Critique of Bahai Administration

Baquia9 in response to online bahai agent Peter Terry:

Peter, I heartily agree. Theologian has a whiff of specialized knowledge and authority. We are so lucky that 'Counsellor' has no such connotation!
I mean, what would we do then?!

Some crazy fools may argue that the title counsellor has a whiff of authority and specialized knowledge - after all there are actually people who study and work very hard to become real ones.

But those people who do are clearly covenantally weak and deserve to be unenrolled yesterday.

I also agree fully where you say:

"There are to be no religious specialists, no individuals who, by
virtue of special training are recognized by the community and
governing institutions of the Faith as authorities and experts on the
Faith."

As we all know, the group working at the Archives and at the Center for the Study of the Texts are just a bunch of teenagers who sit around eating nachos and play nintendo all day (my sources reveal they're switching to x-box 360 as soon as it hits store shelves in Haifa).

After all, if you actually use people who have studies Arabic, Persian, history, semiotics, linguistics and other such wacky things what will people think!?!?! What? Do you think we would actually let specialists work on translating the Holy Writings?!?!

We MUST protect the Faith!

No way we are letting a bunch of elitist, beret wearing, cappuccino slurping, pipe smoking intellectuals come into our fold. Ha! They'd really like that, wouldn't they? We'll show them.

Now, if you'll excuse me I'm off to do Ruhi Book 21 (for the 15th time
- or is it book 15 for the 21st time?)

Baquia9 in response to online bahai agent Ian Kludge on 26/11/05:

> If someone claims that their mission is to "purify" our understanding of the
> Writings, then s/he is also claiming that the understanding of others is
> impure or polluted. If not, why would purification be necessary?

First of all, Sen is not claiming that his understanding is better than others, all he says is that he is attempting to contribute to improving our understanding of the Writings.

But for now, let us assume that he is doing what you and the Secretariat claim he is doing - for now let us go along with the unproven allegation. IOW let us assume that he has states his mission is to "purify" our understanding of the Writings.

How is this different from the mission of the UHJ when it claims to "elucidate" the Writings?

Main Entry: elu•ci•date
Pronunciation: i-'lü-s&-"dAt
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): -dat•ed; -dat•ing
Etymology: Late Latin elucidatus, past participle of elucidare, from
Latin e- + lucidus lucid
transitive senses : to make lucid especially by explanation or analysis
intransitive senses : to give a clarifying explanation

By claiming to "elucidate" the UHJ is claiming that the understanding
of others is not "lucid" or muddled. If not, why would "elucidation"
be necessary?

If you are quick to charge Sen with this 'crime' then please remember
to whip out the handcuffs for the UHJ also.

Wahid Azal on 27/11/05:

I think the bottom line is pretty obvious here: it is not about
interpretations or personal perspectives or fundie v liberal.

Baha'ism is a multi-million dollar mafia run business, whose product line has
long ago expired its use by date.

Unfortunately there are many employees and beneficiaries to this business racket, many of whom - such as Maniac and I would argue also Juan and Alison - are direct
beneficiaries, financially.

It is a survival, pocket-book sort of deal here we're talking about. Like all mafia type businesses, whereby all are guilty and all have their hand in the cookie jar, the shareholders and soldiers will hang on for as long as possible and damned be anyone who tries to pull them away from it.

The manner the Marshalls treated you, albeit calculated, is outwardly an act of political suicide. Good!

That said, please know that the Marshalls treat anyone who steps outside of
unspoken groupthink parametres in such manner as you have been treated.

It is a control mechanism by control freaks, who deep down, like Alison, are mentally ill.

Alison's one-dimensional fundielooney bhaktiyogic dependency on Husayn 'Ali Nuri reveals one of two things:

1) a neurotic manic-depressive co-dependent, dysfunctional personality,
who perhaps has suffered a nervous breakdown or three, or

2) someone with a vested financial or political interest in maintaining a status
quo that is solely about their interests. No other explanations are
possible.

You and your acumen and honesty in asking questions became a threat to
the pseudo-liberal, pretend (self-designated "loyal") oppositionists.

Loyal opposition, unless one is taking about a fully transparent
democratic system, under a totalitarian system such as Baha'ism is an
oxymoron and a sign of outright trickery.

Juan Cole has known this system is fascist, yet he has continued to regard himself a loyal opposition.

Juan Cole has known about these Bayani histories - most of the important ones being on his h-bahai - as well as the Tablet of O Creator of creation, yet Juan Cole continues to regard himself a loyal opponent and in word, at least, a Baha'u'llahist.

Juan Cole knows about the mind-boggling corruption of the current system, yet he continues regarding himself a loyal opponent and Baha'u'llahist.

Juan Cole very well knows this Husayn 'Ali was a thug, yet Juan Cole professes loyal
opposition to this system and thus a professing Baha'u'llahist.

Juan Cole knows that his sources in the Sharon article - a man he bad-mouthed as a Zionist Likkudnik on Grok -can be blown away by me in two seconds flat, yet Juan Cole continues the charade of loyal opposition from the background and thus professes Baha'u'llahism, obviously for a personally vested interest.

Please note that the Marshalls do not do anything - including pulling up their underwear in the morning - without the overt string-pulling and go ahead of the Imam al-Nifaq Juan Cole.

Juan Cole is neck deep in the politics of everything that has been going on here since 1996. His withdrawal was a bogus ploy and had nothing to do with Stephan
Birkland.

Juan Cole has lied, lied, lied, lied, lied, lied and lied some more, and hurt many, many, many people via his drooling acolytes such as "I-need-a-shag" Alison and her demented so called husband.

All of what has happened to you lays squarely at Cole's feet. No one else.
Cole has no integrity. Cole has no scruples. Cole has no conscience.
Cole only cares about Cole and Cole's interests.

In short, Juan Cole is the devil, and that is why he is a Baha'u'llahist because Husayn 'Ali was the devil and his ultimate manifestation. Fortunately Cole, as an
unassailably established fact, is an idiot and his calculative, scheming modus operandi has always given him wrong answers.

His continual embarrassingly incorrect prognostications regarding Iraq are
a glaring example.

As uncompromising and harsh my position sounds on the outward, phenomenal scheme of things, for good or bad, it is the unalloyed, unequivocal truth of the matter, and there is a huge track record here to prove it now:

from Nushin Vahdat and Peggy Caton all the way to Nima Hazini, Larry Rowe and Lord knows who else.

As you know my operative motto in life is to speak the Truth even if it be the acme of blasphemous heresy and to fight the opacity of the Great Lie by all means necessary.

Those teachers in the fight include Muhammad Ali, Sun Tzu, Mao and Ho Chih Minh, all of whom taught me how to fight and win by getting the enemy to ultimately weary and thus screw itself -- which I have.

In the fight you don't hold back because holding back tantamounts to allowing the enemy to get the upper hand. An enemy such as a nefarious, sinister bloc who has no scruples such as the Cole/uhj alliance must be hit, hit mercilessly hard, and ultimately smashed and eviscerated.

Anything else allows these people to continue and thereby hurt others. Yet, withal, I thank the Lord Almighty Godhead that, when all is said and done, at the end of the Day the Truth Always Wins Out.

W

Wahid Azal on 28/11/05:

It appears that you and Alison have been picking up on each other,
actually, establishing that you have been working together --

proving my thesis that the liberal game is bogus and nothing more than a snare
to entrap real opposition and people with real balls, set up by the
establishment itself.

What happened to Larry is precisely what happened to me to the letter of a script that you cultists follow, and have followed with everyone.

I picked up months ago that when your attacks against Larry were getting more vitriolic here on TRB there was something going on on the other end. I sat back, waited and watched.

Lo and behold, it came as I saw and predicted. Alison put the axe to Larry. Why?

Because Larry was open enough to revise his views given irrefutable evidence put in front of him, and because unlike congenital cultists such as you - whose only operative mindset is that of the wolf pack -

Larry actually opens his mind and thinks and does not have the sort of bizarre, indefensible loyalties to mafias as you assholes do. He asked questions and followed logical premises to their logical conclusions, which the so-called liberal guard did not find to the liking of its core political agenda, i.e. its own survival and tacit
cooperation with the system.

I put Husayn 'Ali's Lawh-i-Badi' II in front of him and he went to Sen and Juan, neither one of whom have given him answer. Juan has outright gone into occultation. He asked for the Will and Testament of the Point - a document your uhj won't deign
to touch with a ten foot pole lest it humiliate itself further than it
has since it wrote to Badi' Villar last year -,

he asked question, thorny ones, the die was cast. Larry was marked. Larry was treated *exactly* as I was treated by Cole/Lee incorporated in 2001-2002.

In fact, Larry and I were treated exactly as Nushin Vahdat, Peggy Caton
and a long list of people have been treated by this manufactured, bogus
opposition of the mafia cosa nostra whom you fuckers serve.

Well, bitch, I have news for you: the party is over! More and more Larry's
are beginning to come out of the work, all eventually coming to my POV.

In time - a very short time - there will a mass of Larry Rowe's coming out of the woodwork, all of whom with solid axes to grind with you bastards, and at that time it is when I step in and pull the plug from the sockets of your corrupt, miserable existences once and for all.

Count on that, if it isn't already established fact :)

Susan Maneck on 27/11/05:

>would say though that what Alison has said sounds awfully familiar;
> sounds as though it could have come from the lips of the UHJ secretariat
> itself, if it had lips, or a brain. Sounds very much like fundamentalism.

Uh, Larry, when has Secretariat at the World Centre *ever* used the
term "Haifan tradition"?

It sounds like Alison has picked up on the same thing I have, that you
appear to be making claims for yourself.

Larry Rowe on 27/11/05:

Well I wouldn't call someone a fundamentalist as a slur just as I wouldn't
imply that someone is a Covenant Breaker because they are not within my
personal definition of the 'Haifan tradition'.

I would say though that what Alison has said sounds awfully familiar; sounds as though it could have come from the lips of the UHJ secretariat itself, if it had lips, or a brain. Sounds very much like fundamentalism.

I always knew that liberal fundamentalists were a possibilty, I just never expected Alison Marshall to give voice to such fundamentalist drivel.

If we have no connection with the Divine through our own hearts just exactly where is such a connect to be found?

I know I'm owed an apology but I don't expect one, after all fundamentalists rarely admit fault let alone appologize.

When I first had the experience of a coreligionist Baha'i implying that I am a Covenant Braker it was a bit of a shock but not very hurtful because the person wasn't close to me. What they said after I had told them that I belived that women will one day be welcomed onto the U.H.J. was: " that sounds like Covenant Breaker talk ".

This of course is the same thing as saying: " your a Covenant Breaker ", but without having the guts to come out and say it directly.

When Alison said in her post to me:
"This is where we part company. I don't think your message to Talisman is
within the Haifan tradition.

If you had a direct link to God independent of Baha'u'llah, then you would
be able to produce verses to prove it. But you have never produced anything
that would lead me to think you have such direct access to God through your
heart."

... it wasn't only a shock but it was hurtful as well. We are all entitled
to our own personal interpretations, as well as the conscientious expression
of those interpreations, without someone impling that we are hertics for
doing so.

Alison of all people should understand this, apparently she doesn't.

Yours Larry

Alison Marshall displaying loyalty to the Haifan tradition on 25/11/05:

Larry

This is where we part company. I don't think your message to Talisman
is within the Haifan tradition.

If you had a direct link to God independent of Baha'u'llah, then you
would be able to produce verses to prove it. But you have never produced
anything that would lead me to think you have such direct access to God through
your heart.

Alison

Ron House in response to Susan Maneck on 25/11/05:

Didn't say "of the kind Nima is describing". I just said spying.

For an institution to take the trouble to keep track of people, to
accept and retain and act upon information received - about non-Baha'is
at that - and to inform other institutions with the clear expectation
that they too will track those people, that is communist Rumania-style
citizen-informant spying.

Just put together how many levels that information was passed through, and at each stage the decision was taken to keep on passing it.

(For me to see it means it kept on moving after being received in this country.)

Yet according to posters here, Nima is a laughable fool, taken seriously by no one with a brain cell to their name.

What pathetic paranoid organisation takes such efforts over laughable fools?

William Pleasant wrote on 21/11/05:

Can you look at someone and say: "Hey, man, why don't you become a
Bahai?

It's really great! You'll be free to live under the authority of a
pack of wealthy men (and only wealthy men) who are totally
unaccountable--they are spies, cops, prosecutors, juries, judges and
executioners all rolled into one.

And on top of that, they are thelegislative and executive branchs, too.
And get this! You'll get far less access to justice and due process than a South Bronx crack dealer in handcuffs. Sounds pretty tasty, eh?"

Cal Rollins on Baha'i agent Peter Terry (20/11/05 on Talisman):

It seems to me you're want me to mixup what Allah said and Baha'u'llah forbade
after thinking on slavery as a social problem for a united world. Right? Are
you expounding new Baha'i doctrine, dogma, or whatever?

I think you may be one of those "emblematic" Baha'is who tries to simplify the
complicated and problematic by sitting in a painted-in corner attempting to
divide believers into groups--one that sits in your corner and sputters and
others who're out there trying to explain things to a sceptical public.

After almost a week, Paul Hammond briefly responds.
Ron House 24/10 on trb:

PaulHammond wrote:
Steve Marshall wrote:
Ron House wrote:
But he has so far been unable to answer! _Something_ about my question
has utterly silenced him.
A killfile? I haven't killfiled Ron, but it appears he's already decided what
he thinks of me without me saying anything.

Well, remaining resolutely silent to a question from someone genuinely seeking to find a reason to trust you, yet still replying all the while to other messages, including venomous nonsense attacks from elsewhere, whilst two fundies go on an immediate and quite inexplicable personal attack whose only imaginable purpose was to convince other readers that you were silent because you were rightly offended by the gross odiousness and outrageousness of my question, did seem to indicate that you were playing a coherent game with those two in order to avoid answering the question and yet retain your plausibility here.

However, I have now seen that you addressed some quite pleasant words to me in another forum at the end of last week.

I had wondered on day one what other explanation there could be for your silence and, discerning a wisp of another possible reason, I had just a vague inkling that you might say something after a delay of some days if the appearances I mention above were not the reason.

As you did do exactly that, it seems that we understand each other perfectly, so I withdraw my original question.

Ah well!

Just bear one thing in mind before you go around ah welling:

My question was at heart an expression of a level of trust in you: namely, that if you had posted one concrete disagreement with the AO, I would have taken your word for it completely and trusted your word without proof or evidence.

But you couldn't do that.

You can answer people who directly accuse you, with the vilest direct accusations, but you couldn't do that.

Ron House on 21/10/05 trb responding to Sekhmet (Paul Hammond is nowhere)

Sekhmet wrote:
> That's quite possible, because I wasn't giving this thread my full
> attention until approximately your third iteration of your request.
> So, are you telling me that your initial post was in response to one of
> Paul's "put up or shut up" posts to Nima? If so, no wonder you got
> caught in the crossfire, if you jumped in apparently supporting Nima's
> position.

In fact I said why I wondered, namely because I couldn't recall seeing Paul disagree with the mainstream Baha'i teachings; nothing to do with Nima; and I added a mea culpa, that this might be because I have overlooked or forgotten something Paul has said.

But let's say you're right. Given that Paul is willing to trade blows with Nima, of all people, why didn't he say "But Ron, I've already said such and such and so and so" or maybe "That easy; I think X and they think Y."

It would have been simplicity itself to answer, by Paul himself. And given that he answers Nima, insults and direct accusations included, and others too, accusing him directly of all kinds of dishonesty, surely he wasn't offended by such a polite question.

But he has so far been unable to answer!
_Something_ about my question has utterly silenced him.

Instead, _immediately_, All Bad goes for the jugular, maligning me and my post, and then telling a proven lie.

Paul, strangely, is unable to answer a civil question when he daily trades insults against someone who denounces him in unbelievable language.

And All Bad seemingly _aware in advance_ that Paul won't be able to take on that seemingly simple question! Just think about it.

> If you have been reading continuously, you should already know the
> answer to your questions.

Fine.
I said that the fault might all be mine in the original post.

So why not simply put me right and move on?

Why is Paul unable to answer a polite, civil question?

If one had a small reason to doubt him before, one surely has a much bigger one in the light of that stark fact.

> Paul has already told us (more than once,
> IIRC) where and when he encountered the Baha'i Faith, what attracted him
> to it, what his activities were as a seeker and a "friend of the Faith",
> why he never actually enrolled, and why he often defends us against
> certain types of critics in this newsgroup. And even recently he's told
> us a couple of things he doesn't like about our teachings and our
> administration.

I haven't seen those posts.
And Google is absolutely hopeless for tracking down someone's old articles, although I did try, there are some 10000 of them to plough through.

All I found were mundane articles, mainly on Nima.

Today I found one in which he is not willing to accept "Shut up and don't criticise ruhi" as a legitimate exercise of free speech.

If I had noticed even that before my first post, I would have been convinced of his bona fides.

But in the light of what has since transpired, I would want much more convincing. More particularly, whatever is going on, one or two other people here are clearly in cahoots with it.

> I make no claims as an adviser, but if I were advising you on how to
> avoid misinterpretation of your actions, I might have advised you to
> choose a non-controversial thread in which to break your silence, rather
> than jumping into the middle of an argument that has been going on for
> years, and I would have advised you especially to avoid appearing as if
> you were supporting the foaming-at-the-mouth bully rather than the "good
> guys".

Well said. I tried to be as polite and accepting of any fault upon myself as possible, but I think, in light of what we have seen, that it wouldn't have mattered.

> Perhaps Paul is simply Not Here right now. I haven't seen any posts from
> him in days, not since his most recent post telling Nima to put up or
> shut up.

I have.

> But there's no requirement that you answer; some things are nobody's
> business but your own, unless YOU want to share them.

None at all. He was welcome to tell me to put my head in a bucket. But where do the hypersensitivities of the _others_ fit in?

Ron House 20/10/05 trb in reply to Sekhmet (note Paul Hammond is nowhere)

Sekhmet wrote:
> Maybe because everybody's spent so much time "trading it" with Nima over
> his bullsh*t accusations about all and sundry who disagree with him on
> any subject that somebody coming here seeming to believe him is going to
> get the bum's rush as a matter of course. In other words, you've been
> caught in the crossfire, but your insistence on staying there despite
> Paul's clear and unequivocal answer to your first question ("...I have > never been a Baha'i"), puts you in the position of being Nima's partner
> in crime, whether you mean to be there or not.

I din't ask Paul whether he was a Baha'i.

I observed that he said that, and told him how he could convince me, for one.

That was the one and only post, and it produced the truly astonishing hyperreaction we have witnessed here. So Paul has never answered my first question, because my first question isn't the one you think it is.

>>Something's going on behind the scenes here, you can be sure of
>>it. Anyway, time will tell.
> Yes, what exactly are your behind-the-scenes reasons for suddenly
> dropping into a newsgroup that you rarely ever visit nowadays, seemingly
> only to question Paul's integrity?

You have it backwards.

The real question is why I read this newsgroup continuously and yet stopped posting.
I have not posted here of late because I promised someone who paid me a visit on behalf of a certain organisation that I wouldn't post here for a certain period, and even though that agreement has since expired, I have remained silent so that there could be no possible misinterpretation of my actions.

In that time, Paul's persona as it is represented here has puzzled me.

But, wishing to give someone every benefit of the doubt, I told him, mildly, politely, how he could convince me.

BANG! Other people entirely explode in a frenzy, and Paul is curiously silent.

And one more thing: I do think that participants in a news group have a legitimate interest in finding out whether they are dealing with others who are on the up-and-up. It makes a great deal of difference to community building, trust, cooperation, finding solutions, and so on, whether other participants are really who they say or whether they are adopting the persona of the impartial onlooker whilst being something else entirely.

I have been challenged, like most long term posters, many times over the years and when it happens, I simply answer the questioner. It happens to newsgroup participants all the time, on every newsgroup. And likewise, if I post on a religious NG, I expect I might be asked a religious query; if not, I am being extremely naive.

So that said, let's see what might have occurred here:

I post my question, Paul ignores it, Randy points out that Paul is an atheist, we all go home, issue ended.

But do you _really_ think that what actually happened makes any sense at all unless something very odd is going on?

The police have the concept of the guilty demeanor, behaviour so hyperdefensive that it makes no sense in an innocent person. Bad was going for the jugular from square one, which is simply irrational on the public facts as understood by readers of this NG.

Ron House 19/10/05 on trb, responding to paid agent Sekhment:


Maybe.

I said at the outset I was fully prepared to be corrected for such mistakes on my part.

But the incredible reactions of Susan and especially Bad cannot be explained by my making some stupid oversight.

Why the sheer desperation in maligning me and mischaracterising my original question?

Why should such a mild question be followed by the complete absence of someone who has the guts to trade it with the likes of Nima?

Something's going on behind the scenes here, you can be sure of it. Anyway, time will tell.

Ron House 20/10 on trb, in response to Maneck and Kohli's defense of Hammond:


sman...@jam.rr.com wrote:
> This is what you get for being fair-minded, Paul.

What is what you get? He got asked a question, in very polite terms.
Boo hoo, what a tragedy. He keeps on saying that he is not a Baha'i.

I told him how he can convince me. When I typed the post, it was just a quick toss off, a spur of the moment thing based on my own perceptions of small oddities in Paul's posts that I have read over the years.

I thought very little of it, except as a quick way Paul could bolster the solidity of his reputation here. I expected that he would toss off a quick two or three-liner saying, for example, that he disagreed with this or that policy of the uhj.

Any non-Baha'i I know who has such intimate knowledge of the religion could do so
a dozen times over without breaking a sweat.

And this is a man who can trade it with the most foul-mouthed individuals on this NG, returning shot for shot. Why on earth would I think he'd have the slightest problem with such a question?
But now look at it!

You jumped into the fray immediately, and Bad, even more than you, positively busted a gasket!
The propaganda machine went into overdrive to misrepresent my post and malign me, using dishonest debating techniques and at least one outright lie about what I had written.

The two of you sprang into action immediately, as if you knew that Paul would need urgent help on this one. And guess what - apparently you were right: he has been conspicuously amongst those not present.

He hasn't shown his face on this thread to either meet the question and supply some minor factoid or else to tell me to put my head in a bucket. It is impossible to find this behaviour of the three of you other than suspicious in the extreme.

If I was fully prepared to accept and trust virtually anything Paul had chosen to say before, I must admit I am becoming decidedly more sceptical now. It is as if I have stumbled upon some raw, painful secret nerve shared by the lot of you.

I add nothing in response to the rest of your post, except to point out to onlookers the same propaganda techniques we have seen in Bad's posts to date, in this case of swapping discussion of the point with ad hominem accusations of intrusiveness, using extreme false analogies that equate asking a religious question relevant to a participant's religious claims on a religion newsgroup with asking an irrelevant question about one's homosexuality or asking for sensitive financial records.

Other fair-minded readers will judge these tawdry tactics with the contempt they deserve. I am not buying in to answering any more of these misdirections; I leave them here solely as evidence for other readers of the incredible strangeness of all three of your reactions to my simple question.

Ron House 19/10/05 in response to Susan Maneck's relentless support for Paul Hammond:

sman...@jam.rr.com wrote:
>>Do you see anything in my question that says I believe the accusation?
>>No. I suggested to Paul that he had one way open to him to convincingly
>>show that he is not a Baha'i. Let us see whether he wishes to take up
>>that question.
> Why does Paul need to prove he is not a Baha'i?

He doesn't. I never said that he did.

I said that he keeps on contradicting those who say he is, so he must have some interest in convincing others that he is not one, and that one way to do this would be to post some significant point on which he disagrees with the Baha'i Faith.

I specifically said that I did not necessarily believe the accusations about him, and that I was merely suggesting/asking, not trying to impose any requirement upon him (which I couldn't do anyway).

> Why aren't his own statements to this effect sufficient?

That's another question, one which I only touched on, saying that people make sense of conflicting accounts by, in part, comparing their relative completeness and consistency.

And someone saying they are not a Baha'i and yet, seemingly completely, adopting the role here of always taking the side of the official administration, does leave a gap in their self-account. Like it or not, none of us here is just a disembodied intellect posting disconnected assertions. We want to know that we are dealing with others who are, even if behind a pseudonym, real persons offering genuinely-held opinions.

Personally I want to think the best of Paul, but I don't want to be deceived, either.
You ask why his own statements aren't sufficient. I can only answer that for myself.

Personally, in my own reading of his posts (which may be wrong, for sure, but it's all I can go on) I see him knowing so much, so intimately, and caring so much, about the reputation of the administrative order, that I do find it hard to imagine a non-Baha'i, and (we are told) an atheist at that, thinking along those lines.

I can't recall a non-Baha'i that I know of in 'real life' who has heard about the kinds of disputes that spring up around the AO, and who has not said that the whole religion must be crackpot, or words to that effect or worse.

I don't think that party-line Baha'is, such, I venture, as yourself, truly understand just how strange and intolerant your opinions sound to those who are not in your mental universe.
And on that basis, Paul's writings here do give me pause to wonder.

I accuse him of nothing, but I do say what he can do if he is interested in others (or, at least, this other) finding the preponderance of evidence sufficient to decisively reject the accusations of his detractors.

And what's so very, very hard about what I asked him anyway?

Why is there a big secret about his beliefs? Why such reticence?

Why are others springing to his "aid", in two cases finding the need to omit parts of or mischaracterise my original post in order to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the question?

Why is the very propriety of *this* question itself such an issue?

Nothing like this degree of ruckus arises at the most truly offensive attacks that others are posting here, right up to the present time.

Why such a hot-button topic?

Your and All Bad's reactions are truly baffling, and are raising more questions than answers.

> No one told me about
>>shunning, or that the independent investigation of truth, Baha'u'llah's
>>'first' teaching, was supposed to end when one became a Baha'i.
> And that isn't part of the Teachings now.

Tell that to Peter Khan, who I have personally heard say that to a hall of some hundreds, and to other UHJ members and counsellors that others have reported as saying similarly.

Frankly I am getting sick of this continued 'plausible deniability', spreading certain ideas far and wide, but only as 'personal opinions' that they can deny officially, but which they clearly want accepted. It doesn't wash any more.

Ron House 18/10/05 trb , in response to Bahai agent Pat Kohli who was defending Paul Hammond:

I suggested to Paul that he had one way open to him to convincingly show that he is not a Baha'i. Let us see whether he wishes to take up that question.

> > (More surprisingly nosey BS snipped) > Paul, I am ashamed of the conduct of the Baha'is on this forum in > assuming you into our religion.

Well, well! Read my post again. I assumed nothing. I was polite. In fact, I wrote, and you snipped whilst insulting, the following:

> Without in any way questioning your honesty, I would
> like to ask you if you wish to fill this missing piece?

I think I can ask you, perhaps less politely, why you are demeaning and misrepresenting my text? Why has such a milk-mild request hot-buttoned you so completely?

The standard of Baha'i 'politeness' has clearly taken another great leap sideways in that you find such an invitation 'surprisingly nosey'?

But I assume you, the paragon of politeness around here, can show us all how to rewrite my concern in such a way as to meet the new upgraded standard?

And while we are at it, please explain why my statement is unacceptable for courtesy reasons, whilst your deletion of my statement and calling it "surprisingly nosey bullshit" is up to scratch on the politeness stakes, not to mention the question of basic honesty in its characterisation?

And Oh Yes, about that quote from Paul that you gave us above, looking up the article, I notice that the very next thing he says is:

= There *are* pointers towards the Baha'i Faith in the = Bible and the Koran, ...

This makes the alignment of his and certain aspects of Baha'u'llah's opinion (that real prophecies happen, but are not the most important element) even more close, and, given that you do know Baha'u'llah's teachings on prophecy, and must have read this statement of Paul's, as
it is the very next sentence, raises the question - and I needn't be courteous in asking *this* one - what agenda _you_ have that should cause you to use omission of obviously relevant material to distance Paul's ideas from Baha'u'llah's?

It is one thing to think that the standard of politeness here has undergone a stellar revolution, leaving my poor effort at asking a civil question out in the cold, but it is quite another to speak on behalf of Paul, to "defend" him, by twisting his own words. For that, I am dumbfounded.

Ron House, 17/10/05 on trb:

OK Paul, I don't know whether you are or are not a Baha'i, but I for one would like to trust you.
The one thing that makes me, personally, doubt the truth of this is that I can't recall you ever disagreeing with the mainstream Baha'i opinion on anything.

I may be wrong, I might have overlooked or forgotten something. But if, as you say,
you are not and never have been a Baha'i, and yet you have such a keen interest in the religion,
there must be a reason why, surely?

Can you fill us in on what you don't agree with in the Baha'i Faith?

If you want to establish your credibility on this, can you tell us what significant issue/belief(s) you disagree with the teachings of the mainstream Baha'i religion about?

I am not trying to challenge you or cast aspertions, but I think this question
gives you an opportunity to establish your credibility on this question; after all, most of us here don't personally know you or the ones who are denying your claim to not be a Baha'i.

Only consistency and completeness in the respective narratives can give us a handle
on this, and so far, at least in my recollection, there is a gap in your narrative, as noted above.
Without in any way questioning your honesty, I would like to ask you if you wish to fill this missing piece?