Beliefnet

One day Nur posted about the way liberal Baha'is were being treated on the Baha'i boards at Beliefnet. Among other things, according to him, someone had called him a "manifestation of Satan." I decided to take a look. I saw some behavior that appalled me in some of the Talisman liberals and in some people I saw contending with them, but what I was most concerned about was the behavior of those who displayed allegiance to the House of Justice. Unfortunately I fell into contention with them sometimes.

I've always had a passionate interest in working with people I see as downtrodden and marginalized, no matter how wrong, blamable and disagreeable they seem to me. "Loving the unlovable, and befriending the friendless." That's why I was interested in Gay Baha'is, and reading the Gay Baha'i guest book, where I found the post that started this story. In this case, for me, the marginalized people were the Talisman liberals.

Besides that, after my initial shock, I never saw any threat to the Faith from the allegations and ideas of Talisman liberals. The only threat I saw to the Faith was from misbehavior in the name of the Covenant and the House of Justice. As I understood it, the people I saw contending with Talisman liberals thought they were defending the Faith against its enemies, so I tried to practice and promote what the writings say about that. That included fellowship with the "enemies."

Kamal, Asma and Izzat

I started with the ones whose words and behavior alarmed me the most: Kamal, Asma and Izzat. I rarely read their posts because they seemed so poisonous to me, but I read a few now and then.

As always when I feel alienated from someone, I tried to see things their way, to see the good in what they were doing, to see what I could learn from them, to look for ways to serve their interests, and to learn things about them that would inspire feelings of affection and esteem.

Asma

I remember Asma saying that the cruelty in her posts was intended to to punish followers of the House of Justice for their wrongdoings, so I started reading her posts and Kamal's more often because I thought I deserved the punishment. We ended up having some thoughtful discussions about some Baha'i social issues, and we collaborated on a letter I wrote to the House of Justice, asking for it to meet with Asma and some other people to discuss their grievances.

Here are some extracts from her posts to me:

It was indeed to avoid conflict that the founders established this principle on the very sound basis that if you can get people around a table to sit, discuss and negotiate on their differences there will be less need to bring armed conflict into the situation. The process is designed to produce consensus, to produce a decision that all can support. Sadly the AO has twisted that process into one in which it can impose an approved solution of its own rather than one produced by those most directly concerned.

Conflict resolution need not resolve conflict - what it attempts to do is devise a means whereby those in conflict can resolve differences without resort to violence. That is why it is a process rather than an event and why it must include all not just a select few who really have no internal conflict between them.

I'm on the record since early days at T9 in advocating that Baha'i Wars have to be and will ultimately be settled by negotiation. There were indeed interesting posters on that forum who seemed to speak for the AO and seemed to be exploring ways of bringing that negotiation about. But the discussions always fizzled out at that stage at which they could only be processed by commitment from the AO to join a process of negotiation. I concluded that the AO at that stage had determined it could win the conflict and therefore had no interest in settlement.

That situation may have changed. It could be argued that the exhortation from the UHJ in the current plan to reach out to the disaffected may signal such a change. But it also reflects a total misunderstanding of the position and stance of the disaffected.

The current conflict was started by the House and the application of its misinformed directives and policies. It and it alone is in a position to undo that and embark upon a peace and reconciliation process. Efforts by grassroots Bahais to reach the disaffected are doomed to failure because they cannot resolve the issues that are at the core of the conflict and cannot establish the procedures within which they and future issues can be peacefully addressed. It is more likely that the effort to reach out is no more than effort to seek to have the disaffected brought into the fold without any issues being resolved.

Kamal

Kamal never responded to me directly at Belief, but she never said anything against me. Here are two extracts from her posts to other people:

Love without Truth, Freedom and Justice is not Love. It is meaningless and dangerous. It is fluff and self-delusion. But, hey, if it works for you.....

Baha'u'llah sought a balanced and integrative approach of tariqat and shar'iat. In other words, a tariqat without shari'at leads to undisciplined flights of fancy (like many of todays New Agers for example) and antinominaism. While shar'iat without tariqat is like a shell without a kernel.

She did respond to me later, on the talk.religion.baha'i list. Here's part of one of her posts to me there:

If you're a man of service, expend your time in _the real world_, not with a bunch all-talk, no action cultist dumbfucks like the baha'is. Start by volunteering at the homeless shelters and soup-kitchens in your local area. Join, write letters and help organizations like AI & Greenpeace, etc, on behalf of prisoners of conscience throughout the world or causes which require urgent attention. Adopt an orphan and raise them as your own child. If you can spare it, go help someone needy for money, like the countless numbers of young single teenage mothers in the city projects who are out on their luck and because of their dire financial situation end up getting sucked into the spiral of drugs and prostitution. Anglo white people, especially and above all baha'i ones, talk the talk, but have never ever walked the walk. If you mean what you say, go do whatever you think will make the world a better place without any thought to what a bunch of asshole Zionist lackey CEOs managing their Disney-land theme park in Haifa on behalf of their ZioNazi paymasters and the Israeli tourism industry are thinking! If you can do that, then come here and preach.

Izzat

Izzat systematically ignored some people, including me, even when we addressed her by name. Occasionally she posted a message explaining why she didn't respond to fundamentalists. I learned some things from a Web site about her interests and her initiatives for peace and justice. I posted some ideas about the possible meaning of what she was doing at Beliefnet:

This appears at the top of Izzat's page:

"My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight."

--Robert Frost

Her vocation is writing. A review of her "Into the Ruins: Poems." says "This is a poetry of connectedness, which asks us to bring together broken parts of our cultures (both East and West) and search for a new identity, perhaps a new world order." Just as she seeks in her vocation to bring to light broken parts of the cultures of East and West, in her avocation she seeks to bring to light broken parts of the community she was hoping would unite East and West, inviting the rest of us to search for a new identity, in our quest for the new world order made possible by the revelation of Baha'u'llah.

She surprised and delighted me with this response:

Jim,

I'm not sure how to respond, to not only something other than the party line, but actual insight....

After that we exchanged friendly posts now and then for a few years. Here is part of one of her posts to me:

I hope that someday I might truly achieve such a unification of intent and purpose. Alas, so much of it is out of my control.... requires an intelligence, rare . . . that understands what is at stake, on the OTHER side. I grieve, to report, no EVIDENCE yet.... The baha'i wars have long been my refining fire.... my descent into Hell.

Six years, you know, six years.... Thirty, really, in other terms. I don't mean any of that as self-pity, either, just facts, sobering, demanding.

So few, rare, and precious to me, are those who can even begin to see and consider the antinomies involved, so few on both sides of the chasm I'm trying to bridge....

I fear the tapestry, to use your metaphor, has grown to so many megabytes, so many websites even, that few can now follow the thread....

Incidentally, the latest filament, by the way, I regard as such, is my new book The Bower of Nil. Michael McKenny reviewed recently on talk.religion.baha'i, or those interested can link to it off the bottom right corner of my web page.

Mashiyyat

Mashiyyat mostly posted about her husband's removal from the membership of the Faith by the House of Justice for no other reason, according to her, than the liberal ideas he was promoting. We were on friendly terms from the beginning, and had several thoughtful discussions about Baha'i social issues. Here are some extracts from her posts to me:

I'm mindful of the process I went through, and that led me to become a liberal/dissident/insidious-lukewarm/proto-CB Baha'i (Hey, you decide which category, if any, I fit into).

It was through getting together with Baha'is in study groups and discussions of a more personal nature - both face-to-face and on the Internet - that my views developed. Bad and disappointing experiences with the Baha'i administration, and with individual Baha'is, made me aware of the growing gap between my own views and those of mainstream Baha'is.

Jim, your strategy of encouraging your hypothetical friend to attend study classes and to speak her truth is a good one. It sets in motion a process. I agree with Tery that the outcome of that process is in the lap of the gods. She may find that there is a lot of tolerance and acceptance in her community, and her fears are largely groundless. [Kalimat] and I found that we were accepted, tolerated, and even valued in our own geographic community - until [Kalimat] was unexpectedly expelled, on orders from the House, that is.

Nearly all of the liberal Baha'is were once active in their geographic community. Some of us remain active in our local Baha'i community. We sometimes remember the process we went through, and I hope we manage to recognise that process in others.

Next: The chronicles

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