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From: Juan Cole <jrcole@umich.edu> To: Bjaff@aol.com <Bjaff@aol.com> Cc: talisman@umich.edu <talisman@umich.edu> Subject: Re: 4 year plan Date: Tuesday, June 23, 1998 7:02 PM Well, I have to admit that I am exercised about this problem of over-centralization and repression. I genuinely believe that it seriously hurts the growth of the Baha'i faith, numerically and culturally and spiritually. It annoys me to think of 25 years of my life being spent in intensive labor on something that ends up being screwed up by incompetents. When people used to complain to Shoghi Effendi about these sorts of problems, he generally answered with advice to expand the community through teaching and thus to sidestep the rigid and problematic Baha'is. But in actual fact, the very dominance of the community by hardliners who see covenant breakers under their beds, whose first instinct is to attack and to squelch innovation, has made it *very* difficult to grow the community substantially. I am sorry to say it, but a good third of Baha'is are just very unpleasant people to be around and make it their business to drive out of the faith anyone who doesn't agree with them (something they are quite successful at). That third also somehow seems to be the recruitment pool for the administrative order. What happened to Michael McKenny (whom the Baha'is had been lucky to have) is only a somewhat spectacular example of a phenomenon that is repeated hundreds if not thousands of times each year in North America. Narrow-minded people summarily forced a Baha'i with whom they did not agree out of the faith. My own advice to Baha'is who run into these problems is just to do their own thing. Your community is unpleasant? Find some Baha'is in cyberspace with whom you enjoy hanging out and create a virtual community. Sign up under an electronic pseudonym if you would otherwise be afraid of speaking your mind. Enjoy writing about the Baha'i faith but can't stand Review? Found a Web magazine and publish to your heart's content. Your community is unhappy with policies in Wilmette? Keep the money at home and do things with it the local community appreciates. Would rather have a local mashriqu'l-adhkar than yet another monumental neoclassical building in Haifa? Build a local Baha'i center and refer to it in your heart as a mashriqu'l-adhkar. Attend the local Unitarian Universalist fellowship as well. Want to read more of Baha'u'llah and `Abdul-Baha than has been officially translated? Frequent the provisional translations on the Web. The agencies of repression are very powerful, but they can be sidestepped. Baha'u'llah was a Great Soul, and his spiritual and social teachings are a mighty River. Small beavers who think they are divinely guided can attempt to dam the river, but in the end their sticks and mud and hollow trunks will be swept away and the river will flow on, mightier than before. cheers Juan At 04:48 PM 6/23/98 EDT, Bjaff@aol.com wrote: >I'm amazed by the list of individual intitiative programs that have been shut >down and discouraged. This points to overt oppression and I see a revolution >in the works. Proclaiming the problems from the internet mountain tops is one >thing, but finding solutions is another. There must be Justice manifest in the >world, yet the UHJ seems to be contradicting itself by using unjust methods of >control. Maybe it would be beneficial to investigate alternative answers. Is >there anyone who has an acceptable solution to addressing these problems? > Homepage |