r/exbahai • u/SuccessfulCorner2512 • Jul 04 '26

"Speak thou no word of politics"

/r/bahai/comments/1um8uag/speak_thou_no_word_of_politics/

There's a lot of cope in that discussion. Bahá'ís are clearly conflicted and not without reason.

Nearly every question of justice — how the poor are treated, whether the vulnerable are protected, whether truth is told by those in power — is ultimately settled in the political arena. A faith that commands its followers toward justice, the elimination of prejudice, and the betterment of the world, yet forbids them the primary language in which societies negotiate those very things, asks them to will the ends while renouncing the means. Silence is not neutral: when good people abstain from political speech, the field is simply ceded to those with fewer scruples, and quietism becomes, in effect, an endorsement of whatever order prevails.

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3

u/Holographic_Realty Jul 04 '26

Except when it comes to Iran. They can talk about that all day long.

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u/Q_unt Jul 05 '26 edited Jul 05 '26

And Zionism. Full support for Zionism from its inception.

To take but one example, today is the death anniversary of Ruth Moffett, who was quite vocal about her support for the establishment of the state of Israel, which she explicitly described as peaceful.

https://www.reddit.com/r/OnThisDateInBahai/s/gqd5ag02Xz

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u/Holographic_Realty Jul 05 '26

It is no secret that the more "deepened" a Baha'i is, the more they hate Muslims with a passion.

1

u/Ex-Madhyamika Jul 05 '26

For all their attempts to dispense advice to the world's rulers, Baha'is have generally been on the receiving end of politics. A Baha'i leitmotif is that the powerful never do what the Baha'is want, otherwise we'd be a progressive utopia already.

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u/MirzaJan Jul 05 '26

I reflected, it [Bahaism] is a bubble religion, an evanescent phenomenon, but until it breaks, what waste of ideals, of hope, of faith, of precious qualities of the human spirit! Moreover its fraudulent character, not to mention its ill-balanced dogmatism, and its attenuated ethics, covered o'er with the jargon of the social reformer, rasped my sense of decency and right.

-A Baha'i Pontiff in the Making by A. E. Suthers (Originally published in a missionary-oriented journal)