A 'concerned' ex-Baha'i writes about his experience

Baha'i Faith: The Sinking Titanic



Bahai Faith – the harbinger of a United World, Unity of Mankind and New World Order is presently suffering from the same ailments that it was supposed to remove. Differences are galore and individual ambition to rise in administration hierarchy is apparent. Much as the Universal House of Justice (UHJ), the central governing body of the Bahais at Haifa, Israel, would try to cover this weakness, the internet (and not the Bahai Faith) has made the world smaller and informative. As the happenings in the Faith spread through internet (blogs, facebook, emails and web-sites), the reality of the present status of Faith stands exposed.
An analysis of the information available reveals following fronts where the Bahai Faith (read Bahai Administration) stands with its hand in shame :

1. Bahai Administration – Indeed the functioning of all Administrative bodies, headed by the UHJ, have become a centre for nepotism and mal-practices. Elections are controlled and manipulated. The present axis of evil at the UHJ is Farzam-Faredon-Payman, all with Persian background and LOYALTY. Indeed the control is so strict that any sign of difference in opinion is crushed with negative publicity of the individual daring to express his opinion. Shameless propagation is apparent before key elections. Bahais who have lived with Bahai values and idealism towards the advise of the founding father, Bahaullah, are side lined as being irrelevant, non-progressive and negative. There is a virtual moral collapse due to this approach by administrative bodies. What more evidence is required about the spiritual status, when even the numbers related to devotions held, classes conducted and seekers induced into the Faith are manipulated and inflated!!!

2. Bahai Campaigns – The grossly inflated news about teaching campaigns have only 10% truth. Those few that venture for such campaigns are doing it more to justify their place in the Faith than with true devotion. More time is spent in story-telling, singing, dancing and partying than the spread of the Faith. At the end of the session, the contact(s) get an impression that the Faith is more like an NGO or a Social Club than a Faith with a serious message. Also contributing to this failure is lack of knowledge of those who set out for such campaigns. They are so distant from knowledge of History and the Faith principles that they mumble their own interpretations. On occasions, the message conveyed by different Faith members contradict, making the campaigns look mocking. All these campaigns are announced in publications, as grand success, just for the sake of competing with a neighbouring assembly and to satisfy individual egos.

3. Motivation of Local Assembly Members – The Local Spiritual Assemblies (supposed to be the key link in the administrative system linking individuals belonging to a local community with the central UHJ, are occupied by such members who cannot meet regularly even once in two weeks. The priorities are their professions, their families and their excursions. The average attendance of LSA members in meetings of LSA is 50%. The efficiency of the system in plain terms is reduced thus by 50% (100% attendance is seen when certain dignitary happens to come on inspection visit!!!). The effectiveness of the remaining 50% can be gauged when one sees that most members present come late. The LSA meetings start atleast 45 minutes after schedule, but ends on time in another 45 minutes. The meetings include lavish snacks and gossiping of members of community as hidden agenda and balance time for the official agenda.

4. Independent Investigation of the Truth and the Internet - A principle which underlies all campaigns stops after a seeker has entered the Faith. Now he has to digest only what is fed. Thanks to the internet, such Investigators of Truth, can access to several nagging questions like – Was the faith left sans guardian (without a Guardian) by the founding fathers? Is it true that the Bahai Faith does not have sects? What is the ideology of other sects? If the Faith has come to remove differences, why is there a ban on interaction with other sects of the Faith? If the Faith encourages upliftment of women, why are they denied position in the UHJ? Indeed with a click of a button, several embarrassing truths emerge. The Faith and its administration have failed to curb the impact of internet on minds of the Faith members.

5. Failure in Court Cases – Attempts made at censuring different schools of thought and sects have miserably failed. With each court verdict, not only is the Faith retreating several steps but also facing an embarrassing exodus of Faith members. One doubts the wisdom of the administrators in challenging differences of opinion, use of “Bahai” word by other sects and Guardians of other Bahai sects, when the founding fathers had always preached tolerance and restraint. In today’s democratic society, filing such cases appear primitive. It makes one wonder, if the Bahai Faith is really a religion of the new era?

6. Conduct of Bahais – The morality and conduct of not several but most of the Bahais, some of them include important personalities and Councellors, leaves a lot to be desired. Some have been arrested on grounds of false travel papers and forged documents, some have been nabbed on espionage charges and others on flouting laws of the land.Most of the counselors have a divorced life. Eloping has become almost a law and not an exception. Faith. Extra-marital affairs are common (and for certain position-holding individuals legalized by the Faith), consuming alcohol has become a habit and is publicly displayed and divorce on the rise. One can imagine the rot when such behavior is gaining prominence in the small numbers that the Faith presently has.

It is a shame that due to this the Faith has been banned in several countries. Their moral class teachers are arrested, Ruhi activity is look with suspicion and the Intellgence services of various countries have opened a special cell to monitor the activities of Faith.

7. Excommunication – The height of intolerance is ex-communication of those sincere Bahais who have stood-up to challenge the present situation. They are termed as traitors of the Cause and Breakers of Covenant. Their administrative rights are snatched and they are ex-communicated. Abusive languages for respected Bahais have become a common phenomena in the letters of UHJ. Threat of being Excommunication is almost a routine affair of UHJ. So demoralizing is the situation that we find numbers in other sects of the Bahai Faith rising day by day while UHJ dominated Faith continues to dwindle in numbers.

The above are sure signs of downfall! The Bahai Faith will decrease in influence in next few years, and this is irreversible. 

The Sinking of Titanic of Bahai Faith is immininet

http://www.iranian.com/main/blog/nadeem-khan/bahai-faith-sinking-titanic

1 comment:

  1. I'm not a Baha'I, so don't take this the wrong way, but I don't see Baha'Ism diminishing any time in the near future. They've spread rather aggressively, and they're in general quite nice. I'd say about half the ones I've known are either Iranian refugees themselves, or the children of Iranian refugees. The rest are American, with a German or two. They're friendly, they're open, and because they're foreign and exotic, they're automatically less creepy than heterodox domestic groups like Mormons and Scientologists. Both those groups are growing, despite a ton of bad press. No one really says anything bad about Baha'I, so why should their growth taper off?

    That said: I find the obsession with uniformity concerning. I'm a Christian myself, and any close reading of scripture shows the schisming of Christianity into sects happened almost immediately - arguably it started before Jesus was even crucified ("Master, we have seen people casting out demons in Your Name, but they are not a part of us"), and I have to think this is a good thing. Denominationalism is good, as it allows a believer to find the 'brand' of Christianity that's best suited for their spiritual needs.

    Attempts to force a religion into a one-size-fits-all box would seem to me to lead to legalism and a kind of authoritarian clerical dictatorship. Those strike me as bad things. So I do find this trend in the Baha'I rather concerning.

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