Posted by Moondragon on December 29, 1998 at 15:23:45:

After much perusing of Baha'i stuff on the Internet, I find that Talisman / Occasional Papers are by far the best on-line sources of secondary material on the Baha'i religion. As Baha'i academics, you should incorporate them into your discussion or at least acknowledge their existence. Yet you do no such thing. Is this because your religion teaches you to be insular, avoiding neutral arenas of discourse? Is it because of personal reasons? (That little parody piece on Juan Cole, for example, is largely inscrutable to outsiders but seems to consist mainly of--dare I say it?--backbiting.) Or did somebody calculate that the academic gains would be offset by the exposure such dialogue would give to dissidents, ex-Baha'is, non-Baha'is, and so on? I would hope that your Baha'i affiliation would not serve as a barrier to academic quality, but unfortunately that seems to be the case at this writing.

Before you ask, I basically like Baha'is and their religion, but am not and have never been a Baha'i.

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