Note 125

125. Should anyone acquire one hundred &mithqals of gold, nineteen &mithqals thereof are God's and to be rendered unto Him # 97

This verse establishes &Huququ'llah, the Right of God, the offering of a fixed portion of the value of the believer's possessions. This offering was made to &Baha'u'llah as the Manifestation of God and then, following His Ascension, to &Abdu'l-Baha as the Centre of the Covenant. In His Will and Testament, &Abdu'l-Baha provided that the &Huququ'llah was to be offered "through the Guardian of the Cause of God". There now being no Guardian, it is offered through the Universal House of Justice as the Head of the Faith. This fund is used for the promotion of the Faith of God and its interests as well as for various philanthropic purposes. The offering of the &Huququ'llah is a spiritual obligation, the fulfilment of which has been left to the conscience of each &Baha'i. While the community is reminded of the +P219 requirements of the law of &Huquq, no believer may be approached individually to pay it.

A number of items in Questions and Answers further elaborate this law. The payment of &Huququ'llah is based on the calculation of the value of the individual's possessions. If a person has possessions equal in value to at least nineteen &mithqals of gold (Q and A 8), it is a spiritual obligation to pay nineteen percent of the total amount, once only, as &Huququ'llah (Q and A 89). Thereafter, whenever one's income, after all expenses have been paid, increases the value of one's possessions by the amount of at least nineteen &mithqals of gold, one is to pay nineteen percent of this increase, and so on for each further increase (Q and A 8, 90).

Certain categories of possessions, such as one's residence, are exempt from the payment of &Huququ'llah (Q and A 8, 42, 95), and specific provisions are outlined to cover cases of financial loss (Q and A 44, 45), the failure of investments to yield a profit (Q and A 102) and for the payment of &Huquq in the event of the person's death (Q and A 9, 69, 80). (In this latter case, see note 47.)

Extensive extracts from Tablets, Questions and Answers, and other Writings concerning the spiritual significance of &Huququ'llah and the details of its application have been published in a compilation entitled &Huququ'llah.

126. Various petitions have come before Our throne from the believers, concerning laws from God... We have, in consequence, revealed this Holy Tablet and arrayed it with the mantle of His Law that haply the people may keep the commandments of their

Lord. # 98

"For a number of years", &Baha'u'llah states in one of His Tablets, "petitions reached the Most Holy Presence from various lands begging for the laws of God, but We held back the Pen ere the appointed time had come." Not until twenty years from the birth of His Prophetic Mission in the &Siyah-Chal of &Tihran +P220 had elapsed did &Baha'u'llah reveal the &Kitab-i-Aqdas, the Repository of the laws of His Dispensation. Even after its revelation the Aqdas was withheld by Him for some time before it was sent to the friends in Persia. This divinely purposed delay in the revelation of the basic laws of God for this age, and the subsequent gradual implementation of their provisions, illustrate the principle of progressive revelation which applies even within the ministry of each Prophet.