What most distinguishes the Bahai Faith from other world religions renders Australian Bahai leaders* hypocrites OR unconscionably nescient.

For Australian substitute at will, American, British, Canadian, Indian, Kiwi, Nigerian, South African, Tanzanian...

The Fundamental Bahai Principle of a Universal Auxiliary Language

https://gumroad.com/l/TbtCp p.54 

UHJ, L-R: Chuungu Malitonga, Paul Lample, Juan Francisco Mora, Ayman Rouhani, Payman Mohajer, Shahriar Razavi, Praveen Mallik, Andrej Donoval, Albert Nshisu Nsunga. May, 2023 

From their personal breach or nescience of the Bahai Covenant on the auxlang issue the cover-up ensuing is an affront: https://gum.co/gDehr p54-65, 73-74. 

That female Bahai leaders are precluded from serving on the UHJ is addressed here: https://pauldesailly.gumroad.com/l/TVuAR

A decade before undertaking his celebrated travels in western countries on the eve of World War One, Abdul Baha in Haifa said to some pilgrims: “The differences between this Revelation and that of Jesus Christ are, that in this cycle all the inhabitants of the world will be gathered into one nation; universal peace will prevail, bloodshed and war will cease; there will be a universal language; union and harmony will reach its highest state.” Star of The West volume 11 number 17. p 286; See Matthew 10:34

Seven or eight million Bahais in practically every region on Earth believe in progressive revelation: The Founders of Judaism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam, i.e., in Bahai parlance, Manifestations of God, have one and all returned spiritually in the name of Baha, as promised in the holy books. Abraham, Krishna, Moses, Zoroaster, Buddha, Christ and Muhammad possess the same spirit; the said sameness explains the singular true defining of reincarnation. They, and only They, after physical death, return to earth centuries hence, and only in the spirit! (Their virtues return!) To guide humanity in morality and spirituality these peerless Manifestations of God arise consecutively every 500 years or so; They differ only in their physical form and in the glory of the attributes bestowed divinely upon them by the one true God according to exigencies and crises of the era. Baha’u’llah is the Manifestation of God for our time. In that crucial sense no difference exists between the Bahai Faith and other Faiths, including indigenous religions, nor in the central tenet of loving one’s neighbor. 😊

Every Bahai believes that “the Promised One of all the peoples of the world hath appeared. All peoples and communities have been expecting a Revelation and He Baha’u’llah is the foremost teacher and educator of all mankind.” Abdul Baha in Bahá’u’lláh and the New Era (BNE) by dr. John Esslemont, p1. Without precedent in religious history, these teachings and principles of a divinely sent Messenger are extant and accessible in original manuscripts actually penned by Him so that we and future generations may intensely explore Revelation for ourselves, thus foiling forever the hazards of human meddling and faulty interpreting perpetrated by venal elites. But, with non-democratic entities bad old habits die hard, as in Chicago’s Bahai Publishing Trust and in the House-appointed Bahai International Community despite entreaty and overture from Esperantists of Illinois and especially from the office of the BIC’s Esperanto neighbors at the same, famous, NYC, UN address. ☹ MWPR, p86: https://pauldesailly.gumroad.com/l/making_world_peace_real

Significantly, the Bahai Writings make many specific and astounding references to the language principle, to Esperanto and to dr. Zamenhof. At times Abdul Baha not only met solo with Esperantists, he frequently spoke in person in their clubs and establishments. On one occasion in Paris, 1913, he four times directly mentioned Esperanto and once obliquely cited it within two moving paragraphs. The renowned Scottish Esperantist, dr. John Esslemont, recorded that speech in BNE, which Shoghi Effendi has described in his tour de force God Passes By as, “that splendid, authoritative and comprehensive introduction to Bahai history and teachings penned by that pure hearted and immortal promoter of the Faith, J. Esslemont.” That BNE constitutes an authoritative work is importantly relevant! At one-point Shoghi Effendi personally supervised revision of BNE. But, in 1950 the Bahai Publishing Committee USA acquired copyright, arrogated to itself an exclusive prerogative of the Bahai Guardian to pronounce the chronology of Abdul Baha’s Seven Candles of Unity and even published in BNE, as if penned by Esslemont, a belated role for the Language Candle in last position, after the Committee’s preferred Candles had, it stated, been attained. Those damaging machinations of American Bahais appeared in BNE’s chapter on language until the 1970 edition. Their further meddling in BNE sees even now therein faulty interpreting of Abdul Baha in London re a solo Universal Language that causes depreciation of Esperanto as the potential Auxlang. https://interlingvistiko.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/5-Nordenstorm.-Views-on-Esperanto-in-the-Bahai-faith.pdf p.47; FB2B https://gum.co/gDehr  p.64

No one has ever prevailed on BNE’s current owners in the USA to acknowledge the damage done (and is still occurring!) by letting stand for decades in ‘the textbook of the Faith’ non-sequitur conjoining of Abdul Baha’s advice on a Universal Language ‘of a far distant time’ with his ‘repeated and emphatic admonitions’ about an urgently required Universal Auxlang and his unequivocal & firm instructions re Esperanto. In the non-anglophonic world an affront to humanity depicted in this exposé extends far beyond America in translations of BNE in that the original in English, and emending thereof, form the template for BNE in a hundred languages.

Shortly before her murder in Treblinka, a Nazi concentration camp (a death camp essentially) in central Poland, Lidia Zamenhof, a devoted follower of Baha’u’llah and the youngest child of Klara and Ludovik Zamenhof, translated Baha’u’llah and the New Era into the world language (Shì Jiè Yǔ) which is the name for Esperanto in the Peoples Republic of China whose central government promotes it quite well. https://blogs.bl.uk/european/2017/01/lidia-zamenhof-a-cosmopolitan-woman-and-victim-of-the-holocaust.html

Friends, let’s examine the sacred words of Abdul Baha vis-a-vis the synthesis, the symbiosis or, if you prefer, the coincidences, linking the Bahai Faith, the internal idea of the Esperanto movement and the realization of world peace. Notice please in the first paragraph several astonishing promises unprecedented in all the history of religion! 

(1) "The greatest means of progress towards the union of East and West will be a common language. It will make the whole world one home and become the strongest impulse for human advancement. It will upraise the standard of the oneness of humanity. [The Bahais’ maxim-come-battle-cry for 3 generations!] It will make the earth one universal commonwealth. It will be the cause of love between the children of men. It will cause good fellowship between the various races. https://www.bandeeducation.com/racism-routed-9-page-intro

(2) "Now praise be to God that Dr. Zamenhof has invented the Esperanto language. It has all the potential qualities of becoming the international means of communication. All of us must be grateful and thankful to him for this noble effort for in this way he has served his fellowmen well. With untiring effort and self-sacrifice on the part of its devotees, Esperanto will become universal. Therefore, every one of us must study this language and spread it as far as possible, so that day by day it may receive a broader recognition, be accepted by all governments and nations of the world and become a part of the curriculum in all the public schools. I hope that Esperanto will be adopted as the language of all the future international conferences and congresses so that all people need acquire only two languages -- one their own tongue and the other the international language. Then perfect union will be established between all the people of the world. Consider how difficult it is today to communicate with various nations. If one studies fifty languages one may yet travel through a country and not know the language. Therefore I hope that you will make the utmost effort, so that this language of Esperanto may be widely spread.” Abdul Baha, Paris, February 1913. (See Baha’u’llah and the New Era, chapter X, The Way to Peace.)

Abdul Baha to Bahais: To spread Esperanto far and wide is a must and to study it --- a religious incumbency.

On MUST and INCUMBENCY, see points 17 and 12: https://www.bandeeducation.com/the-principle-of-a-universal-auxiliary-language Unique thanks?

Abdul Baha to Esperantists: “Thank you! I am extremely grateful to you. I congratulate you from the bottom of my heart.” 

Why so grateful? Think Ruhi and 21^st century Bahai service! To America’s Esperantists (25-4-1912) he portrayed Esperanto as “the very first service to the world of man.” See point 2, same link, and The Promulgation of Universal Peace, page 60. 

On reaching fifteen years of age, we Bahais choose independently of our parents, as to officially joining the Faith by signing a Covenant, in which we solemnly promise to obey guidance penned by the Universal House of Justice and by the central Figures of our religion, for example, Abdul Baha’s. Few Bahais seem even peripherally aware of his instructions about Dr Zamenhof’s language of world peace. For 21^st century Bahai youths, Zamenhof is a name rarely heard, and Esperanto might be an Italian opera set in utopia! Why so? # By 1985 the Universal House of Justice, the supreme Bahai authority since 1963, had officially called on all peoples to urgently engage the fundamental principle of an international auxlang! (See points 3-5: https://www.bandeeducation.com/the-principle-of-a-universal-auxiliary-language)

Abdul Baha often prioritized Esperanto! # Editors at Wikipedia and the prestigious Chambers Dictionary of Beliefs and Religions grasp way more of the Esperanto Bahai overlap (and publish it!) than House members in Haifa or Bahai proprietors and academics running BahaiTeachings.org, Bahai Blog, Bahai Chronicles etc. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bah%C3%A1%CA%BC%C3%AD_Faith_and_auxiliary_language  https://www.amazon.com/Chambers-Dictionary-Beliefs-Religions-Vernon/dp/0550103449