However, Baha’is are engaged in
building an alternative social structure, based on consultation and
cooperation, where a small elite does not hold power.
The Haifan Baha’i Universal House of Justice is a body considered to be
infallible, and according to the Haifan Baha’i doctrine, the only
legitimate Baha’i body. There are several other Baha’i sects in
existence that disagree and have their own focus of authority, which
the Universal House of Justice does not recognize.
Recently in 2006 the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of the
United States (which is the body under the UHJ) sued the Orthodox
Baha’i congregation and the Baha’is Under the Provisions of the Covenant
organization for, what it claims, are trademark infringement of the
name Bahai. The NSA lost this case in an Illinois District Court and
the case is presently before an Appeals court — where they will likely
lose as well. Here are the details of the case.
Clearly given that the majoritarian UHJ organization cannot stomach the
very existence of alternative Baha’i groups, discourses and communities,
is in itself incontrovertible evidence that in fact the Haifan Bahai
organzation does not remotely stand for “building an alternative social structure, based on consultation and cooperation, where a small elite does not hold power” and that this assertion is pure Orwellian doublespeak.
In fact in actual practice they stand for the very opposite of this
thing; and it should be noted that totalitarian movements of the past,
such as Communists of various types, have also claimed to be building
alternative structures.
Now the question to the Haifan Baha’is is this: how alternative is your
structure when you cannot criticize your Baha’i institutions, and
particularly its UHJ, without being cast out of this community and
labelled a covenant breaker? What kind of cooperation are you talking
about when your institutions are deemed infallible and their word the
final say in any matter? And what kind of consultation are you talking
about when such unfettered consultation has led to people being
sanctioned and eventually thrown out and ostracized from the community with their lives
and family connections subsequently destroyed? And, finally, what is
your definition of small elite when 9 male individuals are in fact the
final word on everything and the system is a pure dictatorship from top down?
