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From: Juan Cole <jrcole@umich.edu> To: Burl Barer <burlb@bmi.net> Cc: talisman@umich.edu <talisman@umich.edu> Subject: Re: 4 year plan Date: Tuesday, June 23, 1998 12:52 PM Dear Burl: Here are some instances of individual initiative in the Baha'i community: 1) In the early 1970s young Baha'is showed initiative in opening up South Carolina to mass teaching, with enormous success. As a result, Firuz Kazemzadeh and others on the NSA closed down the mass enrollment process, diverted funds away from teaching, and ordered the successful teachers out of the area, thus stopping the entry by troops there. 2) In the late 1970s young individuals in the United Kingdom showed individual initiative in beginning academic conferences on Baha'i studies. They were slapped down with nasty letters from Haifa and the person with the most initiative, Denis MacEoin, was driven out of the faith by AQ Fayzi, David Hoffman, Ian Semple, and others. 3) In the late 1970s young intellectuals in the Los Angeles area showed individual initiative in setting up a study class for Baha'i studies. Local Baha'is declared them outside the covenant because the meetings weren't sponsored by any Baha'i institution. When other individuals showed initiative in asking for typescripts of the discussions, they showed the initiative of putting out a newsletter. They were slapped down by nasty letters from Wilmette, and ordered to submit the newsletter for official Baha'i censorship. Gradually the class petered out. 4) In the mid 1980s young intellectuals in the Los Angeles area showed initiative in beginning *Dialogue* magazine. They were immediately informed through intermediaries that people like Ian Semple felt they had showed *way* too much initiative, and they were ordered by Wilmette and Haifa to take the word 'Baha'i' out of their title and subtitle. After the magazine had run for a couple of years, with the editors submitting the articles for censorship, the editors were attacked on false charges by Firuz Kazemzadeh at National Convention in 1988, their personal letters were read out by him on the convention floor, and the NSA interrogated the editors in an attempt to intimidate them, which succeeded, and the magazine closed. 5) In the late 1980s and early 1990s John Walbridge and Moojan Momen showed initiative in beginning and editing the Baha'i Encyclopedia. After Farzam Arbab was elected to the universal house of justice in 1993, he stopped this project in its tracks, had nasty letters written to everyone involved in it, and insisted it be redone along fundamentalist lines. 6) In 1994 John Walbridge showed individual initiative by beginning a listserv for Baha'i studies, talisman@indiana.edu . After a couple of years he and several other prominent academic posters there were accused by the Baha'i authorities in Haifa of 'making statements contrary to the covenant' and threatened with being shunned if they did not fall silent. The listserv was disbanded and those accused either fell silent or left the faith. 7) In the mid-1990s Said Khadivian showed initiative in trying to get mass teaching off the ground in Houston. When some success began to be realized, Henderson insisted in coming in and taking over the project, which then collapsed, and Khadivian was ordered back to Taiwan. I take away from all this the distinct impression that the praise of individual initiative by the institutions and persons you list is an instance of 'words, not deeds,' and, indeed, a smokescreen for the severe disapproval in which individual initiative is in fact held by the entire Baha'i administrative apparatus, which is far more interested in maintaining *control* than in expansion, either of numbers or of Baha'i culture. When they match their words about individual initiative with deeds, then the Baha'i authorities will have some hope of growing the faith, in quantity and quality. At the moment it is stalled in the West, and the blame rests squarely on the shoulders of the nsa and the universal house of justice. cheers Juan Homepage |