On 9/3/05, Scott Saylors <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > Gilberto, > > I think that could be said, but I cannot be certain he did not withdraw > rather than face administrative sanctions. I think he later regretted > withdrawing, but that is surmise on my part, I certainly cannot judge his > actions. Actually, I think that the list policy is to NOT discuss Professor > Cole's frictions with the faith, as he is not participant on this list. I > don't really want to put words in his mouth.
Here is a statement he put out a couple of years ago. I don't know of anything more recent statement about his relation to the faith. http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jrcole/bahai/1999/persdec.htm Date sent: Tue, 02 Mar 1999 18:08:51 GMT Organization: Deja News - The Leader in Internet Discussion From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Personal Statement on Baha'u'llah, 3 years on Date: Tue, 02 Mar 1999 07:34:44 GMT Newsgroups: talk.religion.bahai NNTP-Posting-Host: 207.75.177.105 Organization: Deja News - The Leader in Internet Discussion X-Article-Creation-Date: Tue Mar 02 07:34:44 1999 GMT X-Http-Proxy: 1.0 x13.dejanews.com:80 (Squid/1.1.22) for client 207.75.177.105 X-Http-User-Agent: Mozilla/4.05 [en] (Win95; I) I became a Baha'i in 1972 at the age of 19 in part because of a mystical experience I had while reading the Tablet of the True Seeker in the Book of Certitude, especially this passage: "Only when the lamp of search, of earnest striving, of longing desire, of passionate devotion, of fervid love, of rapture, and ecstasy, is kindled within the seeker's heart, and the breeze of His loving-kindness is wafted upon his soul, will the darkness of error be dispelled, the mists of doubts and misgivings be dissipated, and the lights of knowledge and certitude envelop his being. At that hour will the mystic Herald, bearing the joyful tidings of the Spirit, shine forth from the City of God resplendent as the morn, and, through the trumpet-blast of knowledge, will awaken the heart, the soul, and the spirit from the slumber of negligence. Then will the manifold favours and outpouring grace of the holy and everlasting Spirit confer such new life upon the seeker that he will find himself endowed with a new eye, a new ear, a new heart, and a new mind. He will contemplate the manifest signs of the universe, and will penetrate the hidden mysteries of the soul. Gazing with the eye of God, he will perceive within every atom a door that leadeth him to the stations of absolute certitude. He will discover in all things the mysteries of divine Revelation and the evidences of an everlasting manifestation." Kitab-i-Iqan pp. 195-196. I had gone home to Virginia after my freshman year at Northwestern, and I was taught the faith by many friends in the Northern Virginia area, including Charles "Herk" Lerche, the Huddlestons, Abbas Seymour and the Bashirs. It was the time of the Vietnam war, which I opposed, so peace and world unity looked good to me. It was a time of enormous interest in Oriental religions, and I already knew something about Hinduism and about Sufism; the Baha'i faith seemed to exemplify the best in them. And it was a time of great licentiousness in the youth culture, in which I perceived something selfish and immature, and which a specific spiritual discipline helped address. Under the influence of Shoghi Effendi's Advent of Divine Justice, I immediately began studying Arabic at Northwestern and switched to majoring in religion, completing a B.A. This was the passage that really shaped the rest of my life: "Those who participate in such a campaign, whether in an organizing capacity, or as workers to whose care the execution of the task itself has been committed, must, as an essential preliminary to the discharge of their duties, thoroughly familiarize themselves with the various aspects of the history and teachings of their Faith. In their efforts to achieve this purpose they must study for themselves, conscientiously and painstakingly, the literature of their Faith, delve into its teachings, assimilate its laws and principles, ponder its admonitions, tenets and purposes, commit to memory certain of its exhortations and prayers, master the essentials of its administration, and keep abreast of its current affairs and latest developments. They must strive to obtain, from sources that are authoritative and unbiased, a sound knowledge of the history and tenets of Islám--the source and background of their Faith--and approach reverently and with a mind purged from preconceived ideas the study of the Qur'án which, apart from the sacred scriptures of the Bábí and Bahá'í Revelations, constitutes the only Book which can be regarded as an absolutely authenticated Repository of the Word of God. They must devote special attention to the investigation of those institutions and circumstances that are directly connected with the origin and birth of their Faith, with the station claimed by its Forerunner, and with the laws revealed by its Author . . . Let him also attempt to devise such methods as association with clubs, exhibitions, and societies, lectures on subjects akin to the teachings and ideals of his Cause such as temperance, morality, social welfare, religious and racial tolerance, economic cooperation, Islám, and Comparative Religion, or participation in social, cultural, humanitarian, charitable, and educational organizations and enterprises which, while safeguarding the integrity of his Faith, will open up to him a multitude of ways and means whereby he can enlist successively the sympathy, the support, and ultimately the allegiance of those with whom he comes in contact." -Advent of Divine Justice, pp. 49, 51 In 1974 I pioneered to Lebanon as part of the Five Year Plan. I returned briefly to graduate, then went back in September, 1975. Despite the advent of civil war, which forced me to leave for Egypt in December of '75, I made the effort to be at my post in summer 1977 and came back to live and work in 1978-1979. In the time Beirut was too hot, 1976-78, I completed an MA in Arabic Studies/History at the American University in Cairo. Although a new Baha'i, I quickly became pretty deepened, helped tremendously by kind locals like Shihab Zahra'i (later kidnapped by a militia and now almost certainly dead). I helped out the NSA of the Near East with community development, both there and in Senegal/Gambia and in India. My Arabic got near-native fluent. I then went to UCLA in fall, 1979, to begin a doctorate in Islamic Studies, studying with Professor Amin Banani (son of the Hand of the Cause) and others. In all this living in the Middle East and studying Arabic, Persian and Islamics, I sought to fulfill the mandate Shoghi Effendi laid upon Baha'i youth. Of course, I also was filled with intellectual curiosity about the magnificent civilization of Islam and the kind and generous peoples of the Middle East. I fell in love with Arabic literature, and then Persian, and then Urdu. A fine poem in any of them still gives me tingles in my gut. At the request of the Association for Baha'i Studies, in 1980-81 I wrote "The Concept of Manifestation in the Baha'i Writings." In the '80s I also translated two books by Mirza Abu'l-Fadl. The House of Justice commended me for the latter and asked me to do some translating for them, in which I complied even though it was perhaps the busiest time of my life. I did my dissertation research on Shi`ite Islam in Lucknow, India, and did some community service work for Baha'is when I traveled to places like Bengal. I remember buying a whole Bengali village copies of a translation of Hushmand Fatheazam's New Garden. I went back to UCLA, finished writing up, and came to the University of Michigan in 1984, after which I was very much immersed in trying to establish myself in Middle East scholarship. I heard only vague echoes of the 1988 crackdown on *dialogue* magazine (I was abroad when the heavy action occurred), which had been published by some friends of my in Southern California. I did not approve, to say the least. But I thought, well, all religions have narrow-minded people in them, and the Baha'i faith's principles are so stacked toward tolerance that eventually it must emerge in the faith itself. In the '90s I occasionally published articles on the Baha'i faith in places like History Today or scholarly journals. To my knowledge they were well received. Then [EMAIL PROTECTED] came along, and I was introduced to the new medium of electronic mail on a big listserv. I think all of us were astonished at what followed, with feminist Baha'is discussing with rather conservative Iranian males, fundamentalists discussing with academics, mystics meeting bureaucrats, and all sorts of diverse views being expressed. [EMAIL PROTECTED] was controversial in a community that was used to pretty tight controls on public, written discourse, but I had no reason to think it was somehow illegitimate as an activity, and I enjoyed the 'deepening' aspects of it, as with the slow read of the Most Holy Book and the give and take on all sorts of issues, from which I learned an enormous amount. I also liked the idea of making friends in cyberspace, and I made a large number. I still have no idea why it was that in late April, 1996, I was called up by a member of the Continental Board of Counselors and informed that I had on [EMAIL PROTECTED] "made statements contrary to the Covenant." I have been back over my messages there numerous times and find nothing in what I said that in any way challenged the Baha'i Covenant. Indeed, the very idea of such a challenge would have made me nauseous. I don't approve of schism or covenant breaking. I am sure that the entire thing was an unfortunate misunderstanding, and have heard back privately from members of the Universal House of Justice to that effect. At the time, the entire thing seemed to me clearly contrary to every principle I had ever believed about the Baha'i faith, from the importance of the rule of law to the right of every Baha'i to declare his conscience and express his views (guaranteed by Shoghi Effendi himself) as long as those views were advertised as non-authoritative (which I always did). I have to admit, with some shame, that my faith in Baha'u'llah was shattered by this episode. Leaving ideology aside, the officials I was dealing with seemed to me very weird. When, full of unutterable sorrow, I announced my resignation from the faith under this duress, the counselor with whom I was dealing, who should by all rights have been concerned with the good of my soul, merely sent me a gloating email message: "I thank you for your intellectual consistency." If at that point I had ever done or said anything to make a Baha'i think about leaving the faith, I would have been stricken. I would have called him up and said it was clearly all an error and could he please reconsider. I wouldn't have thanked him for his intellectual consistency, basically saying 'Good riddance!'. This was weird. I was mystified, shocked and horrified. I also realized over time, partially through the Meyers-Brigg profile, that I am simply not temperamentally suited to a strongly extroverted organized religion. For better or worse, I'm introverted, an intellectual, a mystic, and an individual. As a professional academic historian, my life is dedicated to free inquiry and I cannot allow an outside body to dictate how I write history. There could not have been a worse fit between a personality and a religion than that between me and the Baha'i World Faith. However, in the meantime I have continued to read, meditate on, study and translate the works of Baha'u'llah and the other holy figures, and I continue to find nothing in any of this material that would in any way justify what was done to me and others on [EMAIL PROTECTED] in 1996. And I found that that old love I had conceived for Baha'u'llah in August, 1972, just would not flicker out. I therefore feel the obligation publicly to say that I feel myself a believer in and a follower of Baha'u'llah. (That feels so right to say!) And that I formally disavow my earlier disavowal of Him. As for the rest, I know very well by now what the reactions and expectations of many will be. All I can say is this: I probably do not mean 'believe in' or 'follower' in the sense most conservative Baha'is would take the terms to connote; I abhor schism and urge all Baha'is to recognize the legitimate authority of the Universal House of Justice in its legitimate spheres of authority; I am only a rather inadequate individual with no pretense to any sort of authority or leadership. I simply am not temperamentally suited to membership in an organized religion and I do not seek any administrative rights in the community. I recognize that my views are so similar to those of Michael McKenny that I probably also do not "meet the requirements for membership" in the Baha'i World Faith, nor do I claim to be a member or to be able to speak for it in any way. I suppose if anything I am an eternal seeker oriented to Baha'u'llah. I actually have met people in the past who died for their belief in Baha'u'llah. I shook hands with Professor `Ali Murad Davudi in Tehran in the summer of 1976, who was later bulldozed into a mass grave and made to 'disappear' by the Khomeinists. I have never felt happy with my surrender of faith in Baha'u'llah, however paradoxical the situation in which I found myself. I don't think, though of course I could be wrong, that I would have disavowed Baha'u'llah if some terrorist had kidnapped me and demanded it. As those who know me will attest, I am very stubborn. It was only an internal issue that could have so confused me. If in the end all this means that I am shunned by the Baha'is, well, so be it. It is better than my shunning Baha'u'llah, my Lord. As Baha'u'llah quotes the Qur'an, "How well hath a believer of the kindred of Pharaoh, whose story is recounted by the All-Glorious in His Book revealed unto His beloved One, observed: 'And a man of the family of Pharaoh who was a believer and concealed his faith said: `Will ye slay a man because he saith my Lord is God . . ?'" [Qur'án 40:28] To all the Friends, as well as to my friends, I wish a happy and spiritually uplifting Fast. Sincerely, Juan Cole The information contained in this e-mail and any attachments thereto ("e-mail") is sent by the Johnson County Community College ("JCCC") and is intended to be confidential and for the use of only the individual or entity named above. The information may be protected by federal and state privacy and disclosures acts or other legal rules. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, you are notified that retention, dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail is strictly prohibited. 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