Re: discussions of problems/title> <style type="text/css">  </style> </head> <body><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tr><td> <table border="5" width="100%"> <tr> <td width="100%"> <h1 align="center"> <a title="Home" href="https://fglaysher.com/bahaicensorship/">The Baha'i Faith & Religious Freedom of Conscience</a></h1> </td> </tr> </table> </td></tr></table><table dir="ltr" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tr><td valign="top"> <pre>From: Juan Cole <jrcole@umich.edu> To: Dagur Nordberg <d_nordberg@hotmail.com> Cc: talisman@umich.edu <talisman@umich.edu> Subject: Re: discussions of problems Date: Thursday, June 11, 1998 7:46 PM </pre> <pre>I did want to add a couple other things.</pre> <pre>The first is that I am sorry Dagur and I could not have gotten to know one another in the old days before cyberspace emerged, when I was an enrolled Baha'i. You know, I was not always as critical as I am now, and I never was publicly critical. And all the time till late April 1996 I never disobeyed any of the Baha'i institutions or broke a Baha'i law, not even once.</pre> <pre>When I was a Baha'i, I would never have dreamed of independently starting a formal list like H-Bahai; I would not have dreamed of publishing the Babi and Baha'i texts suppressed by the House; I would not have dreamed of publicly criticizing the house or its members or hands of the cause, etc. I was quite a sincere Baha'i. And I never broke the covenant by word or deed all the time I was a Baha'i and the Baha'i authorities knew it.</pre> <pre>When they falsely and outrageously threatened me and my friends with being declared covenant breakers in order to close down Talisman I, in my view they relieved me of all further responsibility to them. They are not my leaders, and they do not stand for my values, nor do they stand for the values of Baha'u'llah or `Abdul-Baha or Shoghi Effendi. There is no further reason for me not to discuss the things wrong with the way the Baha'i faith is being run, just as I would discuss the things wrong with the way any institution is run with which I have had a long association.</pre> <pre>If the Baha'i authorities wanted my continued cooperation, they could have politely asked for it and sought the path of mutual consultation. They chose not to do that. They chose to try to bully me and other Baha'i academics. And there is a price to pay when you are so maladroit as to expose the inner workings of your organization as cult-like to a major historian in that field. If they did not want to pay the price of exposure, they should have been more careful. Now they are going to be exposed. I do this because I am extremely distressed to see what the proud and beautiful Faith of Baha'u'llah, which was in my heart for a quarter of a century, has become. And I believe that only by speaking out can I discharge my final responsibility to Baha'u'llah, who bestowed so much on me, which is to provide some encouragement to the Baha'i institutions to cease their rapid ratcheting toward the techniques and mindset of the Moonies, the Scientologists, and other mind control cults. When you get to the point where you are threatening your most prominent academic historians with being shunned over their email discussions, that is the road you are going down.</pre> <pre>That said, I recognize that I can seem irascible on these unmoderated lists, and all it would take would be a few friends suggesting I get back off for me to do so, if they really think the things I'm saying are doing more harm than good. </pre> <pre>cheers Juan </pre> <hr> <p><a href="index.html">Homepage</a><br> <hr> <hr> </td></tr></table></body> </html>