Denis MacEion is the researcher who left the organization after his
۱۵-years active membership in the Baha’i community. He was born on
Jan. 26, 1949 A.D. in Belfast, North Ireland. After learning the English literature from Michael Longley, the British poet, he became interested in theater and literature.
During these years, he became familiar with Bahaism while he went to Dublin to learn English language and literature. After that he learned Arabic, the holy Quran and Farsi in Edinburgh university, Scotland and then he traveled to Jordan, Turkey and Iran. After studying at Shiraz university, he took his Ph.D. degree in Kings college, Cambridge university whose thesis was about Sheikism and Babism in Shia Iran in 19th century A.D.
Dr. Eion, the Baha’i, has taught the Islamic civilization in English and has been a translator from English to Arabic in “the 5th Muhammad” (located at Morocco for two years (1979-1980) and after that (in 1981) he has taught Arabic in New Castle university till the time when capitalists from the Saudi Arabia dismissed him due to teaching Shia and Sufism topics.
During the time when he was a member of Bahaism organization, he tried to make the cult’s aims and nature clear quite scientifically and academically and accidentally this scientific and studious concentration caused his quitting to be paid more attention.
After 15-year continuous serving to Bahaism from his presence and giving lectures at organizational conferences to teaching at summer Baha’i schools, MacEion was boycotted due to illustration against the deceptive nature of Bahaism.
Denis MacEion has written various articles about scientific and objective findings including remarkable notes.
It wasn’t fly by night for MacEion to leave Bahaism. With the passage of time and his awareness about Bahaism, he tried to reform the current conditions using helpful criticisms. At last; due to the Baha’is functions and theological positions of Bahaism, he turned and wrote against it. The following issues were criticized by him professionally:
Criticizing deviating of Babi and Baha’i history, hiding historical facts, and lack of honesty in narrating historical events,
- Criticizing the lack of women’s presence in the leadership organization of Bahaism,
- Opposing against the Baha’i elections to be non-democratic and paying attention to appointing instead of electing in the organization system,
- Criticizing the complete surrendering of the Baha’is to the decisions of the universal house of justice and the Baha’i organization.
- Opposing against the extensive censorship of the Baha’i texts and omitting some facts out of the books and works.
- Criticizing the violent confrontations of the Babi and Baha’i leaders against others.
- Stating the basic antitheses between Babi and Baha’i creeds and existing contradictions between them.
- Criticizing Bahaism indifference towards the real problems of the people of the world and making them amazed with statistics and figures and that in how many countries and lands do the Baha’is of the world reside and to how many languages have the Baha’i writings been translated instead of paying attention to the important issues of the world and presenting solutions for them.[1]
These are several cases mentioned by MacEion which had been presented to the Baha’is in the form of letters, articles and etc., but the Bahaism organization couldn’t answer to them and some people such as Joan Cole who had defended Bahaism one day turned against it after a while.
The helplessness of Bahaism to confront and answer to a person like Denis MacEion and their violent confrontations show that contrary to the claims by this cut for the importance and believing the principle of the necessity for the conformity between science and religion (one of the 12 principles) claimed by Bahaism to believe,
Bahaism can’t tolerate the slightest scientific look and the scientific characters are not able to stand the atmosphere dominated on the organization.
The following is one of the critical works by MacEion translated by Ms. Leila Chaman Khah into Persian language:
The first letter has been written when he was Baha’i. It is about the teaching of the lack of meddling with policy. He has posed some Baha’i activities which is proselytizing and has indicated that they are in contradiction with the aims posed by Baha’i concerning the universal government. In this phrase, he is hopeful to reform the Baha’i community.[2]
In the article entitled “the branches and claiming for leadership of Bahaism” which has been written by MacEion a bit after he left Bahaism, a brief narration of the events after Bab’s death has been presented critically. In this article, the author studies a short period of time since the history of forming Bahaism in details; that is, the power war and challenging over the leadership of Babi community after Bab’s death.”[3]
The third article is about opposing the atmosphere of Baha’i international studies and opposing Joan Cole himself. Of course; later on, Joan Cole turned against Bahaism community and became of the famous critics of the universal house of justice.
In this article, the author mentions the important crisis in Bahaism which is non-scientific confrontation of Bahaism facing scientific-historical criticisms. Meanwhile, the article advises the organization to reform its approach or not to claim for being scientific
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[۱] Ibid, pp. 16-17.
[۲] MacEion, Denis, branches and claims of leader ship in Bahaism, translated by Chaman Khah, Layla, Tehran: Negah-e-Moa’ser,
۱۳۹۶, p.6.
[۳] Ibid, p.7.
