Hi Frederick Glaysher

Thank you for your comment at Provoketive Magazine (http://provoketive.com). We’re creating a space of rich conversation about life, faith, justice and culture without judgment. Our desire is to provoke the reader’s imagination through conversation and open up spaces of dialogue, learning, and hope.  We want to invite you to come back soon and continue to participate in the conversation. 

Thank you,
Jonathan Brink
Provoketive Magazine

You posted the following comment:
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'One misconception about the Baha’i faith is that it’s a cult. Cults are usually small groups that are governed by a radical leader who tries to isolate the group from society and tries to keep them from listening to anyone else....'

For a different view, I invite you and your readers to consider the comments and experience of 
Professor Juan Cole, University of Michigan, from his Autobiography
http://www.juancole.com/toward-an-authorized-biography


The Baha’is said they believed in the unity of the world religions, the elimination of racism, the equality of women and men, and world peace... 

 It gradually became apparent that most Baha’is do not actually believe in the equality of women and men, excluding women from their elective highest body, the Universal House of Justice, and giving speeches about how women have a different function in society than men and how men are the heads of the household. Then it gradually became apparent that whatever they privately believed about racism, they were unwilling to take a stand, as quietists, against Apartheid– and, indeed, were entirely willing to cooperate with the South African government if their religious institutions thereby gained freedom of action. Then it became clear that they are no more religious pluralists than Roman Catholics or Muslims, admitting partial truth in other traditions, but insisting that only in their own tradition is the fullness of the contemporary truth manifest. Then it became clear that the Baha’i authorities were not exactly pacifists. The top leadership has a secret cult-like belief in a Baha’i theocracy that will rule the world, rather on the same model as the theory of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini that Muslim clergy should replace civil governments globally. Some Baha’i communities were frankly reactionary, as with the Chilean community, which kept trying for photo ops with Gen. Augusto Pinochet. The community, for understandable reasons, opposed the Iranian revolution of 1978-79 in Iran, but many went further and privately warmly supported the shah for the most part. Cole gradually lost his enthusiasm for the community and the administration. When he married outside it in 1982, he stopped going to services because his non-Baha’i wife was excluded. He was also increasingly disturbed by the censorship practices imposed on Baha’i writers by the religion’s administration, and refused to submit to them....

(When email lists came along in the 1990s and he was active in Baha’i discussions of the religion’s history and policies, in which he retained an academic interest, and some hopes of reform, and he came to be hated by the fundamentalist leadership. In 1996 they had a high official call him at home and threaten him with being declared a “covenant-breaker,” i.e. a heretic, because of his critical email postings. Baha’is shun “covenant-breakers” and shun people who are in contact with them. Cole was astonished at the narrow-minded and coercive tactics of the administration, and declined to remain in the community. He angrily resigned. He is now not interested in organized religion as a personal matter. Cole was all along an American liberal, and had thought the Baha’is were on his side, which he discovered to be an error, at least with regard to the secretive and duplicitous leadership...."

Many people have had similiar experiences with the Baha'i organization located in Haifa, Israel, and Wilmette, Illinois. Some of their stories may be found at The Baha'i Faith &amp; Religious Freedom of Conscience
http://www.fglaysher.com/bahaicensorship