Navid Pourmokhtari, “The Baha’i Discourse on World Peace”

This presentation discusses the concept of peace as understood within the context of the Baha’i faith. Baha’u’llah, its founder, along with his son ʻAbdu’l-Bahá and great grandson Shoghi Effendi, articulated what He called “the Most Great Peace,” which, according to him, “no mortal eye had ever beheld or human mind conceived.” In unpackingthis concept, I elucidate how the Baha’i discourse offers a way forward forrealizing a global order upon which a lasting all-inclusive peace can be realized. As will be seen, such a peace can be achieved only by reconceptualizing society as a first step in transforming the relationship between the individual and state. More specifically, what I aim to show is the manifold ways a Baha’i discourse on peace problematizes and subsequently transcends the philosophical assumptions informing international politics, and in particular the dominant doctrines of liberalism and realism. It will be shown that the Baha’i philosophy informing international relations casts aside the Kantian and Hobbesian interpretation of the present-day global order, calling instead for the advent of a new order that rejects fundamental elements of global politics, including nationalism, statism, and sovereignty. In practice, this wholesome reorientation enables the condition of possibility for the creation of a global common-wealth system capable of ensuring universal peace.

Navid Pourmokhtari teaches at Concordia University of Edmonton. Pourmokhtari is the author of Toward a Paradigm Shift in International Relations Studies: (Re)Claiming World Peace, published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2025. His first book, Iran’s Green Movement: Everyday Resistance, Political Contestation and Social Mobilization, was published by Routledge in 2021. Pourmokhtari’s other recent publications have appeared in Third World Quarterly, International Sociology, Against the Current, Jadaliyya, the Journal of Human Trafficking, Sociology of Islam, Legal Pluralism and Critical Social Analysis, Foucault Studies, and the Journal of International Women’s Studies.