Browsing by Subject "Baha’i Faith"

Peace has always been a pivotal issue in the core of humankind’s thoughts throughout centuries; prophets, great thinkers, poets and elites have expressed their concern, vision and ideas of peace. Major world religions have teachings for peace. As one of the new religious movements of the world, Baha’i Faith has placed peace in the focus of its teaching. There have also been academic and intellectual efforts to define peace and to present plans for making peace like the works of Johan Galtung, the founder of the peace and conflict studies. The purpose of this study is to compare and contrast the peace plan of Baha’i Faith with Johan Galtung’s peace theory and explore their possible crucial differences and similarities (commonalities). In Galtung’s book, Peace by Peaceful Means: Peace and Conflict, Development and Civilization, the first chapter is peace theory which is used to explore Baha’i teachings on peace in Baha’i primary sources like writings of Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of Baha’i Faith, Abdu’l-Bahá' (first successor), Shoghi Effendi (Guardian and appointed head of the Faith) and Universal House of Justice (supreme ruling body) publications. Secondary Baha’i sources are also studied which are articles, papers and books written about Baha’i Faith. The method of comparative analysis used in this study is lens comparison in which we explore A (Galtung’s Peace Theory) less than B (Baha’i Faith peace plan), we use A as a lens through which to view B. The text A is used as a framework to understand and compare with text B. Galtung’s peace theory is an umbrella under which Baha’i teachings are studied. The idea of peace and the approach toward this idea is in the center of this comparison. During this process, the differences and commonalities of A and B are listed and analyzed in three realms, i.e. in relation to peace and gender, peace and democracy and peace and inter-state systems. After every point by point comparison chapter, all common and different features of A and B are observed, listed and analyzed to verify to what degree they are similar with or differ from each other. In this way, it is possible to see the level of proximity and remoteness of two sources and to verify how much they converge or diverge. The thesis reveals in which areas of peace-building ideas, Galtung and Baha’i Faith have common approaches and in which areas they have different standpoints, i.e. this paper disclosed, on gender and peace, both approaches have high level of proximity and convergence.