Sunday, May 21, 2006

Baha'ivy League

Baha'i Practices

Individual:
Daily obligatory prayers and the daily reading of Baháí scripture; a period of fasting once a year; abstaining from mind-altering drugs including alcohol except for medicinal purposes; monogamous marriage; chastity; endeavouring to apply Baháí principles in their everyday lives, teaching others about the Baháí Faith.

Collective:
Developing Baháí institutions based on principles of cooperation and consultation providing models for all levels of human interaction; disseminating these principles; education of future generations; social and economic development based on these principles wherever the opportunities arise.

This Baha'i cult is popular with a couple Ivy league professors that I know. How far does it stretch? Who knows. Have you fellahs encountered it at all?
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4 comments:

Arelcao Akleos said...

Well, it is not really a cult.That is, it does not try to entrap people, use subterfuge, put pressure to join up or pressure to prevent leaving the faith, etc...
My roommate at GU, aeons ago, the year Billy Became Governor, was Bahai. He was from Iran, which makes sense given that the Bahai movement/faith started in Tehran in the 19th Century.It's founder was seeking a new faith which would escape the ideology of Islam, and establish "common bond" with all the world's major faiths [including christianity and buddhism]. It is considered as a blasphemous heresy by Islam, and the reward of being Bahai, for those who stayed in Iran, has been brutal [my roomate, whose first name was Owrang, for example, faced his father being axed to death by a Khomeinist group, the one Ahmedinejad belongs to, in 1980]. My now former Iranian friend, H., had nothing but contempt for the Bahais, considering them a "political group" which was created by "British Intelligence" in order to weaken Islam by showing a way for peace between the religions. Who knows, he may have been right about that. But I should have surmised his contempt was more telling than I did....
The headquarters for Bahai is now in the USA, with their largest religious center being in Chicago. It is a beautiful and elegant pseudo-mogul structure in Evanston, Ill., overlooking the lake....The most peaceable people I've ever gotten to know [yes, I've met Amish, but I never knew the Amish ;)]

5/21/2006 6:10 PM
Tecumseh said...

Interesting observations, AA. Here is some context about the place where the Bahai movement started from.

5/21/2006 8:22 PM
My Frontier Thesis said...

Minor clarification: I wasn't implying that Baha'i attempted to entrap people. Merriam-Webster is my basis for using the word "cult":

1 : formal religious veneration : WORSHIP
2 : a system of religious beliefs and ritual; also : its body of adherents
3 : a religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious; also : its body of adherents
4 : a system for the cure of disease based on dogma set forth by its promulgator
5 a : great devotion to a person, idea, object, movement, or work (as a film or book); especially : such devotion regarded as a literary or intellectual fad b : a usually small group of people characterized by such devotion

5/21/2006 9:41 PM
Arelcao Akleos said...

oh, I see, you are using "cult" as in the "cult of buddhism" or "cult of christianity" sense. Not in its "scientology cult" or "Hale Bopp cult" sense. okey doke, MFT ;)

5/21/2006 10:43 PM

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