Bahai/Talk

You know, it had never occurred to me - are there Babists who didn't accept Bahaullah? What grounds did he give for them to accept his revelation? What was the reaction in Islam?

I've examined the Bahai faith to some considerable extent, and as a personal opinion, if I was ever going to belong to an organised religion, this would be the one. A damn fine bunch of people.

As far as Babi's go, there was a small number who rejected Baha'u'llah, I don't remember their fate exactly, but they are written about in the book "God Passes By" by Shoghi Effendi. When Baha'u'llah died he specifically instructed that the Faith was to be led by his son "Abdul'Baha", but when Abdul'Baha passed away he left instructions for the Faith to be administered by his grandson Shoghi Effendi. When Shoghi Effendi died, he passed authority to an elected body called the "universal House of justice". A guy called Mason Remy declared in contrary that he was to be the ruler of the faith from then on, and he attracted a handful of followers, less than a few hundreds (compared to several million Baha'is). I considered including them in the article, but decided against it as they are such a tiny minority - it would also create a precedent for including every minute fringe group under every religion article.

His grounds for accepting his revelation were that he fulfilled prophecy in both the Bible and the Koran. The reaction by the Islamic faith was savage to say the least, the Baha'is have been persecuted and executed en masse ever since the 1860's. Over 100 000 Baha'is have fled Iran since the Islamic revolution, specifically to Canada and Australia (both countried passing resolutions condemning Iran for its treatment of the Bahai's).

You know, after all this comment, a lot of the above probably belongs in the article... some more research is needed (to validate some of my statements) before it goes in as "the facts". - MMGB

Manning, I'm afraid the precedent has been set and that we have the gnostics? being presented as Christians, not to mention entries on every other group under the sun! Yep, the persecution does, explicitly (I remembered that, though not clearly), as does the architectural style (which is neat). I think you turned a sentence around - not his grounds for accepting his revelation, but theirs is what I was after. If the Bab was dead, who validated Bahaullah as the Promised One? --MichaelTinkler

He did I guess, and the Babi's accepted him. Apparently there was a fairly general consensus that he was the "one" even before he personally announced it in 1863. According to the Baha'i history I have read, Baha'u'llah was in prison in a place called the "Siyah Shal" which was a sewer where they chained up dissendents and he was told of his destiny "by God" in the late 1840's. (The Bab was executed by firing squad in 1844).

I think there is a difference between the Gnostics (who have a fairly significant number of believers in the Middle East and an established literature) and a fringe group such as the "Orthodox Baha'is". A better comparison would be with the "Potters of God" who I sincerely hope are not included under the article for Christianity. The may deserve their own article (again, questionable due to their size, they only have two web pages,both by the same guy) (BTW - I have revised some of my statements above after doing a bit of research) - MMGB

(a huge discussion about Gnostics and Chrisitanity was cut out and moved to Christianity/Talk)

Maybe the Orthodox Baha'is deserve a page as well, but frankly there is so little evidence of their existence. I've been searching the web pretty hard and I'm almost willing to revise my estimate of membership down - there is a "Society of Indian OB" which seems to have 2 members, another in Australia which seems to have 1, and an American "National council" which only mentions 3 names. Their webpages make them out to be much more significant, but close examination doesn't bear this out. - MMGB

Ain't web-presence a wonderful thing? You used to have to have people who would stand on corners and pass out brochures to have a decent cult! I agree that gnosticism should be an autonomous thing, not a subset of Christianity. It is needling to the Christians and condescending to the Gnostics to not take seriously their differences. --MichaelTinkler

I think Mason Remy should be mentioned. Sure, his following was small, but he seems to be reasonably well known (or at least, this isn't the first time I've ever heard his name mentioned). We have no shortage of space to write on religious groups. And its not as if the Remy was just some lone individual setting up his own religion in his backyard. -- SJK

Someone added what looks like a cut and paste job from a usenet FAQ. Did they have permission? Else it should be deleted. (And even if they have permission, it needs to be seriously reworked if we are to retain it...) -- SJK

Where on earth did that come from? Have you seen a usenet FAQ that this looks like it was cut from? Maybe someone just wrote a decent article. (Later - oops, ignore that, I checked past history and I see what you meant now - MMGB

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Article said: "The Bahá'í Faith also holds a (non-voting) seat at the United Nations." What on earth is that talking about? It sounds to me like it is claiming they are permanent observers to the General Assembly, but they are not. If all it means is that they are in consultative status with the Economic and Social Committee, it should say that. (And that isn't that big a deal -- thousands of organizations have that status.) -- SJK

Well why don't you research it, find out the actual state of affairs and put that in, rather than deleting something and complaining about it here. And a side comment meant nicely, this "delete and whine" behaviour is quite out of character for you, Simon - having a bad day? :) Manning

Sorry... actually I've got a end-of-year exam tommorow for one of my uni courses, natural language processing... :) -- SJK

fair enough Simon - I was just a bit surprised, you're normally much more cheerful :) Good luck with the exam. - MMGB