(Hoda Mahmoudi's email may be found at the end.)
March 31, 1997
The Universal House of Justice of the
Bahais of the World
Haifa, Israel
Dear Members of the Universal House of
Justice:
After careful reflection and prayer for
the past few days, I've
decided that open public discussion and knowledge are more
important than my own status as a Bahai.
I have been a Bahai for more than
twenty years, since 1976. I
became a Bahai by reading almost every single Bahai book
published at the time. Given my background as a Catholic and
poet, I was deeply moved by the beauty and profundity of the
Bahai Writings. As a young person, I spent two months travel
teaching throughout Michigan with several other youthful,
innocent Bahais. Like many, I have sacrificed financially to
contribute to the Bahai Faith. I pioneered for a year and a
half in Japan, for two years on an American Indian reservation,
and have travel taught in China. The spiritual profundity of
the Bahai vision, as reflected in the work of the
African-American poet Robert Hayden, inspired me to study at
the University of Michigan under him and to spend considerable
time and labor editing his collected poems and prose for
Liveright and the University of Michigan Press. I have
published two essays in the Bahai magazine World Order and
spent more time than I can remember at Bahai summer camps,
workshops, and deepenings. Throughout all my varied Bahai
experience, I have loved the Figures and Teachings of the Faith
even as the conviction has grown that all information and
discussion in the Bahai Faith is subtly manipulated, controlled,
and distorted for the "good of the Faith." There seems to be
a
pervasive, rigid control of all thought, ideas, and information
that calls into question the motives of the individuals in
power in the Bahai Administration.
As a published writer and former
college and university
instructor of rhetoric and literature for over ten years, I
believe the whole process of "review" has become a
complete
farce and disgrace to the Bahai Faith and is suggestive of the
worst censorship under the most repressive regimes, religious
or secular, of historical experience. If one truly wishes to
understand why many Bahais, both highly educated and others,
leave the Bahai Faith or become "inactive" and withdraw
into
silence and uninvolvement with the religion, one need only to
look objectively at what seems to be the oppressive and
coercive methods of people in the Bahai Administration itself
to find the answer.
My experiencing of these same methods
of censorship and
distortion on soc.religion.bahai proved to be the last
intolerable straw. My attempt to form an unmoderated newsgroup
on the Internet that no one could manipulate and censor has a
long experience of Bahai tyranny in the background. The
resorting to deceit and back-channel communication by the
moderators of soc.religion.bahai and others naively believing
they're working for the benefit of the Bahai Faith by
campaigning for 691 unethical NO votes on talk.religion.bahai
further proves the pervasive acceptance of disreputable tactics
by Bahais in their attempt to maintain a stranglehold over all
thought and discussion.
Recently, more than ever, I've often
recalled the words to me
in private several times of Robert Hayden, the only Bahai to
be appointed Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress:
"Why I continue to have anything to do with the Bahai Faith,
I
do not know, I do not know." I myself no longer know.
I suppose I hope that the oppressive,
coercive methods that
have come to be accepted and justified in the Bahai
Administration, demonstrated for instance in the crushing of
the magazine Dialogue, the incidents surrounding the Bahai
Encyclopedia, the listserv Talisman I, and the continuingly
crude, unreadable propoganda vehicle of the American Bahai,
might yet be put aside in favor of the beautiful vision of
Baha'u'llah and Abdul-Baha for freedom of religious conscience
and belief and a humane, tolerant universalism. I fear that all
too often the religious totalitarianism of Baha'u'llah's
fanatical homeland has seeped into every nook and cranny of
His religion, smothering out the free light of the human soul
and hamstringing His Administration.
It was with the bitterest of feelings
that I observed some
time ago the Bahai exhibition, a deceitful propaganda event
really, on freedom of religious conscience and belief sponsored
by the National Spiritual Assembly in the rotunda of the
Capitol in Washington, D.C., so far in reality from the truth
was it, so misled, trusting, and uninformed were the
Congressmen of my country....
If censorship is allowed in the Bahai
Faith, I would like to
know what passages of the Bahai Writings support it and what
are the "rules," if you will, of Bahai censorship. It
seems to
me that censorship pervades the Bahai Faith so thoroughly that
some Bahais regularly use it as a method of intimidation and
silencing of anyone with an unconventional opinion by accusing
the individual of being a covenant breaker. This tactic was
used against me by at least three Bahais during the discussion
period for talk.religion.bahai and tacitly condoned by the
moderators and others.
I include, at the end, a threatening,
coercive email message I
received on March 27, 1997, from Mr. Hoda Mahmoudi,
Auxiliary Board Member for Michigan, at a crucial juncture of
the discussion and voting for talk.religion.bahai and would like
an explanation of his motives.
I, and perhaps the rest of the world,
would greatly appreciate
evidence that there are not now nine ayatollahs residing in
Israel on Mt Carmel.
Respectfully,
FG
Some might want to compare Mahmoudi's tactics with those used against Kalimat
Press and Juan Cole. Below, Mahmoudi is clearly intervening in the
first interest poll voting for talk.religion.bahai the very day when the RESULTS
we're released, revealing over 600 bahais had voted NO to oppose the
formation of the newsgroup, an unprecedented number of NO votes for any
poll on Usenet. Since I was the primary advocate of its creation,
Mahmoudi's intentions below, to anyone familiar with how the bahai
administration regularly operates, was to coerce and silence me and stop the creation of an unmoderated newsgroup
forum uncontrolled
by bahai fundamentalists.
>Date: Thu, 27 Mar 1997 15:45:46 -0500
>To: FG@hotmail.com
>From: Hoda Mahmoudi <hmahmoudi@olivetnet.edu>
>Dear Mr. Glaysher:
>
>I have been reading your e-mail postings recently. I would
like to speak
>with you by phone about some of your throughts and opinions
regarding
>matters relevant to the Baha'i Faith. As an Auxiliary Board members
for
>Michigan, I am always interested in issues which relate to
individual
>spiritual responsibility and the Baha'i Faith's principle of
unity. My
>phone number is 616/789-0590.
>
>Hope to hear from you soon.
>
>Hoda
>
>
>
>
>
>Hoda Mahmoudi, Ph.D.
>Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs
>Olivet College
>Olivet, MI 49076
>616/749-7614
Re: Letter to Mahmoudi: The Old Lie
See also:
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