Baháʼí Faith in the Netherlands
[1] The Opregte Haarlemsche Courant covered the attempt on the life of Nasser-al-Din Shah, by some Bábís, on October 11, 1852 - a couple months after the incident.
[1] The incident was reported a few days later by the Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant and then by Dagblad van 's Gravenhage, all of which had borrowed the stories told of the event from London or Paris based newspapers.
The accounts presented to the Dutch public, however, were generally untrue and described that the Babis being a communist organization, sanctioning the sharing of wives, believing in the transmigration of souls, and were in open violent revolt.
[1] During a second assassination attempt on the same Shah in 1896 by a group not associated with the Bábís, as recognized in Persia at the time, western newspapers continued to blame the Babis for some years afterwards.
These two Baháʼís were arrested and executed because the Imám-Jum'ih at the time owed them a large sum of money for business relations and instead of paying them would confiscate their property.
[8] In the same year, Dutchman Henri Dunlop had trade relations in Shiraz with Afnán-i-Kabir, brother to the wife of the Báb,[9] and acquired several Baháʼí manuscripts which he offered to professor Edward Granville Browne and later to professor Michael Jan de Goeje of Leiden University who published the first Dutch academic article on the Babis/Baháʼís in October 1893.
[10] The portrait of the Babis from these accounts and articles communicated to the Dutch public was different than the early reports, and was of being prone to engage with foreigners, being monogamous, and seeking out civil authorities for protection from Muslim mobs.
[2] The first interests in the religiosity of the Baháʼí Faith in the Netherlands come in 1912-1917 when the Theosophy Publishing Society in Amsterdam translated and issued a few booklets and brochures about the religion.
[3] It is also known that ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, the son and successor to the founder of the religion, wrote a letter to Julia C. Isbrücker, the chairperson of the Esperanto movement in The Hague.
[3][11][12] In 1920, two Persian Baháʼís, Ahmad Yazdani and Hand of the Cause Ibn-i-Asdaq, brought a letter from ʻAbdu'l-Bahá to the Central Organisation for Durable Peace in The Hague.
During this time she met with women's and peace groups, Quakers, Theosophists, Esperantists, and female leaders of thought such as the founder of the Netherland Girl Guides, and libraries in Amsterdam and The Hague.
[3] In June of that year, the committee asked Rita van Bleyswijk Sombeek, a Dutch woman who had spent World War II in the United States and became a Baháʼí during that time, to return to the Netherlands to pioneer.
Some 38 Persian Baháʼís responded, mostly families, and it was then possible to establish spiritual assemblies in Arnhem, Delft, Haarlem, Leiden, Rotterdam, and Utrecht.
It covered questions about the election of, the station of, and authority of, the Universal House of Justice and asked that this letter be re-printed widely for Baháʼís to read around the world.
[26] The 1969 Netherlands Summer School, held in Ellecom, had then member of the Universal House of Justice David Hofman and Hand of the Cause Jalál Khazeh.
[27] 1976 saw a variety of activities - it was the first entry to province of Zeeland and a regional conference gathered 250 Dutch Baháʼís and talks by Adib Taherzadeh.
[35] The government of the Netherlands took a stand and spoke out about the persecution of Baháʼís in Iran in 1980 when it rose in support of the United Nations Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities.
[36] The topic continued to get attention in the fall of 1983 with coverage in de Volkskrant and NRC Handelsblad, and the feminist magazine Opzij (see Mona Mahmudnizhad.
In 1985 the Dutch Baháʼí community purchased Conference Centre De Poort, Groesbeek, formerly a Jesuit Philosophicum built in 1929 to act as an institutional center for the religion.
[40] Also in 1988 twenty-eight Baháʼís from 10 countries took an active part in the 73rd Universal Esperanto Congress at the De Doelen Center in Rotterdam.
[4] The first Baháʼí on Suriname was American Leonora Stirling Holsapple; in October 1927 she gave a lecture about the religion in the Loge Concordia centre in the capital Paramaribo.
