Open Letter to Ali Reza Maybodi

Dear Mr Maybodi,

I am writing in reference to one of your recent segments in order to express my disgust at your declining journalistic standards and contempt regarding your shameless public cheerleading on behalf of the Haifan Baha'i organization. It appears that you have sold out any integrity you once possessed upon the altar of the highest bidder: a situation that, alas, plagues many of your other colleagues in Tehrangeles as well, nay the entire Iranian emigre media establishment of North America as a whole - an establishment increasingly fixated on the most shallow and banal surface appearances which mirror the worst aspects of North American popular culture. It is people like yourself who again and again have given the lie away to the mullahs throughout these past 30 years thereby discrediting an opposition movement who could have potentially dispatched the infernal regime of the Khomeinist Islamic republic long ago. And the reason for this is because of a basic lack of integrity coupled with myopic greed and the cynical politicking that has become the veritable sickness of an entire generation of Iranians like yourself who are daily compromising any and all values whilst slowly being culturally lobotomized by the cancer eating away at all genuine Iranianity: that disease which is the soulless, Western and modernist reign of quantity over quality with its complete lack of all standards and total disregard of truth over the sound bite.

Now you may ask why I am so incensed at a segment aired by you that otherwise has received appalause and accolades, and my answer is this: you have blindly and uncritically repeated sectarian propaganda and complete historical fiction. But before I detail what these are, allow me to say a few words about myself to give you some context as to where I am coming from. I am a Bayani, what popular diction has labeled Azali, and I am proudly a former Baha'i who does not mince his words or pull his punches regarding this organization and creed. I was born into Baha'ism and on my maternal side they count six-generations of Baha'i adherents. My (estranged) extended family still remain adherents to this creed; which as far as I am concerned is not a religion at all, but a political movement and an NRM cult masquerading as one. I draw your attention to the following blog by myself which includes a compilation of factual information I have gathered that casts Baha'ism in a far less favourable light than what you have attempted to cast it in:

http://bahaicultfaq.blogspot.com/

I also draw your attention to one of my own blogs, that includes some personal information about myself:

http://wahidazal.blogspot.com/

That stated, in your segment you claim that the Baha'i holy land is Iran. While this might be an attempt on your part to inordinately flatter your Baha'i audience and benefactors, it is in fact unfactual and incorrect. The Baha'i holy land is not Iran. It is Israel / Palestine. The reason why you might be under this erroneous impression that Iran is the Baha'i holy land is because of the possible misrepresentations made to you regarding the connection of Baha'ism with Babism (that is, the religion of the Bayan) -- a connection that in itself has been falsely appropriated by the Baha'is, but which in real historical terms is an outright lie and fabrication! Iran, and Shiraz specifically, is indeed the Bayani holy land. In fact Shiraz is scripturally considered to be the qibla by the people of the Bayan since it was there that the Essence of the Seven Letters, Siyyid 'Ali Muhammad Shirazi, the Bab (d. 1850), proclaimed his mission on May 23rd 1844 and revealed the first part of his commentary on the quranic Surah of Joseph (12), the Best of Stories (ahsan al-qissas).

Whether you are aware of the situation or not, Siyyid 'Ali Muhammad Shirazi, the Bab, before his death on July 8th 1850 appointed a successor in Mirza Yahya Nuri Subh-i-Azal (d. 1912). Until the mid-1860s the Baha'i founder and older brother of Subh-i-Azal, Mirza Husayn 'Ali Nuri Baha' (d. 1892), himself paid allegiance to the Bab's designated successor. But beginning in 1863 he decided to violently usurp the authority and succession invested in his younger brother and proclaim himself a new theophany or manifestation of God, thus founding Baha'ism. Now what happened next is something that if you are not aware of, you should be. As British orientalist E.G. Browne states in his annotated volume of A Travellers Narrative Written to Illustrate the Episode of the Bab, "All prominent supporters of Subh-i-Azal who withstood Mirza Husayn Ali's claims were marked out for death, and in Baghdad Mulla Rajab Ali "Kahir" and his brother, Hajji Mirza Ahmad, Hajji Mirza Muhammad Reza, and several others fell one by one to the knife or bullet of the assassin" p.359. "As to the assassination of the three Ezelis, Aka Jan Bey, Hajji Seyyed Muhammad of Isfahan, and Mirza Riza-Kulli of Tafrish, by some of Beha's followers at Acre, there can, I fear, be but little doubt...the passage in the Kitab-i-Aqdas alluding (apparently) to Hajji Seyyed Muhammad's death...proves Beha'u'llah regarded this event with some complaisance" p.370. On the murder of one Aqa Muhammad Ali of Isfahan in Istanbul (who first bore allegience to Husayn Ali and then went back to Azal) by one Mirza Abu'l-Qasim the Bakhtiyari, Browne quotes the words of Mirza Husayn Ali Nuri addressed to the latter, "O phlebotomist of the Divine Unity! Throb like the artery in the body of the Contingent World, and drink of the blood of the Block of Heedlessness for that he turned aside from the aspect of thy Lord the Merciful!"

I won't tire you with further details of what Bayanis know as the Direful Mischief (fitna-i-saylam). You can read any further details for yourself if you wish at www.bayanic.com and follow the links provided there. But what should be obvious by now, and a fact detailed by numerous Western and Iranian scholars alike, is that there is no direct, filial connection between Baha'ism and Babism/the religion of the Bayan, and that Baha'ism is largely a violent schism of the former. As such given this fact the claim that Iran then constitutes the Baha'i holy land becomes more than a little probelmatic, especially since the Baha'i qibla itself is claimed as being Bahji in Acre Israel/Palestine.

You also claimed at the beginning of your segment that Baha'is are Iran-lovers. Generally that might be true with individuals, but as far as the official ideology of the creed itself is considered that is categorically untrue. From a young age Baha'is are systematically encouraged (nay, brainwashed) to identify themselves as Baha'is before anything else. That means that all Baha'is define themselves as Baha'is first and whatever follows, be it Iranian or otherwise, only secondarily afterwards. In a situation such as this, whatever individuals themselves feel, I do not see the consistency of any statement posited that makes Baha'i tout court Iran-lovers. It makes a segment of the Iranian Baha'i community Iran-lovers, but not Baha'is as a whole because the ideology of the organization itself does not encourage it at all. Rather it frowns on it, and, furthemore, the Anglocentric tonality of this establishment's entrenched elite is conspicuously anti-Iranian. Also, and as a matter of course, the overt globalist ideology of Baha'ism mitigates precisely against specifically being an Iran-lover, whatever individual Baha'is might say, feel or do otherwise.

Next, throughout your segment you ridiculed and lampooned the notion of the British imperialist connections of Baha'ism, as if these are merely allegations without substance. I wonder what you make, then, of the following two declassfied British cabinet documents from the teens and twenties of the last century which demonstrates a direct connection (obtained from the British National Archives under UK freedom of information legislation):

http://bahaisandbritannia.googlepages.com/home

Moreover, I wonder what you make of the following statement made in the Handbook of Palestine published by the British High Commission for Palestine itself in 1922 regarding the 1919 knighting of Abbas Effendi:

http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=RvttAAAAMAAJ&dq=%22The+Handboo.

"...Sir 'Abbas Effendi 'Abdu'l Baha had travelled extensively in Europe and America to expound his doctrines, and on the 4th December, 1919, was created by King George V. a K.B.E. for valuable services rendered to the British Government in the early days of the Occupation....."

Certainly such facts and information are not merely wild conspiracy theories fabricated by the fertile minds, the mercurial and over-active imaginations of mullahs and Islamists. Rather these are the prima facie statements of the British government and establishment Itself.

I won't go any further into historical and interpretative distinctions about such issues. I am merely highlighting such information to point out that you either do not know what you are talking about, or that you have specifically been courted by the Baha'i establishment to make favourable statements in the media about them completely denuded and divorced from all contextual and historical reality whatsoever. In such a situation, lately, you are not alone. Yet being actively wined and dined by an organization does not mean that one must sacrifice ones objective (and in your case, journalistic) integrity completely. As a journalist - if that is what you are - you must be doubly vigilant and do your homework that much more intently. But here you haven't.

Finally, I wonder what you make of an organization who issues such directives as the one below:

http://bahai-library.com/published.uhj/counsellors.html

THE INSTITUTION OF THE COUNSELLORS

A Document Prepared by the Universal House of Justice
January 29 2001

Protection of the Cause (pp. 15-16)

Although deepening the friends' understanding of the Covenant and increasing their love and loyalty to it are of paramount importance, the duties of the Auxiliary Board members for Protection do not end here. The Board members must remain ever vigilant, monitoring the actions of those who, driven by the promptings of ego, seek to sow the seeds of doubt in the minds of the friends and undermine the Faith. In general, whenever believers become aware of such problems, they should immediately contact whatever institution they feel moved to turn to, whether it be a Counsellor, an Auxiliary Board member, the National Spiritual Assembly or their own Local Assembly. It then becomes the duty of that institution to ensure that the report is fed into the correct channels and that all the other institutions affected are promptly informed. Not infrequently, the responsibility will fall on an Auxiliary Board member, in coordination with the Assembly concerned, to take some form of action in response to the situation. This involvement will include counselling the believer in question; warning him, if necessary, of the consequences of his actions; and bringing to the attention of the Counsellors the gravity of the situation, which may call for their intervention. Naturally, the Board member has to exert every effort to counteract the schemes and arrest the spread of the influence of those few who, despite attempts to guide them, eventually break the Covenant.

The need to protect the Faith from the attacks of its enemies may not be generally appreciated by the friends, particularly in places where attacks have been infrequent. However, it is certain that such opposition will increase, become concerted, and eventually universal. The writings clearly foreshadow not only an intensification of them machinations of internal enemies, but a rise in the hostility and opposition of its external enemies, whether religious or secular, as the Cause pursues its onward march towards ultimate victory. Therefore, in the light of the warnings of the Guardian, the Auxiliary Boards for Protection should keep "constantly" a "watchful eye" on those "who are known to be enemies, or to have been put out of the Faith", discreetly investigate their activities, alert intelligently the friends to the opposition inevitably to come, explain how each crisis in God's Faith has always proved to be a blessing in disguise, and prepare them for the "dire contest which is destined to range the Army of Light against the forces of darkness.

I don't know where you come from, but in my world such words as the words above are the words of the worst sort of fascists and totalitarian monsters.

I bid you farewell.

Sincerely,
Wahid Azal
Queensland, Australia