Sanctification, an approach to the independent identity of the Bahai community

Margit Warburg has studied the history and sociology of the Bahais, and especially the issue of globalization. She has spent more than 25 years, within the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, researching about this community in various countries and particularly in the BIC headquarter in Haifa, the Occupied Palestine. Her outstanding work, The Citizens of the World, contains some interesting evidences of the process of identifying the Bahai community as a cohesive and organized religious group over the past 100 years. The materials and texts, compiled by a sociologist of religion, reflects the fact that in the current system, especially after the leadership of Shoghi Effendi, various capacities and facilities have been used in the process of Baha'i identification, the main of which has been sanctification. Shoghi Effendi, the Guardian of Baha’ism was able to use this principle in the identification of the Baha'i world community with special care and designing. Baha’is use the term “community building” to identify some of these sanctifying activities. This article presents some of Ms. Warburg's research on Baha'i sanctification, especially from the time of Shoghi Effendi thereafter.