The Baha’i Faith in Africa Establishing a New Religious Movement, 1952–1962 By Anthony A. Lee LEIDEN • BOSTON 2011 Studies of Religion in Africa Edited by Benjamin Soares, Africa Studies Center, Leiden, The Netherlands Frans Wijsen, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands VOLUME 39 This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lee, Anthony A., 1947– The Baha’i faith in Africa : establishing a new religious movement, 1952–1962 / by Anthony A. Lee. p. cm. — (Studies of religion in Africa ; v. 39) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-20684-7 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Bahai Faith—Africa—History. I. Title. II. Series. BP355.A35L44 2011 297.9’309609045—dc23 2011030296 ISSN 0169-9814 ISBN 978 90 04 20684 7 Copyright 2011 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. 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CONTENTS List of Illustrations, Maps, and Tables ............................................ vii Note on Transliteration and Style ................................................... ix Acknowledgements ............................................................................. xi 1. Introduction: The Babi/Baha’i Movement ............................... 1 2. The African Presence at the Genesis of the Babi/Baha’i Religions ........................................................................................ 21 3. Opting for the Apocalypse: The Baha’i Response to the Modern Crisis in the Middle East and West Africa .............. 43 4. Planting the Baha’i Faith in West Africa: The First Decade ............................................................................................ 63 5. The Roots of Baha’i Conversion in British Cameroons ........ 115 6. British Cameroons: A Movement Develops ............................ 159 7. The Baha’i Church of Calabar ................................................... 195 In Lieu of a Conclusion ..................................................................... 219 Appendix: A List of Baha’is in British Cameroons, 1958 .............. 225 Bibliography ......................................................................................... 259 Index ..................................................................................................... 277 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS, MAPS, AND TABLES Chapter 1 Illustration 1.1. The Entrance to the House of the Bab ............... 3 Table 1.1. Estimated Baha’i Populations .............................. 11 Chapter 2 Illustration 2.1. An African Slave, 1840 .......................................... 22 Illustration 2.2. Mubarak’s Room in the House of the Bab ........ 32 Chapter 4 Illustration 4.1. Map of Baha’is in Africa, 1952 ............................ 75 Illustration 4.2. Baha’i House of Worship, Kampala, Uganda ... 98 Illustration 4.3. The First Baha’is in Liberia, 1952 ........................ 105 Illustration 4.4. Baha’is in Tamale, Northern Ghana, 1960 ........ 111 Table 4.1. Goals and Achievements of the African Campaign, 1951–1953 ........................................... 72 Table 4.2. The First Twenty-six to Become Baha’is in Liberia, 1952 ............................................................ 80 Table 4.3. Pioneers and First Baha’is in West Africa ......... 91 Table 4.4. Numbers of Baha’is in Northwest Africa, April 1956 ........................................................................... 93 Table 4.5. Statistical Summary of African Territories, 1952–1963 ................................................................ 96 Chapter 5 Illustration 5.1. Enoch Olinga (1926–1979) ................................... 134 Illustration 5.2. Four New African Baha’is, Kampala, Uganda, 1952 ........................................................................... 139 Illustration 5.3. Leroy Ioas Greeting the New Baha’is ................. 149 Illustration 5.4. Africa Intercontinental Conference, Kampala, Uganda, February 12–18, 1953 ............................ 150 Illustration 5.5. New Baha’is from Teso, February 1953 ............. 151 viii list of illustrations, maps, and tables Map 5.1. Detail of a Map of South British Cameroons .... 117 Map 5.2. Uganda, Showing Teso District ........................... 136 Table 5.1. Growth of the Basel Mission in Cameroons, 1914–1925 ................................................................ 129 Chapter 6 Illustration 6.1. Three Cameroonian Baha’is ................................. 163 Chapter 7 Illustration 7.1. ‘Abdu’l-Baha (taken circa 1912) .......................... 201 NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION AND STYLE Any academic work on Baha’i history raises the question of how to render Persian and Arabic words, names, and phrases into the Latin alphabet. The use of other English conventions—such as capitalization, gender forms, and italics—also becomes problematic. Unfortunately, there is no one system of transliteration and style that is used univer- sally in academia, so various systems compete. The systems used in this book are not entirely consistent. For that, I apologize in advance. In 1923, Shoghi Effendi, then the head of the Baha’i Faith, asked Baha’is of the world to “avoid confusion in the future” by adopting an academic system of transliteration which was then in use. He pre- sented this as “an authoritative and universal, though arbitrary code for the spelling of Oriental terms.”1 The strong point of the system was its strict insistence on letter-for-letter transliterations, such that any bilingual reader seeing a Persian or Arabic word transliterated by this system could immediately write the word back into the original language without error. The other advantage was that it brought con- sistency and uniformity to spellings in Baha’i books in various coun- tries and languages. Since then, Baha’i literature has adhered to this system religiously to represent Persian and Arabic words that did not have conven- tional spellings. However, academic conventions moved on, and the Baha’i spellings now sometimes appear old-fashioned and/or confus- ing. The system, besides being arbitrary, also had the disadvantage of being heavy with diacritical marks—so that the ubiquitous word Bahai, for example, was loaded down with two accent marks and an apostrophe—Bahá’í. 1 Shoghi Effendi, Bahá’í Administration: Selected Messages, 1922–1932, Revised edi- tion (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1974 [1928]) p. 56. Shoghi Effendi appa- rently believed that this system had been adopted as standard by academics at one of the International Oriental Congresses. But he seems to have been mistaken. (Marzieh Gail, Bahá’í Glossary [Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1955.] For a discussion of this matter, see Moojan Momen, “The Baha’i System of Transliteration,” Bahá’í Studies Bulletin, Vol. 5 ( January 1991) Nos. 1–2, pp. 13ff. See also, Stephen Lambden, “Modern Western, Arabic-Persian Academic Transliteration System,” Bahá’í Studies Bulletin, Vol. 5 ( January 1991) Nos. 1–2, pp. 56ff. x note on transliteration and style For this book, I have used a modified and softened version of (what is now exclusively) a Baha’i system. I have eliminated all sublinear diacritical marks (dots and underlining). All accent marks have been removed, as well, even from Baha’u’llah and Bab—though, the Bab retains the definite article to avoid confusion with the common Eng- lish name (Bob) which is pronounced identically. Words that have conventional English spellings, as might be found in a dictionary or newspaper, are not transliterated using this system. The second hyphen in the rendering of the ezafeh form of Persian (which links two nouns) has been dropped. (So, Baha’u’llah’s Book of Certitude is Kitab-i Iqan, not Kitáb-i-Íqán, for example.) I hope this will make the work more readable. However, when quoting other books and authors using other sys- tems of transliteration, I have been obliged to copy the spellings found in those works. Since I have cited and quoted a large number of Baha’i books and authors, the inconsistencies are glaring.2 Normally, book titles are placed in italics. However, books of Holy Scripture are not italicized—Bible, Qur’an, and Torah, for example. Therefore, major works of Baha’i scripture are not found in italics, unless the reference is to a specific published edition. For example, Baha’u’llah’s holy book, the Kitab-i Aqdas, is normally not italicized.3 References are made to the paragraph numbers of that book, which are the same in all editions. Persian and Arabic phrases that are quoted in the book have been rendered in italics.