The Baha’i community is receiving some good news from Egypt. In case you’re not familiar with the situation there, it involves the right of Egyptian Baha’is to have government issued ID cards. You can read more about it on Wikipedia.
According to the Muslim Network for Baha’i Rights, there ruling will probably come in a few days and it will most probably be favorable for the Baha’is. I hope it will put an end to this and the Egyptian Baha’is can live in peace.
Meanwhile, over in the US the Baha’is are also involved in a court case but they are acting as the plaintiffs rather than defendants. The case involves the Orthodox Baha’is and their use of Baha’i names, symbols and trademarks. You can read about it to get some background information. The US NSA was trying to enforce a crazy 1966 ruling against Mason Remey and his organization for infringing on Baha’i copyright.
The NSA of the Baha’is of the United States lost the case last year when the presiding judge ruled that there was no “substantial continuity between the NSA-UHG and the PNBC”. What she meant was that the 1966 ruling was enforceable on Remey’s organization but the current Orthodox Baha’i group has little if any resemblance to it.
Unfortunately the NSA of the Baha’is of the US decided to appeal this ruling. The case will come before the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals and be argued before a panel of judges on February 20th, 2009.
It is sad to see the NSA spend so much time and the precious resources of the Faith to engage in a legal wrangle of this sort. It is especially lamentable when you consider that it is all based on a flimsy ruling which will not stand up to the most superficial scrutiny.
Would any legal minds reading this care to offer their opinion as to why the Orthodox Baha’is haven’t simply attacked the trademark basis of the 1966 ruling? After all, the word “Baha’i” can not be owned by any one organization, just as the term Christian doesn’t belong to only the Catholic Church.
