The rival miasmas: experts and the Baha’is

While we are at it, let’s continue the rant. The world is going to end soon. So the cognoscenti are out in force to save us. They just know about everything. And what they don’t know, other cognoscenti know. If only we could listen. For our own good!

I agonized over whether or not to introduce you to the fellow I am going to introduce you to.

But I have been obsessing in a roundabout way about that fine line which separates sane human beings from those denizens of insane asylums and also about reality, illusion, delusion, bigotry and intolerance.

We also explored at some length, of course, that could be and even if not, still outlook on life. So given that both Dr. Sanity and that famed Iranian blog also featured prominently the writings of one Alan Peters recently, I decided to go with the flow.

Dr. Sanity, of course, is a law onto herself. But when our fellow Iranian Dr. Zin--so discerning about the real news and the real nature of the Iranian society, and the real dimensions of all the real threats we face and champion of real democracy as the real solution to all our real woes—features an analyst, who am I to argue?

So this Mr. Alan Peters has been full of warnings about the Reality of Iran’s Hojatieh Threats:

Shia Islam believes that the 12^th Imam, a child named Mehdi, hid down a well 1,300 years ago and disappeared but will return to redeem the world. The Bahai religion, which declassified documents from the British Foreign Office appear to indicate Britain founded and organized artificially to splinter and weaken Iranian clergy influence, consolidated against British presence in Iran, claims their Prophet, Sheikh Baha'ollah, as the 12^th Imam, who has already returned.

As devotees of the 12^th Imam, the Hojatieh firmly believe he will return only when the world contains enough oppression, misery, tyranny and sorrow to warrant his coming. To hasten and facilitate the return, they believe in spreading evil, tyranny and misery and argue that standing in the way of all these delays his coming and their redemption.

That just about settles things then. Who is this Alan Peters who speaks so authoritatively? There is an answer:

Alan Peters is the nom de plume of a correspondent who spent many years engaged in security and intelligence issues in Iran. He had significant access inside Iran at the highest levels during the rule of the Shah, until early 1979.

So that, of course, really settles it. He just must surely know:

The Bahai religion, which declassified documents from the British Foreign Office appear to indicate Britain founded and organized artificially to splinter and weaken Iranian clergy influence, …

You know, the irony of course, is that only a few days ago some mourned the passing of Dhabihu'llah Mahrami a courageous and much tormented man after his decade long refusal to renounce his religion.

A religion much persecuted in Iran today. And much maligned over the years, once as product of century-long conspiracy conceived by persons of the basest character and motive and now, as we all must surely know thanks to our experts, a religion founded and created by those mischievous Brits.

So I ask you: what else have those British been up to, lately? How hard could it to be to organize those Khuzestan bombings? And those plane crashes? And the Kurdish protests? And the various student demands? And women’s groups? They could even be behind the Mullahs, no? Or perhaps both the Mullahs and the opposition? What to do, what to do?

Politics as thaumaturgy, then! Go figure. What is the allure? What makes some people so susceptible?

I really don’t understand sometimes what this has become about. An almost identical pathology expressed in an almost identical language promising an almost identical outcome.

Who’s out to help save, I often wonder these days, our saviours?