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| Bahá’í Scandals Unmasked |
The glossy brochures of the Baha’i Faith promise a world of universal peace and high morality, but as a former insider who has seen the gears grind from the top, I am here to unmask the institutional rot that smells far worse than any of their flowery sermons. The primary weapon in their marketing arsenal is the Ruhi class system, a "moral" factory that churns out "McBaha’is" who are trained to smile and never ask questions. These classes are nothing more than manuals of silence, designed to keep the rank-and-file busy while the elite leadership deals with scandals that would make a soap opera writer blush. The strategic gap between the "high morality" they preach and the "immoral" actions they hide is a chasm wide enough to swallow the faith whole. If the Baha’is spent as much time on actual peace as they do on illicit bed-hopping, the world might actually be united. Take the case of the fifty-year-old Auxiliary Board Member in Orissa, India, a man supposed to be a "protector" of the faith. Instead of protecting anything, he used his Ruhi books to woo a twenty-five-year-old student, eventually eloping and leaving his wife and two children behind. The girl's parents were absolutely terrified, calling the Baha’is double-faced and hypocrites because they realized that behind the religious garb was absolute immorality. These parents weren't alone in their shock; in Chennai, another high-ranking official was caught red-handed in a homosexual relationship inside a Baha’i center, only to be moved onto a local spiritual assembly afterward as if nothing happened. In Kerala, the saga of Mr. Gopalakrishnan and Mrs. Rijesh turned into a multi-year tangle of extra-marital affairs and children born from illicit relations, while even the "Baha’i Mona," (Tahirih Gaur of Bombay) "martyred" her own marriage for a third party despite her status as a moral class teacher. The administration’s response is a satirical masterpiece: they hand out a "Teaching Pass" by removing "voting rights"- meaning you can’t help pick the local committee, but you are perfectly welcome to keep teaching children and paying your Huquq money. It is an absurd system where the "Universal Appeal" of the faith really just means a universal pass for the elite to ignore the laws they force on others.
When the leadership is too busy covering up their own affairs, it is no surprise they leave the door open for predators, and the "So What?" of their institutional failure is a trail of broken lives. In Hungary, the Baha’i Foundation hired Gabor Farkas, a convicted pedophile, as a soccer coach for marginalized children, crowing about his "youth leadership" until a newspaper exposed his past. Rather than owning the disaster, the administration's instinct is to blame the victim to save the reputation of the organization. This was most sickening in Peru, where Shirin, the daughter of a NSA Chairman, accused her father of years of incestuous abuse. Instead of calling the police, high-ranking Counselors told her to go home and forgive him because the Universal House of Justice wanted it. From the incest scandals in Fiji to the sexual harassment case of Om Joshi at the New Era High School in Panchgani (India), the pattern is the same: silence the victim and protect the image. In Pakistan, the depravity reached a peak when a Baha’i UN worker was accused of raping refugees, a crime he dismissively called "consensual sex" in what might be the most demonic euphemism in the history of the faith. Even in the United States, the "Ruhi factory" was allegedly used by pimps and traffickers to groom young girls, while the NSA responded by slandering the grandmothers who dared to report the crimes. These aren't isolated accidents; they are systemic failures. Even the Marc Dutroux case in Belgium left the local community in a state of deep shame, yet the leadership continues to hide behind their "stats" rather than protecting their children.
Keeping these secrets quiet isn't cheap, which is where your mandatory Huquq payments really go while the elite stash millions in offshore accounts. While poor followers are guilt-tripped into giving every spare cent, Dr. Jehangir Sorabjee was exposed in the Panama Papers for stashing wealth in secret accounts while his mother Zena Sorabjee, sat on the national board demanding donations. In Italy, Franco Ceccherini managed to embezzle 360,000 Euros over fifteen years, a feat made easy by an administration that has no transparency and no term limits. The corruption even enters the world of international espionage. In India, a Spy Ring was busted where leaders were accused of smuggling classified defense documents to foreign agencies. One official, N.K. Bhudhiraja, even used the fake name Captain S. Budhiraja to masquerade as a military officer while penetrating prohibited defense areas. It is the ultimate irony that a group preaching "Universal Peace" is caught red-handed masquerading as the military to smuggle secrets. This high-pressure environment also produces tragic failures like Mohammad Sadegh Moghaddam, the Walmart hostage-taker in Texas. He was a Baha’i who fled persecution only to be crushed by debt and passed over for promotion; once he snapped and became a "bad stat," the community quickly abandoned him, calling it a "personal conflict" rather than admitting their support system is a hollow shell.
The entire "Covenant" is a carefully managed family business dominated by a Persian elite who treat local members like propagation drones. In India, Counselor Omid and his inner circle use their "cunning" to ensure that Persian families maintain a dictatorial grip over administrative bodies, replacing any local members who dare to speak up. They treat the faith like a franchise, appointing relatives to key positions and cleaning any internal dissent. They boycotted Kalimat Press and disenrolled scholars like Sen McGlinn without a single hearing, simply because these people dared to suggest that the leadership’s version of a theocracy wasn't the only way to read the books. The goal of this administration is to create a culture of "exit by troops," where the talented and honest are humiliated until they leave, leaving behind only the "McBaha'is" who will facilitate the leadership’s exaggerated achievement reports. In the end, the "Great Baha’i Myth" is a story of profound irony. A religion that preaches the oneness of humanity is defined by internal rifts, lawsuits, and a leadership that protects rapists and embezzlers while calling sincere believers criminals. As we look at the spy rings, the sex scandals, and the millions in Panama, we must ask: where is this "infallibility" the House of Justice claims for itself? If the leadership cannot stop its own officials from stealing or smuggling, then their divine guidance is just a corporate slogan. The reality proves that the only thing "universal" about the Baha’i Faith is the lengths its leaders will go to protect their power and money, regardless of the lives they destroy along the way.
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