A glance at Shoqi Effendi, the third Baha’i leader

Bahaismiran:

Shoqi Effendi entitled Shoqi Rabbani, the third leader of Baha’ism cult, is the senior offspring of Ziaeeieh Khanom (the senior daughter of Abbas Effendi and Mirza Hadi Afnan. He was born on March 3, 1897 A.D, 1314 A.H. in Akka city, Palestine.[1] Shoqi Effendi. He went to Baradran school in Heyfa city and became familiar with French language. After a while, he went to a catholic round the clock school in Beirut. Then, he entered into the American university in Beirut and graduated in 1918 A.D. He went to the English university Oxford and was busy studying until 1921.[2]

After Abdul Baha’s death, the second leader of Baha’is, he came back Hayfa in 1921 A.D. when he was 24. He became the chairman of the Baha’ism cult based on Abdul Baha’s will and with the help of his mother. His morality and behavior made most of the Baha’i proselytizers angry and annoyed; so that, most Baha’i proselytizers such as Abdul Hussein Ayati, Fazullah Mohtadi, Hassan Nikou and etc. quitted the cult and turned to Islam. However, the main reason (according to their writings) wasn’t annoyance by Shoqi Effendi.

Like the previous Baha’i leaders, Shoqi cursed the opponents. They wrote several writings in order to answer him. For instance, Abdul Hussein Ayati wrote the book Kashful Hiyal and fazlullah Mohtadi wrote “Sobhi’s memoirs” and Hassan Nikou wrote the book “the philosophy of Nikou”. Nevertheless, most Baha’is accepted Shoqi as Abdul Baha’s leader and successor.

Shoqi resembled the foreigners in appearance in order to serve the Colonialists and strangers more than his forefathers. The Baha’i author of the book “from Bab to the universal house of justice” writes: “Before Shoqi became the Baha’i leader, the Baha’i leaders had to maintain the traditional and cultural frameworks; since they were living in traditional and religious communities of Iran and Arab countries specially the Palestine land. Thus, Abdul Baha was constantly wearing goan and a kind of hat [ which was worn by clergymen in some Islamic countries] and going to religious and traditional mosques and assemblies to debate.[3]