Baquia's blog is a stunning example of how transparency, freedom and "healthy", ubstructured peer review can "work" to produce very high quality material and commentary.

Baquia's comitment to principle and integrity is an excellent example of how things go well when done right, and when outstanding leadership is in place.

*** NO AO IS NEEDED. OR WANTED. ***

In contrast, most of what goes on in the AO is the opposite of such healthy leadership. It is allergic to honest self-examination.

This is the "real stuff" that faith is about: faith in the never ending human yearning for meaning, truth, honesty, freedom, beauty, justice and compassion.

A Faith that errors and lies will be shown for what they really are, in the light of day.

Those are values that bahais once stood for, but rarely do anymore (except at a superficial level). Something "fake" has grown in the dysfunctional dark corners of fear and fundamentalism that have taken over much of bahai culture.

When I first met “LA Study Class” people in the late 70s, they were incredibly free of self-censorship. (The deep rot of the PC/Left hadn’t become deeply ingrained in academic/intellectual circles.) It is true that they were somewhat paranoid about being “investigated” by the AO, and thus, tended to be somewhat secretive until they knew that someone wasn’t going to “rat them out”.

Unfortunately, that kind of free discussion, or “liberated mindset”, usually gets misappropriated, or failing that, crushed, in the bahai community. There is a severe discomfort about any dissent, nonconformism, criticism or questioning of the “status quo”, and plenty of thought police or fascists pop out of the woodwork to squash such nonconformism whenever it openly presents alternatives to mainstream bahai thought.

e.g., a middle-level, but rising, member of a bahai scholarship organization, after hours of exasperated/futile attempts to convince a bunch of nonconformists that the AO is a good thing, finally blurted out a personal horror story about how the members of a sponsoring NSA were ‘idiots” and were incapable of understanding what scholarship (or science) actually is, but bahai scholars had to tolerate such morons running things because “chaging things from the inside” was the only available strategy that would not risk alienating the (mostly anti-intellectual) masses.

Pathetic stuff.

The reality is that if one is involved long enough, the pattern of rot within bahai culture, and the AO, becomes readily evident.

The purity/unity myth and the status quo myth have doomed bahai to failure.

The very things that could rescue bahai from its current fate, such as profound self-examination and atonement for past errors/sins (such as institutionalized racism) have been defined as “evil” within the sick version of bahai culture.

!HTH!

You are in a state of constant outrage. You arrogantly pontificate, presuming that anyone that disagrees with you that is a critic, nonconformist, or dissident needs to be treated in as child-like a manner as possible.

thanks (again) for showing that bahai apologists are no different from any other cultural imperialists in the history of religion.

Masud, sorry for any confusion. For decades, the US NSA was clearly racist and elitist. Despite the flowery and hollow lip service paid to "unity through diversity" and other similar blather uttered by dupes and polemicists.

The bahai elites engaged in retaliation against working class activism and race unity activism within the bahai community (this is documented, but some bahai historians are afraid of making the information available, presumably due to an aversion to controversy, or retaliation, censorship, etc.). The "excuse" was that such activism was "too political", or distracted from the forms of "social change" programs that the ruling bahai elites felt comfortable discussing with their upper class friends/family, business associates, political allies, and so forth.

Please note the glaring HYPOCRISY: the NSA Secretary also had a "parallel" life running a very large upper-class CHURCH in NEW YORK for DECADES, in complete disregard of the guidance of the Guardian!

HOW CAN YOU POSSIBLY EXPLAIN SUCH AN APPALLING FACT ?!?!

HOW CAN YOU ATTEMPT TO CALL FOR "OBJECTIVITY" WHEN THE NSA SPENT DECADES BREAKING THE VERY RULES IT MADE OTHERS FOLLOW ?!?!?!?!

THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A RELIGION PROMOTES STUPID IDEAS SUCH AS THAT MODERN PEOPLE SHOULD BE "SLAVES OF GOD".

A little known fact is that Jewish activists with "social justice" backgrounds did much of the boring, tedious work behind the scenes in the bahai community for decades, and the elistist/facist snobs "WASP" bahai leadership took credit for the work of the Jewish bahais. the same thing happened to many of the deeply comitted counterculture/60s bahais: they were forced into conformism and service to fake leaders with absurd promises of "spiritual rewards".

This is what the "middle man scam" is about in religions that are premised on an image of humanity as "slaves of god".

The idea that humanity should be "slaves of god" to an outmoded form of diety worship that is full of bad metaphysics is an appalling dysfunctional example of "cultural impedence mismatch" in contrast to modernist/postmodern and integral culture.

in short: bahai is completely out of step with the evolution and advance of human culture. it no longer has a viable model of spiritual enlightenment that can withstand the critical scrutiny of the most advanced thought produced by the human race.

Even up into the 1990s, when I personally knew people appointed to the national race committee (can't remember what it was called), it was obvious that the NSA did not want to "really open up" the topic. I heard 2nd/3rd generation Iranian bahai youth openly yelling at their parents/grandparents about being racists in a room with 600 people in it at a conference in San Diego about 10 years ago.

I'm not a big fan of political correctness, but the real evidence of a deeply ingrained pattern of institutionalized racism in the USA bahai community is obvious to anyone that was involved in race unity activism from the 70s to 90s, or anyone that has access to the "real history" of the AO in the USA.

I missed, or ignored, the Taliban comment. Please accept my deepest regret.

Considering that such a comment probably had an obvious subtext that was "just slightly" hyperbolic, I would not have considered it to be a "serious" comparison, rather one made for purposes of exaggeration. The fact is that the conformists/authoritarians/fundamentalists in the bahai AO do have some superficial similarities to Taliban types, and the shared middle eastern tendency toward "cultural imperialism" presumably has common roots.

You certainly would have a good point about "objectivity" or "fair and balanced" IF:

You yourself went on EVERY "Pro-AO" blog on the WWW, and held the vast multitude of mindless pro-AO conformists on those blogs to such a standard of "objectivity".

Which of course, you probably don't. (???)

BTW, most of the "Pro-AO" bahai blogs have thought police and censors, many of them quite nasty and dysfunctional types. Ironically, that is a perfect example of how conformist/facist bahai culture really is when pressed about its comittment to principles.

(Ironically, even some of the ex-bahai groups haven't broken free of the tendency toward conformism and thought policing, but that is to be expected given their PC/Left mindset. )
(cont.)

I disagree. Your version of "empowerment" = enslavement and indoctrination by Ruhi, strict obedience to the institutions, no matter how stupid they are, and following the imaginary will of an imaginary God that is dictated by whoever is on the UHJ.

"The AO is not a power system, but a mere harmonizing / synchronizing institution that marks the limits and sets the general goals in tune with the revealed word."

That is the biggest load of crap I've ever heard. If it was a mere harmonizing institution they would be more concerned about the views and feelings in the general Baha'i populace than about enforcing their own "infallibility" by way of sacking Baha'is who don't go along the party line.

"Read the compilation by the UHJ "Unlocking the power of Action" you will find on this blog or by google."

That document is the biggest load of bollocks, replete with buzzwords, jargon and hype, in the history of mankind. The second biggest load of bollocks is "Century of Light".

"The fact that people are elected, makes them feel that they are not self appointed through ego and ambition to dominate, but have legitimacy for arbitration, invited for this function at grass roots."

Oh so you are concerned for the feelings of the little egomaniacs that get voted to power?

The AO is not a power system, but a mere harmonizing / synchronizing institution that marks the limits and sets the general goals in tune with the revealed word.

Some want to do door knocking, others don't; the institutions provide the limits within which such personal projects are allowable. Read the compilation by the UHJ "Unlocking the power of Action" you will find on this blog or by google.

The fact that people are elected, makes them feel that they are not self appointed through ego and ambition to dominate, but have legitimacy for arbitration, invited for this function at grass roots.

Basically, people have no voice in the Baha'i community unless they support the popular view, in which case they've become sheep. Baha'i elections are a case in point, because there is no campaigning, no advertising of policies and no debate. In normal elections you can join a cause and while in the long run it may not alter which parties get in, at least you've got your view out in the open.

In the Baha'i community, incumbency has ruined any chance of there ever being any change in policy or direction, it will always be conservative and fundamentalist because there will never be a change in the people in power unless they retire. Likewise on the LSAs and NSAs, you have to try real hard not to be reelected. Any opposition is quashed by whoever is in charge by invoking the covenant, obedience to institutions, etc. Normal channels such as feast and recommendations to the LSA do not work because of how badly people in the community respond to any kind of challenge to the status quo.

Basically, the Baha'i Faith has removed any kind of voice or free will from its people.

I believe the Bible has talked about this: beware the ravening wolf dressed up in the guise of a lamb. While I'm not Christian, it is certainly interesting that on the outside the Baha'i Faith is all sweetness and light, but when you look deeper, the implications for humanity in terms of free will, independence of thought, and basic human rights, are extremely bad.

Is the Baha'i Faith the big bad Satan?

Grover, the point is not changing the identity of those who are entrusted with this charge, but making those entrusted with this charge feel that it is not they who asking to access a privileged position, but that the majority of the members of that community is praying them to assume this heavy and time consuming sacred responsibility.

All this is totally different from what happens in the political system around us and we must not forget the spiritual dimension of this responsibility.

That is one of the many problems with the Baha'i Faith, it doesn't cater for a wide variety of views and perspectives, and if your view differs from the majority then you no longer feel as though you're represented, and you have no where to go. This has happened when indigenous tribes join the Faith and represent a small fraction of the majority. Christianity on the other hand, you can shop around for a denomination that suits you and best represents your views and beliefs.

In the future, if the Baha'i Faith grows substantially, that may change, because then you're more likely to find people in your community sympathetic to your view. Then you have more chance of making an impact and you feel like you're part of something and contributing in a meaningful way.