Women's-only meetings
Letters[edit]
(To categorize)[edit]
"The Universal House of Justice has considered your email message of 16 July 1997 inquiring whether it is advisable for the friends to organize meetings that are only for women and has provided the following response.
"On more than one occasion, `Abdu'l-Baha praised meetings and other activities that had been organized for women, as shown by the following excerpts from His Writings, all of which are cited in the January 1986 Compilation on Women, prepared by the Research Department. ... "The establishment of a women's assemblage for the promotion of knowledge is entirely acceptable, but discussions must be confined to educational matters. It should be done in such a way that differences will, day by day, be entirely wiped out, not that, God forbid, it will end in argumentation between men and women. As in the question of the veil, nothing should be done contrary to wisdom. The individual women should, today, follow a course of action which will be the cause of eternal glory to all womankind, so that all women will be illumined. And that lieth in gathering to learn how to teach, in holding meetings to recite the verses, to offer supplications to the kingdom of the Lord of evident signs, and to institute education for the girls. (From a Tablet -- translated from Persian)
“While the following excerpt from a letter written on our behalf to an individual believer indicates that wisdom is needed in the holding of any meetings that are exclusive to one identifiable group, it also acknowledges that such meetings are sometimes necessary:
"The ideal perhaps would be for such apparently exclusive meetings to be unnecessary and for peculiar problems, no matter what group was affected by them, to be resolved in an atmosphere in which universal understanding could be achieved and all involved, despite their diverse backgrounds, would behave with sufficient sensitivity and wisdom. But it appears that there will always be the demand for some measure of specialization in different areas of social and spiritual development. There will continue, for example, to be a need for special activities related to youth, children, women and men, and to those of any grouping which is or has been pointedly disadvantaged. But such specialized activities as may be called for should surely not supersede, but rather fall within, the context of the process towards the goal of world unity."
"The House of Justice regards the need to educate and guide women in their primary responsibility as mothers as an excellent opportunity for organizing women's activities. Your efforts should focus on helping them in their function as educators of the rising generation. Women should also be encouraged to attract their husbands and male members of their families to the Faith so that the Baha'i community will be representative of the society of which it forms a part. Gradually the spirit of unity and fellowship, as set forth in our teachings, will be reflected in the life of Baha'i families."
- (From a letter written on behalf of the Universal House of Justice to a National Spiritual Assembly, February 29, 1984: Women, in Lights of Guidance, no. 2083)
