Covenant-breaker


Covenant-breaker is a term used by Baháʼís to refer to a person who has been excommunicated from the Baháʼí community for the act of covenant-breaking, roughly defined as active opposition to the Baháʼí Faith from a current member. According to Baháʼí law, only the head of the religion, currently the Universal House of Justice, has the authority to declare a person a covenant-breaker.
A person may be declared a covenant-breaker for actions which are seen as challenging the unity of the Baháʼí community, not for personal matters such as failure to obey Baháʼí law or conversion to another religion. When a person is a declared a covenant-breaker, all Baháʼís are expected to avoid unnecessary association with that person.

Definition

Covenant-breaking does not refer to attacks from non-Baháʼís or former Baha'is. Rather, it is in reference to internal campaigns of opposition where the Covenant-breaker is seen as challenging the unity of the Baháʼí Faith, causing internal division, or by claiming or supporting an alternate succession of authority or administrative structure. The central purpose of the covenant is to prevent schism and dissension.
In a letter to an individual dated 23 March 1975, the Universal House of Justice wrote:
The term 'Covenant-breaker' or, in Arabic 'naqid al-mithaq' , was first used by ʻAbdu'l-Bahá to describe the partisans of his brother Mírzá Muhammad ʻAlí, who challenged his leadership. In ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's Will and Testament, He appointed Shoghi Effendi as the Guardian of the religion and called for the eventual election of the Universal House of Justice, and defined in the same manner opposition to these two institutions as Covenant-Breaking. ʻAbdu'l-Bahá advised all Baháʼís to shun anyone opposing the Covenant: "...one of the greatest and most fundamental principles of the Cause of God is to shun and avoid entirely the Covenant-breakers, for they will utterly destroy the Cause of God, exterminate His Law and render of no account all efforts exerted in the past."

Categorization

Included categories of people

Most Covenant-breakers are involved in schismatic groups, but not always. For example, a Baháʼí who refuses to follow guidance on treatment of Covenant-breakers is at risk of being named one. One article originally written for the Baháʼí Encyclopedia, characterized Covenant-breakers that have emerged in the course of Baháʼí history as belonging to one of four categories:
  1. Leadership challenge: These are persons who dispute the authority and legitimacy of the head of the religion and advance claims either for themselves or for another. The main examples of these are Mírzá Muhammad ʻAlí and Charles Mason Remey.
  2. Dissidence: Those who actively disagree with the policies and actions of the head of the faith without, however, advancing an alternative claim for leadership. This group consisted mostly of opponents of the Baháʼí administration such as Ruth White and Mirza Ahmad Sohrab.
  3. Disobedience: Those who disobey certain direct instructions from the head of the religion. Mostly the instruction in question is to cease to associate with a Covenant-breaker. Examples of this type include most of the descendants of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá during Shoghi Effendi's time.
  4. Apostates who maliciously attack the Baháʼí Faith. Examples include Ávárih and Níkú.

    Excluded categories of people

Shoghi Effendi wrote to the National Spiritual Assembly of Canada in 1957:
Beyond this, many other relationships to the Baháʼí Faith exist, both positive and negative. Covenant-breaking does not apply to most of them. The following is a partial list of those who could not rightly be termed Covenant-breakers:
are generally regarded as another religion altogether. Since Covenant-breaking presumes that one has submitted oneself to a covenant and then broken it, and Bábís never recognized or swore allegiance to Baháʼu'lláh, they are not Covenant-breakers.
Followers of Subh-i-Azal, Baháʼu'lláh's half-brother who tried to poison him, engaged in active opposition to Baháʼís, and Shoghi Effendi did inform Baháʼís that they should avoid contact with his descendants, writing that "No intelligent and loyal Baha'i would associate with a descendant of Azal, if he traced the slightest breath of criticism of our Faith, in any aspect, from that person. In fact these people should be strenuously avoided as having an inherited spiritual disease -- the disease of Covenant-breaking!".

Covenant-breaking in Shoghi Effendi's immediate family

Through the influence of Bahiyyih Khanum, the eldest daughter of Baháʼu'lláh, everyone in the household initially rallied around Shoghi Effendi after the death of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá. For several years his brother Husayn and several cousins served him as secretaries. The only ones publicly opposing him were Mírzá Muhammad ʻAlí and his followers, who were declared Covenant-breakers by ʻAbdu'l-Bahá. Contrary to ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's specific instruction, certain family members established illicit links with those whom ʻAbdu'l-Bahá had declared Covenant-breakers. After Bahiyyih Khanum died in 1932, Shoghi Effendi's eldest sister – Ruhangiz – married Nayyer Effendi Afnan, a son of Siyyid Ali Afnan, the son of the Báb's brother in law. Nayyers' brother Hussein Effendi Afnan had been expelled for failing to resign from the government of Iraq in protest for the seizure of the house of Baháʼu'lláh. Through Ruhangiz's efforts, Shoghi Effendi's other sister and his cousin Thurayya also married sons of Siyyid Ali Afnan. Presumably being faced with a choice between shunning their disobedient family members and being themselves disobedient to ʻAbdu'l-Bahá and Shoghi Effendi, his cousins, aunts and uncles chose the latter.

Ruhi Afnan

After years of silence on these developments, cables sent by Shoghi Effendi on 2 November 1941 provide background to developments among family members. Ruhi Afnan, Shoghi Effendi's cousin through ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's daughter Tuba:
Faydi was the son of Furughiyyih Khanum, a daughter of Baháʼu'lláh by his third wife Gawhar. Furughiyyih and her children all supported Mírzá Muhammad ʻAlí. Faydi had two elder brothers. Hussein Effendi Afnan was aide-de-camp to Faisal II of Iraq and Nayyer Effendi Afnan was Commissioner of Parks in Cairo, Egypt. The entire Baháʼí Family was stigmatized by Shoghi Effendi as Covenant-breakers as he was displeased with their marriages.
Then in a 1950 cable:
And in 1953:
Later, Ruhi was presented with a copy of Sohrab's book about his excommunication:

Munib Shahid

Concerning Munib Shahid, Shoghi Effendi's cousin through ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's daughter Ruha, Shoghi Effendi sent the following cable to the Baháʼí world in November 1944:
Husayn Ali was Shoghi Effendi's brother. In April 1945, Shoghi Effendi sent the following cable to the Baháʼí world: "My faithless brother Husayn, after long period of dishonourable conduct, has abandoned the Master's home to consort with his sister and other Covenant-breakers". In March 1950, Shoghi Effendi would send a further cable: "Faithless brother Hussein, already abased through dishonorable conduct over period years followed by association with Covenant-breakers Holy Land and efforts undermine Guardian's position, recently further demeaned himself through marriage under obscure circumstances with lowborn Christian girl Europe" . Shoghi Effendi would later clarify the use of the term "lowborn Christian girl" as follows: "Regarding his cable concerning Hussein: he has been very surprised to note that the terms “low-born Christian girl” and “disgraceful alliance” should arouse any question: it seems to him that the friends should realize it is not befitting for the Guardian's own brother, the grandchild of the Master, an Afnán and Aghsán mentioned in the Will and Testament of the Master, and of whom so much was expected because of his relation to the family of the Prophet, to marry an unknown girl, according to goodness knows what rite, who is not a believer at all. Surely, every Bahá’í must realise that the terms low-born and Christian are definitions of a situation and in no way imply any condemnation of a person’s birth or the religion they belong to as such. We have no snobbery and no religious prejudice in our Faith. But the members of the Master’s family have contracted marriages which cannot be considered in any other light than disgraceful, in view of what ‘Abdu’l-Bahá wished for them.”.

Riaz

Concerning his own brother Riaz, the following cable was sent in December 1951:
He dispatched a cable concerning his younger sister in December 1941:
The reason for her being declared a Covenant-breaker was that she followed the example of Ruhi's sister by marrying to one of his cousins without the Guardian's consent. Mehrangiz married to Hassan Afnan, the son of Furughiyyih Khanum, a daughter of Baháʼu'lláh by his third wife Gawhar.

Resultant groups

Most of the groups regarded by the larger group of Baháʼís as Covenant-breakers originated in the claims of Charles Mason Remey to the Guardianship in 1960. The Will and Testament of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá states that Guardians should be lineal descendants of Baháʼu'lláh, that each Guardian must select his successor during his lifetime, and that the nine Hands of the Cause of God permanently stationed in the holy land must approve the appointment by majority vote. Baháʼís interpret lineal descendency to mean physical familial relation to Baháʼu'lláh, of which Mason Remey was not.
Almost all of Baháʼís accepted the determination of the Hands of the Cause that upon the death of Shoghi Effendi, he died "without having appointed his successor". There was an absence of a valid descendant of Baháʼu'lláh who could qualify under the terms of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's will. Later the Universal House of Justice, initially elected in 1963, made a ruling on the subject that it was not possible for another Guardian to be appointed.
In 1960 Remey, a Hand of the Cause himself, retracted his earlier position, and claimed to have been coerced. He claimed to be the successor to Shoghi Effendi. He and the small number of people who followed him were expelled from the Faith by the Hands of the Cause. Those close to Remey claimed that he went senile in old age, and by the time of his death he was largely abandoned, with his most prominent followers fighting amongst themselves for leadership.
The largest group of the remaining followers of Remey, members of the so called "Orthodox Baháʼí Faith", believe that legitimate authority passed from Shoghi Effendi to Mason Remey to Joel Marangella. They, therefore, regard the Universal House of Justice in Haifa, Israel to be illegitimate, and its members and followers to be Covenant-breakers.
The present descendants of expelled members of Baháʼu'lláh's family have not specifically been declared Covenant-breakers, though they mostly do not associate themselves with the Baháʼí religion.
A small group of Baháʼís in Northern New Mexico believe that these descendants are eligible for appointment to the Guardianship and are waiting for such a direct descendant of Baháʼu'lláh to arise as the rightful Guardian.
There is also a small group in Montana, originally inspired by Leland Jensen, who claimed a status higher than that of the Guardian. His failed apocalyptic predictions and unsuccessful efforts to reestablish the Guardianship and the administration were apparent by his death in 1996. A dispute among Jensen's followers over the identity of the Guardian resulted in another division in 2001.