BAHA'I ADMINISTRATION SHRINKS FROM PATRIOTISM

WHERE IS "SANE AND HEALTHY PATRIOTISM" OF AMERICAN BAHA'IS?

Shortly after 9/11, The American Baha'i * published a call from Uncle Sam for Arabic- and Farsi-speakers to enlist in the language side of the war on terror. Uncle Sam helped a lot of those Iranian Baha'i emigres to make it to freedom's shores, and his bank of Arabic and Farsi speakers was sorely lacking in manpower. At the end of the article, the National Spiritual Assembly added a warning: Baha'is who enrolled with the government in this program should prayerfully consider that they might be asked to perform actions against Baha'i law. In other words, to volunteer for service to their new country was, under the terms of the NSA, illegal and would be punished (see below).

What were these prohibited actions? The NSA has for years struggled to erode the healthy patriotism of the American Baha'i. No threat to America's shores has ever before come from an area of the planet where few Americans know the language or could do a thing about the situation, but many, many American Baha'is do. In our experience the NSA would like nothing more than to have its rank and file cleave to the belief that their true government is their National Spiritual Assembly.

Why did the NSA refuse to state the actions that would be "against Baha'i law?" Could it be because there were none? Could it be that the Iranian-Americans might discover in their service to America a real democracy relying on real freedom and due process, instead of a badly Americanized version of the Islam they thought they left behind? Perhaps the NSA simply wanted to maintain its control over the lives of a people that lent the Faith a glamour, a mystery, and a very wealthy and generous community.

This is not the first nor the last time the NSA has warned the believers to refrain from some charitable, patriotic, or innocent association under the pretence that it possesses esoteric knowledge the Baha'is can't be trusted with. The warnings are couched in the form of threats, for every Baha'i know the result of disobedience to the NSA: public humiliation in the pages of American Baha'i or in a mass-mailing to every believer in the United States. Accompanying these punishments is the refusal to inform the punished one of the gory details. Even the offender is not permitted to work his salvation, since he is not permitted to learn the charges levied against him. This is the pattern of their New World Order?

Years ago its Guardian observed :

Stupendous as is the struggle which His words foreshadow, they also testify to the complete victory which the upholders of the Greatest Name are destined eventually to achieve. Peoples, nations, adherents of divers faiths, will jointly and successively arise to shatter its unity, to sap its force, and to degrade its holy name. They will assail not only the spirit which it inculcates, but the administration which is the channel, the instrument, the embodiment of that spirit. For as the authority with which Bahá'u'lláh has invested the future Bahá'í Commonwealth becomes more and more apparent, the fiercer shall be the challenge which from every quarter will be thrown at the verities it enshrines.
(Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Baha'u'llah, p. 17)

The NSA still argues that its enemies are without. We argue that many sit plainly and openly on the Institutions of the Baha'i Faith. We believe they have become giddy with the contemplation of themselves as the officers of that "future Baha'i Commonwealth." We are sure that Baha'u'llah's authority is a spiritual one, and that Spirit wields ultimate supremacy over His servants. We believe the U.S. government might listen a little more closely to the noise coming out of Baha'i administration, remove the rose-colored glasses bestowed upon it by Baha'i dignitaries, and read what Baha'i administration is preaching to the rank and file.

*The American Baha'i is published for Baha'is only by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of the United States.