Prejudice Destroys Civilization: A Talk to a Japanese Audience in Oakland

On the seventh of October, 1912, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá visited the Japanese Independent Church in Oakland, California, and addressed the Japanese Young Men’s Christian Association. The hall was crowded. He took as His subject the destructiveness of prejudice, and He took as His witness His own life.

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> When we review history from the beginning of human existence to > the present age in which we live, it is evident all war and > conflict, bloodshed and battle, every form of sedition has been > due to some form of prejudice — whether religious, racial or > national.

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He had seen this with His own eyes. In the years of His exile in the Balkans — in Rumelia, where Bahá’u’lláh’s family had been sent by the Ottoman state — He had watched neighbour rise against neighbour in the name of religion.

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> Some years ago when I was living in Rumelia, war broke out among > the religious peoples. There was no attitude of justice or equity > whatever amongst them. They pillaged the properties of each other, > burning each others’ homes and houses, slaughtering men, women > and children, imagining that such warfare and bloodshed was the > means of drawing near to God.

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The point landed with force in a room of young men whose own nation was at that moment wrestling with the question of its place among the powers. True religion, the Master told them, does the opposite. True religion unites where prejudice divides. The proof of any faith is not its claims about itself but its capacity to bind humanity together — across colour, creed, language, and birth.

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He left them with the standard Bahá’u’lláh had set: *Ye are the fruits of one tree and the leaves of one branch.* Anything less, He said, is not religion at all.

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