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MEDIA COVERAGE
About Baha'i
Barney Leith, Secretary of the National Baha'i Community, will be speaking at an event hosted by the Oxford Baha'i Society on Tuesday 14th October at 8pm at the Friends Meeting House on St Giles, writes Anjool Malde.
The apparent suicide of Dr David Kelly has seen a massive surge in interest in the Baha'i Faith of which he was a member.
Janice Kelly said that Baha'i "really was a spritual revelation" for her husband, who enjoyed the company of fellow members at his Oxfordshire home.
Meeting to defend Kelly's faith
The Oxford Baha'i Society held an open meeting this week following the media frenzy surrounding
the death of one of its followers, Dr David Kelly, in Oxfordshire last July.
Guest speaker Barney Leith, the Secretary of the National Spiritual Assembly of
the Baha'i of the UK, spoke on the topic of "The Baha'i Faith: Fostering Unity
in a War-Torn World".
Mr Leith, a local Abingdon resident, told Cherwell that "the Baha'i faith is a
religion and not a sect," as reported by some areas of the press in the Hutton
Enquiry into Dr Kelly's death.
"Some parts of the media view religion as easy pickings to draw a scandal, if
Dr Kelly had believed in another faith then his religion would not have been an
issue.
"The Baha'i faith is a progressive religion based on rational thought and a universal
ethos of tolerance.
We believe that the teachings of the Baha'u'llah are the key to resolving conflict
in the world and bringing about a just and prosperous society." Juliette Doostdar, a member of the Oxford Baha'i Society, said that since the
Hutton Enquiry there had been increased speculation and interest as to what the
faith was. "We have an obligation to share our faith and by holding an open forum we felt
we could create a happy medium to meet those who are interested in finding out
more."
Faith highlighted by Dr Kelly death
Prospective converts to the little-known Baha'i religion gathered
in central Oxford to hear more about it.
The Oxford Baha'i group hosted the event on Tuesday, October 14,to explain their
faith after a surge in calls from across the county, following the death of weapons
expert Dr David Kelly. Some people had criticised the faith for remaining hidden from potential converts.
Dr Kelly, from Southmoor, near Abingdon, had converted to the Baha'i faith before
his apparent suicide during the BBC mole scandal.
The scientist remains at the heart of rows over whether the UK Government's case
for war against Iraq was justified.
The on-going Hutton Inquiry into his death has led to a string of phone calls
to the home of Julliette Doostdar, the Oxford Baha'i's secretary.
Ms Doostdar, of Charlbury Road, Oxford, decided the best way to deal with the
mounting queries was to call in Barney Leith, secretary general of the Baha'i
Community's National Spiritual Assembly. She said: "Since all this publicity I had a lot of phone calls because my number's
in the phone book as the contact.
"We're not allowed to proselytise in our religion. But we got accused of hiding ourselves away.
"We don't mean to, we want people to have information, but we believe people have
a right to investigate under their own steam and not be shaped by others."
About 40 people joined the Oxford Baha'i's at the Friends Meeting House in St
Giles.
Mr Leith, who lives in Abingdon, gave a talk at the meeting.
He said: "Humanity is in transition from collective childhood to a collective
adulthood. It's a long term process. We can get there by understanding that each of us is part of a global society."
He added that everyone shared the same god, whatever their religions might be.
A peaceful visionary
ALISON LOCK speaks to Barney Leith,
chief executive of the Baha'i faith about David Kelly and the impact of his death
on the community When you used to say the word Baha'i, people used to say, "uh?"
The girl shrugs at me. "And you'd say, "yes, its a really new religion from Iran. It'd be hard to explain really quickly but people would only be asking because they didn't know, not because they wanted to find out about it".
She smiles. "But now all you have to do is say it and people click, and say 'ooh! David Kelly!".
She's right. The Baha'i have been catapulted into the international limelight since a single
reporter noticed the fact that the weapons inspector David Kelly had committed
to the faith four years before his death. And this change has hit nobody harder than Barney Leith, the secretary of the
Baha'i National Spiritual Assembly — the effective chief executive of the Bahai
community and the nearest they have to a spokesman.
He has been the first in line to answer the demands of the media, and over the
last months has faced intense scrutiny culminating in his appearance before the
Hutton inquiry on 2 September. The results are instantly recognisable as he sits down with me: he explains his
faith gently and with the deliberate air of someone practised at teaching a novice
an unfamiliar idea. His tone is warm though, and he is still clearly highly entertained by this move
from obscurity to being very prominent as a faith "in about two days flat!"
He admits that the challenge was a huge one. There were the allegations that the Baha'i were a cult who led Kelly to his suicide,
and the endless explanations of their beliefs about afterlife and acceptance of
suicide victims. The ferocity of the media interest astounded him, and his face clouds as he remembers
the headlines; "we had to deal with some really rather inaccurate, foolish reporting". The relief is now that after approximately 111 tagged printed news articles and
up to 16 broadcast interviews a day at the height of the controversy, the media
is finally showing itself to be more sympathetic.
For the Baha'i teachings need sensitivity to make sense of them, and express concepts
of peace and unity that seem strange to the cynical modern outlook. They start their beliefs with the idea that all human beings occupy the same earth,
and all share the same basic claims on this world by virtue of their humanity.
Now, statements like this have been made before, and dismissed as hippyish or
fantastical, but the Baha'i possess a conviction that this human unity not only
exists but will inevitably triumph if people work at it. They see a final vision of a universal civilisation and peace across the world, and are determined to destroy the current divisions and barriers among the races
to achieve it.
To the Baha'i this vision is not simply a hope or a potential action plan. Their understanding is not that the earth may move towards an ultimate state of
global unity and peace, but teaches that it is a reality already set in motion
by God. Humans, then, must work to allow God's will to have the full effect on the world.
The idea is mind boggling enough, but the faith of these people that it will inevitably
come about is more so. The idea seems at first blind and naïve: how can they claim humans are this rational,
clear sighted and generous? They make me feel bitter for my instinctive reaction
that they show a delusional lack of realism about basic human nature. And what of all the evidence pointing to the ever increasing corruption, intolerance
and destruction in the modern world?
Leith chuckles deeply at these dismal questions.
Yes, he acknowledges, the Baha'i are of an optimistic turn, but surely it is better
to talk of global peace and world unity than to give up, turn our backs on the
world and opt to live from day to day with no hope for the future. And while he recognises the bad way the present world is in, "it's a collective
dark night of the soul; a very bad time" the words of the Baha'i prophet sustain
him. "There will come a time when peace will arrive" he tells me, and it depends on
the hard work of humanity now.
And the Baha'i are committed entirely to working for humanity. Leith talks of education as the crucial element in moving forward — the "collective
action" of the world community is to spread knowledge. To know what we are and why we are here as human beings is central to Baha'i thought,
and he describes seriously the need for all people of the world to be made conscious
not only of their own existence, but of their place within the wider world community.
My cynicism returns once again, though, as I think about real people; surely the
very problem with humans is that most don't want to know about the wider world
or their place within it — human nature is far too perverse for that unified view.
And yet, why not try a little of the optimism of these people? Leith speaks of
the Bahai faith giving a fresh relevance to religion — the twentieth century,
he says, was a disaster for the established faiths and saw many people alienated
from them, with secular groups trying to prove faith had no place in modern life.
Baha'i brings religion back closer to people's experiences: the revelations of
their prophet, Baha'ullah were made in the 1860s and so understand modern issues.
They include an outline of social considerations that the ancient religious texts
cannot hope to convey, like the equality of men and women, economic responsibility
and justice, and the idea that science can help religion to further man's experience.
This very modern view also leads the Bahai to work on a political and public level,
and here, Leith says, lies the focus of his work: the "absolutely huge emphasis"
of his faith on social cohesion. The regret of past years, he explains, is that "religion had become a rather private
issue, out of the public square", and he has now been appointed to the Government
committee set up to "open the door between government and religion"; to make it
useful again.
Leith is proud of the results this work is getting, telling enthusiastically of
how the faith communities are responding: "they are being seen as part of the
public square — seen as having something to contribute, seen as being worthy partners". He wants the Government to go further, to work on the grassroots these faiths have established, and with the ever growing need to penetrate into those most
hidden and sensitive communities he admits "it will give the Government access
to areas of society that are potentially troublesome". In a world where religious fanaticism is inducing hysteria, the calm rational
voice of the Baha'i should be heeded.
Maybe the unqualified optimism of these people is our way out. Leith
has many close friends drawn from other world religions, and stresses
the "equality of regard" that forms a central theme of Baha'i. Perhaps
the faith does understand something which our modern world, so absorbed
in the violence caused by gulfs between the religions, doesn't seem
to know.
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