What is this all about?

US NSA Annual Report – Ridvan 2007

Mr. William E. Davis
Former Chairperson
National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of the United States of America

So much so that Jack seems to have changed his mind about the whole thing and decided to call it all off… by erasing his post from his blog.

Before the self-censorship, the blog post was featured on Baha’is Online. And Allison also wrote a commentary on her own blog. As for this humble blogger, for now I’m withholding any comments.

However, the internet and the technologies it contains allows us to punch a few buttons and take a ride in our own time machine (also known as, Google Cache) to retrieve Jack’s original post.

In all its effulgent glory (minus the holy numbered comments), behold:

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Thursday, August 23, 2007
DISSIDENTS AND THE BAHA’I FAITH

On the Internet today one may find webpages, websites and member lists that contain disgruntled views and/or bitter attacks, usually against the Bahá’í Administrative Order, from a relatively small number of so-called dissident and ex-Bahá’ís. A dissident is not, of course, an ex-Bahá’í, but someone who still claims to be a follower who has serious grievances against the Bahá’í Faith and who continues to militate for their acceptance. A dissident must be distinguished from the individual, who for personal reasons, chooses not to associate with the community, and from the person who, for one reason or another, drifts away from the Faith. Surprisingly, some of these attacks are made even by “Bahá’ís in good standing.”

In the early 1990’s, I gained first-hand experience of this phenomenon when I was a temporary member of the original Talisman list, hosted by ex-Bahá’í, Dr. Juan Ricardo Cole. I subsequently resigned from Talisman I when Dr. Cole, in his grand design to be the “gadfly” reformer of the Bahá’í Faith, made direct, frontal attacks on the Universal House of Justice. What is perhaps not so well-known was that by that time Dr. Cole had been remonstrating with the Universal House of Justice more or less steadily for about 20 years.

It is not the purpose of this message to reanimate the specifics of Cole’s case which are well-known to those who once belonged to Talisman I and who are familiar with his articles that attempted to blacken the reputation of the Bahá’í Administrative Order. He has since found new enemies: his blog is largely devoted to attacking the foreign policy of the United States government. However, I would like to make some general comments about dissidents and ex-Bahá’ís, whether it be Juan Cole, Francesco Ficicchia in German-speaking Europe in the 1980’s and ‘90’s, and/or the like-minded Internet club of present or past hostile critics.

The behaviour of these individuals, if one wants to step back and observe it, reveals a negative dynamic or pattern of behaviour that continues to be dismally instructive. I am submitting the following observations, consequently, not to revive some old grudges, nor to perpetuate present ones, but because I seriously doubt that the Bahá’í community has seen the end of the complaints of the constantly disgruntled, the doctrinally innovative and the permanently embittered. While space is lacking here to set out fully the entire dynamic of this pattern, I would like to comment briefly on the climate of sympathy that seems to be created, at least momentarily, for the grievances of these individuals.

Allow me to preface these observations with this comment: I do not doubt for a moment that these persons have been hurt or that some have been betrayed by a fellow believer or that some decision by an administrative body has not gone their way. Most Bahá’ís, if they live long enough, will experience betrayal, or be subject to an administrative decision that has not been in their favour. The latter phrase applies sometimes to members of these very same institutions. These experiences contribute to our awakening to the stark realities of the human condition.

One of the keys to the sympathetic ear temporarily lent to the disgruntled has to do with the way that organized religion is generally perceived in contemporary society. In modernity, religion and spirituality have gone their separate ways. Individuals may willingly affirm their theism or spirituality but many disavow being official members of an “organized religion.” Of course, the whole notion of being against organized religion per se is a strange one, when one thinks about it. People, generally, do not object to organized government, to an organized judiciary, to organized political parties, to organized education, to organized medicine, clubs, associations and societies. But except for official members, the religious “organization” in a secular age has become definitely suspect.

And for good reason. This climate of suspicion has been created by a long history of the violent repression of doctrinal minorities, and other past or present moral travesties. Uninformed observers, consequently, tend to be predisposed to accept the viewpoint of the dissident without further reflection or investigation. If she has dissented from a religious institution, ergo, the charges must be true and she must be a victim: at least, that is the hasty conclusion. This predisposition was clearly at work for a time in Juan Cole’s case, just as it was for another ex-Bahá’í, Francesco Ficicchia.

What the dissidents fail to realize, and do not accept, is that the Bahá’í Faith, while it allows for a fair and reasonable largesse of individual interpretation, has nonetheless its own doctrinal boundaries and ethical norms. But in the final analysis, these doctrinal boundaries and ethical norms are simply not accepted by these individuals who, driven by frustration at the non-acceptance of the perceived moral rightness of their cause, ego-mania, hyper-individualism and the principles of “liberal democracy,” engage in corrosive attacks which by definition are beyond the ethical norms and the principles of consultation which Bahá’u’lláh has mandated to replace acrimonious and divisive debate.

The founders of the Bahá’í Faith have repeatedly warned their followers—some individuals even balk at the very notion of a warning–of the grave moral and spiritual consequences that accompany such hostile, confrontational approaches. But these individuals, unless they disaffiliate themselves from the religion to which they belong, and although they have knowingly accepted these doctrinal boundaries and ethical norms, imagine that these standards do not apply to them. They clearly view themselves as belonging to a different category. Dissidents believe somehow that they are fully within their rights to violate these norms with impunity.

Yet, just like the perpetrators who claim to be victims, they act shocked and surprised, and charge betrayal and harassment, when the government of their religion finally asks them to withdraw or takes measures to remove them permanently from the membership list. This removal, I should add, usually takes place after a lengthy and patient hearing and exchange of views, counselling and, final warnings. This careful process, however, has sometimes resulted in charges of fascism and religious fundamentalism being levelled against the institutions of the Bahá’í Faith. Of course, neither Bahá’í doctrine nor covenants gives any one a licence to radically alter Bahá’í belief or ethical practice to the point of making it unrecognizable to the community itself and to the institutions of the Bahá’í Faith. But for these individuals, this seems to be quite beside the point.

As sequitur to this last sentence: the point of this message is not, as might be supposed, simple justification, the basic preoccupation of theology, of administrative sanctions taken against these individuals. Methodologically, the confrontational, heavy-handed approach is also unsound. It is both strange and ironic when this defective, ineffective tool originates with the learned. Phenomenologist of religion, William Brede Kristensen, the Norwegian-Dutch scholar (1867-1953), in his instructive essay “What is Phenomenology?” was perhaps the first to make the point that serious students and scholars of religion must identify with the faith of others to the extent that they “must therefore be able to forget themselves, to be able to surrender themselves to others” (p. 49). The respected comparative religionists, Wilfred Cantwell Smith and Huston Smith have since made the same point both in their writings and in their lives by profound study and congenial practice with followers of faiths outside the Christian tradition.

Kristensen is promoting here, not some objective and detached study of a particular religion—let alone an inflammatory one–but rather a process of initiation into the sympathetic understanding of “the faith of other men,” as the title of Cantwell Smith’s 1962 comparative study of Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Chinese philosophy, Christians and Jews put it. Smith’s innovative little book aimed to elucidate, not only the beliefs of these world religions, but also and especially, how these religions formed the personal values of the men and women who practiced them, and how their personal beliefs motivated their lives. In other words, Cantwell Smith recommended that the observer be willing to be taught by the participants of the tradition he or she was investigating, and to assume their point of view, without necessarily adopting their faith. In the academic study of religion, then, the testimony of believers is consequently the starting point and the meeting place of authentic understanding and must necessarily carry great weight.

Some may think that this argument is irrelevant and has no bearing on the present case; these individuals are, after all, already Bahá’ís, and are no longer studying the faith to which they belong. But Kristensen’s views are pertinent to this discussion. The point is that with Cole, Ficicchia, and present-day dissenters, the testimony, sacred writings, history and ethical norms of believers were either ignored or distorted to the extent that members of the Bahá’í Faith were no longer able to recognize their own religion in the distorted or hostile depictions by these critics. So much for the elementary protocol advocated by Brede Kristensen, Cantwell Smith and Huston Smith and other respected scholars of religion.

What one sometimes reads from these poisoned pens is even more surprising since some of them claimed, or still claim, to be Bahá’ís. It is no wonder that the appointed and elected institutions of the Bahá’í Faith ultimately came to the intellectually defensible conclusion that they were not. Neither is it a wonder that the Universal House of Justice has written that character, that is, active spirituality, ethics, values and norms, and methodology cannot, and should not, be separated. In this, as in all things Bahá’í, character and methodology are one.

***

Posted by J.A. McLean at 11:45 AM 9 comments

[END DOCUMENT]

I was unable to retrieve the nine comments, if anyone has them, please forward them for inclusion.

I have nothing against Persian food but I’m beginning to develop allergies against the superstitious practice of calling everything “God’s Will” or “a test”.

For one, how are we to know what is God’s Will? Sure, the general broad strokes are obvious. They are in every religious dispensation. Don’t kill, be nice, don’t lie, etc. Those are God’s Will for us. That’s what He wants us to do. I have no qualms about those. They are clear.

But what about the mundane, everyday things. Was it God’s “will” that I be late for an interview? Was it God’s “will” that I forgot to call ahead and make reservations? That I burn the toast by forgetting to adjust the setting on the toaster?

I’m not so sure. Maybe it was the Big Guy’s will that those things happen. But then again, maybe they were a result of less than devine motives.

But many of the Baha’is that I spend time with have no doubts whatsoever. They know. And they want to tell you. Usually I just play along and don’t upset their perception of things. But sometimes I do venture to ask meekly, how exactly it is that they know. In those times, they blink and recover with: why… what else can it be? of course it is God’s will.

And then they smile at me as if I’m a total idiot incapable of telling the difference between yogourt and glue.

I keep thinking though that unless you have some sort of direct phone line to God, or are a Prophet you can have no conviction on the matter. But then again, saying “It may or may not be God’s will” just doesn’t have the same ring to it, now does it?

The other one is when they call difficult situations “tests from God”. This one gets me even more. I mean, how the heck do you know? Oh, we already covered that: what else can it be? Yes, ironclad logic. How did I ever miss that one?

Seriously though, I’ve heard this explanation when people are confronted by challenges in their life and slap the name “tests” on them. Going through a divorce? It is a “test”. Children misbehaving? yup, another “test”. And you guessed it, it was specifically tailor made by the Big Guy for you.

Again, not once do these people stop to ask how exactly they know or can prove that this is a “test from God”.

This insidious practice is seeping into Baha’i culture and I hate it. For one, it is supersition and we are to guard against superstition. When religion doesn’t agree with simple reason, something is wrong.

Also, using these superstitious labels, like “God’s will” or “test” causes one to become separated from cause and effect. To not feel personally responsible for our actions, our lives and the results that we cause. I don’t believe that God wants us to live that way. Some things may very well be God’s will or tests, but there is no way for us to know.

What’s more, living our lives as if most or almost everything is a test or His will, can cause one to feel disempowered. I’d rather live my life believing that some things are under my power and some things under His. Since I will never truly know which is which, I will simply live my life by giving it all I’ve got. By living my life to the fullest, by trying my darndest, by never ceding an inch. And letting Him sort it all out in the end.

Where someone else might simply sigh and say, “Well, it is God’s will…” and sit back, I will redouble my efforts or reflect on what else I can do, what other options I have and how I can learn from this for the future. I attempt to be proactive, a protagonist in my own life, rather than a puppet whose strings are pulled by divine decree.

Where someone else might call a situation a “test from God”, and feel vindicated or absolved from responsability, I attempt to reflect on how I contributed to the outcome, how I may react or act differently in the future and what I may do now to improve things. It may be a test, or it may not. That sort of thing is irrelevant to the matter.

Finally, another reason I strongly dislike this practice is that it can be a useful tool in the hand of a bully. Let’s say that a situation arises and you disagree with things or how it came to be. If you contact the institutions and let them know, like a good Baha’i is supposed to, you may get the short and sweet response that “it is God’s will” and that agitating for change would mean that you are making the situation “a test” for yourself.

Farfetched? Impossible? Not at all. This has actually happened.

You can read the response of the House of Justice (Adobe PDF document) to the legitimate concerns of the NSA of the United States regarding the perilous condition of the Baha’i community in that country.

You can also find the April 19th 2007 letter from the House, here as a simple HTML file.

So severe was the rebuke that the House of Justice forced the delegates to not base their consultation within the National Convention on the NSA’s Annual Report but instead on their own spin (the April 19th 2007 letter above). And to show that they meant business, they sent an enforcer: Ms. Penelope Walker from the International Teaching Center. She delivered the message of the House to the delegates, made sure that the focus of the convention was on the letter from the House and that reality did not creep in into the consultations.

Furthermore, the convention’s consultation would be based on the letter from the UHJ, not the annual report from the NSA. The coup de grace was when the National Spiritual Assembly formally asked delegates to the 98th Bahá’í National Convention to refer to the April 19, 2007 letter from the House as the basis of their reports to the Baha’is nationwide on the Convention – and not the annual report from the NSA. So the vast majority of the Baha’is in the community, who hadn’t attended the convention would not even learn of the major concerns from their own NSA.

So effectively was her duty performed that Counsellor Rebequa Murphy said in the closing remarks of the National Convention:

We don’t want to be those people that want to see God with their own eyes or hear His melodies with their own ears. Because we’ve been given the gift of being able to see through the eyes of the House of Justice and listen through the ears of the House of Justice.

New meditation pose suggested by Counsellor Rebequa Murphy

Timeline:

1. Document: US NSA Feast Letter (Jalal/Glory)
   Time: April 8th 2007
   This letter contains the (in)famous 50% decline statistic.
2. Document: US NSA Annual Report
   Time: April 12th 2007
   A refreshing dose of reality: the Baha’i community in the US is in a perilous state.
3. Document: UHJ Letter to US NSA in response to US annual report
   Time: April 19th 2007
   A rebuke to the US NSA Annual Report: presented to delegates of US convention on April 27th, 2007 as a substitute to the US NSA’s Annual Report. Ms. Penny Walker ITC counsellor sent to US convention to supervise this change of focus.

4. Document: UHJ Ridvan Message to world
   Time: April 21, 2007
   This is an annual letter sent from the House of Justice.

5. Document: US NSA Feast letter (Jamal/Beauty)
   Time: April 27th, 2007
   In this letter the NSA, obedient to the UHJ, requests that Baha’is study UHJ’s Ridvan message.

In their letter, the House of Justice sweeps aside nonchalantly the methodical reasoning of the NSA and their multi-pronged approach aimed to save the hemorrhaging Baha’i community. In its stead, the House of Justice posits a simple strategy: more of the same.

While the NSA is struggling valiently to break free of the constraints of the “framework”: “We feel a particular need for flexibility and innovation…” the House of Justice provides clear guidance: “…what is essential is for such roles and functions to take shape within the framework for action that has been elaborated in the message dated 27 December 2005…”.

While the NSA is attempting to acknowledge the marginalization of the LSAs: “…there is a pervasive feeling of confusion and dislocation among many Local Spiritual Assemblies, including those in ‘A’ clusters.” the House of Justice responds: “In every cluster the institutions and agencies guiding the process — the Auxiliary Board members and the institute, together with the Area Teaching Committee — need to examine the dynamics of growth on a regular basis…”. So basically tough luck! No elected institutions need apply.

In conclusion, the House insisits that Baha’i communities must follow the same “framework for action” that has (by the NSA’s own observation) failed to produce results, that has marginalized LSAs, caused conflict within the community, lead to a stagnant Baha’i community, straitjacketed the community’s dynamism and robbed it of the freedom of individual initiatives.

The next five years should be interesting!

Here are my own heretical questions:

How will we know, specifically, if this whole Ruhi/core curriculum/institutes process is succeeding? what metrics will we have to watch? what time frame will have to elapse? is there any point or event or situation in which we may potentially acknowledge that it didn’t work? what would that be?

Of course, I’m spiritually weak. If I were strong as Counsellor Murphy I would comprehend that although the US Baha’i community has hit the event horizon and is at imminent negative absolute growth, we shouldn’t allow this fact to dissuade us from following the UHJ’s guidance.

I would realize that reality, is not the yardstick by which we should judge the efficacy of “X-Year” plans. I would understand that rather than use our own eyes and ears as Baha’u'llah instructed us, we should see things and hear things through the eyes and ears of the House.

And that although the largest, most dynamic Baha’i community in the world is fast spinning down the tubes, we should not be alarmed nor let doubt enter our mind in the least. Rather, we should rejoice that 3 yak herders in Mongolia are taking Ruhi and parroting back perfectly what their tutor is telling them in the best tradition of taqlid.

I have quite a long ways to go to reach Counsellor Murphy’s spiritual level. Maybe I should take Ruhi again.

The way censorship works in Iran is that the rules are deliberately kept vague. Something that sneaks through one week is then used later as a catalyst for a crack-down. What is acceptable and what not changes constantly: the blurry red lines foster a climate of self-censorship more powerful than any rules.

Sadly, this is also a succint description of the way Baha’i pre-publication “review” works. There are no clearly defined lines. In fact, they would bristle at the word ‘censorship’ being applied to what they do. But the outcome of the process is the same as that in the Islamic Repulic of Iran: within the Baha’i community there is no academic freedom, nor is there freedom of the press.

And by keeping the mechanism and process as vague as possible, the result is that a state of fear is produced. Academics, authors and all creatives begin to self-censor themselves much more readily and to a deeper extent simply because they don’t quite know where the lines are. If one day a Baha’i of many years can be thrown out of the community for calling himself a ‘Baha’i theologian’, then who knows what’s next?

Here is an excellent article by Barney Leith on pre-publication review.

In case the link to the Times article kicks the bucket, here is the complete article:

This is Iran, but not as you know it
Young Iranians are doing more to transform their country than any outside agency could do, writes Rageh Omaar

It might have been hot, but it was going to take much more than the familiar Tehran cocktail of unrelenting heat and choking smog to deter the 20 or so young Iranian women gathered outside the record shop. Beethoven’s isn’t exactly the sort of name you would expect of a hip music store. But this is Tehran, and as with most things involving young Iranians today, even a seemingly boring name hides something far more subversive.

All the young women are in manteaus, the figure-hugging three-quarter length jacket worn as a substitute for the chador. But underneath they sport tight white jeans, Versace print head-scarves, designer sunglasses and delicate sandals, the thin straps of which wrap around perfectly painted toenails.

A brand new silver Mercedes glides up and an androgynous young man clad in trendy black gets out. Behind him walks a confident man in his late thirties who shepherds the younger man past the adoring female fans. A ripple of excitement goes through the crowd as the girls recognise the young man while some hold up their mobile phones to take pictures and video clips of him in the crush.

Were it not for the head-scarves and manteaus, it could easily have been Robbie Williams outside HMV. Welcome to the vibrant and almost completely unnoticed world of Iranian pop music.

Tehran is one of the most talked about cities in the world; many people believe it could well be the next target for the Bush administration’s third invasion in its so-called “war on terror”. The majority of the limited reports and images to have emerged from the Iranian capital in the past year have been about alleged nuclear weapons programmes, senior members of Iran’s theocratic state and, of course, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Very little has been said that accurately describes this nation of 70m, which is one of the most ethnically and religiously diverse countries in the Middle East. Despite a recorded history of more than 5,000 years, making it one of the oldest civilisations on earth, Iran remains shackled to a small number of clichés; turbaned mullahs, women wearing the black chador and antiwestern rhetoric.

As a news correspondent this Iran was familiar to me. I’d seen many angry rallies postFriday prayers and done interviews with politicians and military figures. But I longed to show the unseen and hugely varied life of ordinary people in Tehran; one of the least understood cities on earth.

I had a personal reason for doing this, too. There have been many times over the past year or so where the accelerating crisis over Iran has reminded me of the relentless build-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2002. The similarities are chilling; accusations of the development of WMDs, allegations of sponsoring terrorism, and military reinforcements being sent to the region while leading Bush administration officials consistently speak of the need for the world to be prepared for preemptive action.

I reported from inside Iraq for several years before the invasion and I regret enormously that while I did endless stories about Saddam, his regime, weapons inspectors and suchlike I spoke very little about ordinary Iraqis; what role religious and sectarian beliefs played in their identity, what they made of the exiled politicians groomed by Washington as their leaders in waiting.

I wanted to make sure that mistake was not repeated. It took a year of wrangling with the authorities to be able to follow the lives of ordinary Iranians without restrictions or minders, but I was given an extraordinary opportunity.

Iran has one of the youngest populations in the world; around 70% of its citizens are under the age of 30. That means 70% of Iranians have no memory of life under the Shah, and have grown up under the rules of the Islamic republic. For them there is the profound sense that nearly 30 years after Ayatollah Khomeini led the world’s first Islamic revolution the rebellion has to renew itself to become relevant to their generation.

So in Iran at the moment there is a unique situation where an Islamic theocracy is being challenged, scrutinised and publicly questioned in a way that very few other regimes in the Middle East are. This is not just happening in Iran’s parliament and the active media; it is being done in the streets, in people’s homes, and even by what citizens wear and how they express themselves.

The pop star I met at Beet-hoven’s record shop was called Benyamin and the analogy with Robbie Williams is pretty accurate. Benyamin is currently the hot young thing in Iranian pop music. Mohsen Rajabpour, his manager, is Tehran’s Simon Cowell — and is a match for his English counterpart in every way. The last person I expected to hang out with in Tehran was a pop svengali cum entrepreneur.

“The difference between me and this Englishman [Cowell] is that he is not restricted in making his pop stars,” said Rajabpour as we glided around in his Mercedes. “Mine must be created within the restrictions of Iran.”

But this hasn’t stopped him producing a number of highly successful pop acts. The restrictions are ones you’d expect. “I can’t do songs that are about hot sexy topics,” but despite this his acts find ways of pushing back the boundaries with each record.

The key to Rajabpour’s success and why he is an unlikely modern revolutionary is that he succeeds as a pop entrepreneur by having a very good grasp of the laws and jurisprudence of the Islamic republic. He’s now working on what he thinks is the perfect rock band for Iran.

“It has the usual things: drums, bass, guitars . . . but with girls!” They’re going to be Iran’s answer to the Spice Girls, but with a very different kind of girl power. The law says that the lead vocalist in a publicly approved rock band cannot be a girl. His trick is that all members of the band are vocalists, so it can’t be said that the lead vocalist is a girl. It is in thousands of such small tests of change that Iranians from all walks of life are transforming their country.

Bozorgmehr Sharafeddin is the editor of Chelcheragh, one of Tehran’s best known weekly youth magazines. Still in his twenties, he leads a constantly changing group of 40 or so young Iranian men and women journalists. The topics range from politics and culture to music and comedy. In the midst of Benyamin’s appearance at Beethoven’s, the editor quizzed me about my documentary and I explained that I wanted to follow the lives of ordinary Iranians.

“So,” he said with a wicked grin, “you are on mission impossible.” He paused briefly then said: “Why don’t you write an article for our magazine as a guest reporter? It’s the best way for you to get as deep into Iranian society as possible.”

I duly attended the magazine’s editorial meeting where I was quizzed by staff and given a stark insight into the constant battle they face with the censors and the threat of the magazine being suspended or shut down.

Iranian journalists call them “red lines”, the opaque and constantly shifting guidelines by which the state clamps down on publications. My article was going to be edited by Sharafeddin and any sensitive or risky comments would be cut.

I said I wanted to write a feature profiling three prominent young women: Nazila Noe-bashari (who runs a transportation company employing many men), Newsha Tavakolian (a renowned photojournalist I met in Iraq) and Ghazal Chegini (who works in Iran’s huge nongovernmental organisations network for a charity caring for children with cancer).

The three of them allowed us into their lives and homes in Tehran and took us around their city. I discovered a mass of contradictions. Tehran has one of the highest rates of cosmetic surgery among young people and terrible poverty. One day I went to a pro-Hezbollah protest in the morning and a recording studio with Benyamin in the afternoon. Women cannot ride motorcycles, but in the glitzy shopping malls of the affluent northern suburbs young men with earrings openly court girls.

I went back to Sharafeddin to go through my article. Various lines and paragraphs had been crossed out and the changes revealed a lot about the republic. For example, my comment about women not being allowed to ride motorcycles in Tehran was changed to “in Tehran there are no women motorcyclists”.

The reason? My original sentence laid too much emphasis on the government’s restrictive rule. Another comment, on how Iranian women wear what they want in their homes but outside wear a headscarf (which, it seemed to me, meant they were hiding their identities behind a mask), was rejected and changed to “women felt they were having to take on different identities”.

The way censorship works in Iran is that the rules are deliberately kept vague. Something that sneaks through one week is then used later as a catalyst for a crack-down. What is acceptable and what not changes constantly: the blurry red lines foster a climate of self-censorship more powerful than any rules.

And yet it is the millions of largely young Iranians who are forcing through a slow but surely unstoppable transformation in the country. Sometimes at a terrible cost to imprisoned journalists and human rights activists, the restrictions are being rolled back. But the quickest way to reverse this progress is for the West to attack.

In fact, I would not at all be surprised to see other NSAs soon following the lead of the US in this decision. In that case, it would confirm my suspicions that it did originate from the House of Justice (and/or the ITC).

Just recently the UK NSA boycotted Kalimat. Not only does this mean that Kalimat is in further danger of closing, but more and more it also seems that this is not an isolated action taken by the NSA of the US. Rather, it was probably a decision taken at the highest level (ITC/UHJ) and delegated down to them:

Below you will find the latest letter from the UK NSA to all local assemblies in their jurisdiction. To make it interesting, the UK letter (in blue) invoking a boycott of Kalimat is contrasted in color with the US NSA letter (in red) :

23 July 2006

December 29, 2005

Dearly loved Friends

Dear Bahá’í Friends,

The National Spiritual Assembly has taken the decision that Baha’i Books UK and its agents will cease to distribute books and other items marketed by Kalimat Press with immediate effect.

Enclosed for your information is a copy of our letter of today’s date addressed to Kalimát Press. We ask you to comply with the decision we have made that all national and local Bahá’í agencies cease to distribute books and other items marketed by this publisher. However, you may continue to sell whatever you may have in stock until your inventories are depleted. Individuals are free, of course, to decide to purchase books from any publisher.

Baha’i Books UK and its agents may continue, however, to sell whatever Kalimat titles remain in stock until their inventories are depleted. Further, individuals are free to decide to purchase books from other suppliers.

Our decision was regretfully reached as a result of increasing concern in recent years that a number of titles handled by Kalimát Press, aside from those which have enriched Bahá’í literature over the years, contain matter inimical to the best interests of our Faith. It is highly inappropriate for Bahá’í institutions, which are obligated to safeguard such interests, to provide channels of distribution for publishers promoting such titles.

The National Assembly’s decision was reached as a result of increasing concern in recent years that a number of titles published by Kalimat Press, aside from those which have enriched Baha’i literature over the years, contain matter inimical to the best interests of the Faith. The National Assembly believes that it would therefore be inappropriate for it, as the institution obligated to safeguard such interests in the United Kingdom, to provide channels of distribution for such material.

With loving Baha’i greetings,

With loving Bahá’í greetings,

National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of the United Kingdom

NATIONAL SPIRITUAL ASSEMBLY OF THE BAHÁ’ÍS OF THE UNITED STATES

As you’ve noticed, the two letters are almost identical. Were they simply polished and lightly edited based off a ‘master’ letter out of the ITC?

You make the call.

Related Links:

Karen’s commentary on her blog

Alison’s commentary and podcast on her blog

Boycott of Kalimat

Fahrenheit 245

Website of Kalimat Press

NSA letter to LSAs (pdf file)

NSA letter to Kalimat Press (pdf file)

I was not only impressed by the tone of love in the letter, but also by the courage that it took to write it. After all, if the US NSA decides to retaliate against the author of the letter, a livelihood that took more than 15 years to build can be vaporized as fast as an email with the words ‘inimical to the Faith’ can be cc’ed. Justice has also written quite a number of other articles on different subjects. They are all worth a read.

If you have no idea what this is all about, read the Kalimat petition (and if you’re not familiar with this whole situation, read the background material). Then sign it if you agree. It will probably be closed and sent off to the UHJ very soon. So this is your last chance. Also, let others know by informing them of the situation and forwarding the address of the petition to them.

As well, you might want to take a gander at the catalogues of Kalimat and Special Ideas:

But I’m not writing this merely to repeat what I’ve already mentioned before. I wanted to address the reaction of some Baha’is to the petition. Many have a knee jerk response running along the lines of “petitioning is not Baha’i-like”.

As Dilbert quipped, when did ignorance become a point of view?

In fact, Baha’i history is replete with instances of petitioning and petitions. To give you some idea of what I mean, I’ll provide three specific examples:

The Baha’i temple at Wilmette was built as a result of petitioning by the Baha’is of North America. They had heard a lot of good things coming out of Ishqabad and their temple and had a bad case of temple envy. Abdu’l-Baha received the petitions, acquiesced and came to lay the cornerstone.

The Kitab-i-Aqdas was written after a small group of Baha’is repeatedly petitioned (harassed would be a more accurate albeit non-politically correct adjective) Baha’u'llah for a book of laws. Baha’u'llah had not written any rules until then but acquiesced after the intense and repeated petitions.

In the late 80′s, at the US national convention a petition was distributed to the delegates which asked the UHJ to apply the law of Huquq’u'llah to all believers (then it only applied to non-Western Baha’is).

As you can see, petitions are allowed and have been used quite a bit. They have a long and glorious history with the first petitions being presented to Baha’u'llah Himself. I’m sure that if you do a little bit of digging on your own, you’ll find more examples. Hopefully, the above puts aside the fallacious belief that the Kalimat petition or petitions in general are somehow ‘not kosher’ in the Baha’i Faith.

Which brings us to the recent events surrounding the Kalimat petition. Apparently it was presented at the recently held US national convention by a delegate. Or atleast, an attempt was made to do so on the floor. But it was quickly snuffed out by Henderson. No consultation or dialogue was allowed on the matter. And the petition was not allowed to be distributed either.

So it seems that its not petitions per se that are anathema but petitions which originate from outside the AO from the grass roots. Those that were there for the Huquq petition, remember seeing, as if by magic, copies of the petition come out of nowhere and with them hundreds of pens with which they were expected to sign it.

The NSA of South Africa A few Baha’i youth unaffiliated with any institution of the Faith has have an interesting contribution to the world wide campaign mounted to bring attention to what is happening to the Iranian Baha’is (please refer to the comments section for clarification of edit). In about a subtle way as a charging rhinoceros, the site compares what is happening to the Baha’is in Iran to what happened to the blacks in South Africa during apartheid.

Now since the majority of those using the internet and reading blogs nowadays were not around then, it must be explained that the late 70′s was a rather politically charged era. Not only was Vietnam still fresh in people’s minds, but apartheid was a glaring eyesore on the political landscape. And as you would expect, many Baha’is felt that since it went directly against the bedrock values of the Baha’i Faith, they must do something about it.

A few of those kind of Baha’is were in California at that time and as luck would have it, they had just organized themselves into publishing a new magazine called Dialogue. Naturally, they felt that since this was such a popular topic in their time, they must address it within their newly created Baha’i magazine. What they got for their trouble is simply embarrassing (for the Baha’i administration involved). I’ll let Karen Bacquet describe what happened :

There were several disputes over articles: about a dozen were censored outright and dialogue was required to excise phrases in and alter the titles of others. The often slow and cumbersome review process also created real difficulties for the publication schedule.

The first major battle occurred over an article about the anti-apartheid movement. While Baha’i scripture teaches racial equality, Baha’is are expected to abstain from any political involvement. Scholl was warned that to criticize the South African policy of apartheid might endanger the Baha’i community in that country, even though the Baha’is’ failure to oppose this institutionalized racism created the impression that they supported it. In the end, the article was allowed to appear after several changes had been made.

So while the apartheid was raging, Baha’is were not allowed to make a peep about it. Nor do anything or say anything against it… even though it went against everything that the Baha’i Faith stands for. Baha’is were gagged by their respective NSAs and something as simple as an article could not pass censors because it opposed apartheid.

Which makes this part of the website created by the NSA of SA especially interesting:

“…like so many…” Indeed.

But now, now that apartheid is over… and by over, I mean that Baha’is stood on the sidelines and did nothing nor contributed anything to its demise… I guess its alright for the NSA of SA some of us to use it in a rhetorical technique to draw attention to the suffering of Iranian Baha’is.

A final thought: Dialogue was pressured so much over an incident (A Modest Proposal) that the founders could do nothing but shut it down with a heavy heart.

Related Links:

Intensifying Persecutions in Iran
The Return of the Hojjatieh
Universal House of Justice message of March 22, 2006 (English)
Universal House of Justice message of March 22, 2006 (Persian)
Statement from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights