{"id":5841,"date":"2021-06-08T08:44:48","date_gmt":"2021-06-08T05:14:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bahaismiran.com\/?p=5841"},"modified":"2022-04-27T08:45:43","modified_gmt":"2022-04-27T05:15:43","slug":"peter-of-baha-ibrahim-george-kheiralla","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bahaismiran.com\/?p=5841&lang=en","title":{"rendered":"“Peter of Baha” – Ibrahim George Kheiralla"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ibrahim George Kheiralla<\/a>\u00a0was born on November 11, 1849, to a Christian family in a village on Mount Lebanon. He later studied medicine at the Syrian Protestant College in Beirut.<\/p>\n

Ibrahim George Kheiralla<\/a>\u00a0converted to the Bah\u00e1’\u00ed Faith while living in Egypt in 1889 when he met H\u00e1j\u00ed `Abdu\u2019l-Kar\u00edm-i-Tihr\u00e1n\u00ed. Kheiralla went through Europe and eventually came to the United States in late 1892 where he joined Anton Haddad, the first Bah\u00e1’\u00ed to come to America. Initially, Kheiralla settled in New York where he began teaching “Truth Seeker” classes. He visited\u00a0Charles Augustus Briggs<\/a>\u00a0and others, as well as the Syrian community in New York.<\/p>\n

In 1894 Kheiralla moved on to Chicago following the interest fostered by the World’s Columbian Exposition’s World Parliament of Religions. In Chicago he taught “Truth Seeker” classes. One of the early converts while Kheiralla was in Chicago was\u00a0Thornton Chase<\/a>, who had read the presentation about the Bah\u00e1’\u00eds at the Exposition, and is generally considered the first Bah\u00e1’\u00ed convert in the West to have remained in the religion. Other individuals had converted, but none remained members of the religion.<\/p>\n

Another to join the religion from Kheiralla’s early classes was\u00a0Howard MacNutt<\/a>, who would later compile\u00a0The Promulgation of Universal Peace<\/a>, a prominent collection of the addresses of `Abdu’l-Bah\u00e1 during his journeys in America. Both men were designated as “Disciples of ‘Abdu’l-Bah\u00e1” and “Heralds of the Covenant” by Shoghi Effendi.<\/p>\n

Another student of the classes and Disciple was\u00a0Lua Getsinger<\/a>, designated as the “mother teacher of the West”.<\/p>\n

Another who “passed” the class and joined the religion was the maverick\u00a0Honor\u00e9 Jackson<\/a>. Kheiralla moved once again, to Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 1895, where a large Bah\u00e1’\u00ed community soon developed.<\/p>\n

Because of his success promulgating the Bah\u00e1’\u00ed Faith in North America, ‘Abdu’l-Bah\u00e1 titled Kheiralla “Bah\u00e1’s Peter,” “the Second Columbus” and “Conqueror of America.” ‘Abdu’l-Bah\u00e1 would write a Tablet to Ibr\u00e1h\u00edm George Kheiralla.<\/p>\n

In 1898, Kheiralla undertook a Bah\u00e1’\u00ed pilgrimage to Palestine to meet ‘Abdu’l-Bah\u00e1 with other American pilgrims, including Phoebe Hearst, Lua Getsinger and May Boles.\u00a0In Akka, Kheiralla witnessed first hand the conflict between ‘Abdu’l-Bah\u00e1 and his brothers.\u00a0Upon his return to America in 1899, Kheiralla began to announce his avowed leadership of Western Bah\u00e1’\u00eds independent of `Abdu’l-Bah\u00e1 and authored a book, Beha’u’llah, wherein he states his belief that ‘Abdu’l-Bah\u00e1 was equal in rank to his brothers\u00a0M\u00edrz\u00e1 Muhammad ‘Al\u00ed<\/a>, D\u00edy\u00e1’u’ll\u00e1h, and Badi’u’ll\u00e1h. Early after the return to America, ‘Abdu’l-Bah\u00e1 sent, first, Anton Haddad with a letter contesting the definition of leadership, then Khieralla’s initial teacher of the religion, ‘Abdu\u2019l-Kar\u00edm-i-Tihr\u00e1n\u00ed, to confront him.<\/p>\n

The conflict made the newspapers. Ultimately, in the conflict between ‘Abdu’l-Bah\u00e1 and\u00a0M\u00edrz\u00e1 Muhammad ‘Al\u00ed<\/a>, Kheiralla sided with the latter for which he was declared a Covenant-breaker.<\/p>\n

Kheiralla would go on to form the “Society of Behaists,” which would later be led by\u00a0Shua Ullah Behai<\/a>\u00a0and eventually become defunct. Kheiralla had three children, two daughters who were named Nabeeha and Labiba, and a son named George Ibrahim Kheirallah who converted Islam in the 1930s, becoming active in the Islamic Society of New York, and translated and published some poems of Khalil Gibran.<\/p>\n

Ibrahim George Kheiralla died on March 6, 1929.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ibrahim George Kheiralla\u00a0was born on November 11, 1849, to a Christian family in a village on Mount Lebanon. He later studied medicine at the Syrian Protestant College in Beirut. Ibrahim George Kheiralla\u00a0converted to the Bah\u00e1’\u00ed Faith while living in Egypt in 1889 when he met H\u00e1j\u00ed `Abdu\u2019l-Kar\u00edm-i-Tihr\u00e1n\u00ed. Kheiralla went through Europe and eventually came to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5842,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[823],"tags":[4699,4693],"class_list":["post-5841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english-articles","tag-ibrahim-george-kheiralla","tag-peter-of-baha"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bahaismiran.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bahaismiran.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bahaismiran.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bahaismiran.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bahaismiran.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5841"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bahaismiran.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5841\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5843,"href":"https:\/\/bahaismiran.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5841\/revisions\/5843"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bahaismiran.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bahaismiran.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bahaismiran.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bahaismiran.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}