Baha’i Rants

A while back we looked at the geographic breakdown of the data: Iranians Curious About “Bahai”, Americans Not. I decided to go back and take a look at the pattern of search results for Baha’i.

Since Google is the king of internet when it comes to search, I was somewhat saddened to see that the number of worldwide searches for the keyword, “Baha’i” is continuing to decline. The chart below is from Google Insight for Search and it shows the incidence of people searching for the word Bahai on Google:

Since 2004 (the farthest Google has data) there has been a consistent decline in the number of Google searches for the term Baha’i. By the way, alternative spellings such as “bahai” provide the same results – Google is smart like that. Since Google loves numbers more than the Count, they crunch the numbers to come up with a short term forecast one year ahead (not visible in the chart above). Based on their forecast, the search index will decline from 39 (May 2010) to 33 in June 2011. You can see the chart including the forecast here.

To get some perspective we can compare this to, say, the term “Islam”. For starters, Islam’s index is flat, indicating a consistent level of online search interest. But I didn’t show the two together because there is so much more interest in the term “Islam” that the two plotted together on one index makes “Baha’i”‘s index basically unreadable.

Searching for other religions is also interesting. For example, the keyword “Judaism” shows a similar decline in popularity but the amount of search is higher than Baha’i. As well, there is an annual peak of interest that centers around Yom Kippur – the holiest of Jewish religious holidays.

So what inferences can we draw from this?

For starters, it is important to realize the importance of the internt. The reality is that the internet is a now an integral part of life in most developed countries. And with time, the integration and usefulness of the internet is only growing. So on the one hand, this trend tells us that within the Western, or wealthy nations, there is a decline in interest.

Considering the significant correlation between religiosity and wealth that isn’t surprising. As well, the Baha’i world center has for some time now targeted the less developed nations and developed programs such as Ruhi specifically to gain inroads within them.

Although in physical form it is in 4 separate locations around the world, the oldest known copy of the Bible is now completely online. The document dates back to Constantine I and is considered one of the world’s greatest written treasures. Now, thanks to the internet, everyone has equal access to this historical heritage.

To find out more about why this document is so important, you can read more about it here. Interestingly enough, there are many discrepancies between the contents of the Codex and what we consider as the Bible today. For example, it has no mention of a resurrected Jesus – a pivotal component of modern Christian doctrine.

I took the image you see above while playing around with the controls at the Codex Sinaiticus website. As the image shows, you can zoom in to see quiet a lot of detail.

Even you are not a librarian or a photographer or an archivist, it isn’t difficult to imagine the daunting task of digitizing a 1,600-year old manuscript that is literally falling apart.

This monumental achievement reminded me of the massive volumes of Baha’i texts which are hidden away in vaults and not accessible by scholars (or anyone else). To give you an idea of what a similar project for Baha’i texts would look like, here is a low resolution image of an excerpt from the Epistle to the Son of the Wolf by Baha’u'llah (written in the handwriting of Mirza Aqa Jan, Baha’u'llah’s amanuensis):

Continue reading ‘Oldest Bible (Codex Sinaiticus) Now Online’

An interview with Brian Taraz

Usually when I’m looking up for a specific quote or topic within the Baha’i writings I head to the “official” Reference Library at the world center. But there’s a new and improved website called BahaiResearch.com that has the same content, as well as writings from other religions and periphery content such as memoirs, pilgrims notes, etc.

Although the site is the work of Ian Vink and Runa Ali, it is hosted by USBNC.ORG (US Baha’i National Center web servers). And still the site is way too slow. Speed is extremely important for a search engine as it improves productivity and frequency of use.

It also supports 14 languages in total: most romance languages, Arabic, Persian, Chinese, Japanese and more. As well, new documents are being continuously added. The best part is that it features boolean searches. This means you can use OR AND NOT to zero in on what you want.

You can even download the whole thing and work offline. And we are told that there are “widgets” coming that would enable you to embed it on your website to allow people a portal to access it.

You might remember a while back we talked about majnun, a Baha’i search engine which basically filtered the web according to what… we don’t know. While majnun is simply a veiled exercise in censorship, Ian and Runa’s project is about disseminating knowledge openly.

BahaiResearch.com reminds me of Ocean, another similar tool (but it is only downloadable and has no online feature).

So take BahaiResearch.com for a spin and let Ian know what you think. He’s done a great job of not only designing a very easy to use application but one that has some real practical value.