Abdul-Baha's 1912 Authentic Covenant

[Lunitik]

I say nothing new because there is nothing new to be said.

Baha'u'llah has taught only unity, you are creating disunity, you cannot say you are Baha'i.

I have left rather than create disunity, why do you persist in creating further disunity instead? I cannot accept Baha'i repression, but you have no problem with that apparently since you still cling to the scriptures. Instead, your problem is with a direct quote of Baha'u'llah, the man you claim is a Divine Light. It is incomprehensible and no amount of justification can change it.

Reform Baha'is are part of how Baha'u'llah's covenant has been broken, but you are too much concentrated on the issue with UHJ.

 

[Ruth White]

Reform Baha'is are part of how Baha'u'llah's covenant has been broken, but you are too much concentrated on the issue with UHJ.

I respect your right to your own opinions and have striven not to say anything that might offend you, while being true to my conscience, study, and reflection.

How ironic that it's actually what many consider to be the UHJ that has broken Baha'u'llah's covenant, along with its followers, most of whom do not even have a clue about the actual history and teachings of Abdul-Baha prior to his death.

I invite you to seek truth, independently, as Baha'u'llah and Abdul-Baha taught. Consider, it is only after Abdul-Baha's death that that teachings was reversed...

Jenabe Fazel Mazandarani. Universal Religion
Jenabe Fazel Mazandarani, Universal Religion

 

[Lunitik]

I reject the invitation on the grounds that the covenant is broken and thus the faith is null and void.

Blame does not help, it has already happened and Baha'u'llah is not around to say it is reinstated, man does not decide these things - even Baha'u'llah was merely a vessel talking against his better judgement.

 

[bob x]

Are you rummaging "around the Internet" on Wikipedia?

Not particularly. I looked at chat-boards and anything that would come up on Google.

I have never seen any corroborating evidence that the "UU Baha'is" are actually accepted or sponsored by the Unitarian Universalists.

*shrug* The UU church around the corner from where I used to live had a Baha'i meeting once a week. They're pretty hospitable about letting any spiritual-minded group use their buildings, which is all the "affiliation" that the Unitarian Baha'is have or claim to have with them.

The "unenrolled" appear credible, usually. I don't believe, though, that they're very intellectually astute, nor consistent, indeed, in my opinion, naive, for many seem to think they're going to change the Haifan denomination

I got more the impression that they don't much care which way Haifa goes, that they seek their own paths; but obviously, it will vary from one to another, since we are not dealing with an organized "denomination" of any kind but rather the direct opposite.

I mentioned earlier here on Interfaith that Abdul-Baha had used the term the "Universal House of Justice" for as long as a decade prior to his death in 1921

Which is entirely irrelevant to the "trademark law" issue, which is whether use of the name is likely to cause confusion as to the organizational affiliation, among people who do not know the niceties. I cannot make watches and sell them as "Omega" watches, because there is a big company that already uses the name "Omega" and it would be deceitful for me to sell to people who might well assume my watches come from that company; it is no defense to point out that "Omega" as the last letter of the Greek alphabet and a common metaphor for the "last word" in anything has been used for thousands of years.

In my opinion, Baha'is of other denominations have every right to establish their own Universal House of Justice.

Yes, but while I'm not a federal judge, if I were I would be inclined to require them to have a prominent disclaimer on their web-site that they are not affiliated with the UHJ in Haifa, Israel (as I would have thought they themselves would want to make crystal clear). It would not be necessary for Haifa to have a disclaimer that they are not affiliated with the UHJ in Missoula, Montana since few people have ever heard of it or would be misled into thinking that.

While I do not personally find the claims of BUPC persuasive, they are my fellow American citizens and Bahai brothers and sisters. I have exchanged views with a few of them in the past, and all were cordial.

How recently? My efforts to find out whether, aside from Neal Chase himself, their current membership is more than "BUPCiss" did not turn up anything.

The US Federal Courts were right in protecting their and other Bahais' rights. I invite you to consider that the fact that it was necessary for the Federal courts to do so might be worth reflecting on and speaks volumes, as the phrase has it, about the denomination that filed the lawsuit.

As I understand it, it was Mason Remey's group which filed the suit in the 60's, trying to take control of the Wilmette building and getting a severe injunction slapped on them. It was indeed Haifa which filed the more recent motion reviving that suit, asking that the OB and BUPC be found in contempt of the injunction; but the court did not rule on the substantive issue of how broad a trademark injunction would be proper, only that the OB and BUPC are not "the same" as Remey's original organization, so that the old injunction has no force and the question would have to be litigated afresh.

The ruling does, to be sure, criticize the 1966 injunction for having gone into questions of which group was truer to the original teachings; the Supreme Court has since ruled that in religious property disputes, the courts should stay totally out of religious issues and try to apply neutral property-law principles.

The argument you advance was the Haifan Baha'i argument that was wisely repudiated by the Federal Courts, *three* times.

The 1941 ruling said that the name "Baha'i" could not be trademarked; I have agreed with you and that court that such an injunction would be ridiculously overbroad. The 1966 ruling went entirely the other way. The recent ruling did not reach the substance of the questions, merely saying that the 1966 ruling cannot be enforced any longer.

I encourage you to speak directly with members of the Baha'i denominations concerned, if you're genuinely interested and a person of goodwill.

It is very difficult to find any.

I suggest reading the 150 megabytes...
After doing that, read the 400 megabytes...

I suggest you use the option here of searching for more posts by bob x, and read everything I've written since I've been on this board before you make assumptions about who I am and what my motives are.

Incidentally, Bob, since you bring up the Orthodox Baha'is and so forth, you might want to read the following article from The Chicago Tribune:


Federal appeals court rules in favor of splinter Baha'i group

It says there are about 50 of them, where another source said about 40. Whatever. On YouTube they all looked very old, and stuck in the past: "I well remember when Hand of the Cause So-and-So convinced the Quincy Illinois Assembly of Mason Remey's Guardianship..." WHO CARES??? That was fifty years ago; the guy is dead now; and his leadership was even less inspiring than Shoghi Effendi's. And you want to argue about whether the will appointing Shoghi Effendi ninety years ago was authentic or forged: hey, that guy's been dead since before I turned one year old, and I'm not exactly a spring chicken either.

I invite you to read Abdul-Baha's actual covenant of 1912 and ponder its implications

I told you already, I read it, and your commentary on it, and remain as puzzled as "stinkyhenry" was about how you derive from it that there wasn't supposed to be any central leadership in the future. Instead of just linking to what you have written before, which doesn't seem to have attracted a lot of convinced believers, why don't you try explaining anew?

 

[Ruth White]

You really don't understand the history of the supposed "trademark" of the generic word Bahai. Ruth White and Ahmad Sohrab's books cover it in detail. And the US Federal Courts brought it up to date when they ruled,

Opinion, Judge Sykes, p 14-15: "Considered in light of these First Amendment limitations on the court’s authority, certain aspects of the 1966 injunction are troubling. The decree declares that “there is only one Baha’i Faith,” that Shoghi Effendi was its last Guardian and none has come since, and the National Spiritual Assembly was its representative and “highest authority” in the United States and was “entitled to exclusive use of the marks and symbols of the Faith,” including the exclusive use of the word “Bahá’í.” Declarations of this sort push the boundaries of the court’s authority under Kedroff and Presbyterian Church. In church property disputes (trademark suits obviously qualify), the First Amendment limits the sphere in which civil courts may operate. When a district judge takes sides in a religious schism, purports to decide matters of spiritual succession, and excludes dissenters from using the name, symbols, and marks of the faith (as distinct from the name and marks of a church), the First Amendment line appears to have been crossed" (boldface added).

List of Documents in case

Your arguments are those of the Haifans. I suggest you do more homework since your sources "stink"; enough that you don't merely repeat the opinions the Haifans regularly feed the uninformed.

 

[Ahanu]

A 1912 Announcement of the Covenant?                   Sen McGlinn's blog

One thing familiar to us today, is missing – the Guardianship. One rather unorthodox Bahai has even renamed the text of the June 19 talk “the 1912 Covenant,” as if the announcement of the Covenant could be a substitute for the Covenant itself. The motivation for inflating the talk’s importance is precisely the lack of mention of a Guardian. But this silence is simply enough explained: first, this talk was not some uniquely important explanation of the Covenant, so there is no reason why Abdu’l-Baha would want to make it comprehensive. The Covenant rests on written texts, such as Baha’u’llah’s Kitab-e Aqdas, Tablet of the Branch and his Will (Kitab-e `Ahd), and on Abdu’l-Baha’s Will and Testament (the first two sections of which had been written before Abdu’l-Baha left for the United States). It does not rest on a talk given to some believers in New York. Second, Shoghi Effendi was born on 1 March 1897, so he was just over 15 years old in June 1912. Abdu’l-Baha kept his appointment as Guardian secret, even from Shoghi Effendi himself, to allow his character to develop without the burden of a sense of entitlement, and to protect him from the adulation and attacks of Abdu’l-Baha’s own friends and enemies.

 

[Ruth White]

Sen McGlinn's not credible for reasons I have explained elsewhere:

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

and

Sen McGlinn & Frederick Glaysher - A 1996 Conversation, Censored....
Sen McGlinn & Frederick Glaysher - A 1996 Conversation, Censored...

As in the past, none of his arguments in the cited passage holds water. Like the Haifan Baha'is after the false will and testament was supposedly pieced together, conveniently "hidden underground," the Covenant, throughout the Star of the West and all early Bahai publications, does not refer to the bogus document, but the publicly delivered, repeatedly published, Address Upon the Covenant of 1912, which is emphatically not an "announcement" of the fraudulent will, an anachronistic subterfuge if there ever was one.

Hearsay and falsehood have long been the Haifan Baha'i way of "proving" its specious creed, while avoiding at all costs an independently probating and authentication of it, since it can't be done, then or now.

They have every civic and religious right to follow and worship it, if they wish; there is no reason why other Bahais must, who can use the independent investigation of truth that Baha'u'llah and Abdul-Baha guaranteed them.

Abdul-Baha's Interpretation of Baha'u'llah's Teachings is a broad, open, loving Covenant of God with humanity, and it is articulated in simple language, in his 1912 Address Upon the Covenant. It is universal, moderate, predicated on pluralistic spiritual democracy, based on a separation of church and state, not tyranny, and emphasizes the universality, the non-creedal and non-exclusivism of religious truth.

Abdul-Baha's 1912 Authentic Covenant
Abdu'l-Baha's 1912 Authentic Covenant

An Analysis of Abdul-Baha's 1912 Authentic Covenant
Comments on Abdul-Baha's 1912 Authentic Covenant

 

[bob x]

You really don't understand the history of the supposed "trademark" of the generic word Bahai.

Sure I do. You really just don't bother listening to what anybody says to you.

When a district judge takes sides in a religious schism, purports to decide matters of spiritual succession, and excludes dissenters from using the name, symbols, and marks of the faith (as distinct from the name and marks of a church), the First Amendment line appears to have been crossed

This is why I distinguish between trying to block anybody else from using the name "Baha'i" (which I have always agreed with you is ridiculous, but you won't take Yes for an answer) and objecting to "This is the official web-site of the Universal House of Justice" without any disclaimer: the UHJ name is well-known as the name of a large church body, whether you like that fact or not. As an analogy: there are traditionalist Catholics who think the last few Popes have become apostate from the true faith (some have even elected their own Popes); I would not bar them from calling themselves "Catholic" (that would be absurd) but putting up "This is the official web-site of the Roman Catholic Church" on a site which is actually totally opposed to the Vatican would be misleading and confusing. This has nothing to do with the question of whether those "Catholics" are or are not more faithful than the Vatican to the faith of centuries ago; I don't care.

Your arguments are those of the Haifans.

The Haifans were arguing for continued enforcement of the 1966 injunction with its absurdly overbroad restrictions. I found an OB source which explained how a judge could have issued such a ruling, which I found a little odd (even before the Supreme Court's ruling in the Presbyterian case, the constitutional problems ought to have been obvious). Mason Remey went into a funk and told everybody not to fight the case anymore, so their attorneys defaulted on the case; the BWF attorneys had submitted a "proposed injunction" which went way beyond what they hoped to be granted, as lawyers will, but when the other side just didn't show up, the judge just signed the unopposed injunction (as judges will; they aren't going to spend their time arguing on behalf of a party who won't argue for themselves). The OB's position now is that Remey had spiritually turned over the Guardianship to Marangella already, although Marangella himself did not know it; well, whatever.

Hearsay and falsehood have long been the Haifan Baha'i way of "proving" its specious creed

An article about the paranoid atmosphere in 19th-century Iran when the Babi movement started (I found it while trying to find out if the Azali vs. Baha'i schism was still alive; apparently some "Azalis" or "Bayanis" do still exist, but nobody except another Bayani would know one) shed some light for me on why this movement for religious unification instead seems to be filled with back-biting and suspicion.

Abdul-Baha's Interpretation of Baha'u'llah's Teachings is a broad, open, loving Covenant of God with humanity, and it is articulated in simple language, in his 1912 Address Upon the Covenant.

Whereas, what you are doing with that text is promoting more back-biting and quarrels; I wish you could see yourself as others see you.

As to what I see in the text: I agree with Lunitik in part that the early Bahai had political as well as religious aims, assuming that a unified world government would arise as a natural consequence of spiritual unity-- but rejecting the notion of actively overthrowing governments (the Azalis were more the "terrorist" wing of the original Babi movement). The 1912 speech is looking at that long-term picture; but doesn't have anything to say, one way or another, about what leadership structure the Baha'i community would have after Abdul Baha's death, and why should it? He wasn't expecting to die imminently; there was a continuing family feud, so it was not prudent to publicly name any successor when that choice might prove unwise and have to be revised later. I remain puzzled as to what evidentiary relevance you think it has to the question about the will. I seriously do not think that the Baha'i were immediately supposed to become an anarcho-syndicalist commune after having been run monarchically up until that point.

 

[Ruth White]

Bob,

With all friendliness, you're the one not listening, nor reading what's presented to you. If you don't want to make the effort, that's fine, but it leaves one at the mercy of Haifan disinformation.

"...back-biting and suspicion." My speculation would be, once one forges a will for one's own benefit, alls that left as a defense is to slander Ruth White and the 1600 plus other people who objected and left, as a "besotted woman," "notorious covenant-breakers."

Incidentally, according to "I, Brian," http://www.interfaith.org/forum/251840-post14.html "...please note this is an interfaith forum.... This is not about making judgements about specific faiths, trying to extoll one over another, and especially not about trying to diminish any specific faith here."

So my question to you and him is why is he, "I, Brian," you, and others, silent when Lunitik and others have used basically the Iranian Shiite tactics of practicing 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.

In terms of government, see Abdu'l-Baha's suppressed 'Treatise on Leadership' translated by Juan Cole at Treatise on Leadership (Suppressed, like Abdul-Baha's 1912 Authentic Covenant, because it contains a vision of the Bahai Cause utterly different from the theocracy of Shoghi Effendi's clique.)

The "covenant breaker" mentality is clearly exhibited in the following link on Interfaith, which Wil had noticed and remarked on at http://www.interfaith.org/forum/250807-post71.html - ...namely http://www.interfaith.org/forum/covenant-breaker-website-6096.html It's been used in this thread.

Juan Cole, a professor at the University of Michigan, who was driven out of the Haifan Baha'i Faith by its heresy hunters, explains what's involved with the witch hunts quite well:


"Right wing Baha'is only like to hear the
sound of their own voices (which are the only voices they will admit to being
"Baha'i" at all).

Obviously, the world is so constructed that they cannot in fact only hear
their own voices. They are forced to hear other voices that differ from
theirs. This most disturbs them when the voices come from enrolled Baha'is
or when the voices speak of the Baha'i faith.

The way they sometimes deal with the enrolled Baha'is is to summon them to a
heresy inquiry and threaten them with being shunned if they do not fall
silent.

With non-Baha'is or with ex-Baha'is, they deal with their speech about the
faith by backbiting, slandering and libelling the speaker. You will note
that since I've been on this list I have been accused of long-term heresy, of
"claiming authority," of out and out lying (though that was retracted,
twice), of misrepresentation, of 'playing fast and loose with the facts,' and
even of being 'delusional.' I have been accused of all these falsehoods by
*Baha'is*, by prominent Baha'is. I have been backbitten by them.

This shows that all the talk about the danger a sharp tongue can do, all the
talk about the need for harmony, for returning poison with honey, for a
sin-covering eye, is just *talk* among right wing Baha'is. No one fights
dirtier than they when they discover a voice they cannot silence and cannot
refute."

Re: Baha'i backbiting 2/23/99

 

[bob x]

you're the one not listening

I've listened to you, and just not been very impressed-- particularly when you just echo again your arguments against the Haifa organization without even seeming to notice that I've been saying something different.

nor reading what's presented to you. If you don't want to make the effort, that's fine

I've read a bunch of your stuff, but you know, I'm not going to plow through hundreds of megabytes if you won't give an "executive summary" here. I do spend more hours on the Internet than is probably mentally healthy, but I am not going to be a full-time student of decades-old church politics within the Baha'i denomination; I'm also expected to figure out the etymologies of Avestan words from Zoroastrian scriptures, and the textual history of the New Testament, and on my politics boards I am expected to know the complete history of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and the ins and outs of the current military situation in Libya...

"...back-biting and suspicion." My speculation would be, once one forges a will for one's own benefit, alls that left as a defense is to slander Ruth White and the 1600 plus other people who objected and left, as a "besotted woman," "notorious covenant-breakers."

You take it as if it were an established that the will was forged, when there's very little evidence here. The most appropriate time to contest the will would have been 1921, when the property hadn't yet been distributed and everybody who knew the decedent was still around; courts and other authorities want to see a lot before they are going to try to unscramble an omelet, and the reason the Mandate authorities blew Ruth White off is that she didn't make much of a case. In 1921 nobody disputed anything. Years later, Ruth White was dis-satisfied with Shoghi Effendi's leadership, as were a lot of people, evidently; but if the decline in membership under his leadership is evidence that God didn't want him in that position, then what does the tiny membership of your denomination say about how God felt about Ruth?

Aside from the argument "Abdul Baha was too wise to have left leadership to someone as uncharismatic as Shoghi Effendi" (which seems to be the core of it), all you've given me is this report from Dr. Mitchell, who was totally ignorant of the fact that Persian script for a formal document like a will is very different from the cursive for a friendly note in someone's guest-book, which is what he was asked to compare with. White wrote a rambling letter to the authorities which left them uncertain what she was even saying: they thought she was questioning whether the reproductions of the will were really pictures of the actual paper document, so they had Shoghi Effendi produce the paper, and an expert cursorily compare the photos with the paper. White then explained that she didn't doubt the photos were really photos of the paper, but was asking whether the paper was really in Abdul Baha's handwriting, so there was another very cursory expert examination (Shoghi Effendi acknowledges that he was waiting in the outer office the whole time this was done, so it didn't take much time) concluding that the will looked like Abdul Baha's handwriting (I see nothing giving us much clue where the samples of his handwriting for this occasion were produced from), and the authorities wrote back bluntly that they had no interest in pursuing it further.

Is this the story, or am I missing something? I'm not seeing any reason to care, here. You call it "slander" to refer to Ruth White and such-like dissidents in unflattering terms, but "slander" is a legal term referring to false statements of fact, and really has no application to matters of opinion. My opinion, likewise, is that Ruth White comes across as a little nuts, and if I had been the Palestine Mandate authorities, I wouldn't have spent much time on her either.

This is not about making judgements about specific faiths, trying to extoll one over another, and especially not about trying to diminish any specific faith here.

There's a fine line between expressing disagreements, which we do all the time here, and being 100% negative and derogatory. There are some writings about your positive beliefs on your website (if "you" are the same person as Fred Glaysher; I'm not clear if you are him, or just a fellow-member of his group-- not that it matters), but you don't express any of that here, just give links that people may or may not have time to follow. From your postings here, if all links were broken, all anyone could gather about your beliefs is "The Haifa organization is a bunch of nasty people, and anyone who doesn't agree with me must be a mole or a dupe for Haifa." Like this:

Lunitik and others have used basically the Iranian Shiite tactics of practicing Islamic “takfir,” labeling people “kafir” or infidels, and issuing fatwas

Do you understand how insane you sound when you make such statements? Lunitik claims no authority, issues no "fatwas", uses no such words as "kafir"; he broke with the Baha'i because, like you, he doesn't care for the emphasis on organizational unity, but unlike you, he doesn't think you can throw away organizational unity and still have a "Baha'i faith" left. Rather than elucidate how it is that you disagree, you go on a rampage against him for daring to say you might be wrong-- are you labelling him an infidel ?

denying the very existence of other Bahais and denominations

Uh, nobody has denied your existence-- it would be rather pointless to talk to you if we didn't notice that you are here.

In terms of government, see Abdu'l-Baha's suppressed 'Treatise on Leadership'

"Suppressed"? It wasn't widely published in his lifetime, because it was directed to a specific political situation, and those who don't know the context wouldn't even know which "ignorant, unwise insurgents and fomenters of turmoil" he was arguing against (the Tobacco Rebels of 1890's Iran, Juan Cole explains), nor would those outside Iran readily understand all the examples from previous centuries he refers back to, taking for granted that the readers know the intricacies of the Safavid, Zand, and Qajar periods.

Cole does a good job of clarifying what the text is about, advocating that religious teachers stay out of the civil government's proper sphere, and certainly not get involved in trying to overthrow governments. He does however expect that there will be a religious leadership, as authoritative within its sphere as the government in the civil sphere:

In classical Muslim lexicons, I'm not aware of the word tashri`, which literally would mean 'to legislate.' Modern standard Arabic, on the other hand, has two words for 'legislation:' tashri` and taqnin (to make a law or qanun). But tashri` has been secularized in this sense, referring to the civil legislation of a secular parliament. It would anyway not make sense for a civil parliament to be said to legislate (tashri`) divine revealed law (shari`ah). No one can legislate shari`ah except the Prophet, who is called sha:ri`.

So why does `Abdu'l-Baha refer below to the Shi`ite religious leaders of Iran as sources (mas.dar) of *tashri`* regarding the divine ordinances (ah.ka:m-i ila:hiyyih)? That makes no sense if we translate tashri` as legislation. The clergy cannot legislate divine ordinances, only God and the Prophet can do that.

There is only one resolution to this philological puzzle, it seems to me. `Abdu'l-Baha is not using 'tashri`' to mean 'legislation' at all! He is using it as a synonym of istinba:t. or ijtiha:d. He is using it to mean, 'establishing the purport of the revealed law.' And, luckily, `Abdu'l-Baha makes it quite explicit that this is precisely what he does mean by tashri`, since he glosses it himself here: "that is, whenever the government questions them about the exigencies of the revealed law and the reality of the divine ordinances affecting both general and specific issues, they must communicate the conclusions to which their jurisprudential reasoning (mustanbat.) has led them about the commands of God."

Now, `Abdu'l-Baha has already made it crystal clear that he doesn't want religious leaders intervening in *civil* affairs. When he said they should carry out tashri`, he therefore could not possibly have meant that they should be legislating in the area of civil law. He writes below of the religious leaders, "Otherwise, what expertise do they have in political matters, the protection of the subjects, the managing of serious affairs, the welfare and prosperity of the country, the implementation of the civil regulations (qava'id) and secular laws (qanun) of a realm, or foreign affairs and domestic policy?"

Rather, he envisages the state acknowledging that certain matters are covered by the religious revealed law (shari`ah), and that when in doubt the state will ask the religious leaders what the purport of the revealed law is in a particular case. But religious leaders *may not* seek to implement the law directly, themselves, but must depend on the civil state to do so.

We might compare this to the recurring controversy in the US about "judicial activism": the courts are only supposed to "interpret" law, but interpreting laws as to how they apply in situations that the legislature didn't foresee really does amount to "making new law", even though the courts have to say that they aren't doing so. Similarly here, the religious leaders are only "interpreters" of what God ordains through the words of his prophets, but these interpretations are in effect "legislating" for the believers; the religious leaders are not to take it upon themselves to invoke the civil power to coerce believers into obedience, but Abdul Baha is taking it for granted that there will be authoritative interpreters. He himself acted, within the religious sphere, as a monarchical authority, and it was certainly to be expected that he would leave a will naming a successor, or some council of successors.

The "covenant breaker" mentality is clearly exhibited in the following link on Interfaith, which Wil had noticed and remarked on at http://www.interfaith.org/forum/250807-post71.html - ...namely http://www.interfaith.org/forum/covenant-breaker-website-6096.html

That's talking about the website that calls itself "The official site of the Universal House of Justice", which I just find terribly deceitful within the context.

I'm not going to defend the "shunning" practice of the Baha'i, which is similar to what Jehovah's Witnesses or the Amish do when someone breaks with their dogmas (no-one, not even close family or former friends, should talk to them at all, at the risk of being "shunned" in turn), similar indeed to what "excommunication" meant in medieval times when the Catholic Church had more power; I will only say that it within their rights to do this. This is not like the Scientologists' "fair game" behavior of using any means legal or illegal to track down and hurt those who have left; and it is ridiculous on your part to compare it to threatening imprisonment or death to apostates. They think organizational unity is a principle of paramount importance, so as far as they're concerned either you're in, all the way in, or you're out.

 

[iBrian]

Time to close this thread, too.