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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