It got reported in an interview the Israeli press had with him.
"He [Abu Mazen] does not forget to ask that I write he is still awaiting an
apology by former Mossad chief Shabtai Shavit, who said in a newspaper interview
that Abbas belongs to the Bahai faith. Shavit explained at length in the
interview that a Bahai cannot become a Palestinian leader.
That false rumor has been lately disseminated by people with ill-will toward
Abbas. He is angry at The Jerusalem Post for prominently reporting that posters
claiming he is Bahai are appearing in Arab countries. "This is not the first
time that people spread that malicious rumor. I sued a Jordanian newspaper for
publishing it. Regrettably, the person I sued passed away before the court ruled
unequivocally that the report was false. I am a believing Muslim, son of a
family of believers, and committed to the religion's commandments."
Elsewhere the same newspaper reported:
"A week has gone by since Shabtai Shavit, the former head of the Mossad,
promised to apologize publicly if it turns out he misled the public with the
"news" he provided in an interview with Yedioth Ahronoth on December 7, when he
said that Abu Mazen doesn't have a chance to inherit Arafat's seat because Abu
Mazen "is an ethnic Bahai." As a matter of fact, Bahaism is a religion, not an
ethnic group.
Shavit's "fact" is meant to buttress his thesis that if
Israel removes Arafat, nobody will fill his shoes and the Palestinian issue will
disappear from the international agenda. Shavit explained that the likelihood of
a Bahai becoming leader of the Palestinians is about the same as a Samaritan
becoming president of Israel.
Last Wednesday, Shavit said that while his
source for the "fact" is reliable, he would make sure it wasn't really Hamas
disinformation meant to harm one of the Oslo architects. To make things easier
for the former head of the Mossad and his secret sources to get to the truth, I
called Shmuel Elgrabli, the Israeli adviser to the Bahai Center in Israel.
Elgrabli, who also learned about Abu Mazen's purported Bahai connection from the
Shavit interview, had an answer ready, on behalf of the Bahai Center. "Mr. Abu
Mazen is not known to the center and does not appear on its rolls."
So,
maybe Shavit's reliable source knows something about Abu Mazen's Bahai beliefs
that isn't known to the Bahai Center?
To save Shavit and his sources the
time and effort, I called Prof. Moshe Sharon, who holds the Bahai Studies chair
at the Hebrew University. He also read the interview with Shavit, and he also
raised an eyebrow. If the former head of the Mossad had called an expert, maybe
he wouldn't have been embarrassed by disseminating baseless
information.
Sharon: "It's impossible for Abu Mazen to be Bahai. First of
all, if the Bahai say someone isn't Bahai, then there's no chance they are. They
know all their members and they have complete rosters of their members.
Secondly, according to the Bahai religion, it is absolutely forbidden for a
believer to live permanently in the Land of Israel, between the Jordan River and
the Mediterranean. If you decide to be a Bahai, you have to immediately leave
the country (all the Bahai in Israel are temporary emissaries). Third, according
to the faith's founder, Baha-Allah (1817-1892), Bahai are prohibited from any
nationalistic political activity (as opposed to international frameworks). A
Bahai cannot be Arafat's deputy."
But to remove any doubt, Sharon
emphasizes that one of the tenets of faith for the religion says that a person
is not born Bahai, and every believer must "seek the truth" personally.
Therefore, Abu Mazen can not be "the son of a Bahai family that converted to
Islam." And Bahaism, after all, is banned in all Arab countries.
So, how
did Abu Mazen end up being called a Bahai? The answer may be buried in the
Palestinian leader's name - Mahmoud Abbas. The original name of Abdul-Baha ("the
servant of glory"), the great proselytizer of the Bahai faith worldwide, was
Abbas Effendi. So, maybe Abu Mazen is a descendant of that same Abbas Effendi,
for whom a street is named in Haifa? Nope. Sharon says that the Bahai leader
only had daughters, so there's no significance to the family name. Shugi
Effendi, the last Bahai leader, was the grandson of Abbas Effendi, through his
eldest daughter. Besides, Abbas is a common name among
Persians.
Presumably, a slip by a retired defense establishment official,
no matter how senior, shouldn't be cause for concern. But Shavit is one of two
people (the other is former central bank governor Jacob Frenkel) with whom Prime
Minister Sharon often consults. He's the man who convinced Sharon on September
11 that he should quickly dress up Arafat as bin Laden. Perhaps he "revealed" to
the prime minister that there's no danger Abu Mazen, "of Bahai background" will
fill Arafat's shoes in the international arena?
The story also says
something about Mossad chiefs, whose mistakes can be very costly to the state -
for example, the botched attempt by Danny Yatom to assassinate Khaled Meshal,
which rewarded the Hamas with the return of its idolized leader, Sheikh Yassin,
back to Gaza."
http://www.uga.edu/bahai/News/121801.html
