From: minhaszt@ucunix.san.uc.edu (Zafar T Minhas)
Subject: Re: Some more info on the Baha'is
Organization: University of Cincinnati
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 92 17:36:05 GMT

Salama alaikum everyone, this is your friendly neighborhood Zafar. I just came
back from a vacation to the old country, and it was marvelous. I enjoyed myself
very much and I feel very refreshed.
I have been reading something aout this bahai issue and like I said I would I
did some research on the subject. It is very interesting indeed. There are alot
of things I have on my mind, so here goes.

In recent history there have been 4 major splinter groups in Islam, Sikhism,
Bahai, Ahmadiyah, and the Nation of Islam by Elijah Muhummad. Of these four two
claim to be seperate religions, Sikhism and Bahai, while Ahmadiyah and the 
Nation of Islam claim to be within the orthodox Islamic framework. Each one of
these groups claims legitimacy because of revelation from God and each one uses
the Arabic language to justify its claim with the exception of Sikhism, which
uses a mixture of Arabic, Persian, and Punjabi. All claim that God spoke to the
founders of the religion either through revelation or inspiration. Two of the 
groups claim the right to world mission, Ahmadiya and Bahai. The Nation of 
Islam claims right only to the African Americans while Sikhism would be a 
failure outside of India, specifically East Punjab.

The relation that Islam, the religion of all of the prophets from Adam to 
Muhammad ben Abdullah ben Abdul-Mutallib (SAW) is that all four of these other
religions are false splinter groups that have nothing to do with Islam. These
other four groups claim that they are the natural outcome of Islam because of
various Quranic verses and Ahadith, Bahais would in no far stretch of the 
imagination claim that Baha-ullah is a prophet of God and denounce Mirza Ghulam
Ahmed, Elijah Muhammad, and Guru Nanak as mistaken, fakes, or both. And the 
other three do denounce each other. Which makes one ask the question, who is
right.

Each and everyone of the four religions exhort the believer and lover of the 
truth to use independant investigation to find out what is the truth for there
can be no contradiction to the truth and the truth can not be self-
contradictory. Anything that seems contradictory simply requires a more deeper
analysis in order to clear the confusion.

The claim of a command of arabic language is laid to rest for all except for 
Sikhism which doesn't worry about Arabic. Bahai's claim that Baha-ullah's hand
was guided by God in all of his writing, I saw recommendations in other groups
(soc.culture.pakistan) to read the book Kitab-e-Iqdas, which was said to be 
written in Arabic. I do not know if the book really was originally written in
Arabic but that is what I was told. The grammar in the book is very bad, I as
a student of Arabic can write better than this, I wasn't sure if what I was
reading was bad fush or mediocre amiya. I was beginning to think that the 
recommendation was a mistake, but upon more research what I found was that
Kitab-e-Iqdas really was written in Arabic. I asked myself, the Bahais claim 
that the Quran is the word of God, it is written in a very powerful language
the grammar is correct of all things, what happened in Kitab-e-Iqdas, if that
is the word of God? The same thing is true for the Ahmadiyya books. In one of
the books, Barahin-e-Ilahi, Mirza Ghulam Ahmed talks about a revelation he
received from Gabriel and the text of the revelation, it was not very good 
Arabic. As far as Elijah Muhammad is concerned, he claims he received the 
Quran, so his Arabic is wonderful, but there is a problem because the Quran
was revealed over 1400 years ago. As far as the Grant(spelled Gaf-ray-nun-teh),
of the Sikhs, it is simply a collection of writings by Indian Muslim Sufis and
Hindu Mystics.

The issue of self consistency is an issue in which all religions rely on.
I will deal with the bahais and Ahmadiyat lastly. The problem of the Sikhs can
be dealt with easily; the Grant is full of contradictions, thats all, you can't
go 50 pages without seeing one. The issue of the nation of Islam's
contradiction can be seen in the person of Malcolm X (Al-Haj Malik Al-Shabaz).
He was convinced through the teachings of Elijah Muhammad that white man can
not be Muslims and the brothers and sisters in Africa were part of the larger
following of his. However his trip to Africa and the performance of the Hajj 
showed how false those two statements were. Africa is over 50% Muslim and none
of them ever followed the Nation of Islam. At the Hajj Malik Shabaz was 
surprised to find Muslims from Yugoslavia (Bosnia-Hercegovina), Albania, and 
even Italy. Also the womanizing Elijah Muhammad proved that he was no man of 
God. The case of Mirza Ghulam Ahmed and Baha-ullah are interesting. Both 
said that they were the Mahdi, both said on other occasions that they were not.
Both said that they were prophets of God meant to spread their mission over the
earth. Both said they were not. Both claimed command over the Arabic language, 
their writings proved otherwise. Both existed around the same time! Among all 
of these which one is true?

I ask the Bahai friends how can one be a prophet of God and not be one at the 
same time? Kamran is bent upon proving that he was a prophet of God while 
another Bahai, Hooshyar was trying to convince a fellow netter that he was not
a prophet of God. According to Kamran, Bahais believe that prophets will come
again and again. But acording to Hooshyar, the last prophet was and always will
be Muhammad ben Abdullah, and anything following Muhammad will be considered a
Manifestation of God. It seems that Bahais differ on their basic beliefs. This
is even more serious a contradiction than the Sunni/Shia dilemma who differ on
a lot of things but not the basic beliefs.

The Bahais are bent on convincing us that there are equal rights for women, and
in a manner which indicates equal in all senses, but there are many things that
women can not do as far as high level decision making in religious aspect. This
is different in Islam where women are allowed to be at the level of Ulema' and
make religious decisions (fatawat). The last article by Farzin shows some of 
the unusual aspects of social intercourse between men and women in the Bahai
faith. I will not going reinvent the wheel just read it yourself (BTW if you 
want to talk about temporary marriage, I'm not interested. I'm Sunni).

Another aspect of the telling of whether a person is a true prophet or not
is by the action of his followers. It seems that among the 4 groups that I am
talking about, Bahais are no better and no worse than anyone else. I have not 
seen anything special about Bahais, if I wanted to be strict, I think the
nation of Islam are the best followers of their religion. They pray 5 times a
day. They fast more consistently than people of other religions do (even 
regular Muslims) they are more strict in abstaining from alcohol than regular
Muslims and even eating pork. They are healthier because their youth are forced
to exercise and abstain from smoking and their standards of morality are 
higher. They are actively involved in fighting the problem of drugs in this 
country. Their are bad apples in every group but I have never seen a group with
fresher apples. "By their fruits ye shall know them..."

In essence I have not seen anything in Bahai that would distinguish itself as a
true religion, the more I read the more I am ambivalent about it.

sincerely

zafar minhas
Newsgroups: soc.culture.iranian