Religion and the Challenge of Identity Building (Part 2) The Relationship between “Value” and “Religion” in Trans-Theory Space

The description of religion and its attribution to the Baha’i Faith is one of the most important components of the Baha’i Political Philosophy. In the first part of this article, it was stated that Irfan Sabeti, by defining a new project, seeks to introduce the Baha’ism as a “new emerging religious movement” or “a new world religion”. Part of his claim goes back to a re-reading of the fundamental epistemological presuppositions. Thus, the description of religion is the final synthesis of the paradigm shift from manifestation to transcendental theology, and then to the normalization approach. In this part of the present study, the methodology of the attribution of Baha’ism to religion category will be analyzed. Using the sociological method of constructivism, Sabeti first tries to reduce titles such as “religion” and “sect” to “ideal examples”, then, by presenting a minimal meaning of the concept of value, a new term called “new religious movement» is being introduced. The claim of this paper is that the two concepts of “value” and “prescription” are among the most important and fundamental components of religion and should be evaluated from a scientific perspective, at the trans-theory level. The moral trans-theory space is an arena that measures the concept of “value”, and if Baha’ism are valued at that level, then it can be said that it is religious. Moral values are intrinsic and immortal; ideal laws belong to the realm of immutability, eternal and independent affairs. Instead of using the general and universal rules mentioned in the first part of this article, and instead of the ideal moral values, Sabeti has tried to describe the “new religious movement” only from the approach of normative values. But this argument is logically presented only at the level of theory, and therefore, is not measurable.