Beautiful calligraphy is an
honoured tradition and high art in many parts of the world, especially in Asia
from Japan to Turkey. For a boy being
educated in Canada, for me calligraphy simply meant good penmanship, of which I
was proud, but it certainly didn’t imply any dimension of actual artistic
merit, just neatness (and perhaps a hint of a good character). In the Muslim world, which eschews graven
images, calligraphy is elevated to the status of high religious art, the
apotheosis of which is the adornment of mosques with holy words from the
Qur’án. Since the Bahá’í Faith was born,
suckled, and weaned in this environment, it is therefore not surprising that
the Scriptures of the Bahá’í Faith have been hand-copied and recopied, framed
and illuminated (decorated with intricate borders, often golden), and often
admired almost as much for their artistry as their spiritual content. Bahá’u’lláh’s father and Bahá’u’lláh Himself
were noted calligraphers. Perhaps the
most famous Bahá’í calligrapher contemporary with Bahá’u’lláh was Mishkín-Qalam,
pictured below (the spit and image of John Lennon, no?), and his enduring
legacy in the Bahá’í world at large is his rendering of the “Greatest Name” or
“Most Great Name”: “Ya Bahá’u’l-‘abhá” (“O
Thou the Glory of the All-Glorious”).
Most Bahá’ís have this symbol is some form in their homes, from plaques
to tapestries to bookmarks for selected books.
All well and good so far. However, Bahá’ís, who fearlessly confront all
manner of social and religious issues, often skirt the fact that the majority
of the world does not read Arabic, nor that Arabic, like Persian and Hebrew, is
read from right to left. Many more
people, however, can read English, and if one looks at Mishkín-Qalam’s
masterwork, it seems blatantly to say “EVIL”
-- you simply can’t not see it, and by the time you explain it away, the
initial effect has made a cicatrix difficult to heal. This is not only fodder for anyone opposed to
the Faith, but off-putting to anyone else as well. One can only speculate as to how it works on
the imagination, but it can’t be good.
We can’t just sweep this under the rug, for it is often the first
impetus and conversation piece for teaching about the Faith. I opine that we really ought to be more
discreet in our use of this symbol and instead field questions about photos of
‘Abdu’l-Bahá on our walls and end-tables, as people are always curious about
our great-grandparents.
For eighteen years I had a music
school in Markham, Ontario, and on a wall opposite the piano I had a beautiful
Navajo sandpainting of Mishkín-Qalam’s Greatest Name on a brilliant
turquoise background and surrounded by nine eagle feathers. Dozens of people saw it daily. One day a student of mine piped up and asked,
“Why does it say ‘Elvis’?” I don’t know
if he was dyslexic, but clearly the musical training was progressing nicely.
