{"id":11909,"date":"2023-08-07T11:01:37","date_gmt":"2023-08-07T07:31:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bahaismiran.com\/?p=11909"},"modified":"2023-08-07T11:01:37","modified_gmt":"2023-08-07T07:31:37","slug":"brendan-cook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bahaismiran.com\/?p=11909&lang=en","title":{"rendered":"Brendan Cook"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brendan Cook, a teacher, an author, an artist, an intellectual and a Baha\u2019i<\/a> critic was born in 1970s in a Baha\u2019i family in western Canada in Saskatchewan State. He got his master in English History and Literature from Canada\u2019s Toronto University. Brendan Cook is familiar with six Latin, Greek, French, Spanish, Italian and English (modern, middle and Victorian) languages.<\/p>\n

After criticizing the performance and narrow-minded viewpoint of the Baha\u2019i organization toward the Baha\u2019is, he was systematically pressured by the organization and the advisor and member of the deputy board in the protection branch. In 2010-2011, he preferred to move from Canada to California to escape the problems that the propaganda of the Baha\u2019i Organization of Toronto had created against him. He is currently living in Tampa, California, and is teaching English literature at the university.<\/p>\n

He is about 50 years old and in addition to studying, he devotes his free time to farming and taking care of flowers and plants. Brendan Cook is currently a believer in God with a traditional Christian orientation, unaffiliated with the church, and has the rational thinking of an educated person. His wife is a Hindu and they have a 7-year-old daughter and a 4-year-old son. In the conflicts between Israel and the Palestinians, Cook, like other Baha\u2019is who are intellectuals and critics of the establishment, sympathizes with the Palestinians.<\/p>\n

Brendan Cook was born into a Baha\u2019i family. Therefore, he got familiar with Baha\u2019i Faith since childhood and was attracted to Baha\u2019i teachings and slogans as a teenager. For about 30 years, believing in Baha\u2019i, he was a member of the Baha\u2019i Community of Canada and was present in Baha\u2019i study groups and circles. In all these years, he tried to research his beliefs and not accept any issue simply. When at the age of 15, the Baha\u2019i organization asked him to sign a membership card in the Baha\u2019i Community of Canada, he refused to sign the enrollment (tasjil) form and stated that believing in a religion does not require formalities and completing an administrative form. Moreover, no one asks for a membership card when attending the Baha\u2019i banquet program. As a teenager, he did not know that it is necessary to sign a special enrollment form to become a member and accept the Baha\u2019i religion.<\/p>\n

Brendan Cook is a skilled storyteller. He is interested in writing creative humorous and allegorical stories. He presents his criticisms with humor and metaphor to better stay in the reader\u2019s mind. His style in satirical writing is similar to that of George Orwell in the book \u201cAnimal Castle\u201d, which criticized communism in his book with the language of metaphor and humor. or similar to writers such as Erasmus, Thomas More, Jonathan Swift, and Voltaire. With the same creative style of humor, Cook has criticized the Baha\u2019i administrative order and the dictatorial behavior of House of Justice in the stories of the \u201cEmperor\u2019s New Clothes\u201d and \u201cThe Strange\u00a0Story<\/em>\u00a0of\u00a0Max<\/em>\u00a0the Infallible\u00a0Donkey\u201d<\/em>.<\/p>\n

About his writing style, he writes: \u201cI have found in my studies that humor and parables are the best tools for dialogue and encountering the material, and Baha\u2019i sacred subjects are also of this kind.\u201d (quoted from the article \u201cTravel to Puchistan\u201d).<\/p>\n

Despite being a member of the Baha\u2019i community and attending and participating in its meetings and programs, Cook had many questions and uncertainties in his mind. In this regard, he himself says: \u201cI remember at the age of seventeen, I protested to the House of Justice for spending heavy expenses to build temples and theatrical administrative buildings in Haifa.\u201d (quoted from the writer\u2019s interview with Cook in December 2021) \u201cAlso, I always asked my parents whether they could accept the decree of rejecting Baha\u2019ism and stay away from a group of people accused of being so-called violators and covenant-breakers and not have any greetings or words with them?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brendan Cook, a teacher, an author, an artist, an intellectual and a Baha\u2019i critic was born in 1970s in a Baha\u2019i family in western Canada in Saskatchewan State. He got his master in English History and Literature from Canada\u2019s Toronto University. Brendan Cook is familiar with six Latin, Greek, French, Spanish, Italian and English (modern, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":11910,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[999,985],"tags":[1610,5971,10215,10219,1950,6853,10217],"class_list":["post-11909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-former-bahais","category-slidshow","tag-bahai-organization","tag-criticizing","tag-english-history","tag-performance","tag-propaganda","tag-turning-against","tag-viewpoint"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bahaismiran.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bahaismiran.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bahaismiran.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bahaismiran.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bahaismiran.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11909"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bahaismiran.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11909\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11911,"href":"https:\/\/bahaismiran.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11909\/revisions\/11911"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bahaismiran.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bahaismiran.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bahaismiran.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bahaismiran.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}