Pare one's nails

Enjoined to pare one's nails

" It hath been enjoined upon you to pare your nails...Take heed lest through negligence ye fail to observe that which hath been prescribed unto you by Him Who is the Incomparable, the Gracious."

(Bahá'u'lláh, Kitáb-i-Aqdas, par. 106)

"To cut one's nails" (under "To be the essence of cleanliness")

(Shoghi Effendi, Synopsis and Codification of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, IV.D.3.y.iv)

"The people of the Days of Ignorance engaged in many practices which the Law of Islám later confirmed...It was...their wont to...pare the nails...Can one, God forbid, assume that because some of the divine laws resemble the practices of the Days of Ignorance, the customs of a people abhorred by all nations, it follows that there is a defect in these laws?...Rather, the purpose of His consummate wisdom was to free the people from the chains of fanaticism which had bound them hand and foot, and to forestall those very objections which today confuse the mind and trouble the conscience of the simple and helpless."

('Abdu'l-Bahá, Secret of Divine Civilization, p. 28-29)

See also

• Self-cleaning