Baha’i Faith and Al-Qaida

[Robert Well]

Baha’i Faith and Al-Qaida
By Juan Cole

“John Ricardo I. "Juan" Cole (born October 1952) is an American
scholar, public intellectual, and historian of the modern Middle East
and South Asia. He is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of
History at the University of Michigan. As a commentator on Middle
Eastern affairs, he has appeared in print and on television, and
testified before the United States Senate

Cole became a member of the Bahá'í Faith in 1972 as an undergraduate
at Northwestern, and the religion later became a focus of his academic
research. He resigned from the faith in 1996 after disputes with
Bahá'í leadership concerning the Bahá'í system of administration.”

The Baha'i faith stands for universal love, for tolerance, and for a
separation of religion and state. The need for religious leaders to
let politicians do the ruling is a key value stated over and over
again in Baha'i scripture.

Unfortunately, a weird Baha'i sub-cult has arisen. It structurally
resembles al-Qaida, and differs from al-Qaida only with regard to
methods, not ideals. It does not usually employ violence or terrorism
(though persons with this mindset have beaten up friends of mind).
And, most frighteningly of all, it has taken over and subverted the
main institutions of the Baha'i faith.

1) Al-Qaida believes in the destruction of secular, civil governments
and replacing them with a fascist theocracy.

Baha'i theocrats believe in the destruction of secular, civil
governments and replacing them with a fascist theocracy. Ian Semple, a
member of the Baha'i Universal House of Justice, has for decades cast
scorn on civil governments and spoken of his dream of a future when
Baha'i Institutions will rule in their stead.

One pilgrim wrote,

"I recall being in Haifa in the '70s ('72 and '78) and hearing long
talks about this from Ian Semple, on how the world was destined to be
ruled by houses of justice and there will eventually be no distinction
between church and state, with rather snide and smug comments about
how at last the world will finally get it right and have God and
Government fused through the power of the Baha'i covenant."

Note that this is the opposite of what `Abdu'l-Baha says in the
Treatise on Leadership:

http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/~bahai/trans/vol2/absiyasi.htm

Ian Semple also put out a letter from the Secretariat of the UHJ:

"As for the statement made by Shoghi Effendi in his letter of 21 March
1932, the well-established principles of the Faith concerning the
relationship of the Baha'i institutions to those of the country in
which the Baha'is reside make it unthinkable that they would ever
purpose to violate a country's constitution or so to meddle in its
political machinery as to attempt to take over the powers of
government. This is an integral element of the Baha'i principle of
abstention from involvement in politics. However, this does not by any
means imply that the country itself may not, by constitutional means,
decide to adopt Baha'i laws and practices and modify its constitution
or method of government accordingly."

In this passage he basically argues for a Nazi-like tactic of getting
elected democratically and then abolishing democracy. By the way, the
Islamists (with al-Qaida links) tried this in Algeria, and the
democrats and secularists fought back, embroiling the country in a
civil war that has cost 100,000 lives. This is the sort of conflict
between theocratic Baha'is and the rest of society that Semple is
urging on the world. At that point would the Baha'i theocrats refrain
from violence?

2) Al-Qaida wishes to reestablish the Islamic Caliphate as the One
World Government.
Baha'i theocrats substitute the House of Justice for the Caliphate and
envision it ruling the world.

3) Al-Qaida despises parliamentary democracy as corrupt, money-driven
and unrepresentative. It wishes to overthrow parliaments and institute
authoritarian religious rule instead.

Baha'i theocrats despise parliamentary democracy and wish to
substitute their religious institutions, which are not freely elected,
for civil government. Long-time Baha'i leader Firuz Kazemzadeh said in
1988:

"If somebody is dissatisfied with a local assembly, he is not
prevented from appealing to the NSA . . . It is something else when
whispering campaigns or petitions are sent around for signatures
objecting to the activities of the institutions. That also may be
something which is countenanced by American democracy but has nothing
to do with the Bahaullah and Baha’i Faith. We must always remember
that our institutions are an unusual and unique combination of
theocracy in the best sense of the term with democracy. The
institutions of the Baha’i Faith have not been created by us, the
institutions have
been created by God.

Actually, Kazemzadeh's version of the Baha'i institutions has been
created by Kazemzadeh.

4) Al-Qaida establishes cells throughout the world to work for
theocracy, and recruits innocent Muslims at mosques.

Baha'i theocrats have secret cells within the Baha'i community, and
recruit Baha'is at deepenings and other events into their twisted
world-view. Many "Auxiliary Board Members" and Assistants are secret
theocrats who play dirty tricks on ordinary Baha'is to force them out
of the Faith.

The Ian Semple/Kazemzadeh theocratic ideology aims at destroying
American democracy. It aims at gutting the Constitution and abolishing
Congress in favor of Kazemzadeh's weird, secretive, authoritarian way
of ruling.

5) Al-Qaida demands absolute obedience from its recruits, and no
dissent is permitted.

Baha'i theocrats demand absolute obedience to "the Institutions" and
tolerate no dissent. Kazemzadeh told a group of Baha'i intellectuals,
"the word dissent implies separating oneself from the activities of
the group and putting oneself outside the mainstream of the community,
and that is contrary to Baha'i practice.

You can't disagree with the NSA.

The dangers to the pristine Baha'i faith, with its values of
tolerance, allowing the expression of diverse points of view, and firm
commitment to the separation of religion and state, of this theocratic
cult that has taken control of the community cannot be overstated.
Moreover, it is a threat to the whole world.

Now that we have seen where such authoritarian theocracy leads, on
September 11, I call upon all Baha'is to step back, reread the
scriptures, and adhere to the real values of our religion.

Juan Cole

[NUR]

http://original.antiwar.com/john-v-walsh/2011/09/01/juan-cole-consultant-to-the-cia/

Juan Cole, Consultant to the CIA


Juan Cole is a brand name that is no longer trusted. And that has
been the case for some time for the good Professor from Michigan.
After warning of the "difficulties" with the Iraq War, Cole swung over
to ply it with wet kisses on the day of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
His fervor was not based on Saddam Hussein’s fictional possession of
weapons of mass destruction but on the virtues of "humanitarian
imperialism."

Thus on March 19, 2003, as the imperial invasion commenced, Cole
enthused on his blog: "I remain convinced that, for all the concerns
one might have about the aftermath, the removal of Saddam Hussein and
the murderous Baath regime from power will be worth the sacrifices
that are about to be made on all sides" (emphasis mine). Now, with
over 1 million Iraqis dead, 4 million displaced and the country’s
infrastructure destroyed, might Cole still echo Madeline Albright that
the price was "worth it"? Cole has called the Afghan War "the right
war at the right time" and has emerged as a cheerleader for Obama’s
unconstitutional war on Libya and for Obama himself.

Cole claims to be a man of the "Left" and he appears with painful
frequency on Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now as the reigning "expert" on
the war on Libya. This is deeply troubling – on at least two counts.
First, can one be a member of the "Left" and also an advocate for the
brutal intervention by the Great Western Powers in the affairs of a
small, relatively poor country? Apparently so, at least in Democracy
Now’s version of the "Left." Second, it appears that Cole’s essential
function these days is to convince wavering progressives that the war
on Libya is fine and dandy. But how can such damaged goods as Cole
credibly perform this marketing mission so vital to Obama’s war?

Miraculously, Cole got just the rehabilitation he needed to continue
with this vital propaganda function when it was disclosed by the New
York Times on June 15 that he was the object of a White House inquiry
way back in 2005 in Bush times. The source and reason for this leak
and the publication of it by the NYT at this time, so many years
later, should be of great interest, but they are unknown. Within a
week of the Times piece Cole was accorded a hero’s welcome on
Democracy Now, as he appeared with retired CIA agent Glenn Carle who
had served 23 years in the clandestine services of the CIA in part as
an "interrogator." Carl had just retired from the CIA at the time of
the White House request and was at the time employed at the National
Intelligence Council, which authors the National Intelligence
Estimate.

It hit this listener like a ton of bricks when it was disclosed in
Goodman’s interview that Cole was a long time "consultant" for the
CIA, the National Intelligence Council and other agencies. Here is
what nearly caused me to keel over when I heard it (From the Democracy
Now transcript.):

AMY GOODMAN: So, did you know Professor Cole or know of him at the
time you were asked? And can you go on from there? What happened when
you said you wouldn’t do this? And who was it who demanded this
information from you, said that you should get information?

GLENN CARLE: Well, I did know Professor Cole. He was one of a
large number of experts of diverse views that the National
Intelligence Council and my office and the CIA respectively consult
with to challenge our assumptions and understand the trends and issues
on our various portfolios. So I knew him that way. And it was
sensible, in that sense, that the White House turned to my office to
inquire about him, because we were the ones, at least one of the ones
— I don’t know all of Mr. Cole’s work — who had consulted with him
(emphases mine).

That seems like strange toil for a man of the "Left." But were the
consultations long drawn out and the association with the CIA a deep
one? It would appear so. Again from the transcript:

AMY GOODMAN: Well, the way James Risen (the NYT reporter) writes
it, he says, "Mr. Carle said [that] sometime that year, he was
approached by his supervisor, David Low, about Professor Cole. [Mr.]
Low and [Mr.] Carle have starkly different recollections of what
happened. According to Mr. Carle, [Mr.] Low returned from a White
House meeting one day and inquired who Juan Cole was, making clear
[that] he wanted [Mr.] Carle to gather information on him. Mr. Carle
recalled [his] boss saying, ‘The White House wants to get him.’"

GLENN CARLE: Well, that’s substantially correct. The one nuance,
perhaps, I would point out is there’s a difference between collecting
information actively, going out and running an operation, say, to find
out things about Mr. Cole, or providing information known through
interactions (emphasis mine). I would characterize it more as the
latter.

And later in the interview Carle continues:

On the whole, Professor Cole and I are in agreement. The
distinction I make is it wasn’t publicly known information that was
requested; it was information that officers knew of a personal nature
about Professor Cole, which is much more disturbing. There was no
direct request that I’m aware, in the two instances of which I have
knowledge, for the officers actively to seek and obtain, to conduct —
for me to go out and follow Professor Cole. But if I knew lifestyle
questions or so on, to pass those along (emphasis mine). That’s how I
— which is totally unacceptable.

It would seem then that the interaction between the CIA operatives and
Cole was long standing and sufficiently intimate that the CIA spooks
could be expected to know things about Cole’s lifestyle and personal
life. It is not that anyone should give two figs about Cole’s
personal life which is more than likely is every bit as boring as he
claims. But his relationship with the CIA is of interest since he is
an unreconstructed hawk. What was remarkable to me at the time is
that Goodman did not pick up on any of this. Did she know before of
Cole’s connections? Was not this the wrong man to have as a "frequent
guest," in Goodman’s words, on the situation in the Middle East?

This is not to claim that Cole is on a mission for the CIA to convince
the Left to support the imperial wars most notably at the moment the
war on Libya. Nor is this a claim that the revelation about the White
House seeking information on Cole was a contrived psyops effort to
rehabilitate Cole so that he could continue such a mission. That
cannot be claimed, because there is as yet no evidence for it. But
information flows two ways in any consultation, and it is even
possible that Cole was being loaded with war-friendly information in
hopes he would transmit it.

Cole is anxious to promote himself as a man of the Left as he spins
out his rationale for the war on Libya. At one point he says to
Goodman (3/29), "We are people of the left. We care about the ordinary
people. We care about workers." It is strange that a man who claims
such views dismisses as irrelevant the progress that has come to the
people of Libya under Gaddafi, dictator or not. (Indeed what brought
Gaddafi down was not that he was a dictator but that he was not our
dictator.) In fact Libya has the highest score of all African
countries on the UN’s Human Development Index (HDI) and with Tunisia
and Morocco the second highest level of literacy. The HDI is a
comparative measure of life expectancy, literacy, education and
standards of living for countries worldwide. A glance at the map here
says it all.

Whither The Left on the Question of Intervention?

None of this is all too surprising given Cole’s status as a
"humanitarian" hawk. But it is surprising and troubling that he is so
often called on by Democracy Now for his opinion. One of his
appearances there was in a debate on the unconstitutional war in
Libya, with the estimable Vijay Prashad taking the antiwar side and
Cole prowar. It would seem strange for the Left to have to debate the
worth of an imperial intervention. Certainly if one goes back to the
days of the Vietnam War there were teach-ins to inform the public of
the lies of the U.S. government and the truth about what was going on
in Vietnam. But let us give Democracy Now the benefit of the doubt
and say that the debate was some sort of consciousness raising
effort. Why later on invite as a frequent guest a man who was the pro-
war voice in the debate? That is a strange choice indeed.

This writer does not get to listen to Democracy Now every day. But I
have not in recent weeks heard a full-throated denunciation of the war
on Libya from host or guests. Certainly according to a search on the
DN web site, Cynthia McKinney did not appear as a guest nor Ramsey
Clark after their courageous fact finding tour to Libya. There was
only one all out denunciation of the war – on the day when the guests
were Rev. Jesse Jackson and Vincent Harding who was King’s
speechwriter on the famous speech "Beyond Vietnam" in 1967 in which
King condemned the U.S. war on Vietnam. Jackson and the wise and
keenly intelligent Harding were there not to discuss Libya but to
discuss the MLK Jr. monument. Nonetheless Jackson and Harding made
clear that they did not like the U.S. war in Libya one bit, nor the
militarism it entails.

If one reads CounterPunch, Antiwar.com or The American Conservative,
one knows that one is reading those who are anti-interventionist on
the basis of principle. With Democracy Now and kindred progressive
outlets, one is not so sure where some segments of the "Left" stand,
especially since the advent of Obama. In his superb little book
Humanitarian Imperialism Jean Bricmont criticizes much of the Left for
falling prey to advocacy of wars, supposedly based on good
intentions. And Alexander Cockburn has often wondered aloud whether
many progressives are actually quite fond of "humanitarian"
interventionism. Both here and in Europe this fondness seems to be
especially true of Obama’s latest war, the war on Libya. It is little
wonder that the "progressives" are losing their antiwar following to
Ron Paul and the Libertarians who are consistent and principled on the
issue of anti-interventionism.

Democracy Now, quo vadis? Wherever you are heading, you would do well
to travel without Juan Cole and his friends.