The Association for Bahá’í Studies conference completed its first day of talks, and Dr. Haleh Arbab capped the day with a snapshot of where she sees the various streams of Bahá’í activity worldwide heading.
Whether undertaking social and economic development projects, contributing to dialogue at the United Nations, or sponsoring moral development initiatives at the neighbourhood level, Bahá’ís worldwide, Arbab sees, are adopting a process of consultation, action, and reflection that is beginning to bear fruit. At the heart of this civilization-building process is a commitment to the generation and application of knowledge.
The Institute for Studies in Global Prosperity, an international Bahá’í initiative of which Arbab is Director, has drawn interest from people in the development field as a result of introducing religion alongside science in the dialogue on development.
Many people now recognize the failure of outright materialism to solve the world’s most pressing problems, Arbab said. They are now opening up to the idea that the promise of science to humanity cannot be fully realized without the ethical and cultural insights of religion.
The strides the Institute has made, Arbab said, have been partly due to a developmental process that places equal importance on consultation, action, and subsequent reflection.
The process is essentially a simple one that takes on different dynamics depending on the complexity of the project. At its heart, it requires people to consult about the challenge at hand and what is required to address it; to act based on that consultation; and then to reflect on the results, which in turn, will inform the next cycle of activity.
Arbab said the way this process has been adopted at FUNDEAC, a rural university in Colombia with which she is also closely involved, has been integral to its success.
While urban centres of research may be equipped to address certain issues, she noted, they cannot presume to fully address the challenges facing rural populations. Where FUNDEAC innovates, Arbab said, is in its approach to helping put the surrounding rural population itself at the centre of its own learning and development — in effect, giving it ownership of the program of which it is the beneficiary.
Arbab’s insight was a relevant one for the conference’s theme, “Scholarship and Community Building.” The Bahá’í world community is beginning to see the rewards that come when the wall between scholarship and the community dissolves — a scenario in which the community draws on the most promising methodologies of scholarship, and scholarship opens up to the innovative developments in grassroots community building.
Arbab’s talk was the first of a series of plenaries here at the Association for Bahá’í Studies conference. Check back here for further coverage.