a***@yahoo.com
2005-07-07 11:36:09 UTC
Here is the wonderfully divinely appointed Peter Khan instilling fear
of hellfile in the new Baha'i converts.
Now, some Baha'is say that his speech from 1995 does not answer the
needs of 2005.
Wierd? Baha'is redact their own words when it does not fit the needs of
people. Thus Baha'i cult has no central dogma?
Just fleeting ideas- that hook to the local beliefs.
And Baha'is have no shame defending their oppressive cultish
ideologies. Prof. Maneck has really made an **ass* out of herself
defending every illogical activities of the fraudulent Baha'i cult.
Henry
--------------
A RESPONSE TO PETER KHAN'S TALK THE TESTS OF THE WEST DELIVERED AT
THE BAHA'I HOUSE OF WORSHIP IN WILMETTE, SEPTEMBER 23, 1995
When Peter Khan delivered his talk On the Nature of Tests at the
Wilmette temple in 1995, I am not sure even he knew how great the
response to his words would be. He may not have anticipated that his
little speech would continue to be read by so many people after he had
given it. I have decided to write this because in my own Baha'i
community of Toronto in 2005, the reach of Peter Khan's words has
proven long indeed. Rather than being set aside and forgotten, On the
Nature of Tests is being read and studied at informal gatherings in my
city. It has become a starting point for the discussion of a number of
issues currently facing the faith. While all discussion, by its
nature, is valuable, the reading of Peter Khan's letter also demands a
response. Peter Khan addressed his talk to North American Bahai's, and
so as a North American Baha'i I feel I have the right to answer it.
On the Nature of Tests deserves a reply because the message that it
presents to the believers on this continent is, in essence, one of
fear. In trying to reach his audience, Peter Khan's main instrument is
fear: fear of people, fear of ideas, and fear of the modern world. I am
only an individual believer, and I do not know how much my word counts
against one of the most distinguished modern representatives of the
faith, but in so much that my opinion still matters, I owe it to my
conscience to respond. For thousands of years up until the present
day, religious leaders have tormented the faithful with words of fear.
Sin and the damnation of hellfire have been the favorite tools of
priestly castes to terrorize their victims from one generation to the
next. I have decided to write this because I believe that fear has no
place in religion, especially this one. As no religion in the past,
the Baha'i faith is built on hope, and it is in the spirit of hope that
I want to answer Peter Khan.
The first sort of fear which Peter Khan inspires in his speech is a
fear of people, a sense of danger posed by flesh and blood human
beings. In his address, Peter Khan warns the believers in North
America that we are threatened by men and women within our own
communities. He says that "dangerous forces" and "insidious
influences" are at work within society at large. But the greatest
danger comes not from outside the faith, he explains, but from
Baha'is themselves. He tells us that "nefarious elements" menace
the faith and "seek to undermine it from within." He quotes Shoghi
Effendi warning of "the far more dangerous attacks, the insidious
attacks of... people inside the Faith who have no real attachment to
the Cause."
Now, it is worth stressing that Peter Khan tries to speak with
restraint here. At no point does he identify just who these people
are, these concealed enemies of the faith who present themselves as its
friends. And he constantly reminds his listeners that they cannot tell
the true believers from the false. But in one sense, this only
increases the feeling of apprehension. According to Peter Khan, this
threat to the faith is one that cannot be detected, one that could come
from any direction. Any Baha'i could be the source of
"dangerous... insidious attacks" upon the fabric of the cause. The
problem here has nothing to do with whether Peter Khan singles out any
specific individual. It is troubling simply that we should need to
fear anyone who claims to be a lover of Baha'u'llah. Indeed, this
emphasis on fear may prove a far greater danger than any of the threats
Peter Khan is concerned with. I have always believed that the opposite
of love, the real corrosive force within the human soul, is not hate,
as it is commonly thought, but fear. Wherever fear makes a home there
can be no place for love, and in a soil watered by fear, love can never
take root. And if we want to love, to truly love, the first thing we
need to do is put fear from our hearts. And if this is true in the
world at large, it is true a thousand times over within the faith. In
loving the revelation of Baha'u'llah we are called to love the
believers in that revelation, and it is not possible to love someone
you fear, someone who represents a danger or a threat. When Peter Khan
tells the Baha'is of North America to prepare ourselves against these
false believers, so that "whoever they are, wherever they are... we
will be immune to their dangerous, insidious influence," I believe he
is doing the faith real harm. I believe that this talk of fear erodes
the very foundation of love on which the house of Baha'u'llah
rests.
But it is not only a fear of people which runs through Peter Khan's
talk, it is also a fear of ideas. Another of the dangers Peter Khan
discusses comes from Baha'is being exposed to the prevalent attitudes
of the larger communities in which we live. "We need to realize
clearly and definitely," he says, "that the principles to which we
subscribe as Baha'is are in many ways radically different from what
have become the standards and generally accepted norms of American
society around us." In the sense that its object is more elusive, this
sort of fear is even more potent than the fear of actual human beings
mentioned above. It is bad enough that there are harmful people around
us, but when ideas are a threat, our own minds become potentially
dangerous. The first enemy comes from within the faith, the second
from within ourselves.
Now, it is true that Peter Khan says he will not condemn or judge
individual Baha'is. He denies that he would ever tell me or anyone
else that we have failed the tests he talks about, that our ideas are
dangerous, either to ourselves or others. Nevertheless, his warning
has a personal character in that he identifies attitudes which for
other Baha'is may involve personal conviction. While he refuses to
name people, he does not hesitate to name ideas, and in naming ideas,
he implicates those who hold them in his message of fear. As an
example, he says that the Baha'i ideal of chastity is at odds with the
way modern society celebrates sexual diversity. "Sexual relations" he
explains, "are permissible only between two people of the opposite sex
who are married to each other. This is our standard. It is not the
standard of our society."
I am not saying that any Baha'i cannot agree that here, Peter Khan
speaks for them, but I also feel I have the right to insist that he
does not speak for me. This may be his standard, but it is certainly
not mine. I support equal marriage for gays and lesbians
unconditionally. I am glad that society is beginning to endorse
same-sex marriage, and I hope that the Baha'i faith will do the same
some day. And I feel that in that in identifying this attitude as
being in conflict with the faith, Peter Khan singles out me and singles
out anyone else who feels this way as well.
Peter Khan says that his talk is not directed against individuals, but
he makes the ideas I value as an individual the object of fear time and
again throughout the course of his talk. This is because I am one of
those believers who accept the attitudes of society at large over the
values of the faith - or at least what Peter Khan says are the values
of the faith. Not only do I believe marriage is a right which belongs
to every couple, gay or straight, I support the work of Amnesty
International. The Universal House of Justice forbids this, according
to a letter of February 1993, because Amnesty opposes the death
penalty. Because the Kitab-i-Aqdas recommends the death penalty for
murder and arson, the Universal House of Justice has ruled that Baha'is
cannot be members of Amnesty International. This is another case where
Peter Khan would say that I am substituting the attitudes of
the larger North American society for the principles of the Baha'i
faith.
But this all depends on whether there actually is a conflict between
the values of the modern West and the teachings of Baha'u'llah. Of all
the different kinds of fear Peter Khan evokes in the course of his
speech, the most pervasive and the most powerful is the fear of the
modern world. Throughout Peter Khan's talk, there runs the assumption,
sometimes stated and at other times only implied, that the Baha'i faith
is somehow at odds with the prevailing spirit of the times. This is
apparent in his remark about the difference between Baha'i norms and
those of American society mentioned above, and it can be found in
almost all of his published speeches. Elsewhere in the same talk, he
says that modern society "is manifestly in decline."
In a speech made a few years later, he tells us that as Baha'is
"our view of the world is very, very, different from that of the
society around us." In another place he says that our attitude
"differs very markedly, very radically." For Peter Khan, the
greatest fear is not a fear of people, nor ideas, but of the general
tendency of life at the beginning of the twenty-first century. There
is nothing, personally, that frightens him more than that the values of
the faith should become corrupted by the "radically" different values
of the modern world
But if it is here that Peter Khan's fear seems to be greatest, it
also here that it is least justified. It is here that I personally
disagree with him most sharply. I believe that his fear has blinded
him to the signs of hope that are all around us. Where Peter Khan sees
"a tottering civilization" and an age whose values are fast spinning
out of control, I see a profoundly hopeful moment in the history of
humanity, one uniquely in harmony with the spirit of Baha'i revelation.
All around us, the promises of the faith, the very developments that
Baha'u'llah and Abdu'l Baha looked forward to in previous centuries are
coming to pass. Everything the believers have aspired towards,
everything we have hoped for - equality of the sexes, racial
understanding, harmony between religions, the reconciliation of science
and faith - all of these things are closer now than they have been in
all the previous millennia of human history.
Now, as never before, advancing technology has given us the means at
our disposal to end hunger, to end disease, to provide a decent living
for every person on the planet. The new discoveries of science are
allowing us to understand our world as we never could have one thousand
or even one hundred years ago. We are mapping the human genome and we
are learning to explore the stars. And alongside these scientific
discoveries we are witnessing new ethical discoveries. We are learning
about the genetic and environmental causes of crime, something which
renders the kinds of punishments prescribed in the Kitab-i-Aqdas
obsolete; and we are learning that sexual orientation is not a sin.
As Baha'is, I believe that it is crucial that we do not fear these
developments: we must actually embrace them. We have been and must
remain at the forefront of all that is new and challenging and modern
in the world. It has always been easy to fear what is new, but the
central figures of the faith provide us with the inspiration of their
example. When Baha'u'llah wrote that women and men should have equal
responsibilities in society, that nations should be one, that science
should support religion, these were radical claims. These were claims
that no other religious leader, no other secular leader at that time
would endorse: they were utterly novel, they were revolutionary through
and through. As Baha'is living at this incredible moment in the
history of humanity, we need to continue in that revolutionary
tradition. We are living at a time when ancient prejudice is vanishing
like smoke in the wind or shadows at the break of dawn. The spirit of
mankind is bursting through the bonds which have held it fast for
untold epochs: at long last, the human race is about to take wing. At
all times, and above all at this time, we need to be true to the
faith's radical heritage. We must continue to lead the way, not only in
working for racial and sexual equality, but in pushing the boundaries
of new issues: putting an end to capital punishment, ensuring
reproductive rights for women around the world, and winning respect for
sexual minorities.
I believe that if we see only danger in the direction of the modern
world, we are losing a precious opportunity. I believe that we need to
walk along a path of hope, and not the path of fear Peter Khan marks
out for us. If we live in fear of "dangerous forces" or "insidious
influences," if we spend our time concerned with "attacks" from within,
we may miss this chance to realize God's unfolding plans for the world.
We risk retreating back into the letter of Baha'u'llah's commandments
and leaving behind the revolutionary spirit of this manifestation. It
would be a great loss to the world if this were to happen, if we did
not realize the marvelous potential that is within us. But whatever
happens, I believe we can be sure of the outcome. The hand of God is
at work in the world, and nothing we can either do or leave undone will
stop what He has set in motion. "He has sounded forth the trumpet that
shall never call retreat." And I am confident that in the end, love
will win out over fear, and suspicion will give way to trust, within
the faith and in the world at large. I look forward to that day,
whether I
see it in this life or the next. And I ask whoever reads this not only
to pray that it may come, but to work in practical ways to make it
real. And I pray that Peter Khan will put aside his talk of fear and
threats and return to what is needed most: to telling the believers
about the glorious promises which God has made to every man and woman
lucky enough to be alive in this miraculous era.
of hellfile in the new Baha'i converts.
Now, some Baha'is say that his speech from 1995 does not answer the
needs of 2005.
Wierd? Baha'is redact their own words when it does not fit the needs of
people. Thus Baha'i cult has no central dogma?
Just fleeting ideas- that hook to the local beliefs.
And Baha'is have no shame defending their oppressive cultish
ideologies. Prof. Maneck has really made an **ass* out of herself
defending every illogical activities of the fraudulent Baha'i cult.
Henry
--------------
A RESPONSE TO PETER KHAN'S TALK THE TESTS OF THE WEST DELIVERED AT
THE BAHA'I HOUSE OF WORSHIP IN WILMETTE, SEPTEMBER 23, 1995
When Peter Khan delivered his talk On the Nature of Tests at the
Wilmette temple in 1995, I am not sure even he knew how great the
response to his words would be. He may not have anticipated that his
little speech would continue to be read by so many people after he had
given it. I have decided to write this because in my own Baha'i
community of Toronto in 2005, the reach of Peter Khan's words has
proven long indeed. Rather than being set aside and forgotten, On the
Nature of Tests is being read and studied at informal gatherings in my
city. It has become a starting point for the discussion of a number of
issues currently facing the faith. While all discussion, by its
nature, is valuable, the reading of Peter Khan's letter also demands a
response. Peter Khan addressed his talk to North American Bahai's, and
so as a North American Baha'i I feel I have the right to answer it.
On the Nature of Tests deserves a reply because the message that it
presents to the believers on this continent is, in essence, one of
fear. In trying to reach his audience, Peter Khan's main instrument is
fear: fear of people, fear of ideas, and fear of the modern world. I am
only an individual believer, and I do not know how much my word counts
against one of the most distinguished modern representatives of the
faith, but in so much that my opinion still matters, I owe it to my
conscience to respond. For thousands of years up until the present
day, religious leaders have tormented the faithful with words of fear.
Sin and the damnation of hellfire have been the favorite tools of
priestly castes to terrorize their victims from one generation to the
next. I have decided to write this because I believe that fear has no
place in religion, especially this one. As no religion in the past,
the Baha'i faith is built on hope, and it is in the spirit of hope that
I want to answer Peter Khan.
The first sort of fear which Peter Khan inspires in his speech is a
fear of people, a sense of danger posed by flesh and blood human
beings. In his address, Peter Khan warns the believers in North
America that we are threatened by men and women within our own
communities. He says that "dangerous forces" and "insidious
influences" are at work within society at large. But the greatest
danger comes not from outside the faith, he explains, but from
Baha'is themselves. He tells us that "nefarious elements" menace
the faith and "seek to undermine it from within." He quotes Shoghi
Effendi warning of "the far more dangerous attacks, the insidious
attacks of... people inside the Faith who have no real attachment to
the Cause."
Now, it is worth stressing that Peter Khan tries to speak with
restraint here. At no point does he identify just who these people
are, these concealed enemies of the faith who present themselves as its
friends. And he constantly reminds his listeners that they cannot tell
the true believers from the false. But in one sense, this only
increases the feeling of apprehension. According to Peter Khan, this
threat to the faith is one that cannot be detected, one that could come
from any direction. Any Baha'i could be the source of
"dangerous... insidious attacks" upon the fabric of the cause. The
problem here has nothing to do with whether Peter Khan singles out any
specific individual. It is troubling simply that we should need to
fear anyone who claims to be a lover of Baha'u'llah. Indeed, this
emphasis on fear may prove a far greater danger than any of the threats
Peter Khan is concerned with. I have always believed that the opposite
of love, the real corrosive force within the human soul, is not hate,
as it is commonly thought, but fear. Wherever fear makes a home there
can be no place for love, and in a soil watered by fear, love can never
take root. And if we want to love, to truly love, the first thing we
need to do is put fear from our hearts. And if this is true in the
world at large, it is true a thousand times over within the faith. In
loving the revelation of Baha'u'llah we are called to love the
believers in that revelation, and it is not possible to love someone
you fear, someone who represents a danger or a threat. When Peter Khan
tells the Baha'is of North America to prepare ourselves against these
false believers, so that "whoever they are, wherever they are... we
will be immune to their dangerous, insidious influence," I believe he
is doing the faith real harm. I believe that this talk of fear erodes
the very foundation of love on which the house of Baha'u'llah
rests.
But it is not only a fear of people which runs through Peter Khan's
talk, it is also a fear of ideas. Another of the dangers Peter Khan
discusses comes from Baha'is being exposed to the prevalent attitudes
of the larger communities in which we live. "We need to realize
clearly and definitely," he says, "that the principles to which we
subscribe as Baha'is are in many ways radically different from what
have become the standards and generally accepted norms of American
society around us." In the sense that its object is more elusive, this
sort of fear is even more potent than the fear of actual human beings
mentioned above. It is bad enough that there are harmful people around
us, but when ideas are a threat, our own minds become potentially
dangerous. The first enemy comes from within the faith, the second
from within ourselves.
Now, it is true that Peter Khan says he will not condemn or judge
individual Baha'is. He denies that he would ever tell me or anyone
else that we have failed the tests he talks about, that our ideas are
dangerous, either to ourselves or others. Nevertheless, his warning
has a personal character in that he identifies attitudes which for
other Baha'is may involve personal conviction. While he refuses to
name people, he does not hesitate to name ideas, and in naming ideas,
he implicates those who hold them in his message of fear. As an
example, he says that the Baha'i ideal of chastity is at odds with the
way modern society celebrates sexual diversity. "Sexual relations" he
explains, "are permissible only between two people of the opposite sex
who are married to each other. This is our standard. It is not the
standard of our society."
I am not saying that any Baha'i cannot agree that here, Peter Khan
speaks for them, but I also feel I have the right to insist that he
does not speak for me. This may be his standard, but it is certainly
not mine. I support equal marriage for gays and lesbians
unconditionally. I am glad that society is beginning to endorse
same-sex marriage, and I hope that the Baha'i faith will do the same
some day. And I feel that in that in identifying this attitude as
being in conflict with the faith, Peter Khan singles out me and singles
out anyone else who feels this way as well.
Peter Khan says that his talk is not directed against individuals, but
he makes the ideas I value as an individual the object of fear time and
again throughout the course of his talk. This is because I am one of
those believers who accept the attitudes of society at large over the
values of the faith - or at least what Peter Khan says are the values
of the faith. Not only do I believe marriage is a right which belongs
to every couple, gay or straight, I support the work of Amnesty
International. The Universal House of Justice forbids this, according
to a letter of February 1993, because Amnesty opposes the death
penalty. Because the Kitab-i-Aqdas recommends the death penalty for
murder and arson, the Universal House of Justice has ruled that Baha'is
cannot be members of Amnesty International. This is another case where
Peter Khan would say that I am substituting the attitudes of
the larger North American society for the principles of the Baha'i
faith.
But this all depends on whether there actually is a conflict between
the values of the modern West and the teachings of Baha'u'llah. Of all
the different kinds of fear Peter Khan evokes in the course of his
speech, the most pervasive and the most powerful is the fear of the
modern world. Throughout Peter Khan's talk, there runs the assumption,
sometimes stated and at other times only implied, that the Baha'i faith
is somehow at odds with the prevailing spirit of the times. This is
apparent in his remark about the difference between Baha'i norms and
those of American society mentioned above, and it can be found in
almost all of his published speeches. Elsewhere in the same talk, he
says that modern society "is manifestly in decline."
In a speech made a few years later, he tells us that as Baha'is
"our view of the world is very, very, different from that of the
society around us." In another place he says that our attitude
"differs very markedly, very radically." For Peter Khan, the
greatest fear is not a fear of people, nor ideas, but of the general
tendency of life at the beginning of the twenty-first century. There
is nothing, personally, that frightens him more than that the values of
the faith should become corrupted by the "radically" different values
of the modern world
But if it is here that Peter Khan's fear seems to be greatest, it
also here that it is least justified. It is here that I personally
disagree with him most sharply. I believe that his fear has blinded
him to the signs of hope that are all around us. Where Peter Khan sees
"a tottering civilization" and an age whose values are fast spinning
out of control, I see a profoundly hopeful moment in the history of
humanity, one uniquely in harmony with the spirit of Baha'i revelation.
All around us, the promises of the faith, the very developments that
Baha'u'llah and Abdu'l Baha looked forward to in previous centuries are
coming to pass. Everything the believers have aspired towards,
everything we have hoped for - equality of the sexes, racial
understanding, harmony between religions, the reconciliation of science
and faith - all of these things are closer now than they have been in
all the previous millennia of human history.
Now, as never before, advancing technology has given us the means at
our disposal to end hunger, to end disease, to provide a decent living
for every person on the planet. The new discoveries of science are
allowing us to understand our world as we never could have one thousand
or even one hundred years ago. We are mapping the human genome and we
are learning to explore the stars. And alongside these scientific
discoveries we are witnessing new ethical discoveries. We are learning
about the genetic and environmental causes of crime, something which
renders the kinds of punishments prescribed in the Kitab-i-Aqdas
obsolete; and we are learning that sexual orientation is not a sin.
As Baha'is, I believe that it is crucial that we do not fear these
developments: we must actually embrace them. We have been and must
remain at the forefront of all that is new and challenging and modern
in the world. It has always been easy to fear what is new, but the
central figures of the faith provide us with the inspiration of their
example. When Baha'u'llah wrote that women and men should have equal
responsibilities in society, that nations should be one, that science
should support religion, these were radical claims. These were claims
that no other religious leader, no other secular leader at that time
would endorse: they were utterly novel, they were revolutionary through
and through. As Baha'is living at this incredible moment in the
history of humanity, we need to continue in that revolutionary
tradition. We are living at a time when ancient prejudice is vanishing
like smoke in the wind or shadows at the break of dawn. The spirit of
mankind is bursting through the bonds which have held it fast for
untold epochs: at long last, the human race is about to take wing. At
all times, and above all at this time, we need to be true to the
faith's radical heritage. We must continue to lead the way, not only in
working for racial and sexual equality, but in pushing the boundaries
of new issues: putting an end to capital punishment, ensuring
reproductive rights for women around the world, and winning respect for
sexual minorities.
I believe that if we see only danger in the direction of the modern
world, we are losing a precious opportunity. I believe that we need to
walk along a path of hope, and not the path of fear Peter Khan marks
out for us. If we live in fear of "dangerous forces" or "insidious
influences," if we spend our time concerned with "attacks" from within,
we may miss this chance to realize God's unfolding plans for the world.
We risk retreating back into the letter of Baha'u'llah's commandments
and leaving behind the revolutionary spirit of this manifestation. It
would be a great loss to the world if this were to happen, if we did
not realize the marvelous potential that is within us. But whatever
happens, I believe we can be sure of the outcome. The hand of God is
at work in the world, and nothing we can either do or leave undone will
stop what He has set in motion. "He has sounded forth the trumpet that
shall never call retreat." And I am confident that in the end, love
will win out over fear, and suspicion will give way to trust, within
the faith and in the world at large. I look forward to that day,
whether I
see it in this life or the next. And I ask whoever reads this not only
to pray that it may come, but to work in practical ways to make it
real. And I pray that Peter Khan will put aside his talk of fear and
threats and return to what is needed most: to telling the believers
about the glorious promises which God has made to every man and woman
lucky enough to be alive in this miraculous era.
