How Australian Ex-Baha'i Rachel Woodlock was treated by Baha'is after she accepted Islam.

Rachel Woodlock

 The most unsettling reaction came from an old friend (Baha'i) of my parents, a highly respected elder of the community. I was attending a Baha'i meeting with John, and towards the end of the evening, Mr Aristu* pulled me aside to ask why I had converted. "You know," he said, leaning in close, "in Iran, if it were the other way around, you'd be killed." He seemed to enjoy startling me. I went home in tears. I guess even peaceable Baha'is don't deal well with apostates.

Read full story here :

http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/the-big-read-rachel-woodlock-tells-how-her-conversion-to-islam-was-a-personal-awakening/news-story/6432d30befc7b9ed1719a2da319056cd

Australian Baha'i converts to Islam

Four Australian thinkers come together to ask and answer the big questions, such as: What is the nature of the universe? Doesn't religion cause most of the conflict in the world? and Where do we find hope? We are introduced to the detail of different belief systems - Judaism, Christianity, Islam - and to the argument that atheism, like organised religion, has its own compelling logic. And we gain insight into the life events that led each author to their current position. Jane Caro flirted briefly with spiritual belief, inspired by 19th century literary heroines such as Elizabeth Gaskell and the Brontë sisters. Antony Lowenstein is proudly culturally, yet unconventionally, Jewish. Simon Smart is firmly and resolutely a Christian, but one who has had some of his most profound spiritual moments while surfing. Rachel Woodlock grew up in the alternative embrace of Baha'i belief but became entranced by its older parent religion, Islam. Provocative, informative and passionately argued, For God's Sake encourages us to accept religious differences but to also challenge more vigorously the beliefs that create discord.

Iranian Jews are more faithful to Iran than Iranian Bahai's

Iranian Bahai's whichever part of the world they are, their main goal is to defame Iran.

Why I Abandoned the (Haifan) Baha’i Faith? Extract from Dale Husband's blog.

...If only everyone in the world became Baha’i, I was told, we would be at peace and prosperity forever.

What a wonderful vision! But human nature will NEVER allow for it! The reason is that the leadership of the Baha’i Faith, from its founder, Baha’u’llah, to the Universal House of Justice today, claims to be infallible because it is guided by God. Yet we know that Baha’u’llah, his son Abdu’l-Baha, Abdu’l-Baha’s grandson Shoghi Effendi (the Guardian of the Faith), and the members of the Universal House of Justice were/are all HUMAN BEINGS. What evidence do we have that ANY of them are infallible? NONE! And if you cannot question the will of a leadership, what do you in fact have? Tyranny! And what does tyranny always lead to, according to history? Corruption and injustice! And that, in turn results in the system breaking down over time. Indeed, the very idea that any human being, human run institution, or human product is infallible is sheer nonsense. It is the most dangerous idea in the world!

Also, I finally began to see that the Baha’i Faith also has errors, contradictions, and failures of its own, despite being less than 200 years old. It was my coming to understand this that finally led me to leave the Faith with a heavy heart. The hypocrisies of the Baha’i Faith’s own dogmas can be summed up as follows:

⦁ 1. State that religion no longer needs clergy……and replace them with leaders that are as authoritarian as the clergy ever was.
⦁ 2. Claim that men and women should be equal……but then deny women membership in the all-powerful leadership council of the religion.
⦁ 3. Condemn as heretics those who believe in your religion but dare to challenge the claims of your religion’s current leadership, while at the same time claiming to welcome as friends the followers of other religions.
⦁ 4. Claim there is harmony between science and religion, but also claim that anything your leaders say is absolutely true, even if on topics science is expected to address.

Then there are the scandals I discovered which really disturbed me, even after I had left the Faith.
⦁ 1. The Violation of Abdu’l-Baha – Baha’u’llah in the The Kitáb-i-Ahd, or Book of the Covenant (his Will and Testament) appointed Abdu’l-Baha as his successor, but also started that Abdu’l-Baha’s younger brother Mirza Muhammad Ali should be below him in rank and also be his immediate successor. Abdu’l-Baha disobeyed this commandment by depriving Muhammad Ali of any rank and replacing him as successor with his grandson, Shoghi Effendi, in his own Will and Testament.
⦁ 2. The Madness of Shoghi Effendi – Abdu’l-Baha, in the same Will and Testament that appointed Shoghi Effendi as Guardian of the Cause of God, stated that the Guardian must appoint either his firstborn or another branch (male descendant of Baha’u’llah) as his successor in his own lifetime. Shoghi Effendi not only had no children, but he expelled from the Baha’i community every single one of Abdu’l-Baha’s own descendants, making it impossible for him to keep his grandfather’s commandments. He also died in 1957 without leaving a Will and Testament of his own as required by Baha’i law, throwing the Faith into a crisis.
⦁ 3. Failed prophecy cover up – An early edition of Baha’u’llah and the New Era by J. E. Esselmont stated a prophecy by Abdu’l-Baha that by 1957 “Universal Peace will be firmly established, a Universal language promoted. Misunderstandings will pass away. The Bahá’í Cause will be promulgated in all parts and the oneness of mankind established.” But what really happened that year was Shoghi Effendi’s death. The prophecy was deleted from later editions of the book.
⦁ 4. Attack on Kalimat Press – In 2005 and 2006,The National Spiritual Assemblies of the Baha’is of the United States and the United Kingdom issued orders to Baha’i communities under their command to stop selling books published by Kalimat Press, a small Baha’i owned book publishing company, for publishing a few books that they happened to disapprove of. As a result, the company was crippled in its operations.
⦁ 5. Dr. Hossein Danesh, sex offender – A member of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of Canada, Danesh was stripped of his psychiatric license in the 1990s after being accused by several of his patients of sexual abuse. Instead of being expelled from the Baha’i community, he was sent to the Baha’i Landegg “university” in Switzerland, a private school which failed in 2005. Returning to Canada, he was hired by the NSA of Canada as a marriage and family therapist for fellow Baha’is.
⦁ 6. Italian Baha’i financial scandal – Franco Ceccherini, a longtime member of the Italian National Spiritual Assembly, was found in 2007 to have stolen over 360,000 euros over 14 years while serving as the Assembly’s treasurer. This was discovered only when the Italian government audited the Baha’i community and then charged it 275,000 euros in back taxes, crippling financially the entire Italian Baha’i community.
⦁ 7. Stephen Birkland, Baha’i secret police detective – In the 1990s, as a member of the Continental Board of Counselors for North America, Birkland led an investigation of Baha’is running an internet forum known as “Talisman” where members could openly question and debate issues regarding the management of the Baha’i communities. Birkland’s abusive tactics drove several Baha’is, including Juan Cole and John & Linda Walbridge, to resign rather than be condemned as covenant-breakers for taking part in Talisman, which was then shut down. Birkand was later rewarded for his zeal by being appointed to the International Teaching Center in 2008 and then he was elected to the Universal House of Justice in 2010.

So at the end of 2004, realizing that I had to remove myself from that community outright as a matter of honor, I wrote the following to the National Spiritual Assembly (NSA) of the Baha’is of the United States:

After years of investigation and soul-searching, I have finally come to the sad understanding that I can no longer bring myself to believe in Baha’u’llah or any of the institutions established in His name, including the Guardianship and the Universal House of Justice. I am totally convinced that the Baha’i Faith is doomed to fail in its mission to bring peace, unity, and a Golden Age to humanity and I therefore resign from my past membership in the Faith. Goodbye.
Regretfully,
Dale Husband

I composed that letter on my computer and then mailed it in January of 2005. A few weeks later, the NSA replied that they had accepted my resignation and expressed hope that I would one day decide to return. That looked like denial to me, so I dismissed it and threw away the letter. Then I cut completely all personal ties to the Baha’is in the Fort Worth area. Despite this, I stayed silent about my defection from the Baha’i Faith until October 19, 2007, when I posted my first blog entry attacking it. Encouraged by the feedback I got as a result, I stepped up my efforts until I found myself in battle over the years with various members of my former religion, all of whom only showed me why I had no business being among them anymore!

Source : https://dalehusband.com/2017/01/22/why-i-abandoned-the-haifan-bahai-faith/

The story of Abbas Amanat (Former Baha'i of Jewish background)

By Juan Cole

Abbas Amanat, former Baha'i of Jewish background

He was brought up a Baha'i, in a Kashan family that had traditionally been Jewish but that had converted to the Baha'i faith in the previous generation. His brother Husayn designed the monument at Azadi square in Tehran, and also the seat of the universal house of justice. His father is an accomplished historian and is writing a mult-volume history of the Kashan Baha'i community. His brother Mehrdad is also a historian and co-authored the section on Qajar Iran in the prestigious Cambridge History of Iran. As a young intellectual at Tehran University and then later at Oxford, Abbas noticed that there was an authoritarian and anti-intellectual streak to the Baha'i organization, as exemplified in bigots such as Furutan (who had played a very sinister role in the attack on and suppression of Mazandarani's scholarship back in the 1930s and 1940s). Abbas therefore very wisely decided rather early on that he wanted nothing to do with the Baha'i organization. However, he has said repeatedly and publicly that he is "in love with the Bab."

Abbas wrote his dissertation on the Babi movement at Oxford under the direction of Albert Hourani and Roger Owen, two of the magisterial historians of the Middle East in our times. He then came to the United States to teach at Yale. He did not ask to be transferred from the UK to the US Baha'i community, but some helpful person in Wilmette heard of his advent and entered him into the US rolls. Abbas, naturally, declined to submit his major historical study of the Babis for their approval or censoring to the motley assemblage of insurance salesmen, electrical engineers, bit part actors and failed businessmen who staff the upper echelons of the Baha'i administration. His book was published by Cornell University Press in 1989.

The Baha'i Distribution Service, to its credit, felt that Abbas's book would be of interest to the Baha'is, and therefore contracted with Cornell University Press to buy 500 copies.

When the book was distributed to the Baha'is, it generated large numbers of angry letters from the fundamentalists in the community who have the impression that they own the religion and can tell people what they may or may not say. They were upset that it departs from the details of Nabil's Narrative (which many have elevated to the status of infallible scripture) and Shoghi Effendi's God Passes By (ditto). Moreover, some religious bureaucrats in Wilmette became uneasy about carrying a book by an author who was on the rolls but who had declined to have it reviewed. A dispute therefore broke out in Wilmette as to whether the Baha'i Distribution Service should continue to carry the book.

This dispute was ultimately submitted to the universal house of justice, which in reply declared that Abbas Amanat was not a Baha'i, and therefore the Baha'i Distribution Service was welcome to distribute his book, as it would be to distribute the book of any non-Baha'i author. I have a copy of this letter, but it is in my file cabinets somewhere and I am not going to spend time digging it out just to satisfy Susan Maneck, who may believe it or not as she likes.

In the good old days before the universal house of justice's membership began being stacked with former counselors (who tend to have an Inquisitorial mindset, since part of their job is Inquisition), the only way to be removed from the rolls of Baha'i membership once you were entered on them was to write a letter explicitly renouncing belief in Baha'u'llah. Professor Amanat has never done so, although it is no secret that he long ago dissociated himself from the Baha'i organization and its authoritarian practices. I find Susan Maneck's speculation about his internal, private, existential beliefs, based on nothing more than hearsay, to be extremely rude and the height of slander (since she is bringing up slander). Has she ever had so much as a private conversation with Professor Amanat? I find her, and her organization's, willingness to expel Baha'is from their own religion by haughty and arrogant fiat, to be not only offensive but indicative of a quite dangerous mindset.

In any case, the US Baha'i authorities have slightly more integrity about these things than do the Canadian ones, since they declined to remove Professor Amanat from the rolls simply on the say-so of the universal house of justice. They have sought from him a clarification of his views, but he maintains that his views are nobody's business.

However, I will indulge in a little speculation. I think that if the Baha'i religious authorities really desire to make themselves so odious that they succeed in chasing out of the religion all the major Baha'i professors at major universities, that they will succeed in this. Apparently the real purpose of these intellectual pogroms is to ensure that it may be said that learned persons such as Denis MacEoin, Abbas Amanat and Linda Walbridge are not Baha'is, but the real Baha'is are ignoramuses who know no Middle Eastern languages, know nothing serious about Baha'i history, and adhere to a fundamentalist and intolerant point of view on the Baha'i faith, and who have managed to get themselves elected to high office (often through the most shameful campaigning and manipulation).

cheers Juan