Jafar Kazzab

The brother of Imám Ḥasan ʻAskarí, known to Twelver Shíʻihs as “Jaʻfar-i-Kadhdháb” (“Jaʻfar the Liar”). In this tablet, Baha’u’llah dismisses this tenet of Shíʻih eschatology by establishing the truth of Jaʻfar’s reply to the question about his brother’s son.

https://adibmasumian.com/translations/existence-of-qaim/

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A Baha'i who had secret "spiritual marriage" met Abdul Baha in Akka

Phelps (a New York lawyer and religious writer who studied the Bahā'ī Faith and the Radha Soami movement) and Sanghamitta (first woman to convert to Buddhism on American soil) visited `Abdu'l-Bahā in ‘Akkā and stayed with "the Master" for over a month, questioning him extensively. Except for a brief incident wherein Sanghamitta got extremely irritated and vocal with a translator, the visit was cordial and fruitful and resulted in Phelps's biography of `Abdu'l-Bahā (dedicated to M.A. de S. Canavarro).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myron_Henry_Phelps

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All the people of the world will become Baha'is

All the people of the world will become believers. Should you compare the beginning of the Cause with its position today, you would see what a quick influence the Word of God has, and now the Cause of God has encompassed the world... Unquestionably, all will come under the shadow of the Cause of God.

(Abdu'l-Baha, Quoted in the book by Dr. J.E. Esslemont, Baha'u'llah and the New Era, p. 248)

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These Baha'is were expelled on the grounds that they disobeyed the Baha’i leadership, while others became agnostics or nominal Muslims.

A number of these graduates (Baha’is who entered the American University of Beirut) were expelled on the grounds that they disobeyed the Baha’i leadership while others became agnostic or nominal Muslims.

(Footnote 7, The Iranians of AUB and Middle Class Formation in the Early Twentieth-Century Middle East, Farzin Vejdani, Department of History, Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada)

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Francesco Ficicchia on Baha'ism

"Like a restrictive, fundamentalist Islām, Bahā'ism is based on a theocratic doctrine of state and society (dīn wa daula) and aims to integrate all of humanity into a single state structure in which sovereignty rests solely with God. Religion thus becomes the sole guideline for all areas of life, such that there can only be a God-willed order to which individual, religious, ethical, political, social, economic and legal decisions must be oriented.

"If Islām as a political order is equated with Islamism, then this also applies to Bahā'ism, although a corresponding Bahā'ī equivalent to the word "Islamism" has yet to be invented. Like the Islamists, the Bahā'īs also aim to establish a God-state (theocracy) with a globally valid, religiously constituted legal and social order. Nevertheless, they emphatically deny any involvement in worldly affairs and prohibit any political activity, at least on the part of the faithful base. They emphasize their peacefulness and oblige their followers to obey the ruling authorities — by which prospectively also, and above all, their own is meant. However, a secular (non-religious) order is rejected and the goal is to elevate Bahā'ism to the status of a "state religion" in a "Bahā'ī State" or "Bahā'ī World Government" that is to be created. The supreme authority of this universal faith-based dictatorship is the "Universal House of Justice," which is endowed with infallible authority. Per this premise, Bahā'ism is also a political and ideological religion, although its marginalized position in society means that it must exercise due restraint in achieving its goals.

"In contrast to a militant Islāmic fundamentalism, uncompromising in appearance, Bahā'ism succeeds in giving the impression of a progressive, modern religion with external reference to modernity. With its principle of the indivisible unity and equality of the human race, Bahā'ism — and this is the real attraction of this faith — represents an insight that is increasingly permeating collective thinking in the face of global challenges. However, that a changing world consciousness is also necessarily heading towards a religion of world unity does not seem very realistic. There is a tendency for traditional belief systems, in recognition of religious pluralism, mutual tolerance, and the preservation of cultural diversity, to come closer to one another in a broader dialogue, but at the same time to seek to preserve their own identity. The days of the predominance of only one religion are over and cannot be restored even by a new universal religion, all the more so if the latter includes a religious law that claims secular validity for a period of at least a thousand years beyond the sphere of belief.

"A religious system rooted in 19th Century oriental thinking, largely prefabricated from the outset, dogmatically and ideologically cast in concrete forms, and therefore essentially stagnant at its core, is not compatible with the dynamic zeitgeist of an open and pluralistic society. Even if one may be inclined to assign the phenomenon of Bahā'ism to the other world religions as their youngest member, the global implementation of its goals and the urge to grow up to become an outstanding world culture will probably be forever denied to it in view of these self-erected barriers."

— Bahā'ī: Einheitsreligion und global Theokratie. Ein kritischer Einblick in die Universalreligion der Zukunft [Bahā'ī: Religion of Unity and Global Theocracy. A Critical Insight into the Universal Religion of the Future], (Monsenstein und Vannerdat, 2009), pp. 131–132

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Denis MacEoin about Udo Schaefer and Gollmer

In 1995 Udo Schaefer, German Bahá'í author and lawyer who served on the NSA of Germany, authored Desinformation als Methode as a refutation to Francesco Ficicchia's Der Bahá'ismus — Weltreligion der Zukunft?. Although Der Bahá'ismus was never translated into English, Schaefer's Desinformation als Methode was published in 2001 in English as Making the Crooked Straight, which was reviewed by Denis MacEoin.

MacEoin's article is worth reading for its numerous insights. For example...

When they do deal with matters Islamic, or, for that matter, with Babism or early Bahá'ísm, both Schaefer and Gollmer show themselves well read in the secondary literature, and I congratulate them for that. However, again and again they bite off more than they are qualified to chew, and enter into discussions where a good knowledge of Arabic or Persian might be useful. On page 715, for example, Gollmer writes, keeping alive an old solecism: 'The Kitab-i-'Ahd unequivocally affirms the superior station of 'Abdu'l-Bahá over Mirza Muhammad 'Ali: "Verily God hath ordained the station of the Greater Branch [Ghusn-i Akbar — Mirza Muhammad-'Ali] to be beneath that of the Most Great Branch [Ghusn-i A'zam — 'Abdu'l-Bahá]"' (f.n. 170). The Arabic words akbar and a'zam do not mean, respectively, 'greater' and 'most great'. For one thing, they are from totally different roots (kbr and 'zm). For another, there is no simple distinction in Arabic between comparative and superlative. Akbar could mean either 'greater' or 'greatest', a'zam could be read as 'mightier' or 'mightiest'. It's a tiny mistake, but an Arabist would have put it right, rather than just repeating something found in a secondary source. Now, I'm not criticizing people for not being Arabists. But I'm afraid that the boundaries between academic and amateur scholarship do get regularly blurred in the Bahá'í context. I think it's commendable that so many Bahá'ís want to do some sort of research into their history or scriptures or whatever, and I'd like to think I helped foster that development in the days when I was persona grata.

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