'Abdu'l-Baha': The Master of Social Action and Public Discourse

and uh to share something about this uh really important topic around agriculture and the role that abdul baha played i don't know if everybody here knows who abdul baha is and why we should care what he has to say but uh i guess as as we go along we'll explain it but basically he was the uh the son of the founder of the baha'i faith baha'u'llah was the founder of the baha'i faith abdul baha was son and after his father passed in 1892 uh until 1921 abdullah was the head of the baha'i faith and was an extraordinary figure and so i'll just go into my slideshow here and we'll see what we can learn about him okay so um one of the the titles of abdul baha abdul bahar actually means the servant of baha'u'llah abdullah's servant but baha'u'llah called him the master so often baha'i is referred to to abu bakr as the master and in a sense i think he's also the master of social action and public discourse which is one of the are two of the areas that the baha'i community is is moving into so just before we kind of go into that i just wanted to sort of set the stage a little bit by talking about this question of uh world order and the condition it's in and this is an image taken from syria and it had a big impact on me when i saw it because it looked to me almost like a you know some kind of dystopian movie but it's an actual actual scene in syria and uh you know there's some discussion of this war the horrible civil war that's still going on in syria and how it was really uh triggered in many ways by by a situation where farmers about a million farmers had to move off the land in syria do often due to drought which is connected to climate change and poured into cities and it kind of upset the balance and and triggered this big conflict that's happening there so it's one of the indications that our world order is defective as baha'u'llah said many many years ago here we go so baha'u'llah said the winds of despair are last blowing from every direction and the strength that divideth and afflicted the human race is daily increasing so i think that uh you know this year in particular 2020 i think this is becoming more evident all the time on multiple levels i mean obviously there's the pandemic that's happening but also a kind of outgoing consciousness of inequalities of various kinds related to race and gender class and and uh nationality and so on and he says the signs of impending convulsions and chaos can now be discerned in as much as the prevailing order appeareth to be lamentably defective so baha'u'llah pointed out that all of these things we're facing have to do with the actual order the way the world is organized how it's defective and it's triggering these problems so i beseech god that he may graciously awaken the peoples of the earth may grant that the end of their conduct may be profitable unto them and aid them to accomplish that which beseemeth their station so he's calling on people to really transform their lives and transform the world order and then he says is not the object of every revelation to effective transformation in the whole character of mankind transforming a transformation that shall manifest itself both outwardly and inwardly that shall affect both its inner life and external conditions so baha'u'llah talks about this defective world order and how the role of religion is really to transform that into an into a new order by changing us both internally and externally so and the baha'i community worldwide baha'i community we talk about these how to take uh steps to transformation and there is a systematic plan in place to do that so uh those of us are involved in this know about this idea of there being three protagonists in this process there are individuals each of us there are communities which are more than the sum of the individuals in them and there are institutions of various kinds and all of these players protagonists have to be involved in this process of transformation and there are three areas of action one is a process of building capacity at the level of communities at the level of neighborhoods and villages i think capacity within individuals was also also within communities and institutions to become agents of change and i think once a bit of capacity is built then we're looking at how can we then take action on a larger scale to bring about change and also become involved in public discourse so these are three areas of action in the systematic plan to help transform the world to do our part in that process so we're engaging in baha'i communities all over the world in something like 5 000 geographic clusters and the set of activities that help to build unity and capacity through educational processes engaging with social action really beginning at a very small scale often involving things like gardens and kids working on growing things and improving our environment and also engaging in public discourse so that could happen at the level of a conversation with friends or are engaging at the highest levels of society governments international agencies and so on to really kind of change the way we think about the world and how it how it needs to be shaped and the universal house of justice that the head of the baha'i faith the council that's at the head of the baha'i faith talks about this process having the potential to disable every instrument devised by humanity over the long period of its childhood for one group to oppress another so very very relevant to the situation that's happening in the world now in terms of inequalities of various kinds now when we talk about abdul-baha we talk about him as our exemplar so he is he is considered the example of how baha'is should should act and when we look at the question of public discourse and social action he really was a master of these these actions and so we'll talk about that um one of the things in terms of public discourse is his incredible amount of written material and there are something like 30 000 tablets and a tablet is really maybe a letter or or a an article that he would have written and shared and sent to people around the world and i was thinking because i'm a writer i was thinking about these 30 000 tablets and what was really involved in writing those and at the mention of at the beginning was mentioned that i published 1600 articles so i thought well that's that's pretty good for the resume but i was trying to think of how that compares to abdominals output so i wrote i wrote one article a week for 27 years and that comes out to something like 1500 or so so if i was super prolific and wrote an article every day of the week let's say five articles a week that would be 7 500 articles over 27 years so abdul bahar wrote four times that many so it would take me it would have taken me uh one article per week day would have taken me 108 years to produce whatever baha produced or one article a day for 82 years so really it's it's quite incredible but you got to realize that what abdullah was producing was material this great profundity i mean some of them were small things they might be a letter of thanking people for some kind of contribution but many were these profound uh treatises on every aspect of life and he also wrote three books uh the secret of divine civilization memorials of the faithful and the treatise on politics which were again very profound uh in at least in two cases explanations of how to reorganize the world so an incredible output meanwhile he was also involved in this uh huge mass a huge verbal discourse in international travels they traveled throughout north africa europe and also north america canada and the united states giving talks and my wife has recently been reading mahmoud's diary and she was just telling me the incredible pace that admahal worked at meeting giving talks meeting people speaking to the press and so on so really remarkable achievement unparalleled in a sense yeah i think in in this engagement in public discourse so that was one of the things he did and another thing was to be engaged in social action which is more what we'll be talking about today now his social action uh really took place at a number of levels his personal activities in care of the poor and disadvantaged anaka proving financial providing financial support feeding and bathing the sick the arabs called him the lord of generosity that one one quote says that he goes about doing good and mohammedans and christians alike share his benefactions from sunrise often until midnight he works in spite of broken health never sparing himself if there is a wrong to be righted or a suffering to be relieved so this is his his day-to-day work in social action assisting people in his community now meanwhile he was guiding the baha'is in iran there he fostered the social development of the community he encouraged the baha'is to set up schools and medical facilities and promoted the role of women in the community interestingly baha'i women achieved close to 100 literacy compared to the general population of 25 even in 1976 and around 80 percent today uh meanwhile the baha'i community of ashgabad near turkmenistan in turkmenistan was freer to develop a distinctively baha'i community than the friends were in iran here out of behind encouraged the baha'is to set up a number of institutions schools a clinic a traveler's hospice library and reading room and public baths this all culminated in the building between 1902 and 1919 of the first mashrikal adkar which is the first baha'i temple in the world with abdullah's encouragement the pies of ashrabad attained as close as it was possible to achieve at that time the ideal of a baha'i community so now let's consider that all of this or at least from the age of 9 to 64. he was an excellent prisoner much of the time under constant threat of execution at the same time continuous efforts to undermine his authority by members of his family who were jealous his personal life was very simple and his furnishings his room was very spartan but he was also receiving pilgrims who were starting to come from around the world uh often he would actually cook for them himself he was also engaged in building the shrine of the bob one of the founders of the baha'i faith creating the world center of the baha'i faith actively encouraging the beautification of the shrines he would himself they talk about him bringing soil in in his cloak and helping to build the gardens himself at the same time he's he was administering an emerging world religion and expansion throughout the world and during his ministry the baha'i faith spread to australia new zealand china japan south africa south america and the islands of the pacific he was also constantly managing relationships with governments which were very difficult at that time and one uh indication of his impact just in his local community alone was when he passed away in 1921 10 000 people attended his funeral so what i wanted to talk about mainly today i felt i should set that background before i talk about this one particular project that he was involved with which which is very relevant even today to the transformation of agriculture and it's really a model achievement i think in sustainable regenerative social economic development and that is this community in adesiya which is now in jordan so the the material i found on this is developed by uh uh uh raj pushti perhaps some of you know him he's passed away now but he was an agronomist uh originally from iran who lived in britain and he wrote uh he wrote a really amazing chapter in the book spirit of agriculture which i edited about the activities of the central figures of the faith uh the bob and abdullah in the agricultural and rural development areas and uh later he wrote this uh very excellent essay on this community of adessia which is a study of a model of agricultural road development so um just uh these are just some google earth images that i found which kind of give us an idea of where atocia is which is uh you can see it here just south of the sea of galilee um in 1901 in 1901 al devaha purchased the lands of addis as a whole village state paying 400 turkish gold lira the original area purchased was 920 hectares however abdabah immediately gave away 230 hectares leaving a total of 690 hectares the village was developed in several phases at first alba baha made arrangements for several farmers to begin the work but they found it very difficult due to the poor conditions the land and the heavy labor labor required what is more they were subject to raids by thieves who stole whatever meagre crop they were able to produce in 1907 recognizing these obstacles abdominal contacted the pies in persia and asked them to send experienced farmers to settle in asia over the next couple of years a group of farmers from around yaz began to arrive and commenced farm operations abdul bahan farmed them the farmers that they were coming that they were coming to one of the most inhospitable places on earth i thought that was interesting that how transparent abdul-baha was about what these people were getting themselves into in the jordan valley the heat is stifling from june to september with an average daily temperature around 38 degrees celsius malaria was a significant problem while the land had once been fertile and supported a large population agriculture in the region had fallen into decline under ottoman rule abdul bahad told them that god would gradually make the climate of addisia more comfortable merely for the sake of the baha'i farmers in iran so that was his prediction we'll see what happened these farmers would overcome many obstacles to implement the projects planned and directed by abdul baha at first hand labor with simple tools was used to prepare the land but gradually draft animals and plows were added they also had to build homes to provide for the basic needs of their families and these other buildings were initially made from mud bricks interesting that the land was covered with with thorn bushes so of course this made this work much harder before the farmers started cultivation adabaha instructed them to meet consult and then divide the land amongst themselves uh gradually the friends began to prosper precipitation was sufficient to support rain fed grain production and aldo baja recommended that the farmers begin by planting wheat and barley often the farmers visited haifa or akka to seek abdominal hearts advice he would have a specific recommendation for that season assuring them of a bumper harvest and great bounty an important characteristic of the jordan valley is a year-round growing season making double cropping feasible over time the farmers were able to get become quite productive and to produce surplus grain although some rated rating continued to occur security was improved by building bonds of friendship in the wider community an activity abdul-baha had insisted on during the first world war when drought conditions added to the disruption caused by the fighting out of the hoff for saw famine he went to the farmers in attica and asked them to empty their granaries accepting the amount needed for their own use and for reseeding he also asked them to purchase grain from farmers in the area a train of 200 camels was dispatched to haifa and atka where the grain was distributed amongst the local population preventing starvation this humanitarian effort resulted in abdullah being knighted by the british who had gained control of palestine during the war he accepted the honor as the gift of a just king but never used the title the farmer's initial success opened new horizons alba baja encouraged them to diversify their crops and as early as 1910 they expanded into vegetable production for their families and for the market next abdelbaha encouraged the farmers to add fruit trees it was customary to plant broad beans between them and around pomegranate trees so some were used fresh or dried for human consumption but a large part of the crop was plowed into the soil while still green to improve soil texture and fertility abdul baha also introduced bananas to the region until that time no one in the region knew anything about this crop let alone how to grow it at first the villagers were even unsure how to eat it finding it quite unpalatable and hard to swallow until they were shown that the outer skin must be removed within a few years many farmers in the region were growing bananas and profited greatly from this relatively lucrative business gradually alba's prediction of improving conditions came true in the early years malaria was rampant some of the baha'is developed the disease and even succumbed to it to address the problem abdel baha instructed the community to plant a certain type of eucalyptus around the lagoon in the middle of adessia this variety produced quinine in its leaves and branches which acts as a deterrent to the malarial parasite the trees group quickly sucking up large quantities of the mosquito infested water along with the diversification of crops alga baja encouraged additional methods to improve the productivity and sustainability of the farm such as crop rotations in addition to the use of nitrogen fixing legumes and rotation manure was added to increase the yield of crops abdul-baha encouraged the friends the anatosia to diversify into livestock the baha'i farmers were almost self-sufficient in terms of their own food needs however abdominal advised them to increase their income by selling products in markets beyond the immediate boundaries of jordan a key to increasing the diversity of crops and improving yields was irrigation the community worked together to build a small dam across a portion of the river yarmouk and collaborated to dig and maintain irrigation channels eventually tractors and electric lighting were introduced abdul bahad advised the villages to engage in crafts and small industries many farmers were also artisans and a good number of them worked as part-time carpenters while most of the women were engaged in needlework dressmaking and millinery along with a gradually improving farming operation abdo behind courage spiritual and social aspects of village life problems such as those related to tenancy transfer of the right of production and share of irrigation water as well as interpersonal conflicts are bound to arise in any village setting when the baha'i farmers sought abnormal's advice regarding these matters he would smile and suggest that they should sit down and pray together consult on the resolution of the problems and ensure that the unity of the community was maintained no matter what the conditions of peasants sharecroppers and small farmers in 19th century jordan under the will of the ottoman empire was wretched the peasantry was liable to rapacious profiteering by landlords atticia was a different story the system of crop and animal production was based on a special type of sharecropping tendency that was both innovative and fair adhoha emphasized the application of moral and spiritual values in day-to-day life and farm work these values had a significant influence on the production and marketing systems of the farmers improving their fortunes furthermore he strongly recommended that they establish warm bonds of friendship with the people they met who had business dealings with and conduct all their affairs with high rectitude of conduct in view of this great interest in rural and agricultural development abdominal how would occasionally visit the village himself at its peak there were around a thousand people in the village and surrounding area the first spiritual assembly of the baha'is of adesiya was elected in 1924 to direct the affairs of the community all matters relating to farming and animal production including allotments of land were discussed and conducted by a farming committee working under the auspices of the assembly a spacious two-story building erected and completed in 1931 was dedicated for use as a local baha'i administrative center or hazurato kudz in the early days the education of the children took place at home in the evenings the baha'is irrespective of age attended literary classes atasia soon became an agricultural showpace for the whole of jordan if the government wished to show how advanced it was in agricultural production and farming techniques it would bring foreign guests and dignitaries to addicia a brilliant star in an otherwise semi-arid scrub land even members of the royal family visited the village ultimately due to jordanian reform land reforms in night the 1960s the baha'is were not able to continue to live in adesiya and move to other areas or even other countries to support the worldwide growth of the baha'i faith however the principles and practices of village life and farming initiated by abnormal and the village still offer a relevant example of just productive and sustainable rural development application to one third of humanity the smallholder farmers produce much of the world's food in fact the development principles followed by abnormal addressed a range of social and ecological concerns that have since intensified the re-development of adoceae accomplished three things that if replicated would greatly contribute to the development of rural areas and the world uh yeah i just wanted to point out that you know i've often found it interesting that uh the baha'i faith is the first faith to be established in the kind of industrial era but i wanted to point out how relevant uh you know and the baha'i faith focuses a lot of attention on farming and agriculture and food perhaps more than any other religion i always found that interesting juxtaposition but i i just thought it's worth looking at this how farming remains the largest single occupation in the world with one-third of humanity about 2.5 billion farmers and their families driving their livelihoods from agriculture that there are about 500 million farms worldwide most of them various very small farms and also 2 million 200 million pastoralists and 450 million farm laborers also a lot of people derive at least some of their subs subsistence or income from forests including many indigenous people so many more people involved in this relationship with the land in this category as well also another 58 million people are engaged in fisheries and aquaculture and interestingly as many as 800 million people are involved in urban and peri urban uh food production around the world so um i think that i mentioned three things that we can learn from adesiya the first one is about ecological and climate services with the encouragement of abdomen the community of adesiya restored degraded eroded and deforested land improved soil quality improved water use efficiency and increased crop diversity including the use of perennial three crops and forages today this approach which requires minimum external inputs is known as agroecology an effort to farm in a manner that mimics the functions of the natural ecosystem and also the area of social economic development the initial capital investment by abdul baha was the catalyst that allowed families in adesia to prosper they were able to transform scrubland into productive farms and eventually supported hundreds of residents and contributed to the local and regional economy the farms provided high quality food for the village in urban areas the generous share cropping arrangement and profit sharing improved the standard of living residents and non-resident farm laborers and i thought this is uh so interesting in that these methods that abdul-baha adopted uh were very relevant today when about 3.5 billion hectares of land around the world are degraded desertified deforested and that's an area about the size of the continent of africa and if we can help as abdullah did in this case support the royal port to restore land this would lead to the elimination of extreme poverty and hunger increase the earth's bio capacity and help to ameliorate climate change there's a lot of work been done by the soil scientist ratan law who recently received the world food prize about the potential for restoring soils on small farms being a key to ameliorating climate change and this would also avoid this problem which we looked at at the very beginning with the case of syria of mass migrations of people resulting from this kind of massive ecological and climate uh change situation happening in different countries and restoring that amount of land by helping these 2.5 billion people who are involved in small scale farming would be the equivalent of creating about uh creating a new continent the size of africa potentially so the third area was the area of moral capacity material self-reliance brings a sense of dignity and abdominal went further encouraging the residents of addisia to pay equal attention to their moral development this was achieved through education both material and spiritual for the children the youth and adults and through regular devotional meetings education supported a dual moral purpose to develop the potentialities of the individual and to enhance their capacity to be of service building this capacity helped community members to live harmoniously a local governing institution was elected to administer the material and spiritual needs of the community in this way the moral capacity of the individual the community and the institutions increased so it's no wonder that uh when abdullah passed uh he had this gained the respect he came to this prison city as a an excellent prisoner hated by the people there and eventually won over the entire population this is a picture of his funeral with 10 000 people and i would imagine at that time in 1921 that would be almost all the people of this uh this community so um and today uh as you probably know many of you will know that a shrine is being built to abdominal ha near akka where he lived and this is an example or a picture of the shrine that's being built now uh i just i thought i'd include at the end here some examples from around the world of people falling in the footsteps of the master and and trying to put in place some baha'i inspired agricultural projects this is one which we featured in the book the spirit of agriculture which was in mongolia where the pies there were working with the population to grow more vegetables to improve people's nutrition uh i thought it was interesting that back in 1928 richard st barb baker who was a new baha'i it was inspired by by abdul bahar worked in kenya in nigeria this is in when he's working in benin consulting with local people about methods of farming that were not dissimilar from what al devaha was doing in adesiya developing a kind of permaculture approach using agroforestry to preserve landscapes and increase people's incomes another great project in fundayak which is a ngo in colombia for over 30 years they've been fostering process of learning and training and development in rural columbia which is spread around to different areas of latin america they've created rural educational systems that reaches more than 20 000 students dispersed through different areas including many native ethnic groups and here's just an example of uh experimental plot at the university center for real well-being operated by fundiak in in colombia another example is the barley development institute for rural women started in 1985 by the pies in india they've completed 105 residential training programs for 6 700 young women from 600 villages who go back to their villages and and help in their development of their communities i like this this is a recent one that came out of the local spiritual assembly of mata bastian nepal looking at what it can do to enhance the community's capacity to produce its own food and this is in response to the pandemic which has i guess a lot of agricultural workers lost their jobs and had to come back to their community so the community was concerned about this food crisis increasing price of goods and other issues such as children's education and then they consulted together about how to move forward and how to help these migrant workers find land that was wasn't being used in the community to grow crops and be able to make a living so you see where spiritual assemblies can become involved very much like they did in attica in resolving their own problems most of these things projects we're seeing that are quite exciting are happening in these low-income countries latin america uh south asia africa but also more projects are happening in countries like the united states and canada europe where people are using agriculture urban agriculture to develop develop friendship and cooperation within their communities as well as growing food so this is a garden uh in charlotte north carolina that's done quite a good job of connecting people in the community i always like to point to this project austin bowden kirby started coral restoration projects in with villagers fishing villages in fiji and other small island nations and now becoming engaged in kind of whole of watershed projects going up the watershed up into the hills and mountains and looking at how to improve agriculture so that the uh there isn't a lot of erosion into the into the uh coastal areas and so they're rebuilding uh coral reefs by selecting corals that are more resistant to bleaching and helping to restore fishing in that way another baha'i inspired project the smallholder farmers in alliance in haiti that use a tree currency to pay people with trees and to reform their methods of farming and build stronger communities and really getting excellent results there as well now having helped about 13 000 people in their communities to improve their lives so these are just examples of communities i think that are following in the footsteps of the master this one i thought was very interesting was how when the the local house of worship was built i think one of the first two houses of local houses of worship this one in norte del calco in colombia the community decided to in conjunction with building this house of worship uh which is a center of worship and service together they decided to restore a native forest and consulted with some of the elders there about how they could do that and built this native forest around the temple area so just another example and i think that is it this is a a visual of the area around at asea today i actually went there one time uh some time ago we couldn't go into the village at the time but um you can see how the landscape the agricultural part of the landscape has been restored in the area compared to the surrounding hills and so on so the original article uh which is very detailed and can give you much more information by raj pushti here's a link to it i went on research i think the best way is just to google the name odyssey a study in agriculture and real development and and you can get the full story that arash wrote which is really excellent so that's uh what i have to share i hope that worked for you folks and uh

Channel: Agriculture Working Group ABS

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Length: 38min 24sec (2304 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 28 2021