Baha’i Rants

The topic being discussed currently in various Baha’i forums is a speech given by Peter Khan, on July 3rd 2009 titled “Reflections on the Ridvan Message”. You can read the complete speech here.

There isn’t much remarkable about it but if you manage to hack through the thick underbrush of verbiage you’ll find that almost at the end Khan says:

The solution is childish simple; the solution is so simple, it [sic] hardly worth mentioning. The solution is no more and no less than unreserved acceptance of whatever the central authority of the Cause, in this case the Universal House of Justice decrees.

Unfortunately Khan doesn’t explain what he really means by ‘decrees’.

Does that mean anything the House decides? every word they write? every answer they give to a questioner? every letter of guidance to members or national administrative bodies? or does it mean what they decree as in their legislative authority within Baha’i administrative structure?

It would seem that Khan has a wide understanding of ‘decrees’ since he mentions the guidance for ‘direct teaching’, as well as the implementation of Ruhi courses as the only option within the institute process.

This obviously opens up the hornets nest of the infallibility of the Universal House of Justice.

Oy vey! Here we go again.

Brendan wrote a commentary: Second Thoughts on Peter Khan.

Karen is dispassionate.

Alison believes that Khan is overstepping.

As for your humble scribe, I’m not sure what else I can add to what has already been written before here and elsewhere on this topic. I’m not comfortable with the conviction that Khan has in an absolutist understanding of the decrees of the House of Justice and can’t help but think of this gem of a quip:

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.
Bertrand Russell

No advancement in any field would be possible if at least one person did not doubt if there was a better way to do things. If one person didn’t doubt the dogma of their day. If one person did not have so much doubt that they investigated other potential answers and avenues.

This is true for scientific advancements of course. But it is equally valid in any field of human endeavor.

Do you think that anyone would have believed in the Bab if they first hadn’t a seed of doubt regarding the commonly accepted notion within Islam that Muhammad was the ‘last prophet of God’?

So I respectfully submit to you that believing that we can simply put away questions and do without further investigation of truth is the biggest mistake that Baha’is make.

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’

I was talking to a friend recently about her volunteer work within the GLBT community and something she said caught my attention: “gender is so over!”.

Now that statement may seem ridiculous, especially when you consider that everything in our Western society demonstrates and magnifies the divide between the two sexes.

Boys are given toy trucks, girls? Barbies. Even if the politically correct parents of today have moved beyond such cliches, I’m willing to bet that they may have read books like, Men are from Mars, Women from Venus.

There are two sexes: men and women. But is it that clear cut?

Turns out… no.

Science is slowly beginning to come to grips with the question of gender and the discoveries are nothing short of astonishing. Whereas we once thought of the world divided between two halves, the new paradigm is one where there is a continuum.

Recently I stumbled on this article: We’re all intersex where Gerald N. Callahan, the author of Between XX and XY: Intersexuality and the Myth of Two Sexes is interviewed about his research:

In between what we call the ideal biological male or ideal biological female, there’s a whole range of other possibilities that don’t differ from our basic preconceptions to the extent that we have names for them or call them a disorder. Just like with every other human trait, there are an infinite number of possibilities.

Of course this is nothing really new. There are other books, like Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach, from 1978 which expound more or less the same ideas.

We’ve all heard of ‘hermaphrodites’ – persons which have both sexes. By the way, recently, intersexuality has replaced the more familiar, hermaphrodite, as the word of choice within the medical field. In any case, all of this made me think of an uncomfortable question:

Of what significant is the limitation of women’s capacity to serve on the House of Justice when the very definition of ‘woman’ is not black and white?

Can an intersex person be eligible? what if a person has both sets of genitalia? and biologically is both man and woman?

Would that mean that they are eligible? or ineligible? or both?

Huh?

If the Baha’i Faith didn’t have the principle of the unity of religion and science, we could easily brush this off; just like a fundamentalist Christian decrying the fossil records as ‘Satan’s trickery’. But, as Baha’is we have an incredibly high standard which requires us to abide by scientific truths, just as much as religious truths. They are, after all, twin paths to the same truth (or is it Truth?).

I’m not sure if this question has already been asked of the Universal House of Justice. If anyone knows, drop me a note so I don’t have to bother them by asking again. I’ve looked around the internet and haven’t been able to find anything substantial but that doesn’t mean something of significance isn’t out there somewhere floating about.

The only things I’ve found are others over the years wondering the same question and one Baha’i blogger who wrote such a bigoted tripe of an ‘essay’ that it deserves to not even be dignified with detailed mention.

For those that are new to this topic, currently, membership to the Universal House of Justice is restricted to male adults. But there is some disagreement with others believing that there is a sound theological basis for both women and men being eligible for membership to this institution.

But if science shows that gender isn’t that clearly defined into two subsections, doesn’t that make all this a moot point? that is, rendered irrelevant?

Let me know what you think about all this. I’m sure someone out there knows much more about this than I do.

This news report from the BBC peaked my curiosity (below). It is about a church in Kuala Lampur that uses the word ‘Allah’ to refer to God in their services. The Muslims are not happy about that and are saying that this will cause ‘confusion’. Click play to watch the clip:

This reminded me of the continuing court case between the NSA of the Baha’is of the United States and the Orthodox Baha’i group in the US. The NSA lost the case last year and has appealed the case – everyone is waiting for a decision any minute (day, month, etc.) now.

Similar to the Muslim Malaysians, the NSA is asking the Court to enforce a previous ruling which gave them the sole and exclusive rights of the word “Baha’i”.

I’m not making this up. How I wish I was!

They’ve gone after them in fine litigious style befitting Scientology. The NSA’s aim is to prevent a small group of people from using the word Baha’i – claiming in the presented evidence before the court that it would ‘confuse’ people.

The NSA has already lost once. And once the appeals court ruling arrives, they may very well lose again. But I’m not referring to an unfavorable verdict. Although by any sane stretch of the imagination, one wonders how in the world the term “Baha’i” can be the sole exclusive property and trademark of an organization when other words like Christian, Muslim, Jew, etc. are in the public domain.

No, what I mean is that the Baha’is of the US will lose the PR battle – as they already have. Take a look at this article from the Chicago Tribune (thanks to Baha’is Online for highlighting this article).

“The word Baha’i carries with it implications for a certain sets of beliefs — and we have to protect that,” said Robert Stockman

Can you imagine for one second the Roman Catholic Church suing the Protestant Church over their concern that they had the monopoly on what the word “Christian” means, and that this means it has to be protected?

For some strange reason the Office of Public Information from Wilmette refused to talk to the newspaper about this article. Instead they turned to Robert Stockman, a US Baha’i. For all his best intentions, Stockman comes across as loonie as a Scientologist. I can’t imagine he would have gone on the record unless he was given the approval from the NSA to talk to the press. Which makes his ramblings all the more odd.

If you’d like to know what this is all about, read this original post with detailed background information about the Orthodox Baha’i court case.