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Well the "animus" here continues ...I feel I should apologize to anyone reading this thread that such spitefulness and malevolence toward Baha'is is not characteristic of dialogue among Baha'is.

But there are a few things I'd like to say .. Much is being said about Ruth White and her work to show the Will and Testament of Abdul-Baha was fradulent.. She relies on a handwriting expert of the British museum many years ago.

Frederick also refers to Ahmad Sohrab in his sources making it to appear there full agreement between Ruth White and Ahmad Sohrab.

The problem is in Frederick's own sources.. He refers to Ahmad Sohrab's book on the Will and Testament of Abdul-Baha:

See above

Mirza Ahmad Sohrab. The Will and Testament of Abdul Baha, An Analysis. New York: Universal Publishing, 1944. http://reformbahai.org/images/SohrabWTAB.pdf

Ahmad Sohrab writes on pp. 11-12:

"Now I have compared the photostat copies of the Will and with the handwriting of Abdul-Baha which is in my possession and I find that both are written by the same person.

"Therefore I can assert without any hesitation and with no mental reservations, that the Will and Testament was written, signed and sealed by Abdul-Baha, every word being in his own handwriting.

"This reference to my years of personal service to the Master is made with the intention of nullifying if possible, whatever rumours are yet afloat regarding the authenticity of the Will.

"Claims that this document is a forgery have been set forth both orally and in writing but such an allegation is incorrect.."

So while Ahmad Sohrab disagreed with the emerging administration of the Baha'i Faith he did not for the record agree that the document was a forgery and this is the fundamental difference between Ahmad Sohrab and Ruth White.

Ahmad served as a secretary for Abdul-Baha and was well liked in the Baha'i community ..Later he had his differences with Baha'i administration and a falling out ensued after he established the New History Society.

The thing is some have served this Faith well and decided at some point to leave it or perhaps attack it virulently at a later time.. but there are inherent contradictions I feel in Frederick/Ruth's posts that should be considered here.

Is he free to set up his "reform Baha'i"?.. I think so but a historical knowledge and study is called for to expose some of his assumptions and animus for Baha'is.
 
Here's the key passage by Sohrab,

"Abdul Baha had never in speech or writing given the slightest indication that there would be a successor to himself. On the contrary, a number of addresses delivered by him on various occasions had made the opposite impression." The Will and Testament of Abdul-Baha (61). Mirza Ahmad Sohrab
Mirza Ahmad Sohrab

Many of Sohrab's comments and books should be read in the light of his attempting to make tactical amends with, or influence, Shoghi Effendi, who "excommunicated" him, as Shoghi Effendi had done with his own entire family. Ruth White and Dr. C. Ainsworth Mitchell went much deeper into what had gone wrong after Abdul-Baha's death, but Sohrab throws light upon various Bahai problems of the time, such as freedom of religious conscience, of which many such problems continue today for other Bahai denominations based upon the fraudulent will and testament of 1921. It is not clear what Sohrab's real motivation was.

Given subsequent Bahai history, it is clear Sohrab also failed to understand the wisdom and very profound change in religious form and conduct that Abdul-Baha taught when he repeatedly stated the Bahai Movement could not be organized. Abdul-Baha's Teaching runs entirely contrary to what people usually think of as "religion," and is still today a profoundly challenging paradox for many seekers and Bahais.

Ad hominem is an attack on the person. I would appreciate it if members of the Bahai denomination located in Haifa, Israel, would refrain from personal attacks and address ideas. For others, for the history of that approach by Haifan Baha'is, see The Baha'i Technique - Slander & Shunning The Baha'i Technique - Slander & Shunning  - Coercive Methods used in the Baha'i Faith - "According to the direct and sacred command of God we are forbidden to utter slander." --Abdu'l-Baha
 
Like all of the institutionalized Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition, the usurpers of the Bahai Movement or Cause, created a creed, calling it a Covenant, judged a forged document by the previously mentioned document expert at the British Museum, C. Ainsworth Mitchell.
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Ainsworth Mitchell?

Visit the blog below for a detailed discussion of this issue because the post is too long to copy and paste here.

I'll quote from Sen's blog to disprove this one:

The claim that the Will and Testament was fraudulent was based entirely on the opinion of Dr. C. Ainsworth Mitchell, an English chemist and document analyst, whose publications include Documents and their scientific examination, with especial reference to the chemistry involved in cases of suspected forgery … and Forensic chemistry in the criminal courts (1938).

What interests me is not whether the Will is genuine, but how a scientist of Dr. Mitchell’s stature could have ventured to give an opinion in a field in which he must have known that he had no special competence. As we will see, he was not even aware that Persian is written from right to left, so he was certainly not familiar with the Persian alphabet. Handwriting analysis, and even the simple reading of a handwritten text, requires familiarity with the way that letters are formed by the hand. I am not a forensic handwriting expert, but I have completed a course in Middle-Eastern codicology, which means learning to read and transcribe the handwriting styles used for Persian and Arabic in the Middle East over the past millennium, and being able to name the most common styles and to date and place texts by style. In attempting to read such handwritten texts for this course, I often found my fingers twitching as if holding a pen. By imagining how the pen moves in sequence, as the scribe writes, one can see what parts of the letter are significant and which are accidents. What looks like an up-stroke might simply be the pen dragging on the paper a little as it is moved to where it must be to begin the next letter. To know that, you have to know where the letter ends (thus, know the alphabet) and where the next letter is begun (thus, to know penmanship). Does the pen begin at A and move clockwise to B, or does it begin at B and move anticlockwise to A? Does the stroke begin at the top and move down, or begin at the bottom, move up and then track back?

Only by actually writing in that alphabet, in the way scribes are taught for that style, can one learn to read the style with confidence. So for Mitchell to offer an opinion on a text he could not read, in a script he knew nothing about, is something like someone who knows no English deciding that Dickens could not have written Hard Times, on stylistic grounds.

The problem is that Mitchell appears to have been intelligent, and he had experience in document analysis using both chemical and handwriting analysis, so he knew he was not competent to make an analysis based on a photograph of a text in a language and alphabet he did not know. Why did he venture an opinion then? My suggestion is that he saw some very evident differences, between Abdu’l-Baha’s signatures on the envelope of the Will and Testament and what he was told were authentic signatures from Abdu’l-Baha – differences so large that he was confident that, given the original documents, he or another expert actually familiar with Middle-Eastern handwriting would be able to demonstrate they were not from the same hand. Perhaps he really did see glaring differences: but that could be because what he was given as ‘authentic signatures’ were not authentic, or because Abdu’l-Baha used two quite different signatures.
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Mitchell’s mistake Sen McGlinn's blog

Summary
My hypothesis is that Mitchell saw the signatures and thought he was facing an open-and-shut case: the ‘authentic’ signatures and those on the Will and Testament were quite different. In this he was correct, but he didn’t know that Abdu’l-Baha had two different signatures, or that the specimen signatures were not in fact written by Abdu’l-Baha. Then he saw that the Will and Testament was not all of one piece. Nobody had told him that the Will was in fact written at different times, and he could not read Persian to see that for himself (Abdu’l-Baha says this explicitly in the text of the Will). This made him confident that there was some sort of fraud afoot, even though he must also have known he was not competent to judge a text written in Persian script. His confidence regarding the signatures and the differences between the three parts of the Will then led him to a serious professional lapse: giving an ‘expert opinion’ without the required expertise.
All those competent to judge, even the opponents of Shoghi Effendi and Abdu’l-Baha, say that the Will and Testament is written in Abdu’l-Baha’s own hand. It is therefore absurd to claim to follow Abdu’l-Baha, while rejecting the institution of the Guardianship which he bequeathed to us in the Will and Testament, commanding us:
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Mitchell’s mistake Sen McGlinn's blog
 
Ahanu said:
Ainsworth Mitchell?
....2009/05/27/mitchells_mistake/"]Mitchell’s mistake Sen McGlinn's blog[/URL]

Mitchell’s mistake Sen McGlinn's blog
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In my response to Sen McGlinn's mistaken attempt to discredit Dr. C. Ainsworth Mitchell's Report, I point out briefly the key fact:

What's purported to be Abdul-Baha's will and testament has never been probated or authenticated independently of those who were and are its beneficiaries.

All of McGlinn's arguments are variations of the same old calumnies that the Haifans have always used to smear Dr. Mitchell and Ruth White, following Shoghi Effendi's despicable example. They are not any more convincing coming from a supposedly excommunicated Haifan, namely Sen McGlinn, trying to redeem himself with his masters than when Mirza Sohrab essentially did the same thing, though with more subtlety.

McGlinn concedes in his attack on Mitchell that "I am not a forensic handwriting expert" and knowing a language is irrelevant to forensic experts. His assumptions about what Mitchell did are merely that.

McGlinn's other tactics are unseemly and entirely in keeping with those widely used by members of the Haifan denomination based on the fraudulent will and testament.

Again, the attempts to discredit Dr. Mitchell and Ruth White have relied on, for over 75 years, slander and ad hominem and are no more convincing now than they have ever been. Note the pervasive attempt to shift, from Mitchell's conclusion and his call for an examination of the original, to the man himself. Classic ad hominem.

I ask the reader to reflect on the fact that Dr. Mitchell remains one of the most respected forensic researchers of the 20th century and is still quoted and cited by academics and legal experts. His professional integrity is beyond question as is, and was, his ability to assess the authenticity of the purported will itself. As the document curator for the British Museum, Dr. Mitchell used techniques and methods still widely used and recognized, whether or not one has a command of the language being scrutinized. Knowledge of a language in and of itself has never been the essential for handwriting experts, and informed people know that to be a fact. Those who seek to conceal the act of forgery hope to confuse the uninformed about what is involved. See the link at the bottom to one of his books available online.

Ruth White placed Dr. Mitchell's signed Report on the Writing Shown on the Photographs of the Alleged Will of Abdul-Baha with the Library of Congress in 1930. Certified copy below.

A bibliography of Dr. C. Ainsworth Mitchell's published work is available from the Library of Congress at the bottom of this page.

Mitchell was singularly qualified to judge the authenticity of the purported will of Abdul-Baha:


"In England, C. Ainsworth Mitchell was a public analyst interested primarily in questioned documents and the chemistry of inks during the early twentieth century" (25).

Introduction to Forensic Sciences. William G. Eckert.
Published 1997 CRC Press. Legal Reference / Law Profession. 390 pages. ISBN 0849381010

The authenticity of my quotation from the Introduction to Forensic Sciences above, regarding Dr. C. Ainsworth Mitchell, may be verified by Previewing the book and selecting page 25. On Amazon.com: Amazon.com: Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more

"Documents And Their Scientific Examiniation" (1920) Author: C. Ainsworth Mitchell, Date 1920
Documents And Their Scientific Examiniation : C. Ainsworth Mitchell : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive
[can be downloaded in full]

Professional genealogist Will Johnson's webpage on Dr. C. Ainsworth Mitchell:
Charles Ainsworth Mitchell - RoyalWeb

Will Johnson to a fundamentalist Baha'i who dismissed Dr. Mitchell:
From: "wjhonson" wjhonson@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.religion.bahai,talk.religion.bahai
Sent: Saturday, April 21, 2007 10:36 PM
Subject: Re: 4-20-07 - Ruth White. Abdul Baha's Questioned Will and Testament.
>
> That's a bit disengenuous to his memory. Charles Ainsworth Mitchell
> wrote several books in which he details pencil, ink, writing styles,
> etc. It wasn't a hobby, he was a professional in this type of
> analysis.
>

Link to Library of Congress SEARCH for your own confirmation: Library of Congress Online Catalog
 
arthra said:
If you check posts nos. 58 and 59 above the "Reform Baha'i" have at least doubled while on this thread! There's "Ahmad Sohrab" and "Ruth White".
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Both long dead covenant-breakers.

And of course, all this sound and fury is simply yet another attempt to confuse individuals into thinking there was some "problem" when in fact there was not, save for the carping of a few specific individuals whose names have been appropriated in the attempt to sow the confusion yet again!

Once again, this has all been thoroughly refuted for anyone who wants to take the time to study the facts as laid out in the book already mentioned--which of course the covenant-breakers in turn then also attack.
 
BruceDLimber said:


Both long dead covenant-breakers.
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The Haifan Baha’i administration, while publicly hiding behind a facade of liberalism, essentially practices Islamic “takfir,” labeling people “kafir” or infidels, and issuing fatwas, denying the very existence of other Bahais and denominations, all indicative of the worst in the Shiite Islamic heritage of the Bahai Faith—practices Baha’u’llah specifically repudiated, teaching tolerance of different religious views, largely congruent with modern Western custom.

Nothing could be more diametrically opposed to the modern democracy of Western civic and legal order than the jihad the Haifan Baha’is are conducting.

By brainwashing the ordinary Western Baha'i into blind obedience, taqlid, betraying Abdul-Baha's promise of "independent investigation of truth," Shoghi Effendi concocted a deceitfully oppressive Shiite "world order" upon the pernicious foundation of the fraudulent will and testament.
 
The differences between Catholics and Protestants are fairly obvious.

As are the differences between an Orthodox and Reformed Jew.

However there are many similarities...

Of the various Bahai denominations, setting the will aside, what can you all agree on?
 
wil said:
The differences between Catholics and Protestants are fairly obvious.

As are the differences between an Orthodox and Reformed Jew.

However there are many similarities...

Of the various Bahai denominations, setting the will aside, what can you all agree on?
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Wil,

I don't think your term "various Baha'i denominations" has a lot of utility here.

The vast majority of Baha'is today accept the Will and Testament of Abdul-Baha and that is part of what we Baha'is call the "lesser covenant" that Baha'is accepted Shoghi Effendi as the Guardian of the Baha'i Faith and also in that Will and Testament are provisions for the Universal House of Justice to be elected later.

The Guardianship of Shoghi Effendi lasted from 1921 until 1957. All of the Hands of the Cause of God appointed by Shoghi Effendi who were alive at the time of his passing acknowledged he left no Will.... The only institution that could become the Center of the Cause by default was the Universal House of Justice which was elected by the Baha'i world..the elected representatives of the National Spiritual Assemblies in 1963.

The interpretations and principles set forth by the Guardian Shoghi Effendi are still viable today and respected by the Universal House of Justice.

At various junctures in the above process there were various individuals who challenged it: During the lifetime of Baha'u'llah there was His younger half brother Mirza Yahya.. during the ministry of Abdul-Baha there was His younger half brother Muhammad Ali. During the ministry of Shoghi Effendi there were people who challenged him such as Ruth White...later Ahmad Sohrab. After the passing of Shoghi Effendi one of the Hands Mason Remey claimed to be Guardian..after this there have been at least two or three persons who have claimed to be Guardian.

So what you have in reality are several failed attempts by various individuals to take leadership of the Baha'i world. All of them have failed and there are several groups which have been listed but these are not all viable groups anymore.. a few groups if you will.

If you ask say an orthodox Baha'i or someone who springs from the claims of Mason Remey after 1960 they will acknowledge the Will and Testament of Abdul-Baha and accept the Guadianship of Shoghi Effendi at least give some kind of nod to it. The Writings of Baha'u'llah and Abdul-Baha would be accepted. They do not accept the Universal House of Justice.

On the internet you may find what is called the Bayanis..these would apparently accept the Bayan of the Bab but not Baha'u'llah.. maybe they would accept Mirza Yahya. But there are very few actual descendents of this group. We call them Azalis after the title of Mirza Yahya "Azal". There are a few descendents of the group that accepted the claims Muhammad Ali who would be opposed to Abdul-Baha and who would accept Baha'u'llah.

But in our view these groups noted above have little if any influence today in the Baha'i world and many of them are simply historical footnotes.
 
I would like to make a correction to a statement above made by "Ruth":

"They are not any more convincing coming from a supposedly excommunicated Haifan, namely Sen McGlinn..."

A prejudiced statement and also inaccurate. The status of Sen McGlinn is not "excommunicated".. that's a term used today by say the Catholic church or maybe some other Christian denomination but it has no viability here.

Loss of administrative rights is not "excommunication"..what ever reasons for this loss of administrative rights are the business of the Baha'i involved and are matters that should only be dealt with between the individual Baha'i and the Institution in this case the Universal House of Justice.

A Baha'i who attacks the Covenant and the Institutions of the Faith could be considered a "Covenant Breaker". Only the Universal House of Justice today can designate a person a Covenant Breaker. If this person acknowledges their error and repents of it they can be restored to full membership in the community by the House of Justice.

There are also Baha'is who can voluntarily withdraw from the Faith as they choose and they become non-Baha'is.. and there is no particular onus connected to that. They can later apply to be restored to the Baha'i community as they choose.
 
Wil may also notice that the Baha'is (i.e., the group of around seven and a half million) endeavor to teach and spread the Faith--and indeed, have done so around the world, in every country on earth (except the Vatican)!

In contrast, these other groups--by whatever name--are either already extinct or seem to spend most (if not all) of their time merely attacking the Baha'is and their administration rather than performing any truly unific or constructive activities.

So I suggest the real difference is clear for anyone who actually wants to look.

Bruce
 
wil said:
However there are many similarities...

Of the various Bahai denominations, setting the will aside, what can you all agree on?
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Wil,

The Haifan ideology has always held that it alone has the Truth. Following the Shiite interpretations of Shoghi Effendi, especially takfir, declaring a Muslim/Bahai has departed from the Faith, Haifan Baha'is aren't, shall we say, constitutionally capable of respecting the conscience of other Bahai believers, though Abdul-Baha taught, "The conscience of man is sacred and to be respected." Haifans, though most Western ones don't realize it, actually operate in the worst intellectual and spiritual framework of Islam, which Baha'u'llah Himself had specifically rejected and reformed into a moderate, universal Faith.

The three Haifan responses to your completely rational question is highly indicative of all of the above.

In the view of Reform Bahais, all of the several Bahai denominations largely share the broad, universal teachings of Baha'u'llah and Abdul-Baha, revere largely the same corpus of writings, though select ones have been dropped out by the Haifans, those which clearly contradict their theocratic interpretation.

I believe it's fair to say that Abdul-Baha's Interpretation of Baha'u'llah's Teachings for the modern world was much more along the lines of the Quakers, Theosophy, Sufis, and Unitarian Universalists, than the Shiites and Sunnis, the califate or the papacy. He also emphasized "spiritual democracy," meaning a separation of church and state.

My review on my blog of Sen McGlinn's book might help in this context:

Church and State: A Postmodern Political Theology. Sen McGlinn. University of Leiden, 2005. 432 pages
The Globe Blog Archive Church and State. Sen McGlinn.

Incidentally, Reform Bahais do teach, as do Bahais of other denominations. Here I am talking with people at Speakers Corner, Hyde Park, London, UK July 26, 2009
http://reformbahai.org/Speakers_Corner_Hyde_Park_London_UK.html
 
Ruth White said:
McGlinn concedes in his attack on Mitchell that "I am not a forensic handwriting expert" and knowing a language is irrelevant to forensic experts. His assumptions about what Mitchell did are merely that.
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Hi, Ruth White, after posting quotes from Sen's blog, I have notified him of your comments on this Baha'i forum. I'm hoping he will drop by.

I think Sen had some important points.

I will give one example: Mitchell thought the Will and Testament was written by three different people; he was unaware that the Will and Testament was written over a period of years. How could Mitchell have known? Afterall, he knew nothing about the Persian language.

I will give a second example: Mirza Muhammad-`Ali never claimed the Will and Testament was not authentic.

I will give a third example: for Mitchell to point out that, " in the authentic signatures the width of these characters, compared to their height, is much greater than in the signatures on the envelope [in which the Will and Testament was found]," further illustrates his ignorance of Persian. Sen points out four Persian writing styles: nasta`liq shekasteh, nasta`liq, naskh, and another style used for speed writing and everyday use. Therefore, Mitchell's point is pointless. The hanwriting in the Unity Church Bible and Will and Testament is nasta`liq shekasteh; however, in a long text like the Will and Testament, Sen notes it has more consessions for speed writing. Sen writes:
"in the sample from the Will and Testament one can see, top left, a short horizontal line. This represents two dots: they are usually written this way in people’s everyday handwriting, but they are not written this way in the Unity Church text, which follows the rules for formal decorative writing more closely. Allowing for the fact that the Unity Church text has been written with more care, in a ‘higher’ style, there is nothing here to indicate that the Will and Testament could not have been written by the same person. Most of the various flourishes that appear most striking are simply characteristics of the style, and not particular to Abdu’l-Baha."
​
 
Ahanu said:
...I think Sen had some important points. ... [/I]
[/INDENT]
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To repeat, in my response to Sen McGlinn's mistaken attempt to discredit Dr. C. Ainsworth Mitchell's Report, I point out briefly the key fact:

What's purported to be Abdul-Baha's will and testament has never been probated or authenticated independently of those who were and are its beneficiaries.

No court of law would permit such a bogus "will and testament" to stand.

The documents Ruth White placed in the national archive of the Library of Congress unequivocally demonstrate that Shoghi Effendi was a calculating criminal, part of a criminal takeover of the Bahai Cause:

Ruth White Collection, Library of Congress, 1930
http://reformbahai.org/images/WhiteLCDocs.pdf

You seem to be impressed with what Sen McGlinn presents as scholarship. I urge you to look more closely and critically. Here again is a link to my review of his Church and State:

Church and State. Sen McGlinn.
The Globe Blog Archive Church and State. Sen McGlinn.
 
What's purported to be Abdul-Baha's will and testament has never been probated or authenticated independently of those who were and are its beneficiaries.
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Where is your proof that handwriting analysis is 100% accurate? You act like the conclusions of handwriting analysis are unquestionable.

Here's what I got from a quick google search:

No forensic technique has taken more hits than handwriting analysis. In one particularly devastating federal ruling, United States v. Saelee (2001), the court noted that forensic handwriting analysis techniques had seldom been tested, and that what testing had been done "raises serious questions about the reliability of methods currently in use." The experts were frequently wrong--in one test "the true positive accuracy rate of laypersons was the same as that of handwriting examiners; both groups were correct 52 percent of the time." The most basic principles of handwriting analysis--for example, that everyone's handwriting is unique--had never been demonstrated. "The technique of comparing known writings with questioned documents appears to be entirely subjective and entirely lacking in controlling standards," the court wrote. Testimony by the government's handwriting expert was ruled inadmissible.
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The Straight Dope: Is handwriting analysis legit science?
 
Ruth White said:
What's purported to be Abdul-Baha's will and testament has never been probated or authenticated independently of those who were and are its beneficiaries.

Ruth White Collection, Library of Congress, 1930
http://reformbahai.org/images/WhiteLCDocs.pdf
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NOTE WELL, What's purported to be Abdul-Baha's will and testament has never been probated or authenticated independently of those who were and are its beneficiaries...

Ruth White Collection, Library of Congress, 1930
http://reformbahai.org/images/WhiteLCDocs.pdf
 
NOTE WELL
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Note well prejiduce masked as science.

And the only way the Will and Testament can be authenticated is by handwriting analysis, a questionable method?
 
Ahanu said:
...prejiduce masked as science.
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...sic.

Ludicrous... No lawyer or judge would in the United States or the Western, indeed much of the world, would consider a perported, unprobated will and testament authentic, especially when it was translated by the very person who was its beneficiary, as Ruth White observed, Shoghi Effendi!

Forgery masked as the will of Abdul-Baha...
 
BruceDLimber said:
ad hominem attacks?
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It's false to characterize criticism of criminal acts as ad hominem. You might want to look up the meaning. But one of the oldest tactics of apologists, when confronted with a truth they cannot handle, is to try to change the subject:

"No lawyer or judge would in the United States or Western countries, indeed much of the world, would consider a purported, unprobated will and testament authentic, especially when it was translated by the very person who was its beneficiary, as Ruth White observed, Shoghi Effendi!

Forgery masked as the will of Abdul-Baha..."
 
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