Mendicancy

Prohibited[edit]

"The Bahá'í Faith...prohibits...mendicancy..."

(The Faith of Bahá'u'lláh: A World Religion, 14 July 1947, addressed to a United Nations Commission, p. 3; also in Redistribution of Wealth (compilation), sec. 2.1.1)

"In this Book [the Kitáb-i-Aqdas] He...prohibits...mendicancy"

(Shoghi Effendi, God Passes By, p. 214)

"Mendicancy"

(Kitáb-i-Aqdas, Synopsis and Codification of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, item IV.D.1.y.v, under "LAWS, ORDINANCES AND EXHORTATIONS" -> "Miscellaneous Laws, Ordinances and Exhortations" -> "Miscellaneous Laws and Ordinances" -> "Prohibitions")

Mendicancy has been unchallenged of even indulged (by religion) due to the focus on other reformations considered more essential[edit]

"Mendicancy, slavery, autocracy, conquest, ethnic prejudices and other undesirable features of social interaction have gone unchallenged-or been explicitly indulged-as religion sought to achieve reformations of behaviour that were considered more immediately essential at given stages in the advance of civilization. To condemn religion because any one of its successive dispensations failed to address the whole range of social wrongs would be to ignore everything that has been learned about the nature of human development. Inevitably, anachronistic thinking of this kind must also create severe psychological handicaps in appreciating and facing the requirements of one's own time."

(Universal House of Justice, One Common Faith, par. 48)

(Passage on 'Give that which is asked of you' is not connected to giving to beggars)[edit]

"The passage in the 'Epistle to the Son of the Wolf' in which Bahá’u’lláh says: 'Give that which is asked of you' means that man must always try to develop and reveal the qualities that are to be found potentially in him. It is an urge to self-improvement and individual progress, and has, therefore, no connection with that passage in the 'Aqdas' wherein Bahá’u’lláh forbids mendicity."

(From a letter written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi to an individual believer, March 8, 1936, in Lights of Guidance, no. 1586)

Notes[edit]

The passage in the Aqdas forbidding mendicity (begging) may be par. 147 or possibly par. 33.
See Barstow BC#401 for an exact reference to this translation (attributed as being a Tablet to Mirza Badi'u'llah cited in Epistle to the Son of the Wolf). See Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, p. 93 (where the translation is instead given as: "an answerer to the cry of the needy")

To-dos for this page[edit]

Add more quotes showing it being forbidden