 Dear friends, first I would like to express my sincere gratitude for this wonderful concert at the beginning of this session. Music is a part, classical music is a part of my life and it was a particular pleasure for me to have heard this wonderful music at the beginning. I want also to express my gratitude to Mr. Rassavi for his introduction. Dear friends, I am really overwhelmed and deeply moved by the warm hearted welcome I found here. It is an unexpected, great honor to have been chosen by the association for presenting the Hassan Balousi Memorial Lecture and I would like to express my sincerest gratitude and deepest appreciation versus invitation and also in the name of my wife. The material that I am presenting, some aspects of biathics, is taken from the draft of a forthcoming as yet uncompleted book, an introduction to biathics in the light of the sources. I am very sorry about the delay in the publication of this book due to constantly emerging, challenging new projects that could not be postponed. A systematic presentation of the new standard of values is, as I feel, not only timely, it is rather a matter of urgency in the face of the increasing disintegration of traditional morality and the truly apocalyptic dimension of spreading immorality all over the world. When choosing my topic for this conference I had to decide between an outline of the new morality which, in a given time frame, could not have been more than a general survey or some few central issues that can be dealt with more in depth. I chose the letter option in as much as I can refer to my article published in the Baha'i Studies Review 1995, The New Morality and Outline. My lecture has three parts. Its major part is part two, in which I will discuss the origin and dedication of moral values in the light of Baha'u'llah's revelation. The introductory part will deal with the centrality of ethics in the revelation of Baha'u'llah. And the final part, part three, will conclude the lecture by outlining some features of Baha'i ethics, that conflict with the moral positions which are dominant in Western societies. It takes me 60 minutes for this lecture. The Baha'i faith is not interested in metaphysical speculations or dogmatic definitions. The emphasis is rather on moral orientation and education, on right action and right motivation. The main purpose of the divine message is the transformation of the human being. Consequently, ethics is the central theme in Baha'u'llah's writings. The divine ordinances which concern the realm of morals and ethics are, as Abdul Baha stated, the fundamental aspect of the religion of God. Moral instructions and directives in the Baha'i revelation which can be taken as a point of departure for detecting the underlying system of Baha'i ethics as scattered throughout Baha'i scripture. Not even the Kitabi Actas, the kernel of Baha'i law and ethics, is a systematic code of laws and of moral prescriptions. It is not organized logically, section by section, point by point, as treatises and manuals on Islamic law. The Book of God has never come down in the form of a logically developed system of intellectual exposition. The holy, the divine, is in its very essence beyond the rational and its categories of thought. At all times it had been up to man to order the laws of God systematically. An essential precondition for their later application. My forthcoming introduction to Baha'i ethics is intended as an attempt to systematically analyze the multifarious moral imperatives of Baha'i scripture and to detect their inner architecture. The eminent function of man's character, his behavior, his actions, deeds and works in Baha'u'llah's scheme of redemption become evident from his definition of the covenant of God, the major constitutive principle of all Baha'i theology. The initial verse of the Kitabi Actas clarifies the basic issue as to the relation of faith to works, which was the central controversy between Catholicism and Protestantism. Faith, the recognition of the manifestation, is a foundation, whereas works, deeds are the essence of faith. Faith and works are inseparable. Without faith, man goes astray, though he beeth the author of every righteous deed, but faith without works is, according to the Gospel, like a tree that bringeth not forth good fruit. Its destination is to be hewn and cast into the fire. One grace is not as Martin Luther asserted, granted through personal faith alone, so la fide, but through both faith and righteous deeds. How essential man's works are becomes evident from Baha'u'llah's definition of faith in his words of wisdom, the essence of faith, his fewness of words and abundance of deeds. Man from his admonition, let deeds and not words be your adorning, let your acts be a guide unto all mankind for the profession of most men differ from their conduct. In numerous passages Baha'u'llah enjoins his followers to strive with heart and soul, to distinguish themselves from others by their deeds. They should conduct themselves in such a manner that they may stand out distinguished and brilliant as the sun among other souls, strive to be shining examples unto all mankind, and true reminders of the virtues of God amidst men. What matters is right being, that is a good character, and right acting, that is good works, good deeds, for they are the fruits on the tree of man. Baha'u'llah said that those that yield no fruit on earth, such men are verily counted as among the dead. Thus the emphasis lies more on auto-practice than autotoxic. However, this does not mean that religion is reduced to morals alone as philosophers of the Enlightenment did in their endeavor to keep an equal distance between unbelief and superstition. The morality in religion is not above the mystery in it. The Baha'i Ethos is based on the individual's participation in God's new covenant, that is the recognition of Baha'u'llah's manifestation of God, and obedience to his teachings and laws. The aim of religion is to guide man towards perfection through morals, and the aim of all morals is felicity and happiness, which is the ultimate desire of all human beings. Homo naturalita desiderat beattitudinem, as Thomas Aquinas put it, happiness is man's natural desire. The scriptures moral instructions are the everlasting torch of divine guidance, the straight path to an ultimate aim, to human happiness. But what is happiness? How can it be defined? In his Nicomessian Ethics Aristotle defines happiness or demonia, the prime mover of human actions as living a life that is determined by reason, by reason not by feelings, not by emotions. And he defines happiness as the activity of the soul which is in accordance with virtue. It is a fundamental doctrine of Socrates' Plato and Aristotle that a good man and a happy man are the same. According to Abdul Baha, human happiness consists only in drawing closer to the threshold of Almighty God. On the level of the individual, this means here on earth a tranquil heart and ultimately happiness in the afterlife. On the level of the political world it means the illumination of the world of humanity and securing the peace and well-being of every individual member, high and low alike of the human race. The virtues required for the human being are the supreme agencies for accomplishing these two objectives. Bioethics is not merely descriptive, it is normative, prescriptive in nature. The scripture contains a wealth of different kinds of normative statements relating to ethics. Passages that elucidate its doctrinal foundations, commandment and prohibitions, catalogues of virtue, praise of virtue, warnings against wrongdoing and the consequences of evil deeds, is the life spent in lust, passion and vice, instructions and appeals to live a life of virtue and service pleasing to God, of service to one's neighbor, to mankind and of service at the threshold of holiness. Thus the scripture is not at all a mere textbook of religious and ethical doctrines of abstract moral propositions, but rather a work of moral admonition, of general directives which have a driving power, a compelling force motivating people to pursue the moral good. Baulah's more ethical instructions should not be misconstrued as a dry bloodless philosophy under the yoke of the law. Bioethics is rather a methodical way of life according to the word and the law. And Baulah assures us that he who takes upon himself the yoke will find days of blissful joy in store. Those who have been spiritually reborn and treat this path are on the way to becoming a new man. In the Satutul Haikal, Baulah promises that in the fullness of time a new race of men incomparable in character shall be raced up. I come to part two. That's a little heavy fare. It is on the origin and theological vindication of moral values. This part has seven subsections and I mention always the number so that you can see when we are approaching the end of the part. Number one, the discussion of the ontological status of norms of moral norms and values, their philosophical or theological justification is the cardinal issue of ethics and the starting point of all reflection about it. The discussion of the subject is as old as philosophy. Positions deduced from the Baha'i scripture can be more easily recognized and interpreted in the context of views which have been developed in the past by theologians and philosophers. It was Plato who in his early dialogue, Oitifro, raised the decisive question. Is that which is wholly loved by the gods because it is holy? Or is it holy because it is loved by the gods? Which he clearly answered, the holy is loved because it is holy and not it is holy because it is loved. This judgment became the foundation of the philosophy of natural law. Over the millennia from Aristotle to Thomas Aquinas, Leibniz and beyond, the idea prevailed that God is not the world's legislator, that the categories of good and evil, just and unjust, are not decisions of his divine will, but are rather objective realities, eternal truths preceding the will of God like the numerical proportions. God is bound to these eternal truths which can, at least to some extent, be recognized by human reason. Another strain of thought in Christian theology, that of ethical volunteerism, can be traced back to St. Paul and St. Augustine and was formulated by the Franciscan monk John Dunskotus in categorical language. He says, God is not subject to any principle or law. There is no higher law above him, no moral law independent of him, no preceding idea of good and evil, no a priori system of values, no lexaternal, no natural law that can be deduced from the order of creation that God would be bound to. Not the law is eternal, but the lawgiver. It is God's will that creates every law there is. That is why his action is as he proceeds always and necessarily right and trust. As his commandments are ordinances of his contingent will, God acts wherever he does, always justly. William Ockham followed on this path as did later Luther and Calvine, who saw the origin of all morals and of all law in God's unfathomable will. I quote from Calvine, The supreme rule of justice is the will of God, and everything that he wills must be accepted as just because he wills it. In Islam, the study of ethical principles, the discussions of the sources of law and ethics started in the eighth and ninth centuries come an era. Here, the two antagonistic strains of thought are recognizable as well. In the schools of the Mutazila and the Azharids. The Mutazilites were the proponents of a rationalistic ethics. For them, ethical value has an objective reality and cannot be reduced in essence to the will of God and his commandments. Abdul Shabbar and his predecessors stated that man has the natural ability to know what is right independently from any command or revelation. They allow a place for revelation as an indispensable supplement to reason. It tells us some important truths on values that reason unaided could not have discovered, although reason can recognize and accept them as rational once they have been revealed. For instance, the value of prayer in building character. The pre-dominant theory in classical Sunni Islam was that of ethical voluntarism. Traditionalists, in particular Shafi'i, Ibn Hanbal, Al-Ashari, Ibn Hassan, Al-Rasali and Sharrastani stated that justice is nothing but obedience to the revealed law of the Sharia. Right action is that which God has commanded. They objected to the belief that revelation was merely a supplementary to human reason and argued if God's commandments followed objective principles of value, such as a real justice, this would be something fixed pre-eternally and beyond his control, which would thus limit his power and make him less than omnipotent. If man could judge what is right and wrong, he could rule on what God could rightly prescribe for man. And this would be presumptuous and blasphemous. Furthermore, they objected that the judgments of reasons are arbitrary, and based only on desire, that such judgments in fact always contradicted each other, and lastly they arrogated to themselves the function of revelation and rendered it useless. For them, the primary source of ethics was the divine revelation and tradition of their derivatives, or their derivatives. Whereas a small stream of mutasili rationalism survived in Imami Shia, the auditics view has prevailed in Sunni countries until the present time. Now I come to number two. Bahá'í ethics has its roots in the divine revelation. It is based on the scripture, it has means on the doctrines of God's absolute sovereignty and the infallibility of the manifestations of God's covenant and of human nature, that is, by anthropology. God is the supreme source of all values. Thus, the Bahá'í value system is not a philosophical set of moral standards, not the outcome of methodical human endeavor to formulate concrete norms solely by means of argumentation and rational discourse, no discourse ethics, rather, as in other religions, guidance under the authority of an enlightened teacher who claims that his book is the standard for good and evil, the unearing balance established amongst men. Bahá'í ethics is theocentric and theonomous. Theocentric is clear, but theonomous, I should explain, it derives from the Greek, tears God and nomus law. That means God is the law giver of mankind. He is the primal cause of all good, the supreme source of all morals. His commandments, prescribed by the manifestation, are, I quote Bahá'u'lláh, the essence of justice and the source thereof. The highest criterion in moral judgment is recourse to God's arbitrary will and to the infallibility of the divine messenger who mediates this will to humanity. To this will, which is arbitrary in the sense of unlimited, absolute, depending on volition, not governed by principle, man owes absolute obedience. Thus, the moral order is not as Plato saw it anchored in preceding ideas of good and evil in eternal truths that can be identified by reason, nor in a rational concept of man defining for all eternity the idea of good, nor in a rationally recognizable nature of things, but rather in the decisions of God's arbitrary will. God alone is anarchos, that means absolutely free, not submitted to any law or principle. Therefore, he can never be unchaste. He is the Lord of all things and is the vessel of none. His will has no reason to will as he wills other than that he wills it so. His sovereign, unfathomable, free will is the foundation of all moral obligations. There is no criterion of moral rectitude independent of that will. That is expressed in the tablet Ishrakat. Know for a certainty that the will of God is not limited by the standards of the people. Verily, he is to be praised in his acts and to be obeyed in his behests. He has no associate in his judgment and no, nor any helper in his sovereignty. He doeth whatsoever he wills and ordaineth whatsoever he pleases. A preceding idea of the moral good, the existence of a moral order binding upon God, would limit his sovereignty and amount to shirk. That is the association of a companion to God. Thus, the norms set by divine legislation are absolute, independent from all empiricism, authoritative, categorical, apodictic and not in need of rational justification. This is a clear confirmation of what is called ethical volunteerism. One could object that moral values are universal and perennial and not confined to any historical outpourings of divine truth. St. Paul had to deal with this problem when he promulgated the message of the Gospel to the Gentiles which have not the law. He could not ignore that they knew moral standards and that the Greeks were in procession of a highly developed ethics. According to St. Paul, the Gentiles do by nature the things contained in the law because the law is written in their heart. This doctrine had far-reaching impact on the development of ethical thought in Christian theology. Thomas Aquinas calls the moral law written in their heart lex naturalis, which is man's faculty to know the supreme and general principles of the lex eternal, the eternal law. The Baha'i faith does not support the idea of an innate moral law. Abdul Baha states that there is no innate sense of human dignity that prevents man from committing evil actions and ensures his spiritual perfection. Baha'u'llah's new paradigm of divine revelation as a progressively unfolding process and of salvation history, Heilsgeschichte, as a continuum that is open to the future, opens a new dimension in ethical thought. The fact that values, virtues and vices have existed in all human cultures from time immemorial, that they are basically identical and are taken for granted in the Baha'i scripture, does not contradict the ontological status of these values as emanations of the divine will. For God has revealed his will and behest to man from time immemorial. He has sent his prophets to all peoples, unto the cities of all nations. He has sent his messengers whom he has commissioned to announce unto men tidings of the paradise and of his good pleasure. The mission of the prophets was always to summon mankind to the one true God, to guide it to the straight path of truth and to educate all men morally. Thus, in its religious traditions mankind has a common supply, a reservoir of normative principles of good and evil, of basic values embodied in virtues and vices, of fundamental standards such as the golden rule which exists in all religions, even though the specific accentuation of the values and their mutual relationship in the respective religious context and in the hierarchy of values might vary in different cultural contexts, and though the origin of values in divine revelation is often not apparent, these common values constitute the eternal law revealed unto the prophets of old, which does not change nor alter, which has been confirmed and remute in all religions and which, as Abdul Paraz stated, will never be appropriated. One could call this law a licks eterna, an eternal law, but it is not a natural law derived from an order of beings, but the other one that has its origin in the divine will. It belongs to the core of God's one and indivisible religion, as the Barb called it and, as Abdullah stated, the changeless faith of God eternally in the past, eternally in the future. It belongs, as Abdul Paraz formulated, to the Holy of Holies. The values governing society, however, such as the social norms and laws on family, inheritance, trade, criminal law, as well as the forms of worship, ibadat, vary greatly in the different religions according to the varying conditions and demands of a steadily changing world and an ever-advancing civilization. This is why, according to Baudelaire, in every age and dispensation all divine ordinances are changed and transformed according to the requirements of the time, except the law of love which is like a fountain always flows and is never taken by change. Point three, the doctrine of divine voluntarism should not be misconstrued. God is not a tyrant. These actions are not the results of a senseless, capricious, despotic, epitainous. Man has not been created as an atresive of whimsical injunctions, but as the recipient of God's love, grace, and mercy. According to Baudelaire, God's commandments and all the duties prescribed for His servants are but a token of His grace unto them that they may be enabled to ascend unto the station confirmed upon their own inmost being. They are, as it is said in the Kitab-e-Aktas, the lamps of my loving providence among my servants and the keys of my mercy for my creatures and constitute the highest means for the maintenance of order in the world and the security of its peoples. Thus, the fundamental purpose animating the faith of God, according to Baudelaire's definition, is to safeguard the interests and promote the unity of the human race and to foster the spirit of love and fellowship amongst men. Baudelaire assures us that the one God has nothing wished for himself. The allegiance of mankind profites him not, neither does its perversity harm him. He enjoys upon you that which shall profit you. Your evil doings can never harm us, neither can your good works profit us. Consequently, the chosen way under the yoke of the law is not an evidence of self-effacement, of self-estrangement, of slavery as Nietzsche said, or of hetero determination, but rather the path to man's true self. Tatulian, a father of the church living in the third century, was referring to this way of life which is the right response to God's grace and salvation when he spoke of the anima naturalita cristiana, the human soul is Christian by its nature. Man has been created by this manner of existence. Number four, God is hidden from the sight and minds of men. His knowledge can only be attained through knowledge of the manifestations, the repositories of celestial wisdom. God's sovereign will is mediated to humanity through them who are essentially infallible, free of error in their judgment. Whatever emanates from them is identical with the truth and conformable to reality. For each one of them is the representative and mouthpiece of God and thus incarnate the highest infallible standard of justice unto all creation. The manifestation's charisma of inherent infallibility, alisma is a logical precondition and essential requirement for being God's representative. By this means God safeguards and protects his law and ordinances from all error. All later questioning and all attempts to modify are to annul them. The doctrine of the most great infallibility has been formulated by Baha'u'llah in captivating and powerful language in the Kitab-e Akhtas and in his tablet Ishrakat. Calminating in the formula, he doeth what he pleases, he chooses and none may question his choice. This formula is a frequently recurring motive throughout Baha'i scripture. It is the very touchstone of man's faith. Its implications for the justification of moral values have been categorically formulated in challenging language. Blessed is the man that hath acknowledged his belief in God and his science and recognized that he shall not be asked of his doings. Such a recognition has been made by God the ornament of every belief and its very foundation. Where he did decree as lawful the thing which from time immemorial had been forbidden and forbid that which had at all times been regarded as lawful to none is given the right to question his authority. Whoso will hesitate, though it be for less than a moment shall be regarded as a transgressor. Whoso hath not recognized this sublime and fundamental verity and has failed to attain to this most exalted station, the rinse of doubt will agitate him and the sayings of the infallibles will distract his soul. He that hath acknowledged this principle will be endowed with the most perfect constancy. God's laws must be abate even if they were to be such as to cause the heaven of every religion to be left as thunder or to strike terror into the hearts of all that are in heaven and on earth because they are not but manifest justice. By anchoring the system of values in God's sovereign will in the infallibility of the manifestations and the authenticity of the scripture, Baha'u'llah has made it an Archimedean point. I should elucidate that Archimedean point that is an imaginary fixed point outside the earth after a legendary saying by Archimedes, give me a place to stand and I will move the earth. Though Baha'u'llah has made this system of values an Archimedean point of knowledge a sure handle for the individual as well as for society. Number five, the tablets of a new law with its category commandment Tauchelt revealed to a humanity that deemed Baha'u'llah feeble and far removed from the purpose of God are, to quote St. Paul, taken as an offense, as a stumbling block by those who still believe and as foolishness by those who desire to decide what is right and what is wrong according to their own promptings, to choose their own way of life, their own lifestyle. A concrete religious law with its binding rules, injunctions, prohibitions, and ordinances, with its demand for absolute obedience, is deeply challenging for a secular society. With its political philosophy according to which religion is exclusively a private matter and man an autonomous individual, self-determined, and morally responsible only to himself. For Western thought, which has been shaped by the Enlightenment, it is hard to accept the claim that the newly revealed word of God is the standard of all morals and not, as Baha'u'llah put it, man's fanciful theories. Baha'u'llah has foreseen the commotion his law will provoke as he speaks about the fears and agitation which the revelation of his law provokes in men's hearts. He nevertheless insists where his law to be such as to strike terror in the hearts of all that are in heaven and on earth, that law is not but manifest justice. The commandments of the manifestation must not be judged according to human standards. They derive from the loggers, which a philosopher called the primal reason, alakal alawal, from the divine universal mind whose sovereignty enlightened all created things. These laws are absolute wisdom and are in accordance with the reality of things. A reality known to the manifestation not through knowledge gained by reflection or experience but by a knowledge that is immediate, innate, and unequired. And this knowledge by which the manifestation is aware of the reality of the mysteries of things is termed existential knowledge, ilmul wudjudi. Through the divine ordinances, human reason partakes of the divine wisdom. And therefore the laws of God are above human wisdom and not in need of rational justification. They must be accepted as they are. And for this reason, Bawla admonishes his people to cast away the things current amongst men and to take fast hold on that were unto ye are bitten by virtue of the will of the ordainer. He wants them not to cavill at the testimony of God and not to judge a law of God according to human standards, which are the result of historical processes and are essentially relative. Rather, everything which is taken for granted today and considered to be immune to criticism, secular society as its dogmas as well, must be judged according to the infallible balance, as it is said in the Gita Biaktas, weigh not the book of God with such standards and sciences as are current amongst you for the book itself is the unerring balance established amongst men. And in the same book, the warning, hold ye fast unto the statutes and the commandments and be not of those who, following their idle fancies and vain imaginings, have clung to the standards fixed by their own selves and cast behind their backs the standards let down by God. And now, point seven, if the origin of all morals is God's sovereign will embodied in the revelation of the manifestation, the primary source of ethical knowledge is revealed scripture. The question arises as to the part assigned to reason in Bahá'í Ethics. Unfortunately, this issue of Bahá'í Pistomology cannot be discussed here because of the lack of time. I have to refer to my forthcoming book and confine myself to a summary of the results of my research. In the realm of values, human rationality is limited in so far as it is dependent on a preordained framework, a God given standard, an hierarchy of supreme values, which is not subject to reason. Fixed points that constitute an immovable yardstick. Human beings cannot cognize the moral order by reason. They are dependent on even revelation. Nevertheless, reason can, under certain conditions, attain such discernment that man will discriminate between truth and falsehood even as he does distinguish the sun from shadow. The conditions are, first, that reason is not directed by natural impulse and desire and not guided by vital interests. Second, that the human being has internalized the normative injunctions of the revelation, including the normative image of the human nature proclaimed therein. And third, that the individual is ill-humored by the spirit of faith and has spurned away the veil of self that obscures his understanding with the fire of God's love. Baha'u'llah has elucidated the condition that can be attained through reason in another passage. They whose sight is keen, whose ears are retentive, whose hearts are enlightened, and whose breaths are dilated recognize both truth and falsehood and distinguish the one from the other. Whose breaths are dilated is a Quranic metaphor for embracing the faith. With the guidance of the absolute standard of revelation and its normative anthropology, rational thought can independently recognize what is permitted and what is forbidden in all concerns and situations. When it is stated in the scripture that man should know his own self and recognize that which leads unto loftiness or lowliness, glory or abasement, wealth or poverty, or when the scripture refers man directly to the power of reason, approach not the things which your mind condemns. It becomes clear that reason ill-humored by faith is granted a white scope to distinguish good and evil within the framework of the revealed moral order. Without reason, moral judgment and a moral life are not possible at all. In this sense, Thomas Aquinas' judgment is valid that it is reason that guides us to the works of morality, as it is also demonstrated in the emphasis Bala has placed on the cardinal virtues of Hikma, wisdom, and prudence. Dear friends, I think I have already made clear that the book of God established a value system of its own which is not limited by the standards of the people, since God does not read in their ways. The book is a divine law for whole humanity. No wonder it conflicts in some respects with moral views which are dominant in Western societies, which are no longer molded by the Christian faiths and Christian morals. Let me conclude this lecture by outlining some features of the new morality that differ from moral positions which are current in secular society. One fundamental difference can be seen in the concept of liberty that underlies the two moral systems. In secular society, supreme authority as regards morals is reason. And reason draws the limits to personal freedom at the point where one's person's liberty infringes on the rights of another. That this idea goes back to Immanuel Kant and is expressed in Article 2 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany, where it said, everyone shall have the right to free development of his paternality insofar as he does not violate the rights of others. The unlimited freedom of each individual is thereby both legally constrained and legally guaranteed within the bounds of its compatibility with the liberty of every other individual. The same constitutional article mentions the moral law as a further limit of personal freedom. And the fathers of the Constitution, which was enacted in 1949, considered the moral law as an objective absolute barrier that restrains the freedom of the individual. But today, half a century later, it is interpreted by jurisprudence and jurisdiction as something relative, as the moral consciousness of our society. That is a vague concept, since this consciousness is subject to social change and in constant flux. In contrast to that, Baha'u'llah approves the liberty within the restraints of moderation, the moderate freedom which guarantees the welfare of the world of mankind. Unrestrained liberty causes men to overstep the bounds of propriety and to infringe one's dignity of his station. And it is unbridled liberty, licentiousness that Baha'u'llah is speaking of, when he states that liberty will ultimately lead to sedition whose flames none can quench. His concept of true liberty that consisted in man's submission unto my commandments is the liberty that results from obedience to the will of God as manifested in the divine laws. It is liberty in submission to God. Baha'u'llah's concept of true liberty is a rejection of revolutionary anti as well as of the permissive society of a society where there are no taboos and whose goals is emancipation from all traditional patterns of behavior, a society where everything is allowed to do as he likes, provided he does not violate the rights of others. There is another basic difference between the two ethical systems, whereas secular moral standards are based on the doctrines of individualism and liberalism. The Baha'u'llah's system is balanced. It is, and at this point, more similar to Islamic and Confucian ethics, less individualistic, less focused on the interests and rights of the individual, and more concerned with the common will. The Baha'u'llah's position derives from the basic philosophical concept according to which the common will and the security of the public has priority to the rights of the individual, notwithstanding the community's duty to respect and to protect the unalienable rights of the citizen. Strong emphasis is placed on the security and protection of men, the common will, and the prosperity, wealth, and tranquility of the people. The different emphasis in the two moral systems may be finally elucidated by Baha'u'llah's provisions relating to sexual ethics and the penal law. In our largely hedonistic societies, the idea prevails that the bounds of sexual freedom are usually set by the prohibition of violent sexual acts and the abuse of children. All sexual behavior between mutually consenting adults that does not directly infringe on the rights of third parties is today generally regarded as morally permissible and a locus to the Roman legal formula Valentin non fit inuria. That is, no injustice is done to him who consents. Moreover, the idea is generally accepted that it is up to the individual to determine his own sexual orientation. Consequently, so-called ethical minorities have been placed under legal protection. Marriage between homosexual partners have recently been made lawful in Germany and other European countries. In Baha'u'llah's revelation, marriage is the exclusive place of legitimate human sexuality. Pre- and extramarital sexual activities morally stigmatized as unchastity, and pre- and extramarital intercourse penalized as sinan. Marriage is only intended as a bond between heterosexual partners. Consequently, homosexual relations and homosexual acts have been condemned by Baha'u'llah as immoral. The idea that it is up to the individual to determine his own sexual orientation is incompatible with Baha'u'llah's normative image of the human being. Baha'u'llah's sexual ethics correspond to the basic tenets of the other Abrahamic religions and also to Buddhism, though it avoids the extreme positions represented by sellers. And as to the penal law, it is today generally accepted in Europe by legal theory and jurisdiction that the supreme purpose of punishment is the rehabilitation of the criminal. The idea of retaliation and expiation as fundamental purposes of punishment and capital punishment as well are denounced as expressions of subliminal feelings of hatred and revenge. As barbaric relics of pre-modern times, the abolition of death penalty has been celebrated as a milestone on the path of the progressive humanization of society. The abrogation of capital punishment is, so to speak, le pie d'artre, the ticket of admission for the states that want to enter the European community. By contrast, the penal provisions of the Kitab-e-Aktas are based on the metaphysical principle of justice, reward, and punishment, upon which the structure of the world's stability and order has been read. According to Abdul Bahad, the primary purpose of punishment is retaliation and expiation, as well as the protection of society. The Kitab-e-Aktas ordains capital punishment in cases of murder, homicide, and arson. This raises the question as to the Baha'i phase attitude to European enlightenment. The anchorage of a penal law in the metaphysical principles of justice, and thus the reaffirmation of the idea of expiation and retribution, cannot be denounced as a return to pre-enlightenment positions. While it is true that most Enlightenment philosophers emphasize the idea of crime prevention and by deterrence and socialization instead of retaliation and demanded the abolition of both torture and death penalty, Emmanuel Kantu marked the epitome of European enlightenment thinking and subsequently Hegel, where radical advocates of the principle of retribution and of death penalty. And this was also the position upheld by Catholic and Protestant theology until the early 60s. In the last century. Even the Catholic World Catechism published in 1993 justifies death penalty under certain circumstances. And furthermore, the message of Baha'u'llah can certainly be described as compatible with Enlightenment values with regard to many of its principles and demands such as the unconditioned dignity of every individual and the equality of all before the law, equality of sexes, freedom of conscience, thought and speech, the highest team for human reason, the most precious gift bestowed upon man, the abolition of the clergy, the democratic structure of the community, the preference for democratic forms of rule, the rejection of absolutism, tyranny, despotism, imperialism, colonialism, exploitation of religious fanaticism, as well as the protection of religious, political, and ethnic minorities. These are all positions upheld by Enlightenment thinkers. The vision of a federal world commonwealth in a peaceful global order corresponds to Kant's conviction that, I quote, at the last, the highest purpose of nature, a universal cosmopolitan existence will at last be realized as the metrics within which all the original capacities of the human race may develop and that the perpetual peace is no empty idea but a task that comes steadily closer to its goal. Kant's definition of the Enlightenment as man's emergence from his self-encouraged immaturity and his maxims, sapara auda, that means have courage to use your own reason, is remarkably similar to Paul's principle of independent search for truth, according to which the people I admonish to see with their own eyes and to hear with their own ears and to know of thine own knowledge and not through the knowledge of thine neighbor. That is a fundamental principle with far-reaching implications for ethics. It becomes evident from the many warnings against vain imitation and the implicit rejection of the Islamic principle of taklit, the necessity of having a moral guide, a muchtahid or a shaykh without whom you and beings go astray. As Al-Rasali put it, he who has no shaykh to guide him will be led by the devil into his ways. The coming of age of the human race, the stage of maturity, is a recurring theme in the revealed scripture. In this context, it is highly significant when Baha'u'llah states, no sooner had mankind attained the stage of maturity than the word revealed to men's eyes the latent energies with which it had been endowed. The cunt through whom the European Enlightenment had reached its apex died in 1804, and 40 years later the Bab proclaimed his message. The conflict between the two sets of values, that of Western secular civilization and that of the book of God is inevitable and it will probably take a long time if our humankind will accept that not man is the measure of all things, as the Greek philosopher Protagoras stated, but rather it is God's unfathomable will that is the infallible standard of all morality. I thank you for your time. Thank you.