Baha'i Faith in Canada
Anil Sarwal
Sunday Faith: Baha’i religion looks to nurture ‘higher nature’ of humankind
BY KENT SPENCER, THE PROVINCE OCTOBER 6, 2013
Members of the Baha’i faith believe in the unity of mankind but they know people’s actions get in the way.
“We have a higher nature and a lower nature. The important thing is to build the world, not collapse into dark forces,” says Susan Ardekany, a Vancouver wife and mother who has been involved in the Baha’i religion for most of her life.
She saw mankind’s dark side firsthand at a train station in Belgrade in the 1980s.
It was several years before the Bosnian War, which claimed more than 100,000 lives in the 1990s, but she says trouble was in the air.
“It was one of the most frightening experiences of my life,” she says. “Yugoslavia felt like a black-and-white movie where you know something horrible was coming.”
She was a passenger in a car filled with locals. An argument, apparently about taxes, quickly turned into an all-out brawl.
“They were smashing things and beating one another,” she recalls. “I was a scrawny little kid. I thought if I stayed on the train I would die.”
She forced open a window, threw her bags out and leaped onto the platform.
The incident taught her about the fragility of life and the importance of aspiring to higher purposes.
“One can be living life one moment and it can become desperate the next,” she says. “In Vancouver we have the privilege of being naive of the desperate circumstances of the rest of the world.”
As a member of the Baha’i faith, which emphasizes peace and human rights, she is used to pondering events that impact the world. She has travelled to a dozen countries, worked in Israel and Egypt, and lived all over B.C.
“I am one of the few people I know who has been to Bella Bella,” she says.
Baha’i, a religion that was founded in Iran about 150 years ago, has 700 registered followers in Metro Vancouver and several million worldwide.
“We’re interested in what happens everywhere — Africa, Asia, all over the world. It gives us a sense that we’re all struggling together,” says Ardekany.
“People think Baha’i is not acceptable because it’s from the Middle East. It is not an Iranian religion. It’s a world religion.”
Followers believe in the oneness and equality of mankind, essentially that we’re all brothers and sisters. Baha’is believe that truthfulness is the foundation of all human virtue and that mankind is evolving to a higher level, becoming smarter through experiences such as dealing with global warming.
There is plenty of work to be done in Canada, says Ardekany, everything from addressing perceived bullying in hockey to improving the relationship between First Nations people and the rest of society.
The Baha’i Centre in Vancouver recently hosted a Truth and Reconciliation of Canada conference. The aim was to give natives who suffered at residential schools an opportunity to share their stories in order to begin the process of healing.
“Terrible things happened. Those children were not loved. It fractured their society and caused such pain,” says Ardekany. “The whole point is to see if people can reconcile.”
Believing that everything starts locally, she focuses her efforts in her South Vancouver neighbourhood, where she spreads the message that it’s important to solve conflict.
“I think that is where my future lies, talking to people in the neighbourhood,” she says.
“At times it seems like we’re doing a pretty good job of destroying humanity. But the Baha’i faith tells us there’s a nobility in mankind and something worth saving.”
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