Editing Covenant-breaker (section)

==Categorization==
=== Included categories of people ===
Most Covenant-breakers are involved in schismatic groups, but not always. For example, a Baháʼí who refuses to follow guidance on treatment of Covenant-breakers is at risk of being named one. One article<ref name="bahai-library1" /> originally written for the Baháʼí Encyclopedia, characterized Covenant-breakers that have emerged in the course of Baháʼí history as belonging to one of four categories:

#Leadership challenge: These are persons who dispute the authority and legitimacy of the head of the religion and advance claims either for themselves or for another. The main examples of these are [[Mírzá Muhammad ʻAlí]] and [[Mason Remey|Charles Mason Remey]].
#Dissidence: Those who actively disagree with the policies and actions of the head of the faith without, however, advancing an alternative claim for leadership. This group consisted mostly of opponents of the Baháʼí administration such as [[Ruth White (Baháʼí author)|Ruth White]], [[Julia Lynch Olin]] and [[Mirza Ahmad Sohrab]].
#Disobedience: Those who disobey certain direct instructions from the head of the religion. Mostly the instruction in question is to cease to associate with a Covenant-breaker. Examples of this type include most of the descendants of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá during Shoghi Effendi's time.
#Apostates who maliciously attack the Baháʼí Faith. Examples include [[Abd al-Hosayn Ayati|Ávárih]], [[Sobhi Fazl'ollah Mohtadi|Sobhi]] and [[Níkú]].

=== Excluded categories of people ===
Shoghi Effendi wrote to the National Spiritual Assembly of Canada in 1957:
{{quote|People who have withdrawn from the Cause because they no longer feel that they can support its Teachings and Institutions sincerely, are not Covenant-breakers -- they are non-Baháʼís and should just be treated as such. Only those who ally themselves actively with known enemies of the Faith who are Covenant-breakers, and who attack the Faith in the same spirit as these people, can be considered, themselves, to be Covenant-breakers.<ref>Shoghi Effendi, Messages to Canada, p. 64</ref>}}

Beyond this, many other relationships to the Baháʼí Faith exist, both positive and negative. Covenant-breaking does not apply to most of them. The following is a partial list of those who could not rightly be termed Covenant-breakers:
* Members of other religions or no religion—with or without any particular relationship to the Baháʼí Faith.
* Baháʼís who simply leave the religion. (see above)
* Baháʼís who, in the estimation of the head of the religion have insufficiently understood the nature of the covenant from the start. These are sometimes "disenrolled" and are considered to have never actually been Baháʼís, given their fundamental diversion from this core Baháʼí doctrine.

===Bábís===
[[Bábís]] are generally regarded as another religion altogether and not necessarily seen as covenant-breakers, since strictly speaking covenant-breaking presumes that one has submitted oneself to a covenant and then broken it. As Bábís never recognized or swore allegiance to Baháʼu'lláh, they are not Covenant-breakers of Baháʼu'lláh's covenant.

Shoghi Effendi did inform Baháʼís that they should avoid contact with followers and descendents of [[Subh-i-Azal]], Baháʼu'lláh's half-brother, on the basis of Azal's attempts to poison him, and his followers' active opposition to Baháʼís, writing that "No intelligent and loyal Baha'i would associate with a descendant of Azal, if he traced the slightest breath of criticism of our Faith, in any aspect, from that person. In fact these people should be strenuously avoided as having an inherited spiritual disease -- the disease of Covenant-breaking!".<ref>Shoghi Effendi, From letter dated 9 December 1948 to an individual believer</ref>