Science fiction
Written by mcgee on September 28th, 2005Though this doesn’t involve aliens, here’s another strange connections between the Faith and SF, an alternate history by Lavie Tidhar:
By 1947 Ford was dead, and his manufacture empire controlled entirely by the Universal House of Justice under Shoghi Effendi. Yet luck, or perhaps, as the Guardian often suggested, divine intervention, brought him face to face with just the man for the job of taking the Baha’i faith and its principles to the larger world. In 1947, attending a meeting of science fiction professionals in New York (all now working for the new Futurist Institute founded in 1945 by the Guardian) Shoghi Effendi met a charismatic author and a recent convert to the faith: a man by the name of L. Ron Hubbard. Hubbard has been a writer for some time, and a successful one, but Shoghi Effendi was struck by his commitment to the faith, by his charm and by his charisma. In 1947 the Guardian appointed Hubbard as the head of the missionary arm of the faith, responsible for initiating a Baha’i presence – including schools and temples – in Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia and South America.
This is actually a follow-up to an essay that Lavie wrote a while back for the Internet Review of Science Fiction (registration required).
He obviously is approaching the Faith from a very different perspective (not to mention gleaning some his information from suspect sources), and I think it’s a reminder that no matter how we talk about the Faith, people are going to read into it what they will.
For those of us who came into the Baha'i Faith through the ever popular 
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when one’s intention is to rewrite history, he needs no sources but his own imagination. :)
i don’t know…i find the follow up story neither well-written nor interesting. maybe it’s just me.
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Of course, to be fair we need to understand that the Nanobison site is posting something which is clearly demarked as far as the publication itself is concerned as “speculative fiction”. Fiction being the keyword. This same point is also applicable for the IROSF.
There is no doubt, even to the author that when measured by even the least rigorous scholarly methodology the article would be shot down, and never published in say for example an academic journal. But as a work of fiction when looked at objectively it could even be considered to be quite intriguing… Especially if the publisher or reader has never heard of the Baha’i Faith and thinks the whole thing is a remarkable work of imagination. :) When considered in that light both stories take on a completely different light.
Of course, when put in perspective the article is insensitive to the actual beliefs of the worldwide community of 5 million Baha’is, whether intentionally or unintentionally. This reality is not anything new or different: as individuals everyone has the right to choose how to treat other’s belief systems.
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uuuhhhhhhhhhhhh
“science fiction professionals”