Baha’i Justice

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http://bahai-library.com/published.uhj/counse…
THE INSTITUTION OF THE COUNSELLORS
A Document Prepared by the Universal House of Justice
January 29 2001

Quote
Protection of the Cause (pp. 15-16)

Although deepening the friends’ understanding of the Covenant and increasing their love and loyalty to it are of paramount importance, the duties of the Auxiliary Board members for Protection
do not end here. The Board members must remain ever vigilant, monitoring the actions of those who, driven by the promptings of ego,
seek to sow the seeds of doubt in the minds of the friends and undermine the Faith. In general, whenever believers become aware of
such problems, they should immediately contact whatever institution they feel moved to turn to, whether it be a Counsellor, an Auxiliary
Board member, the National Spiritual Assembly or their own Local Assembly. It then becomes the duty of that institution to ensure that
the report is fed into the correct channels and that all the other institutions affected are promptly informed. Not infrequently, the responsibility will fall on an Auxiliary Board member, in coordination with the Assembly concerned, to take some form of action in response to the situation. This involvement will include counselling the believer in question; warning him, if necessary, of theconsequences
of his actions; and bringing to the attention of the Counsellors the gravity of the situation, which may call for their intervention.
Naturally, the Board member has to exert every effort to counteract the schemes and arrest the spread of the influence of those few who,
despite attempts to guide them, eventually break the Covenant.

The need to protect the Faith from the attacks of its enemies may not be generally appreciated by the friends, particularly in places where attacks have been infrequent. However, it is certain that such opposition will increase, become concerted, and eventually universal.
The writings clearly foreshadow not only an intensification of the
machinations of internal enemies, but a rise in the hostility and opposition of its external enemies, whether religious or secular, as the Cause pursues its onwardmarch towards ultimate victory. Therefore, in the light of the warnings of the Guardian, the Auxiliary Boards for Protection should keep “constantly” a “watchful eye” on those “who are known to be enemies, or to have been put out of the Faith”, discreetly investigate their activities, alert intelligently the friends to the opposition inevitably to come, explain how each
crisis in God’s Faith has always proved to be a blessing in disguise,
and prepare them for the “dire contest which is destined to range the
Army of Light against the forces of darkness”. Anonymous222

Susan wrote:
Interesting that the Remeyites would applaud Fred who rejects the very notion of a Guardianship and the Will and Testament upon which it is based.

I applaud anyone who recognizes and informs the rest of the believers about the usurpation and corruption that has gone on in the Baha’i Faith and the way the current administration functions in complete opposition to the ideals and principals the Baha’i Faith stands for. The Baha’i Faith is for those, in my point of view, who emulate the principals and teachings of the central figures of the Faith. Principals that you don’t just give lip service to, but that you exhibit. Say: all are created by God! I applaud you for your work, as your work is just as much a service as well. We are all servants. Victor

Interesting that the Remeyites would applaud Fred who rejects the very notion of a Guardianship and the Will and Testament upon which it is based. Susan

Marcello wrote:

I’m a Christian and don’t need you to teach me my own history. The “locus of authority” that you speak of was responsible for the stagnation and corruption of the Christian faith — just like the UHJ. Christianity survives today precisely because the Christian community rejected that authority.

Apparently I do. This locus of authority (Apostolic Succession) was largely responsible for the survival of Christianity which to this day is rejected only by a minority of Christians. That rejection, which took place after the sixteenth century, has been responsible for the fragmentation of the church, not its survival. Susan

James wrote:
No one religious group can claim to have copyright over their religious words and symbols.

As I mentioned earlier this injunction with the National Spiritual Assembly is trying to enforce came as a result of the Remeyites attempting to do precisely that. They lost their lawsuit and the trademarks in question were given to the NSA. Obviously we don’t have a copyright over the ‘words’ of our religion but our religious organization does own certain trademarks. Susan

Amen Sister. You’re beautiful. Wonderful suggestions and references to Tablets that would be amazing to read and discuss. Thank you. Victor

So many of us are so passionate about the revelation of Baha’u-llah. So many of us dearly love the teachings and try to the best of our ability to follow what we believe to be the truth. Perhaps there are untranslated documents in Haifa that could clear up a lot of these differences. For those interested in determining if the Will and Testament is valid, why not submit it to a new panel of experts? For those wondering about the meaning of the covenant, why not translate the Lawh-i-Hizar Bayti, one Taherzadeh claims is “one of the most momentous Tablets of Abdu’l-Baha concerning the Covenant and its significance in this Dispensation.”? Or for those struggling to see who are the “sons” of Abdu’l-Baha, lets see the translation of Lawh-i-Khalil, a tablet describing who can be considered his “sons”. Perhaps all of us could arrive at the truth together through some pleasant sort of consultation that is not laden with insults, accusations and name calling. We all love Baha’u-llah and should be able to respect each other. Janice

Also regarding the “few” in numbers that the ignorant use as an excuse to marginalize and belittle; Baha’u’llah says:

XCII. The Book of God is wide open, and His Word is summoning mankind unto Him. No more than a mere handful, however, hath been found willing to cleave to His Cause, or to become the instruments for its promotion. These few have been endued with the Divine Elixir that can, alone, transmute into purest gold the dross of the world, and have been empowered to administer the infallible remedy for all the ills that afflict the children of men. No man can obtain everlasting life, unless he embraceth the truth of this inestimable, this wondrous, and sublime Revelation.

(Baha’u’llah, Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u’llah, p. 183) Victor

I will applaud Fredrick for all his work at exposing the sad horrible situation with the Sans-Guardian Baha’is. Hey, in 1987 I was arrested at the Temple in Willmette for being inside and praying as I was hoping to have my wedding there the next day. We had been there the previous day handing out some booklets and the next day they recognized me as being “one of them” and they called the cops and I was hauled off to the Willmette Police Station. Fun fun.

Has anyone ever considered the fact that Shoghi Effendi knew the will & testament backwards and forwards and in the Will Abdu’l-Baha says that it is “Incumbent” upon the Guardian to appoint in his own lifetime him that shall become his successor. Has anyone ever thought that by saying Shoghi Effendi failed to appoint a successor is saying Shoghi Effendi is a Covenant-breaker! Shoghi had almost forty years to appoint a successor and he failed to do it? Even though he knew very very well that it was incumbent, mandatory, neccessary, required? Shoghi Effendi, the meticulous, detailed, hard-lined, to-the-letter, down to business guy that he was, left as an important a requirement of this from the Will of Abdu’l-Baha by the wayside and failed to accomplish this incumbent requirement from the Covenant? I DON”T THINK SO. They are all calling Shoghi Effendi a Goddamn Covenant-breaker! The Guardians are not required to name their successor in a Will. The only two criteria are that they must be a son, “Aghsan” and that they must be appointed by the previous Guardian. That’s it. To add anyother requirements like he has to be appointed in a Will or that he has to be made known to the people first, or anything that is added is not the criteria established in the Will & Testament. Abdu’l-Baha told everybody that Mason was his “Aghsan”….the whole Baha’i world he told. And then Shoghi Effendi didn’t “appoint” Mason to be the president of the IBC, if you read the cablegram, Shoghi says that he “greatly welcomes” Mason as its president, because the IBC Shoghi set up WAS the UHJ as he told everybody. The IBC was the child that
Shoghi said would grow and effloresce into the UHJ with the same president and head. As an adult, you still have the same head as when you were a child, it has just grown and developed along with the rest of your body. You didn’t change heads. By Shoghi creating the IBC and lauding it as the most incredible event in the history of the Baha;i faith second only to the three central figures of the Faith, The Bab, Baha’u’llah and Abdu’l-Baha, Shoghi was telling everybody that this was the UHJ and that he was “welcoming” the only person in the Baha;i world that fulfilled the criteria for sitting at the head of the UHJ, which, in the Will & Testament, is the Guardian. This was a BIG TEST for the believers. Baha’u’llah says, “Though you say ‘I believe’, do you not think you will be tested?” This was the greatest test, as the test is always on the Covenant, and the majority of the Baha’is throughout the world failed this test.

Oh, yeah I would like to address also the notion everyone seems to have that says “Oh those ones can’t be anything important, they are so few in numbers and we are so many”..I like how in the Baha’i Faith we accept all the scriptures and Abdu’l-Baha and Baha’u’llah were keen on quoting biblical scripture as I will as well.

“Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction and those who find it are many. But the gate is narrow and the way hard that leads to everlasting life and those who find it are few.”

Matthew 7:13-14

Victor

The response by members of the Wilmette Bahai denomination here to this article by The Chicago Tribune ought to give any thoughtful person reason for pause and reflection. Below are a few excerpts for historical context.

Many of the comments demonstrate the truth of what Professor Juan Cole of the University of Michigan observed way back in 1998 in his book Modernity and the Millennium: The Genesis of the Baha’i Faith in the Nineteenth-Century Middle East, Columbia University Press, writing that the Baha’i administration has increasingly come under the control of fundamentalists, “stressing scriptural literalism … theocracy, censorship, intellectual intolerance, and denying key democratic values” (196).

Similarly he wrote online in 1998,“The very technique of the more glaze-eyed among these people is to unbearably bully a Baha’i whom they don’t like, use unjustified threats of declaring him or her a CB [Covenant Breaker (heretic)] to silence the individual, and if the person will not be silenced, then to depend upon the gullibility of the Baha’is in refusing to listen to any victim’s story because, of course, the Baha’i institutions are infallible and divinely guided and could never do anything wrong. It is a perfect racket.”

Professor Juan Cole, in February 23, 1999:
“There is nothing to be puzzled by. Right wing Baha’is only like to hear the sound of their own voices (which are the only voices they will admit to being “Baha’i” at all). Obviously, the world is so constructed that they cannot in fact only hear their own voices. They are forced to hear other
voices that differ from theirs. This most disturbs them when the voices come from enrolled Baha’is or when the voices speak of the Baha’i faith. The way they sometimes deal with the enrolled Baha’is is to summon them to a heresy inquiry and threaten them with being shunned if they do not fall silent. With non-Baha’is or with ex-Baha’is, they deal with their speech about the faith by backbiting, slandering and libelling the speaker. You will note that since I’ve been on this list I have been accused of long-term heresy, of “claiming authority,” of out and out lying
(though that was retracted, twice), of misrepresentation, of ‘playing fast and loose with the facts,’ and even of being ‘delusional.’ I have been accused of all these falsehoods by *Baha’is*, by prominent Baha’is. I have been backbitten by them. This shows that all the talk about the
danger a sharp tongue can do, all the talk about the need for harmony, for returning poison with honey, for a sin-covering eye, is just *talk* among right wing Baha’is. No one fights dirtier than they when they discover a voice they cannot silence and cannot refute.

I suggest recalling the words of Judge Diane S. Sykes, to the lawyer for the Wilmette Baha’is in their attempt to deprive other Bahai denominations of essentially their religious freedom and liberty, quote, “Clearly raises some Constitutional concerns.” Again, the 3-minute Mp3 file of her actually making this statement in the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals may be found at
http://www.fglaysher.com/bahaicensorship/USCo…

It’s long past time that the people of Chicago and the United States should know the Wilmette Baha’is for the fanatical and oppressive organization it actually is. The Chicago Tribune is to be applauded for allowing its readers to decide for themselves.

Frederick
The Reform Bahai Faith