> the following you wrote is the very opposite of anything I have seen
> written by Sen or heard him voice, so please provide any evidence
> written in Sen's own hand to support your claim here.
Own hand? All we get are bytes out here in cyberspace. But here are
some of his statements in this regard:
"I was bought up with the 'Baha'i Faith has no clergy' line too, and
it has taken me years to realize that it ain't necessarily so . . . I
think we are beginning to see the development of a new organ of
religious/academic specialists, and that we can form some idea of
what it might be and how it might work . . . The development of an
organ of 'learned and divines' in the Baha'i community will demand a
major conceptual shift on the part of the whole community, whose
self-image has included the lack of such a
body as a virtue."
"So it seems more likely that the key institutions at the world
level and at the national level will grow out of something like the
Haj Mehdi Arjmand foundation, which is achieving a great deal already
- or my own pet project of a college for Baha'i students and scholars
at Leiden . . . My sense is that we start with excellence and the
academic infrastructure I listed, and out of that develop the
pre-eminent libraries, seminaries, universities and so forth. When
the El-Azhar publishes an official (ie collective university)
opinion, as it did a few years ago on the Baha'i Faith, this carries
tremendous weight, but I don't think anyone appointed the
university to this position or that any outside body has decreed how
the Azhar should go about formulating its opinions."
"In short, I don't think we should be looking to the elected
institutions to achieve the vision of Baha'u'llah and `Abdu'l-Baha,
regarding the role of the learned and divines, for us. It would even
be normal for there to be a degree of tension and jealousy between the
elected organs and the incipient organs of the divines and the house
of worship."
> Taking individual words of Sen's out of the context of a sentence, as
> I hope you would realise, would not convince me of your claim.
I'm not terribly concerned with convincing you. You will believe
whatever you want about your husband. If Sen feels his words are being
taken out of context he is certainly free to put up the entire post
from which these quotations were taken so people can decide for
themselves whether I have misrepresented him.
> If any of the 'reasons' you gave in the posting were the reasons the
> House of Justice had or have against Sen's views, I think they would
> not be afraid of stating this. They have not.
Actually, they did. But their statements were misrepresented as saying
Baha'is couldn't study theology.
> You are prefectly free to express your own opinions about what you
> think of Sen's writing and your own objections to this are, but I
> think it is not your place to claim what the House of Justice's
> reasons are for removing him from the rolls.
Why not? Sen has certainly felt free to do so.
>
> Wouldn't it be better scholarship, surely, to refrute Sen's
> argumentation by showing this from the Writings themselves?
It depends on whether we are talking specifically about a certain text
of the Writings or about the Baha'i Teachings in general. If we are
talking about the Teachings then the Guardian's interpretations,
including those contained in letters written on his behalf, as well as
the elucidations of the Universal House of Justice are perfectly valid
sources, and sources which Sen generally ignores.
In any case, Ron asked what is in essence not really a scholarly
question, namely whether what Sen believed was outside the boundaries
of the Baha'i Faith. That was the question I was addressing. Clearly
the House has found some of Sen's actions and beliefs outside the
boundaries of what it means to be a Baha'i or they would not have
removed him from the rolls. That doesn't mean everything he thinks is
outside of those. This was my point to Ron.
Susan
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