Why are Baha'i communities so often rocked by Scandals?

Zia Shahri, a member of the NSA of Norway, was convicted and imprisoned for sexually assaulting a foreign woman with a declared mental age of 8. The Baha'i community remained silent and concealed the case until it was eventually exposed by another Baha'i.

Despite the gravity of the situation, the Baha'i administration never issued a public apology. When the topic was raised in a Telegram group, several prominent Baha'i teachers attempted to justify, deny, or defend the incident, rather than express remorse or accountability.

What makes this even more disturbing is that Zia Shahri had been teaching "ethics" and Ruhi classes for years. God knows how many Baha'i and non-Baha'i children and youth may have been at risk, yet the community chose silence to protect its image.

Instead of sending counselors or psychologists to speak with and investigate the children who had attended his classes, the Baha'i institutions opted for secrecy and suppression preserving the sanctity and reputation of the Assembly above all else. The victim's family was foreign and non-Baha'i, which is likely why the case reached court.

Had the victim been a Baha'i child, the same silence and cover-up would have prevailed. In the Baha'i system, issues are expected to be reported only to the UHJ, which consistently handles such matters in secrecy and often protects powerful insiders.

This is precisely why such scandals occur. The obsession with preserving reputation over justice creates an environment where abuse can flourish unchecked...

Shared on email: Name withheld on request.

The 1844 "Edict of Toleration" is claimed by the Baha'i Faith as a fulfillment of prophecy, but it's all baloney

Hey everyone,

Like many of you, I was raised reading books like William Sears’ Thief in the Night and George Townshend’s writings. We were taught that 1844 wasn’t just the year of the Báb’s declaration, but a magically verifiable year in secular history for various reasons including that the Ottoman Empire issued an "Edict of Toleration" that allowed Jews to return to Israel, fulfilling biblical prophecy.

I recently decided to dig into the actual secular history of this Edict and it turns out -- surprise, surprise -- that the narrative we were sold is a historical myth borrowed from 19th-century Christian doomsday preachers.

If you look at the actual historical record, the Bahá'í apologetic argument relies on four false pillars. Here is the breakdown of what actually happened.

Falsehood 1: "Jews were strictly excluded from Palestine for 1,260 years."

We were taught that Muslims banned Jews from the Holy Land until 1844. Historically, this is completely false.

While Jews certainly faced periods of severe hardship, historical and archaeological records show a continuous Jewish presence in Palestine over the centuries. In fact, under Muslim rule, Jews were living in Jerusalem.

Furthermore, eight years before the 1844 edict, a legal document (an 1836 firman by Muhammad Ali) was already published to legally arrange the resumption of Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe. There was no blanket 1,260-year ban.

Falsehood 2: "The 1844 Edict allowed Jews to immigrate."

The 1844 "Edict" was a real diplomatic event, but it had absolutely zero to do with Jewish land rights or immigration to Palestine.

It was actually a narrow diplomatic concession about Christians. An Armenian Christian had converted to Islam, then reverted to Christianity, and was executed by the Ottomans for apostasy. European powers (who wanted to protect their Christian missionaries) were outraged. The British Ambassador flexed his diplomatic muscle and threatened the Ottomans until they agreed to stop executing Christian converts.

The actual text of the Sultan’s declaration on March 22, 1844, was simply:

"Henceforward neither shall Christianity be insulted in my dominions, nor shall Christians be in any way persecuted for their religion."

As a Journal of Bahá'í Studies paper notes:

"The Edict, therefore, was not about Jewish immigration... Broader questions of religious toleration—such as might presumably involve Jewish land rights in the Ottoman Empire and Jewish immigration—are not mentioned in the Edict."

Falsehood 3: "1844 was the catalyst for the population boom."

The demographic data also undermines the claim. The Jewish population in Jerusalem was already naturally increasing before 1844, completely undermining the idea that this specific edict was the catalyst.

According to demographic records for Jerusalem:

• 1800: 8,000 to 10,000 total residents.
• 1840 (Four years before the edict): 12,000 to 14,000 residents.
• 1860: 18,000 to 20,000 residents.

The legal frameworks that eventually allowed early Zionist pioneers to purchase land in Palestine didn't happen until over a decade later, through secular Ottoman modernization laws (the Tanzimat), specifically the 1858 Ottoman Land Code and an 1867 law that finally granted foreign nationals the right to purchase real estate.

Falsehood 4: "1844 fulfilled the prophecy of the times of the Gentiles."

So, if this edict had nothing to do with Jews, where did Bahá'í authors get this idea?

They got it from 19th-century Christian millennialists who were desperately trying to prove that the apocalypse was happening in 1844. An English clergyman named Edward Bickersteth first published about this edict. Later, a Christian writer named Henry Grattan Guinness used convoluted "prophetic math" to tie the 1844 Edict to the 2,300-year prophecy in the Book of Daniel.

Guinness needed an event in 1844 to prove the decline of the Ottoman Empire, so he grabbed the apostasy edict and inflated its meaning. Decades later, Bahá'í authors simply copied Guinness’s homework without checking the historical context.

As the research points out:

"Had the Edict been important to Jewish immigration, one would expect to find references to it in works by Jewish historians. Instead, had it not been for the close friendship between Lord Ashley and the Reverend Edward Bickersteth, it is even doubtful that the Edict would have been referred to in connection with biblical interpretations."

TL;DR

The 1844 Edict of Toleration was about stopping the execution of Christians who apostatized from Islam, driven entirely by European colonial pressure. It didn't mention Jews, it didn't mention Palestine, and it didn't grant a right of return. The "proof" used in Bahá'í apologetics is a recycled 19th-century Christian myth, and demographic data proves Jews were already living and migrating there long before 1844.

Has anyone else looked into the historical claims made in Thief in the Night? It’s wild how much of it unravels once you look at standard historical records.

Source : https://old.reddit.com/r/exbahai/comments/1u356r7/the_1844_edict_of_toleration_is_claimed_by_the/

Baha'i schools are part of the Baha'i conversion machinery targeting innocent children.

How Baha’is Targeted and Trapped Iran’s Minorities?

The Zoroastrian Strategy: Gutting the Community Future

The Baha’i movement focused heavily on the Zoroastrian communities in Yazd and Kerman, where conditions were harshest. To a people "exhausted" by being treated as "unclean," the Baha’is sold a vision of radical equality. They explicitly repudiated the idea of "pollution," which was a powerful psychological bait. However, this wasn't just a general outreach; they specifically targeted the community’s future—the "upwardly mobile" mercantile elite. To lure these leaders in, they used the "Sassanian trick," claiming Baha’u’llah was a direct descendant of Yazdigird III and the ancient Persian monarchs. This was a calculated move to appeal to Persian pride. Furthermore, their tactics were notably sneaky: they allowed new converts to keep participating in their old rituals so they wouldn't "fully break" with their families. The numbers speak for themselves: this predatory strategy gutted the Zoroastrian community, reducing its population by approximately 4,000 people as they were absorbed into the Baha'i fold.

The Jewish Conversion: A Staged Psychological Operation

The 1877 conversion movement in Hamadan provides a clear look at how Baha’is used "kindness" as a stage-managed performance. The movement began after a Jewish doctor, Hakim Aqa Jan, accidentally gave strychnine pills to the wife of a Baha’i leader named Muhammad Baqir. Fearing the typical violent death that would follow such a mistake, the doctor was shocked when Muhammad Baqir showed him "mercy." This was not a random act of grace; it was a carefully staged psychological operation designed to impress a man used to being insulted.

This performance was repeated by Baha’i teachers like Mulla ‘Abdu’l-Qani, who would invite minority guests to his home and deliberately drink from the same glass as them. By publically violating the "pollution" rules, they proved they were different from the Shia majority. They combined these displays with the "Messiah" claim, telling Jews that Baha’u’llah was the long-awaited savior. They even weaponized their own persecution. Because Shia Muslims believe suffering is a sign of truth, the Baha'is used their "sacrificial blood" as a marketing miracle, tricking minorities into believing their movement was holy because it was hated.

The Christian Exception: Cultural Dissonance and Dishonesty

While the Baha’is made progress with Jews and Zoroastrians, their efforts with Iranian Christians (Armenians and Nestorians) were a total failure due to "cultural dissonance." The Baha’i sales pitch offered Christians nothing they didn't already have. Iranian Christians felt culturally superior, were highly westernized, and enjoyed the protection of powerful European missionaries and embassies. They didn't need Baha’i "equality" because they were already looking to the West for their future.

When their tricks failed, the Baha’is turned to outright dishonesty. They often used Christian missions as bases for their own conversion efforts and even "feigned" being Christians to get Western protection. They were so dishonest in this "feigning" that missionaries eventually had to force a specific test: any Baha'i wanting to join the church had to explicitly deny Baha’u’llah as the "return of Christ" before they could be baptized. The Baha'is were willing to pretend to be anything to survive and expand.

A Calculated Universalism

The success of the Baha’i Faith in 19th-century Iran was not a miracle; it was the work of "expert synthesizers" who knew how to hunt in a broken society. They relied on four main techniques:

1. Scriptural Appropriation: Claiming their leader was the "return" of figures like Shah Bahram or the Messiah to fulfill every group's prophecies.
2. Sassanian Genealogy: Using a fake royal bloodline to appeal to Persian national pride.
3. Social Performance: Deliberately breaking "pollution" rituals to shock and gain the trust of the marginalized.
4. Weaponized Victimhood: Using the "Shia paradigm" of suffering to market their movement as divine.

Stay cautious of this "kind" trap. The Baha’is were masters of making a calculated expansion plan look like universal love. They knew exactly how to find the most desperate people and offer them a home built on a performance.

Why Christians Reject the Bahá’í Faith?