(d) Another part of the marriage law gives directions as to the number of wives a man may take. The "Kitab-ul-Akdas" says: "God hath decreed you to marry. Beware of marrying more than two, and whosoever is content with one, attaineth peace for himself and her."[330]
Mr. Phelps[331] calls attention to this fact that the Book of Laws permits of taking two wives. This limitation of the man to bigamy is deemed an improvement on the law of Islam allowing polygamy.
But Bahai law does not permit a wife to have two husbands. This absolutely invalidates the claim and declaration of Bahaism concerning the equality of the sexes. It proclaims the woman the inferior, not the equal. No equality can exist in a household under such a license. Where is the boast of progress and superiority, when the most essential unit of human society is nullified? "Twain shall be one," says the Gospel of Christ. Can we believe that the "Incarnated Father of all" has revealed a new "Most Holy Book" in which bigamy is permitted? Akstag fur Allah! God forbid!
I will now give some details from the history of the Babi and Bahai "Manifestations" to show their practice in regard to marriage.
After the execution of the Bab, 1850, the rival claimants to prophethood were Mirza Yahya, surnamed Subh-i-Azal, and Mirza Husain Ali, surnamed Baha Ullah. They were sons of Mirza Abbas of Nur,[332] called Mirza Buzurk. He had a wife and a concubine. Yahya was the son of the wife and Husain Ali of the concubine. This was under the law of Islam. The subsequent enmity of the half-brothers exhibits one of the evil results of polygamy.
Subh-i-Azal was the "Lord of two wives," whose names and condition are recorded in the pension records[333] of the Turkish and British Governments in Cyprus. The first was named Fatima and her companion wife was Rukayya. They had fourteen children. Besides the two, who were with Azal in Cyprus, it seems there were two others. Of the third wife he says[334] in his personal narrative: "My wife, who was taken captive and was released, has now grown old in Persia without an interview being possible." The fourth quarrelled with her lord and accompanied the Bahais to Acca.[335] After several of the Azalis, with whom she was living, were murdered by the Bahais,[336] she was sent on to Constantinople with a surviving Azali.[337]
Baha Ullah, like Mohammed, surpassed his own law. He had three wives, or two wives and a concubine. Bahai writers generally omit this information in describing his life and character. Kheiralla has a chapter on his household and gives the names and titles of his children, twelve in all, but fails to mention the fact that he had two wives, though he says: "Like Abraham, by establishing his household, Baha Ullah perfected the laws of man, and fulfilled the prophecies of scripture."[338] C. M. Remey passes over the subject with the remark: "As a man he lived a life in harmony with his Oriental environment."[339] Abbas Effendi in his "Traveller's Narrative," Abul Fazl, Dreyfus, Sprague, Thornton and others fail to inform their readers of the truth and this omission is evidently with definite purpose. Phelps is more candid. He says that "Baha Ullah had two wives; that the Book of Laws permits it."[340] Professor Browne refers to the three, giving the honorary titles conferred upon two of them. He makes a quotation[341] from Hasht Behasht which reads: "Among the titles conferred by Baha Ullah are the following:—on his wives, Madh-i-Ulya, 'the Supreme Cradle,' and Varaka-i-Ulya, 'the Supreme Leaf.'" And in the "New History," he says: "The title of Varaka-i-Ulya was conferred by Baha Ullah on one of his wives."[342] The name of the first wife was Aseyeh or Nowab. She was the mother of Abbas Effendi and six other children.[343] According to Subh-i-Azal's narrative[344] she was a niece of the Shah's vizier. She survived Baha and suffered much from the children of the other wife, according to Abbas Effendi.[345] The first marriage was in Teheran in 1835. He took a "companion for her" in 1850. Her title was Madh-Ulya. She was the mother of Mirza Mohammed Ali, Mirza Badi Ullah and other sons and daughters. The manuscript, "Life of Baha Ullah," continues: "In the last year at Bagdad (1867-68) before the exiling of our Lord to Constantinople, the sister of Mirza Mahdi of Kashan was honoured to be His wife." It appears that she was sent by a rich believer from Persia to be a maid-servant in Baha's household. The Persian Consul in Bagdad, Mirza Buzurk Khan Kasvini[346] desired to take her as his wife or concubine. Baha himself took her as a concubine. Because he was thwarted, the Consul showed special enmity to Baha and his followers. The only child of this wife, a girl, was born at Acca in 1873. The three wives survived Baha. After his death one of them suffered gross indignities at the hands of Abbas Effendi, being furiously attacked by him in his own house, so that she fled precipitately. This, at least, is the report of Khadim Ullah, the lifelong amanuensis of Baha Ullah.[347]
It should be noted that all of Baha's wives[348] had children, and that the first wife had a living son (Abbas) when he took the second wife, so that the usual excuses cannot be pleaded in palliation. For it is common for Bahais in Persia to quote their law, in speaking to a Christian, as meaning that a man may take an additional wife if the first one is childless. Mr. Phelps pleads[349] in extenuation for Baha Ullah that "his second marriage occurred early in his life and under peculiar circumstances, the exact nature of which I do not know." Such an excuse might be accepted for a man like Mullah Mohammed Ali, the Babi leader of the Zenjan insurrection, for, as far as is known, he entered upon his polygamous life while he was a Mohammedan. Two of his wives[350] were shot by a cannon ball and were buried with him in a room of his house, while his third wife, with children, escaped and lived at Shiraz. But for Baha Ullah the excuse of Mr. Phelps is inadmissible, for he was no longer a Moslem when he took the second wife, and was thirty-three years old, and he was fifty when he took the third wife in Bagdad, having been born in 1817. At that time Baha had been for many years a leader in the Babi religion, had written the "Ikan," and announced his mission. Nor was this polygamous union a passing phase of his life, but one continued through thirty or forty years. It would have concerned us little to know the private life of Baha Ullah so long as the religion presented itself merely as aiming at a reformation of Islam, for it may readily be admitted that it is somewhat less of an evil to have two wives and one concubine than the four wives and unlimited concubines that the Koran allows, or the nine to thirteen wives that Mohammed took, and that if Bahaism should cut off the temporary concubines, which disgrace Islam, it would be doing a good thing—so far forth—but when the "Interpreter, the centre of the Covenant," Abdul Baha, comes and stands in Christian churches in London and New York and proclaims Bahaism as a new and superior gospel, it is expedient that Baha's real life should be made known to the women of Christian lands.
It is well to note the sentiment of Oriental Bahais with regard to plural marriage. The opinion of those at Acca can be understood from Mr. Phelps' narrative.[351] Abbas Effendi (Abdul Baha) had two sons and six daughters. The sons died. After this, as his sister Behiah Khanum narrates, "Many influences and those of the very strongest character have been brought to induce my brother (Abdul Baha) to take another wife. Believers have urged it strongly for several reasons. Very many of them wish to take a second wife themselves. Then there is a general wish that the Master might have a son to succeed him. The pressure brought to bear upon him has been very great, greater than you can imagine." Baha desired that Abbas should take a second wife, but he refused to do so unless Baha should command it. There is deep pathos in the words of Abbas[352] welling from his sorrow-stricken heart. "If it had been God's will that I should have a son, the two that were born to me would not have been taken away." Albeit he was forgetful of his theology which proclaims Baha as "God the Father incarnate." Why did not Baha preserve alive one of the sons rather than wish him to marry a companion-wife in order to have another? Mr. Phelps[353] attributes Abbas Effendi's refusal to adopt polygamy, notwithstanding these "very powerful influences which have urged him to do so" to "his appreciation of the sufferings and discontent which it causes among women."[354] Certainly the animosity and bitter quarrellings between the wives of Baha and their respective children, resulting in a permanent split in the family and a schism[355] in the Bahai community, were sufficient to impress Abbas and his followers with the evil effects of plural marriage. The narrative shows, however, that public sentiment among the believers at Acca strongly favoured taking more than one wife. They evidently had no desire to give up the license granted to them by the "Kitab-ul-Akdas." They inclined to follow it and the example of Baha Ullah rather than the example of Abdul Baha.
In conclusion, it is evident that the law and example of Baha Ullah both sanction polygamy. By this the social inequality of the sexes is fixed. Any claim that Bahaism teaches and establishes equal rights for man and woman is vain and groundless boasting.