![\"Juan](\"https:\/\/fglaysher.com\/TheGlobe\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/Juan_Cole.jpg\" "\\"Juan_Cole\\"")
<\/a>Juan Cole<\/p><\/div>\n
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Modernity and the Millennium : The Genesis of the Baha\u2019i Faith in the Nineteenth-Century Middle East.<\/strong><\/em> Columbia University Press, 1998.<\/strong><\/p>\n Respecting the Conscience of Man\u2026. <\/strong>June 27, 2000 In his conclusion, which would never have passed the system of censorship, \u201cBahai review,\u201d that the Haifan Baha’i governing body \u00a0imposes on all publications brought out under its tight control, Professor Cole, of the Department of History at the University of Michigan, quite accurately identifies the distortions that have been wreaked upon Baha\u2019u\u2019llah\u2019s Teachings:<\/p>\n \u201cSome contemporary leaders of the Baha\u2019i Faith have given answers increasingly similar to those of fundamentalists, stressing scriptural literalism, patriarchy, theocracy, censorship, intellectual intolerance, and denying key democratic values. While the values of the nineteenth-century Baha\u2019i movement, which was far more tolerant, continue to exist as a minority view, by the late 1990s a different set of emphases prevailed\u201d (196).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Cole himself and many others have suffered at the hands of the fundamentalists who have taken control of the religion:<\/p>\n \u201cThe rise of academic Baha\u2019i scholarship has caused tension in the community, whose present-day leadership tends to be fundamentalist and antiliberal in orientation, and this has led to pressure on a number of prominent academics to resign or dissociate themselves from the movement\u201d (201).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n These same forces of fundamentalist orthodoxy are evident on talk.religion.bahai and alt.religion.bahai on Usenet for impartial viewers to witness. They will be evident to all perceptive observers of whatever forum Bahais may be trying to control and influence. Both my and Cole\u2019s websites provide essential documentation along these lines. It should be noted that the Universal House of Justice has actively worked through the BCCA (Bahai Computer and Communications Association) to suppress all links to websites with other than its own \u201ccomprehensive\u201d point of view on such major portals as Yahoo.com, Excite.com, and other search engines. The UHJ has reportedly gone even further by advising Bahais to remove any link whatsoever to Professor Cole\u2019s website.<\/p>\n As a Bahai since 1976, I myself have always found especially repulsive the manner in which Bahai fundamentalists attempt to manipulate the institutions and leaders of government, the United Nations, and public opinion, while pretending to values they deride in private or at Bahai-only meetings.<\/p>\n Ultimately, it is the Bahai Universal House of Justice that is responsible for the perversion and corruption of such clear and elevating teachings of Baha\u2019u\u2019llah and Abdu\u2019l-Baha as the following:<\/p>\n \u201cThese are effectual and sufficient proofs that the conscience of man is sacred and to be respected; and that liberty thereof produces widening of ideas, amendment of morals, improvement of conduct, disclosure of the secrets of the contingent world\u201d (Abdu\u2019l-Baha, A Traveler\u2019s Narrative, 91).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The Universal House of Justice, in Haifa, Israel, \u00a0is also in the end responsible for inciting Baha\u2019i fanatics and fundamentalists to attack other Bahais and non-Bahais merely for their views expressed on and off line in free forums of public discussion.<\/p>\n Professor Cole\u2019s\u00a0Modernity and the Millennium<\/em> will remain, for many years to come, the most important book available on the Baha\u2019i Faith. His discussion of its historical development within the intellectual milieu of progressive 19th Century thought is particularly brilliant and insightful.<\/p>\n Frederick Glaysher<\/a><\/p>\n For further documentation of Bahai censorship, see The Universal House of Justice, in Haifa, Israel, is also in the end responsible for inciting Baha\u2019i fanatics and fundamentalists to attack other Bahais and non-Bahais merely for their views expressed on and off line in free forums of public discussion. Continue reading
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\nThe Baha’i Faith & Religious Freedom of Conscience<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"