The Bahá’í Position on Palestine: A Note for the Record

May 15, 2026 X.T.M 52 Comments filed under Popular, Precedent, X.T.M

Comments of late have drifted, as they sometimes do here, into territory where the Bahá’ís are invoked as a rhetorical chess piece by people who know very little about them. We believe in free speech, and on this blog more than most, in authorial autonomy; contributors and commenters speak for themselves, and we are not in the business of policing opinion. But because the question of Palestine sits adjacent to much of what has been said, we thought it worth setting down what the actual position is.

“Members of the National Spiritual Assembly who disappeared in August in 1980. All are presumed to have been killed” by Bahá’í Media Bank.

One caveat first. When we write or administer here, we do not speak for our Faith in any official capacity. We are members of it. That is the limit of our standing.

The clearest statement of the Bahá’í position comes from the pen of the Beloved Guardian of the Faith, Shoghi Effendi, who in July 1947 was asked directly by the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine to clarify the relationship of the Bahá’í community to the country and its political future. His reply, written from Haifa and reproduced in The Bahá’í World, Volume 11, is as close to a foundational text on this question as exists. We quote it at length, because paraphrase would not do it justice.

Letter to the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine

On July 9, 1947, Shoghi Effendi received a letter from the chairman of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine requesting a statement on the relationship, which the Baha’i Faith has to Palestine and the Baha’i attitude toward any future changes in the status of the country. From Shoghi Effendi’s reply, the following paragraphs are quoted in The Baha’i World, Volume 11 (1946-1950), pp.43-44.1

HAIFA, ISRAEL—15 July 1947

“The position of the Baha’is in this country is in a certain measure unique: Whereas Jerusalem is the spiritual center of Christendom it is not the administrative center of either the Church of Rome or any other Christian denomination. Likewise although it is regarded as the second most sacred shrine of Islam, the most Holy site of the Muhammadan Faith, and the center of its pilgrimages, are to be found in Arabia, not in Palestine. The Jews alone offer somewhat of a parallel to the attachment which the Baha’is have for this country, inasmuch as Jerusalem holds the remains of their Holy Temple and was the seat of both the religious and political institutions associated with their past history. But even their case differs in one respect from that of the Baha’is for it is in the soil of Palestine that the three central Figures of our Religion are buried and it is not only the center of Baha’i’ pilgrimages from all over the world but also the permanent seat of our Administrative Order, of which I have the honor to be the Head.”

“The Baha’i Faith is entirely nonpolitical and we neither take sides in the present tragic dispute going on over the future of the Holy Land and its people nor have we any statement to make or advice to give as to what the nature of the political future of this country should be. Our aim is the establishment of universal peace in this world and our desire to see justice prevail in every domain of human society, including the domain of politics. As many of the adherents of our Faith are of both Jewish and Moslem extraction, we have no prejudice towards either of these groups and are most anxious to reconcile them for their mutual good and for the good of the country.”

“What does concern us, however, in any decisions made affecting the future of Palestine, is that the fact be recognized by whoever exercises sovereignty over Haifa and Acre, that within this area exists the spiritual and administrative world center of a world Faith, and that the independence of that Faith, its right to manage its affairs from this source, the right of Baha’is from any and every country of the globe to visit it as pilgrims (enjoying the same privilege in this respect as Jews, Moslems and Christians do in regard to visiting Jerusalem), be acknowledged and permanently safeguarded.”

Three things are worth drawing out.

Continue reading The Bahá’í Position on Palestine: A Note for the Record

Pakistani Centrists, Not Muslim Extremists

April 25, 2026 X.T.M 191 Comments filed under Popular, Precedent, X.T.M

A Precedent note

The most important thing to understand about the Pakistani voices on this site is that they are centrists, not extremists. Kabir, El Khawaja, S Qureishi: none of them is a fringe figure in Pakistani society. They are roughly where a literate, urban, employed Pakistani sits, and that fact deserves attention.

It deserves attention because India, over the last decade, has stopped engaging with Pakistanis altogether. Visas have collapsed. Cricket is gone. Cinema is gone. Academic exchange is gone. The everyday oxidation of one society against another, the slow correction by which extreme positions get rounded down through exposure to people who hold different ones, has been switched off. What is left is each side talking to itself about the other.

Brown Pundits is one of the few places where that has not happened.

The thread that prompted this note will illustrate. A week ago, S Qureishi observed that the only downside of the Islamic Revolution was that “there is no OnlyFans.” We were deeply offended by this line seriously enough to write the next piece on counterfactual analysis of Iranian society. Q then returned, under another post, with a fuller thesis: female sexuality must be controlled to sustain a civilisation. Pressed on enforcement, he listed disownment, violence, lawsuits, vandalism. Finally when pressed on honour killing, he admitted it was “horrible” and “immoral.”

Three voices took shape on the thread. The most salient asked that the comment be deleted as misogynist.

We are not deleting it.

We disagree with Q on almost every line he wrote. The thesis that female autonomy is the load-bearing crack in civilisation is one we reject in full. The post on Virginity Policing that triggered this thread was our own. But Q is not a Taliban spokesman. He is a Pakistani who, when challenged in writing by other commenters, was forced to articulate his position, defend it under hostile examination, and concede that violence is wrong. That is not platforming. That is engagement. It is the slow work India has decided it no longer needs to do.

Continue reading Pakistani Centrists, Not Muslim Extremists

Overzealous Pemra

April 18, 2026 Kabir 6 Comments filed under Kabir

A few days ago RNJ had referred to Pakistani TV channels being issued show-cause notices for airing Indian content in connection with the passing of Asha Bhosle.

This is one of the rare occasions when RNJ and I actually agree on something. Though there is a judgement of Pakistan’s Supreme Court that bans the airing of Indian content on TV–and this is what PEMRA relied upon in their arguments–I personally think that this law is counterproductive. Art should transcend borders.

Mirza Moeez Baig explains in DAWN:

The decision in Human Rights Case No 22753-S: In 2016, Pemra issued a circular banning all private TV channels from airing Indian content. The circular was assailed before the Lahore High Court, where Justice Mansoor Ali Shah declared that Pemra’s ban was unconstitutional. In 2018, however, the apex court suspended the LHC judgement. In keeping with the jurisprudence that characterised his tenure, then chief justice Saqib Nisar, while suspending Justice Shah’s well-reasoned judgement, thundered, “They are trying to obstruct the construction of our dam and we cannot even ban their channels.”

And:

The right to free speech includes the right to receive ideas, facts, knowledge, theories, creative and emotive impulses through theatre, da-nce, music and film. Critical to the foundation of an independent and free media is creating an environment conducive to the widest possible dissemination of informa-tion from diverse and antagonistic sources.

Unsurprisingly, Pemra’s show-cause notice would only pass muster if the content celebrating Bhosle’s musical journey (i) offended Pakistan’s ideology, (ii) was immoral, (iii) or jeopardised Pakistan’s security and integrity. Needless to say, Bhosle’s music posed no such existential threat.

I will end this post with a clip of Asha ji and Ustad Ali Akbar Khan’s piece “Khayal in Gaud Sarang”