What Really Happened in Tabriz? Re-examining the Execution of the Bab

The barrack square in Tabriz, where the Báb was executed. 

The Doctrinal Contradiction: Reason vs. Legend

The execution of the Báb in a Tabriz barracks square in July 1850 is the foundational "miracle" of the Baha'i Faith, a moment where divine intervention supposedly suspended the laws of physics. For a religious movement that explicitly benchmarks its identity against the harmony of science and reason, this narrative creates an insurmountable logical impasse. The Baha'i leadership, through the hagiographical accounts of Shoghi Effendi and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, insists upon a 750-man firing squad failing to strike its target at close range. However, this claim collapses under the weight of its own internal contradictions when subjected to basic empirical scrutiny.

The Problem of "Cherry-Picking" Logic A religion cannot maintain a claim to rationalism while simultaneously demanding the suspension of logic to accommodate supernatural folklore. When the foundational history of a movement is contaminated by physical impossibilities, the believer is forced into a binary choice: apply empirical standards consistently or admit that their history is a collection of curated exaggerations. To "cherry-pick" when to be a scientist and when to be a fundamentalist is a failure of intellectual integrity.

With the physical impossibility of the miracle established by the laws of ballistics and geometry, the burden of proof shifts from the theological to the mechanical.

The Geometry of Impossibility: Why 750 Muskets is a Myth

The hagiographical text The Dawn-Breakers depicts 750 soldiers arranged in three files of 250 men each. To anyone applying "carpenter’s logic" - the pragmatic assessment of spatial reality - these numbers are a logistical fantasy. A modern-day empirical staging of a 750-man squad conducted in Bend, Oregon, confirmed that such a formation would require a span of 125 to 150 meters. Placing such a line in the Tabriz barracks square reveals the absurdity of the "miracle."

If a firing line is 150 meters long and the target is 15 meters away, the soldiers at the far ends are over 75 meters from the Báb. To even attempt a shot, these men would have to turn at an 80-degree angle, firing directly across the faces and front ranks of their own companions. This is not a military formation; it is a recipe for a fratricidal massacre.

Logistical Absurdities of the 750-Man Narrative:

• The Smoke-Screen Effect: In 1850, muskets utilized black powder. A simultaneous discharge of 250 rifles would generate a "mighty smoke" so dense that the subsequent ranks would be firing blind into a wall of gray soot, unable to see the target or the men in front of them.
• The Danger of Hot Wads: Firing in three ranks is a tactical impossibility with muzzle-loaders. The "glowing hot remains" of the wads from the third rank would fall directly onto the front ranks, causing immediate injury and panic.
• The "Mowing Down" of Ranks: Because of the required 80-degree firing angle from the flanks, the crossfire would have inevitably mowed down the front ranks in handfuls.
• Structural Backstop: There is no historical record of the catastrophic structural damage 750 lead balls would cause. Such a volley would have shattered the building, destroyed the shutters, and likely killed any occupants in the rooms behind the Báb.

With the physical reality debunked, the burden of proof shifts to the genealogy of the lie itself.

The Genealogy of an Exaggeration: From Platoon to Regiment

The inflation of this event follows a classic trajectory of oral transmission errors and linguistic drift. The shift from a standard "platoon" to a "regiment" of 750 men likely stems from the Persian preposition "Az", which can mean both "from" (a subdivision) and "consisting of" (the whole).

The chain of transmission is transparent: Source A reports a firing squad from (az) Sam Khan's regiment; Source B interprets this as a squad consisting of (az) the regiment; Source C asks how many men are in a regiment (750); and Source D invents the "three files" to make the 750 men fit a mental image of an execution.

Comparative Analysis of Execution Accounts

Source Name	Year	Description of Firing Squad Size / Role
Anitchkov (Russian Consul)	1850	"The soldiers" (No unusual size; noted their lack of skill).
Richard Stevens (British)	1850	"A volley of musketry" (No mention of a massive squad).
Haji Mirza Jani	Pre-1852	"Three bullets struck him" (Implies a standard squad size).
Jakob Polak	1865	"A small party of soldiers."
Mirza Kazem-Beg	1865	"A platoon from the Christian regiment."
Quch-Ali Sultan	1858	The Captain who actually finished the execution with a sabre.
Sam Khan	1880s	Colonel of the Christian Regiment; early records cite 40 guards.
Rev. L. Rosenberg	1868	750 soldiers (The first recorded mention of this figure).
Shoghi Effendi	1944	750 rifles in three files of 250 men each.

The "750" figure was first recorded by Reverend L. Rosenberg in 1868, based on oral reports from Baha'is in Adrianople nearly twenty years after the fact. It is a mid-19th-century invention designed to provide what British Consul Richard Stevens called "lustre" to a secular event.

The Grim Reality: Mutilation and the Town Ditch

The final proof of a non-miraculous event is found in the visceral descriptions of the remains. While hagiographies claim a "disappearance," contemporary diplomatic records describe a brutal, bungled execution. There was no "divine protection" over the bodies; instead, Baha'u'llah’s own writings admit to "mingled flesh and bones" and remains that were "enmeshed together" by the force of the bullets.

The Russian Consul, Anitchkov, provided the most devastating blow to the miracle narrative: he commissioned an artist to draw the mutilated remains as they lay in the dirt. This was not a celestial transition, but a point-blank execution often carried out in a guardroom (as noted by Gobineau) rather than in a grand display in the square.

The Fate of the Physical Remains:

• Mutilation: The bodies were riddled with bullets, so enmeshed that they were inseparable.
• The Ditch: The bodies were thrown into the town moat (the "town ditch") outside the city gates.
• Scavenging: Anitchkov recorded that the remains were "devoured by dogs," a detail that underscores the lack of any supernatural preservation.
• The Finishing Blow: Rather than a massed volley, the Báb was ultimately finished "at point-blank range" by Quch-Ali Sultan after the first attempt failed due to incompetence or the accidental severing of the ropes.

Conclusion: The Fabrication of a Sign

The "750 muskets" narrative is a manufactured myth, a product of religious imagination rather than historical documentation. By inflating the scale of the execution to a geometrically impossible size, the Baha'i community sought to transform a chaotic, poorly executed state killing into a "divine sign." However, the records of the Russian and British consuls, alongside the earliest internal accounts, consistently point to a standard platoon-sized squad.

So What? Reducing the execution to a "platoon" makes the story of the cut ropes and the initial miss plausible - soldiers miss targets and hit ropes in documented historical accidents. However, stripping the story of its 750-man exaggeration also strips it of its supernatural status. It transforms a "miracle" into a logistical mess and a clerical error. The cost of this historical accuracy is the loss of a divine icon; the Báb is returned to his role as an ordinary human figure, while the "750 muskets" remains a testament to the community's need to sanitize a grim reality with impossible lustre.

Sources:

https://senmcglinn.wordpress.com/2008/12/25/750-muskets/

https://www.paintdrawer.co.uk/david/folders/spirituality/bahai/bab/Martyrdom%20of%20the%20Bab%20(Sources).doc

https://archive.org/details/russian-book-about-the-bab

Video : Baha'u'llah admits to have supplied women to Subh-i-Azal

Video : How Ruhiyyih Khanum's marriage affected Shoghi Effendi's family and the Baha'i Faith?

Scandals in the world-wide Baha'i communities

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.

Source: https://bahai-scandals.blogspot.com

The Baha'i Guide to Picking Friends: Beware of "Spiritual Germs"!

The Two Faces of Baha'i Childhood

If you read a Baha'i brochure, you will see a lot of nice words about kids. They claim children should have an "independent investigation of truth." They even say it is "futile" to force a kid to follow a religion. It sounds like a lovely, free-thinking playground where every child is a little seeker of light.

But behind the scenes, Baha'i leaders are shaking in their boots. While they talk about freedom in public, they have unhinged rules about who Baha'i kids can talk to in private. It turns out that for a group that claims to love everyone, they are terrified of "spiritual germs." They have a long list of "scary" kids—like the "descendants of Azal"—who must be treated like a biological hazard.

The "Good" Kids

The Baha'i big-shots want their own kids to be "brilliant lights" in a "dark world." The "real object of life" for these children is to grow up and support Baha'i institutions. To get them ready, the leaders give them some very specific instructions on how to be "tender."

For example, Baha'i kids are taught to be "infinitely tender" to animals. If a bird is hungry, they should feed it. If a dog is sick, they should try to heal it. But there is a creepy catch. You are not allowed to be nice to "bloodthirsty wolves" or "poisonous snakes." The leaders claim being kind to a "pernicious creature" is an "injustice." This is a great lesson for a five-year-old: only be nice to the things we tell you are good!

The "Scary" Kids

This is where the hypocrisy gets real. Baha'i kids are told to heal a sick animal, but they are ordered to "strenuously avoid" a classmate if that child has the wrong parents. The leaders call this an "inherited spiritual disease." They aren't just afraid of people who disagree with them; they are afraid of their "grand-children" too.

According to official Baha'i letters, these "bad" kids have "imbibed" a false concept of the Faith since they were babies. They literally claim these children sucked down hatred with their "mother's milk." The leaders argue that these kids have a "lifelong habit of wrong thought" and that it takes a literal "miracle" for them to ever be normal. Imagine telling a ten-year-old that their desk-mate's brain is full of "poison" just because of who their grandpa was.

How to Shun Your Classmates

So, what happens if one of these "poisoned" kids shows up at your school? Baha'i leaders released a "how-to" guide on playground shunning in 1976. They told Baha'i students that they "must not choose" these children as personal friends.

But they want you to be sneaky about it. They tell students to avoid "companionship" without making an "open issue" in front of the school. It is a policy of stealth shunning. If a Baha'i kid is too weak to ignore the "poisoned" classmate, the leaders suggest an extreme move: the Baha'i child should just change schools. They would rather pull a kid out of class than risk them catching "wrong thoughts" from a "diseased" peer.

Saying Sorry for Your Parents' Sins

If one of these "poisoned" kids wants to join the Baha'i club, they can't just sign up. They have to "repudiate" their own family. That is a fancy word for disowning your parents and admitting they are "sinners."

It gets even weirder. High-level officials called the "Hands of the Cause" have to step in and conduct an interrogation. They have to "ascertain" if the child truly "understands the sin" of their parents. You aren't "clean" until a committee of grown men decides you have successfully squeezed all the "poison" out of your head and cut ties with your own flesh and blood.

Fear is the Greatest Name

Baha'is love to talk about the "independent investigation of truth." But how can a kid investigate the truth when they are told that certain people are "poisonous snakes"?

If Baha'i kids are supposed to be "brilliant lights," why are they so afraid of catching "germs" from a kid on the playground? It seems the Baha'i version of "freedom" comes with a "keep away" list. In this religion, you are free to choose any path you want—as long as it is the one the leaders picked for you, and as long as you never talk to the "diseased" kids in the back of the room.

Check the following:

https://bahai9.com/wiki/Child

https://bahai9.com/wiki/Descendants_of_Covenant-breakers

Mary Maxwell was the Baha’i Jezebel

(Ruhiyyih = “Handmaiden of Glory”, was the pompous title she was given), just a bit rude like some other poorly behaved Baha’is or was she actually that special JEZEBEL/JUDAS who ruined the faith this time around? In other words, do you all think it was the Hands as a collective or was it mostly her alone who absolutely destroyed the faith and infected it with her misplaced pride, snottiness and judgmental attitude? I am starting to think she really is patient zero of the greatest spiritual infections that have diseased the body of any faith. The faith is pure delusion now and her pressuring the Hands and insisting that Shoghi can “guide them from the Abha realm” had derailed everything.

It was being ruined in some ways but if she was a different person, she should have been able to secure an heir for the Guardian earlier or a successor after hum but she likely had other self interested priorities such as being a leader who would not submit to another Guardian beside Shoghi. She could have saved the faith but instead she sped up it’s demise. History will probably see her as a post-Shoghi villain eventually, at least by Baha’is with good sense. I hope to be wrong somehow so that is why I am asking. I don’t really see any other moments so pivotal that would have led to Baha’is being so terribly misled, beside her and her involvement with the Guardianship, or lack thereof once Shoghi passed away.

Just 27 people who called themselves head disciples elected 9 and derailed an entire faith. They never took a vote with all the Baha’is about the Guardianship, the Custodians just abruptly took power made everyone deal with it! How could the Hands and all of the Baha’is be so foolish as to follow all of this? Who is primarily to blame and at fault? Is Shoghi’s wife the main person to blame or were all the Hands and many Baha’is collectively wanting to ruin the Guardianship and the faith?

I stumbled upon this today and it seems like Mary Maxwell liked to use the faith’s funds for her personal use. It seems like she thought of being a Hand of the Cause as a job that she had because she did in fact get money for fun stuff in addition to necessities even though she brags elsewhere about how Hands of the Cause like her were not on an official payroll unlike other religions. It appears though now there was an unofficial payroll.

“Milly Collins who is mild and innured to long suffering exploded to me today (24 December). It seems that from the Baha’i Administration n treasury, Ruhiyyih Khanum receives $500.00 a month for her personal expenses. Her meals and lodging etc. all are apart from this. These expenses come out of the common living fund. This $500.00 per month is for her personal things. She likes to go shopping to buy presents for her friends and she is fond of dress and jewelry and pretty things that she pays for out of her monthly stipend from the Baha’i treasury.

Now this is exasperating to Milly who is a very provident and economical spender, even though she is a wealthy person of the cause and gives large sums toward Baha’i projects, she is economical with her own expenses – always well dressed but never extravagantly so. In the Guardian’s House, she has a small and not a comfortable room without running water. She has to run to the other end of the house from her room for the toilets, bath, running water and kitchen where she has to prepare her own food (she is on a diet) and taking it all in all her lot is not agreeable, nevertheless she takes it all because she thinks she must serve the cause in this way. But today she blew up to me at Ruhiyyih Khanum’s extravagances at the expense of the Administrative Baha’i Fund contributed to by the Baha’is in various lands. Of cource Milly is right in her righteous indignation.” These are from Mason’s notes and contradicts Haifan narratives so they will just say Mason is lying to suit their own narratives.

https://proofsforguardian.blogspot.com/2024/03/daily-observations-of-bahai-faith-in_78.html

$500 in 1957 is approximately $5,800 dollars today. MARY MAXWELL MADE OVER $5000 a month off the funds of innocent believers which is $60,000 per year!!! SHE MADE MORE MONEY OFF THE BELIEVERS THAN MANY PRIESTS! Oh that’s right, she was Shoghi’s wife so everyone had to bow down and kiss her feet regardless of her horrid behavior, give me a break! She was very selfish and thought of her own needs first, demanding there be no other Guardian so she could stay in the Guardian’s house and have nice things. Her “service to the Cause” was again probably just a job for her.

“One day in one of our recent meetings of the Hands in the Holy Land I made some reference to the Guardian’s House whereupon Ruhiyyih Khanum turned and said to me, ‘That house will never again be lived in by one but me’, thus showing by this remark her intention of maintaining herself in command of the nine Custodians of the Faith by eliminating the possibility of a series of Guardians to follow Shoghi Effendi. Of course she insists that the Guardianship is BADAH because when the cause has the Second Guardian installed (the one I saw in my vision) she will then no longer be in the supreme position that she now has taken and this she is not yet ready to accept.”

The Baha’is now have no courage or backbone and don’t have the strength to stand up for anything that really matters!

How many times has the administration lied by now and why don’t the Baha’is care? They obviously lie about enrollment numbers, lie about the end of the Guardianship and now lie about Ruhiyyih too if you try to bring it up. I almost cannot believe how many lies the Baha’is willingly stuff into their minds and just look the other way. Haifa is becoming more cult-like by the day and they somehow wonder why the growth continues to dwindle. All that administration does is slow people down and confuse them. It is no longer just useless, but getting in the way of real spiritual progress.

What was the main point of derailment in the Baha’i movement? I think it was when Mary was the Baha’i Jezebel by encouraging Baha’s to now worship the false idol of the infallible House in place of God and Baha’u’llah.

https://www.reddit.com/r/FreeSpeechBahai/comments/1qfm0s5/was_mary_maxwell_the_bahai_jezebel/

The account of Baha'u'llah's close confident, Jarullah

Mirza Hussain Jarullah was a neighbor and a close, devoted associate of Baha'u'llah during his time in Baghdad. According to Kashful Hiyal of Avarih, he was a trusted individual who held the keys to Baha'u'llah’s house and was responsible for daily tasks such as opening the home every morning to prepare tea and coffee.

Origin of His Name

It was a habit of Baha'u'llah to give his close followers titles that incorporated the word "Allah". Because Mirza Hussain lived in the immediate vicinity of Baha'u'llah’s home, he was given the title "Jarullah" which means "Neighbor of God".

The Incident in Baghdad

The most significant account regarding Jarullah involves an event that led to his eventual departure from the Baha'i faith:

• The Discovery: One night, Jarullah accidentally left a door locked with Baha'u'llah inside. Upon returning the next morning and opening the door, he encountered a foul odor.
• State of Intoxication: Jarullah found Baha'u'llah in a state of extreme intoxication, rendered unconscious by "pure wine" to the point where he could not be woken.
• Physical Illness: Because Baha'u'llah was too drunk to leave his spot, he had used an expensive crystal drinking glass as a temporary toilet (chamber pot). Jarullah was shocked and disgusted by the scene. He felt that someone claiming to be the "Supreme God" should have more self-control and dignity. He couldn't understand how a divine being could be so overpowered by his own physical needs and the effects of alcohol.

Defection and Criticism

Following this incident, Jarullah renounced his faith in Baha'u'llah. He began to publicly criticize and curse him, questioning how an individual who could not maintain his own physical dignity or control his intake of intoxicants could be considered a "Supreme God" or a reformer of the human race.

Official Baha'i Perspective vs. Avarih's View

• Baha'i Explanation: Baha'is who are aware of this story often claim that Jarullah was a "good man" who simply chose to withdraw quietly into seclusion to protect the reputation of the faith rather than because he had actually lost his faith.
• Avarih's Critique: Avarih views Jarullah as a key witness to the leaders' human fallibility. He claims that if individuals like Jarullah had been more vocal about what they saw behind closed doors rather than remaining silent out of a sense of "wisdom" or social preservation, thousands of people might have been saved from what he describes as a "web of deception".

A First-Hand Account of Baha'u'llah's True Beliefs

I [Avarih] myself heard directly that the late Sepahsālār, four years before his death, on a day when the writer together with Sayyid Naṣrallāh Bāqerāf had gone to his house—and Bāqerāf was inclined to proselytize him to the Bahāʾī faith—that late man listened to his words, smiled, and said: My father used to say: I was in the house of Mīrzā Āqā Khān, the Ṣadr-i Aʿẓam, when they brought Mīrzā Ḥusayn-ʿAlī Nūrī to me under guard, on the very day that Nāṣir al-Dīn Shāh had been shot. When they brought Mīrzā in, the Ṣadr-i Aʿẓam became angry with him and said: ‘Out of shared homeland ties I was a friend of your father, and he was not a bad man. It was possible that you might have taken his place and attained a position of chancery and courtly administration. But you are so wretched that you attach yourself to Sayyid-i- Bāb—about whom it is not even known what madness possessed him—and now you are also inciting the killing of the Shāh!’

Mīrzā immediately replied that he did not believe in Sayyid-i-Bāb, nor even in his ancestors … —but he immediately restrained his tongue. The Ṣadr-i Aʿẓam also rebuked him sharply and said, ‘Do not be impertinent,’ and gestured that they should take him away; so they took him. After his departure from the assembly and his entry into confinement, the Ṣadr-i Aʿẓam said: This statement which Mīrzā Ḥusayn-ʿAlī uttered involuntarily was in fact true—that he does not even believe in the Bāb’s ancestors [i.e. the Fourteen Infallibles]—because he is absolutely not upon the path of religion and has no aim other than misuse and exploitation.

[Kashf-al-Ḥīl, Vol. 1: 26 by Abd al-Husayn Ayati (Avarih)]

Source : https://www.reddit.com/r/BAYAN/comments/1q4a62e/account_in_vol_1_of_avarih_regarding_haba/

The Baha’i faith does not have clergy but instead maintains a rebranded, centralized, and authoritarian clerical system operating under a different name.

The Baha’i Faith’s public claim of having “no clergy” is misleading when examined in terms of function rather than terminology. Although it rejects ordained priests, the Baha’i Administrative Order, led by the Universal House of Justice (UHJ), performs all the core roles traditionally associated with a clergy. The UHJ is an infallible authority demanding absolute obedience, controlling doctrine through centralized interpretation and strict literature review, and suppressing dissent via censorship and punishment. Those who challenge the administrative authority risk expulsion (disenrollment) creating a powerful system of social and spiritual control.

The Baha’i leadership directs organized missionary activity, oversees standardized teaching programs, and manages mandatory financial contributions such as Huquq'ullah and national funds, reinforcing its clerical character. Despite its rhetoric of democracy and egalitarianism, Baha'ism is governed by a rigid, hierarchical structure with indirect elections that insulate top leadership from ordinary members. Cronyism, intolerance toward dissent, and ridicule of critics deepen the contradiction between the Baha'i faith’s public image and internal reality. 

The Baha’i faith does not have clergy but instead maintains a rebranded, centralized, and authoritarian clerical system operating under a different name.