{"id":3167,"date":"2021-11-14T16:53:25","date_gmt":"2021-11-14T13:23:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bahaismiran.com\/?p=3167"},"modified":"2022-03-07T16:53:53","modified_gmt":"2022-03-07T13:23:53","slug":"rigid-hierarchy-has-taken-over-bahai-religion-dissidents-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bahaismiran.com\/?p=3167&lang=en","title":{"rendered":"Rigid Hierarchy has Taken over Baha\u2019i Religion, Dissidents Say"},"content":{"rendered":"

… but conservative leaders maintain that orthodoxy has not been altered.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Juan Cole, a professor at the University of Michigan,
\nis a former Ba\u00adha\u2019i who thinks the faith has been taken over by its conservative leaders.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

By: Ira Rifkin<\/em><\/p>\n

Religion News Service<\/em><\/p>\n

The first 19 days of March are a special time for Baha\u2019is, members of a worldwide religion with a liberal reputation based on its vision of the underlying unity of all faiths, the oneness of humanity and the harmony of science and religion.<\/p>\n

The Baha\u2019i Faith grew out of Islam, and like the Muslim month of Ramadan, Baha\u2019is set aside the 10 days the month of Ala according to the Baha\u2019i calendar \u2013 as a period of dawn-to-sunset fasting and spiritual reflection. The month rends with the Feast of Nowruz, the Baha\u2019i New Year. It\u2019s a festive time of community gatherings featuring prayers, spiritual readings, socializing and lots of food.<\/p>\n

For former Baha\u2019i Juan Cole, however, this year\u2019s feast will be anything but festive. Cole, a professor of Middle East History at the University of Michigan is among the nation\u2019s leading experts on the faith. Until last May, when he formally resigned from the movement, he had been a Baha\u2019i for 25 years.<\/p>\n

Now he counts himself among a small but influential group of past and present liberal Baha\u2019is who are angry over what they say is the hijacking of the faith by a cadre of conservative leaders who are more interested in preserving their authority than the Baha\u2019i principle of \u201cindependent investigation of reality.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

That principle is among the core tenets of the Baha\u2019i Faith first articulated by its founder, the 19th-century Persian prophet known as Baha\u2019u\u2019llah (the Glory of God) and who is revered by the faithful as an incarnation of God akin to Jesus.<\/p>\n

According to the critics, the National Spiritual Assembly, which oversees the American Baha\u2019i movement is dominated by a tight-knit group of authoritarian officials who keep the lid on free expression by threatening dissidents with excommunication and by manipulating the process by which NSA members are elected. In the Baha\u2019i Faith, excommunication can include total shunning by family members and friends.<\/p>\n

Spreading their message via the internet, the dissidents \u2013 many of whom, like Cole once were members of the faith\u2019s intellectual elite \u2013 say the nine-member National Spiritual Assembly also hides the truth about the faith\u2019s shrinking American following.<\/p>\n

\u201cBaha\u2019is are not open \u2013 repeat, not open \u2013 about how controlling this organization is<\/em>\u201d Cole said. Virtually no one who comes into this faith realizes that by becoming a Baha\u2019i you are making your individual conscience hostage to the dictates of the leadership. \u201cThe Baha\u2019is started out Unitarian and ended up Calvinist.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Emphasis on order<\/p>\n

For their part, American Baha\u2019i leaders with headquarters in the Chicago suburb of Wilmette, III dismiss the critics as an inconsequential group of disgruntled elitists who blinded by their attraction to the faith\u2019s more liberal aspects overlooked its deeply conservative side.<\/p>\n

This includes an emphasis on \u201cadministrative order\u201d as a prime religious goal. Baha\u2019u\u2019llah taught that religions fail in large part because of the disunity that tears them apart following their initial burst of spiritual energy.<\/p>\n

As a result, tight controls are placed on all public statements made by Baha\u2019is including the work of scholars, who are required to submit their writings for pre-publication review.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe always seek consensus. But if there is no unanimity, then the majority must prevail,<\/em>\u201d said Firuz Kazem Zadeh, a National Spiritual Assembly member and its secretary for external affairs. Not all Baha\u2019i scholars find fault with this.<\/p>\n

\u201cI personally don\u2019t buy the totalitarian argument.<\/em>\u201d said Canadian Baha\u2019i B. Todd Lawson, an assistant professor of Islamic studies at McGill University in Montreal.<\/p>\n

Michael McMullen, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Houston at Clear Lake, said prior review \u201cmakes sense<\/em>\u201d because much of the writings of Baha\u2019u\u2019llah and his successors remain untranslated from their original Persian and Arabic, and therefore are inaccessible to the majority of American Baha\u2019is.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy experience has been that what are corrected are factual errors, not interpretation,<\/em>\u201d said McMullen, who is a local Baha\u2019i leader in League City, Texas.<\/p>\n

The dissidents also claim the Baha\u2019i prohibition against public campaigning or nominating candidates for spots on the National Spiritual Assembly serves to keep it a closed body controlled by the American Baha\u2019i establishment.<\/p>\n

Baha\u2019i leaders say they are only following an orthodoxy established by Baha\u2019u\u2019llah and his successors \u2014 his son, Abdul-Baha, and his great-grandson, Shoghi Effendi, who died in 1957.<\/p>\n

Assembly members are elected annually by a fixed number of 171 delegates who represent local Baha\u2019i assemblies across the continental United States.<\/p>\n

Robert C. Henderson, a former Atlanta businessman who is the assembly\u2019s secretary-general, making him the highest-ranking American Baha\u2019i (the faith has no ordained clergy), said there had been 12 changes in the assembly\u2019s membership the last 15 years. \u201cThat\u2019s not indicative of a closed group,<\/em>\u201d he said. Robert C. Henderson is secre\u00adtary-general of the National Spiritual Assembly and the high\u00adest-ranking American Baha\u2019i.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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\u0622\u0646\u0686\u0647 \u062f\u0631 \u0627\u062f\u0627\u0645\u0647 \u0645\u06cc \u062e\u0648\u0627\u0646\u06cc\u062f<\/p>\n<\/span><\/div>\n