Edward Browne about the Baha'i teachings

Edward Browne who met Baha’u’llah a couple of times and was granted four successive interviews with him, says about the Baháʼí teachings:

These teachings are in themselves admirable, though inferior, in my opinion, both in beauty and simplicity to the teachings of Christ.

— Edward G. Browne, Materials for the Study of the Babi Religion, Introduction, p. xxi.

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Former-UHJ member discouraging young Baha'is from seeking a college education because "the Revelation of Baha'u'llah" contains "all knowledge."

According to Peter Khan (a Pakistani-Australian engineer who was elected to the Universal House of Justice in 1987), world-denying fundamentalists go to the extreme of discouraging young Baha'is from seeking a college education because "the Revelation of Baha'u'llah" contains "all knowledge." He adds that in this view

The physical sciences are stigmatized as being incorrect because they take no account of the spiritual dimension of creation. Psychology is condemned because most theories appear not to take account of the spiritual nature of man. Economics is dismissed as appearing not to accommodate a spiritual solution to economic problems. Evolution and the Darwinian perspective are condemned as being contrary to the belief in God. (Khan 1999:46-47).

The presence of such views in the US during the 1960s is confirmed by an old-time Baha'i, who said his parents were "always warning me about those wacko Baha'is who thought that you only needed to read the Writings and nothing else. And there was a good deal of tension over whether one ought, as a Baha'i, to go to university-wouldn't it be better to go pioneering [move abroad to do missionizing]?" (Pers. Comm., 17 June 2000).

(Fundamentalism in the Contemporary U.S. Baha'i Community, Juan R. I. Cole, Review of Religious Research, Vol. 43, No. 3 (Mar., 2002), pp. 195-217 (23 pages))

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3512329?seq=1

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Baha'i Tactics & Technique exposed by a former-Baha'i

*Baha'i Tactics & Technique:*

1. As far as possible they hold back from responding

2. Then they claim no knowledge [of the given issue] by feigning ignorance

3. After the exposer has exposed they will try to divert to secondary and totally peripheral and irrelevant side-issues

4. The exposer is then painted as someone with an axe to grind, biased, deluded (while they, the Baha'is, still have not responded to the main issue exposed)

5. Next they relate mental instability and insanity to the exposer [i.e. shoot the messenger]

6. Then, the last tactic, is to wheel out several dubious personas on the scene who claim to be neutral non-Baha'i observers who then begin attacking the exposer as well as the issue exposed and supporting the Baha'is and their issues as so-called non-Baha'is.

Other techniques here : http://fglaysher.com/bahaicensorship/technique.htm

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Terms (titles) applied to covenant-breakers, dissidents, apostates and opponents

Shoghi Effendi (1897–1957), the (infallible) Guardian of the Baha’i religion and a prolific writer in English, devoted many passages to individuals. Here is an abbreviated list of terms applied by him to covenant-breakers, dissidents, apostates and opponents :

Diabolical, ambitious, malevolent, deluded, ‘shameless apostate’, brazen, infamous, insidious, ‘vile whisperer’, Antichrist, ‘the living embodiment of wickedness, cupidity and deceit’, blasphemous, unspeakably repugnant, perfidious, unquenchable animosity, arrogant, treacherous, despicable, ‘blind, uncontrollable animosity’, ‘the most shameless, vicious, relentless apostate’, ‘the incarnation of Satan’, ‘fiendish ingenuity and guile’, infernal, nefarious, defectors, betrayers.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.religion.2008.08.009

(Denis MacEoin, Challenging apostasy - Responses to Moojan Momen's 'Marginality and Apostasy in the Baha'i Community')

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Three or four Baha'is were killed by the Persians for ridiculing their religious ceremonies

These sectarians (of Baha'u'llah), though long resident at Baghdad, had not hitherto openly professed the new creed, but during the last Mohurrem they attracted the ill-will of true Shiahs by ridiculing the ceremonies usual with the latter at that season, and three or four of their number have since lost their lives in encounters with the Persians.

The Babi and Baha'i Religions 1844-1944 Some Contemporary Western Accounts edited by MOOJAN MOMEN M.A., M.B. GEORGE RONALD, Publisher, page 267

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Baha'i women wore chadur (veil) in obedience to Abdul Baha

Florence gradually broke the news to her family that in Persia she would be wearing a chádur (the word means tent), an outer garment concealing the wearer from head to foot. Some chádurs were of black satin, others of black brilliantine (a dress fabric such as mohair or goat’s wool, glossy on both sides). The chádur was not so much a garment as a humiliation, a kind of degradation, and her wearing it horrified the American missionaries, but in obedience to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá she would wear it, as did the Bahá’í women of Persia.

(Arches of the Years by Marzieh Gail, Page 9)

https://bahai-library.com/pdf/g/gail_arches_years.pdf

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