The Bahai Insider

19 Myths Baha’is Love!

Myth #1: The Bab and Baha’u’llah was anti-slavery

Truth: Both owned, bought, and sold black slaves. Baha’u’llah forbade the slave trade in the Aqdas, not slavery itself. One of the first laws that the Confederate States of America inacted was to make the slave TRADE illegal. But slavery itself continued. Baha’is in the Ottomon Empire and Egypt continued to own black slaves until these areas fell under British rule.

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An Open Letter to the Bahai Faith by Dennis mcEoin

Cambridge
England
7 January 1979

Dear Friends,

I have read your latest (November 1978) Newsletter with more than usual interest and sympathy, and feel that I would like to add a few words in its wake.

I shall not try to expand on Tony’s account of our seminar here in Cambridge, much as it is tempting to do so – from the report in your Newsletter, he seems to have done a thorough job of leading you through a very complicated set of issues raised there. The full report, as stated, is available, and dwells more thoroughly on the major topics mentioned by Tony.

I was most interested by the discussion reported on pages 3-4 of your summary. As Tony knows, this is a topic about which I personally feel very strongly. In the simplest terms, I fear that the Baha’i faith as it stands today is in very real danger of becoming irrelevant to the problems faced by people in the world outside – if it has not already become so. As the faith has become more and more organised, with, as you so rightly point out, a growing obsession with figures, numbers, and statistics for their own sake, and a tendency to evaluate the significance of the faith as a religion in terms which have no bearing whatever on this (such as how many languages literature has been ‘translated’ into), we seem to have become more and more introspective and withdrawn, exclusive rather than all-embracing. As a result, most Baha’is appear to be completely ignorant of the issues facing modern man. And, what is worse, they don’t care – if you suggest that hey read, say, Marouse [Ed. unclear word], most Baha’is react with a disdainful, slightly superior shrug: ‘we have the writings, we don’t need to waste our time on the book of false physicians’. As one friend, for some time an NSA secretary (not in the U.K.) put it to me: ‘nothing worth reading has ever been written in the twentieth century’. In fact, it is not even a case of whether people are up on Patti Smith or Malcolm Bradbury’s latest novel, they have yet to read Marx or early Koestler! Instead, the community is locked into an obsession with issues which were vital before or just after the first World War and, what is worse, are a lot less forthright now about issues such as war, poverty, race, and so forth that they were then. To speak about race integration in the States in the 20’s was genuinely progressive. Last year at a Youth Conference in the U.K. (facing a major race problem and the threat of growing fascism – the country’s fascist party is the fourth largest in the country), an NSA member told the youth that we should have nothing to do with the issue of race, since it is political!

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Ask any Bahai these two questions…

The Baha’i Faith is indeed a strange religion. The more I study it, the more I am amazed at its level of duplicity and intent to deceive people. Let me explain this.

You know there are those kinds of people who like to please everyone. And they will say anything – right or wrong to ensure that people like them or that they don’t lose their appeal. Sure, for some time we like them. But then their “sweetness” starts getting to you. Over a period of time, this “sweetness” starts getting sickening. You then want them to come clean in discussions, when it comes to giving their opinions and speak the right thing. You want them to speak the facts and not what people want to hear. Ever met people like that?

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Why do False Prophets praise the West so much?

It is no surprise that the false prophets have been lavish in their praises of the governments of the West. Perhaps this is because they have got support from there only. This is despite the fact that from a culture point of view, from a Shariat (law) point of view, the West is completely against the teachings of these false prophets.

An example of this is the prayer of Abdul Baha (the son of Bahaullah, the founder of the Bahai Faith) when he went to America in 1912. The American culture promotes alcohol and pork (which the Bahai Faith forbids). It is also one of the biggest advocates of homosexuality (which the Bahai Faith is silent about). Nevertheless, America is a supporter of global democracy, albeit selectively (very like the Bahais who like to protest only against Iran and no other country – Read more).

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