LINCOLN
After 20 years in Haifa, Israel, Albert Lincoln sees the West as disconnected from the rest of the world — and thinks that it’s time for Westerners to realize it.
“It’s really quite something, the extent to which the Western world has really become a gated community and shut off from the rest of the world,” Lincoln said. “In population terms, it’s small. It’s really like a neighborhood compared with a city. And the rest of the world is in a very different place, not a very happy place in lots of ways. But in other ways, it is.”
Lincoln, who served as the secretary general of the Baha’i International Community from 1994 to 2013, will give a lecture titled “Religion and the Middle East — a Fresh Take” at 2 p.m. today in the Hall of Philosophy.
Because a main tenet of Baha’i faith is the belief that all religions are correct and valid, the experience of living in the Middle East has been one of “looking at the picture with an attempt to understand and empathize with all the players,” Lincoln said.
“Israel and the Holy Land are quite central to the world,” he said. “[There is] tremendous potential for flourishing [there], looking at it through the eye of diversity being not the opposite of the ideal.”
This embrace of diversity is a product of the Baha’i belief that all people belong to one human family. Baha’is believe that God is the creator of the universe, who is beyond human understanding but communicates with humankind through prophets such as Jesus, Muhammad, and Buddha. Therefore, in Baha’i understanding, all religions worship the same God.
The prophets followed by Baha’is are the Bab and Bahá’u’lláh, who lived in the mid-19th century. Bahá’u’lláh was exiled from Iran for his teachings. He fled first to Baghdad and then to various other cities in the Ottoman Empire before his death in Haifa in 1892. His gravesite and shrine are maintained in that city, as is the Baha’i World Centre.
“The Baha’i faith is persecuted in Iran and some other Islamic countries, and one of the pretexts is because our headquarters is in Israel,” Lincoln said. “But in fact, it’s in Israel because of events that occurred when that country was under Islamic rule, and one doesn’t simply move graves and shrines.”
Although the Baha’i Faith is new as far as religions go, it has come to encompass significant cultural diversity, Lincoln said.
“In the 172 years that it’s been going, the Baha’i faith has, to quite an extraordinary extent, spread around the world,” he said. “Starting from this obscure Middle Eastern movement and starting from zero in 1844, it has transcended its cultural nature and really become very multicultural and global, to the extent that the membership today almost represents, in terms of distribution, the world population.”
This multiculturalism could serve as an example of cultural understanding and acceptance, Lincoln said.
“It’s a very profound notion that we have, to learn a completely different attitude toward people who look different or think differently,” he said.
The Chautauquan Daily 
A good article. But Bahá’u’lláh never fled anywhere. He was escorted to Baghdad by horsemen of both the Persian and Russian governments. He passed away in Akka, at the pelace of Bahjí. It is the Báb Whose tomb has the golden dome in Haifa.
He was sent as a prisoner and exile! by the ottoman empire!
Nice article, however there are a few inaccuracies in this article, as already pointed out above in other comments. 1. To suggest that Bahá’ís believe that all religions are correct and valid, is a little simplistic. Bahá’ís recognise the great religious traditions (of both Abrahamic origin and from the East) as divine in origin, not necessarily all ideologies in today’s world that identify themselves as religions. It’s also important to acknowledge that recognising the divine origin of a religion does not necessarily means one accepts the interpretations current among believers of said religion to be true nor correct.
2. Bahá’u’lláh never fled anywhere — he was successively banished by both the Persian and Ottoman Empires, first to Baghdad, then to Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul in Turkey), then to Adrianople (modern-day Edirne in Turkey), then via Alexandria in Egypt to Acre in Palestine (modern-day Israel), about 25km north of Haifa. (Also known as Akká, a former prison-city and the most remote part of the Ottoman Empire).
3. He was laid to rest in Bahjí, near Akká. The Báb is interned on Mount Carmel in Haifa, in the golden-domed Shrine of the Báb, which is surrounded by the Bahá’í Gardens and next to the Bahá’í World Centre, the world administrative centre of the Bahá’í Faith.
It is incorrect to identify Albert Lincoln as ‘longtime leader’. The Baha’i Faith has no leaders, only elected or appointed servants who help administer the Faith. Lincoln was the secretary general of the Baha’i International Community from 1994 to 2013. The Baha’i International Community represents the Baha’i Faith at the United Nations. It is.an international non-governmental organization with affiliates in over 180 countries, which together represent over 5 million members of the Baha’i Faith which dates back to the founding conference of the UN and its predecessor, the League of Nations. As an organization in consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council and with UNICEF, it collaborate with the UN and its specialized agencies, as well as member states, inter-governmental and non-governmental organizations.