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About the Baha'i Cultish Practices
http://ghandchi.com/12-AboutBahai.htm
FOREWORD posted on
Jebhe BB on 1/23/02 - As far as my stand on the Baha'is, although I oppose their UHJ as a
cult, the same way I oppose other cults, but at the same time I condemn
the violations of Baha'is human rights by the Islamic Republic of Iran
and I think the IRI and its agents should be brought to justice in an
international criminal court for their acts of violence against the
Baha'is, and tried for crimes against humanity.
I received the following pointer from Juan Cole in 1999 when I had
posted the following article about cultish practices of Baha'is on IRANSCOPE and SCI and
Juan Cole
allowed me to post his reply as well, which is added below:
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 1999 14:15:43 -0600
To: ghandchi@home.com
From: Juan Cole <jrcole@umich.edu>
Subject: Baha'is
Dear Sam:
I saw your courageous message about the cultish practices of the Baha'is
and your call for a critic from within. I thought you might be
interested in the following paper:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jrcole/bahai/1999/jssr/bhjssr.htm
cheers Juan Cole
Since then, I visited Juan Cole's website, and I found his
research on the topic to be very impressive. Unfortunately he does not
drop Baha'i Faith all the way and wants to reform it, but his
theoretical work on the cultish practices of Baha'i Universal House of
Justice (UHJ), and other topics related to the Baha'i practices, are
first hand interesting research. Juan Cole's home page is at the
following URL:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jrcole/index.htm
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XXX wrote:
..
> perfect sense to me that they killed him [Dan Jordan], although it also demonstrates what supreme cowards
> the reactionary fascist regime of the terrorist mullocracy are for failing to publicly take responsibility ever since.
Dear XXX,
I do not know about this case and irrespective of whether your claim that Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) is responsible for this murder [of Dan Jordan], or Patrick's claim that Baha'i uhj is responsible, there is a problem here, beyond this case.
I think there has been a lot of discussions on SCI and elsewhere, about violations of human rights by IRI, and I do not think anybody in their right mind can deny that. But I think when the issue is violations of human rights in Baha'i practices, there is a hush hush, on the justification that Baha'is of Iran are victims of abuses of Islamic Republic of Iran, but this is no justification to ignore the realities of Baha'i practices.
In fact, some Baha'is, who never posted as Baha'is on SCI, and would only post technical question and answers, wrote to me thank you notes, and called me friend and wrote that they wished all non-Bahai's would think like me, when I defended the human rights of Baha'is in Iran, but when I criticized their cultish practices, suddenly they would insult me anyway they could, to discourage me from posting my views. In fact, they would write about political and social writings of other SCIers, as if they were disinterested independent objective authors, but in reality they belonged to the Baha'i Faith.
Beside the above situation, I can tell you that also on SCI, two of the most intelligent Baha'is, who posted on other topics, and also said they were Baha'i, nonetheless, one could never have a rational talk with them about Baha'i Faith and worse than that, they were afraid to challenge some other Baha'is, who were as bad as Islamist hezbollAhis. I do not want to say more about what that BahaollAhi finally did with them. I think the individuals is not the issue here and it is a waste of time to go into details. The issue is the practices of followers of "Bahai Faith" and human rights.
Look, the Baha'i Faith is not even in power and there is so much fear among its adherents, or former adherents. This is not out of respect, that is a lie. This is obviously because of fear. This is like Leninism and Stalinism or even worse.
When I asked one of them, he would justify the fanatic, saying that well this Baha'i fanatic guy has had his parents killed by IRI and this is why that guy is such a fanatic, etc. In fact, I also saw Baha'is with different presences and roles on SCI, as pure dishonesty. When one does not say s/he is a Baha'i, and only discusses technical topics, and suddenly writes as if s/he is an independent-minded professor or a simple contributor writing feedback, who is just reading SCI, and is passing judgment on the authors of different religious and political views, this is what I call dishonesty. I think just condemning the Mollahs and theocracy in Iran is not going to resolve this reality. I think Baha'is live in a very cultish environment, where they feel like traitors, if they do not want to be religious, or if they do not want to have anything to do with this religion, or any other religion for that matter.
Actually seeing this reality of fear among Iranian Baha'is and former Baha'is, even in the West, with all its freedoms, is amazing. I think it has nothing to do with Baha'i persecution in Iran, when even former Baha'is are so reserved to criticize these realities and they walk on ice. This is not much different from EST or Scientology and other similar cults. I think Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman's analysis of cults well applies to Baha'i Faith. Please see my article on Cults:
http://www.ghandchi.com/37-Cults.htm
I think just like the final critic of Communism, that came from within, the critic of Baha'i Faith from within is needed, and going beyond it, rather than staying entangled in this ideology, is long overdue.
Regards,
Sam Ghandchi, Publisher
IRANSCOPE
Dec 12, 1999
P.S. The following article by Juan Cole is an excellent writing on this topic:
http://iranscope.ghandchi.com/Anthology/Bahai/fundamentalism.htm
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The above article was first posted on SCI on Dec 12, 1999.