Early in the religion's development certain ideas, only minimally present in the original teachings of Baha'u'llah, began to be enlarged a great deal. These could be called socialist, Marxist, or progressive ideas found in the statements of most mystics. From a text that contained great mysticism, emphasis on obedience to God and devotion to Baha'u'llah arose a religion that instead promoted feminism, world government, and deracination. The feminism is particularly remarkable since the Kitab-i-Aqdas appears to be directed to men, makes certain prohibitions for women, and quite clearly assumes polygamy as normative. Baha'u'llah himself had, according to accounts, four wives.

But a few minor reforms or relaxing of Islamic regulations on women were spinned by the Baha'is into a program in which the Baha'i Faith became "feminist" in a Marxist sense. The longer the Baha'is suppressed and ignored the Kitab-i-Aqdas, the larger grew the gap between the Kitab-i-Aqdas text and what Baha'is were teaching. Continually attempting to appeal to progressives, they ended up with a "Ten Basic Principles" list that was quite different than their actual founding texts. Nothing made the gap between teaching and text more obvious than the briefest perusal of the Kitab-i-Aqdas! 

Elder-Miller Kitab-i-Aqdas

The earlier Haddad translation (1901) of the above thief verse goes this way:

"To the first or second offence of theft imprisonment or banishment is decreed. But on the third conviction a mar, or sign is to be placed on the forehead of the thief whereby he may be known, and man become aware of him, lest he may be received by other cities and countries of God."

Baha'ullah is obviously referencing a heritage of these disciplinary practices that we consider to be barbaric today, that of marking or otherwise physically damaging the body of the offender. The modern Baha'i handlers are doing some fancy dancing around this one, saying 'It's up to the UHJ to decide what the mark will be, for how long it's worn, etc." But it's clear from Haddad's use of "mar," and Baha'u'llah's follow-up to the effect of "Don't be softies about this" -- that this referred to something permanent like a scar, tattoo, or brand. The Haddad "don't be softies" follow up goes this way:

"Beware not to allow clemency to take hold of you in the religion of God, but do that whereunto you are commanded by one pitiful and clement. Verily we have reared you up with the scourges of wisdom and ordinances for the purpose of your preservation and the exaltation of your station; as children are reared by their parents."

The admin is now posturing towards some sort of "compassionate mark" but this is clearly not what Baha'u'llah intended. The verses say: 'These Baha'i laws are indeed scourge-like. Don't be shy about branding thieves on the forehead.' 

Baha'is point to their religion as superior by virtue of having their original, unaltered writings. But which religious text is the most collapsed and "owned"? The one that has 1) some changes in meaning creep in over time? 

Or 2) The text that is withheld, wholesale, from the people, deliberately corrupted and obfuscated?

Or 3) The text doled out only gradually over decades and centuries  becoming irrelevant by the time it's released?

Or 4) The text gradually made void, with each piecemeal rollout, with nullifying explanations and "this-can't-be-so" abrogations? 

A few religious texts have a bit of problem #1. But the Baha'i text is blighted by problems #2, #3, and #4. Baha'is rejected their own "Holy Book" from the start, then gave the world a carefully doctored version.

This is how the modern Baha'i propagandists are coping with their Kitab-i-Aqdas at the present time: Saying it's held in abeyance and for some "future time." The Baha'i propaganda crew hovering around "Aqdas" page at Wikipedia is saying this about it: "Some laws and teachings of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas are, according to Bahá'í teaching, not meant to be applied at the present time; their application depends on decisions by the Universal House of Justice." That's their entire content under the "Laws" section for the Kitab-i-Aqdas! No laws are listed, just a statement saying the Aqdas is not relevant yet. It keeps getting funnier!

This sort of flies in the face of another Baha'i teaching: That God withholds teachings from mankind and only doles them out "progressively" when mankind is ready for them. Apparently Baha'u'llah misfired. Mankind's still not "ready" for his Book of Laws a century after he's dead! This is the absurd corner Baha'is now occupy. 

Baha'is have obviously refused their own Book of Laws, turned it away at the door. First they kept it at bay and hidden. (The real "hidden words.") Now they are abrogating it's laws before they arrive. They will no doubt consider it null and void during the next 861 years as during the first 120 -- when it was far more palatable to the average man. Or will continue their pattern of  abrogating each law (thinking of reasons it's not valid) bit by bit until by, say, 200 years into his thousand-year dispensation the whole thing's a dead letter and we have Marxist deracination instead of the real Baha'i Faith. 

Upon reading the "Book of Laws" the reader will notice a few things.  One notices a definite Islamic tone and attitude -- of the harsher variety. One law in the case of arson is put bluntly: "Whoever burns a house intentionally, burn him." This is the straightforward Elder-Miller phrasing. The Baha'i officials couldn't find a way to pretty that up as with other jarring verses. They translated it this way: "Should anyone intentionally destroy a house by fire, him also shall ye burn."

The Strange Laws of the Kitab-i-Aqdas / The Textual Manipulations by Baha'i Officials Perceivable Thanks to the Elder-Miller Translation

Baha'u'llah was a prince. He wanted his followers to be an attractive group. 

He wants them to wear silk. The Kitab-i-Aqdas tells them to completely replace their furniture every 9 years. (I myself like to keep some of my old furniture, including antiques.) The Baha'i Avatar outlaws the shaving of the head or men having hair longer than their earlobes. 

Elder-Miller Kitab-i-Aqdas, 1961

No John, Paul, Ringo and George! The scripture instructs them to use perfume, to wear silk and furs. This is succinctly and cleanly stated in the form of one of many commands in the Elder-Miller:

   "Wear sable (sammur) just as you wear silk and squirrel-skin and other things."   

Elder-Miller, 1961

In the Elder-Miller version one can usually distinguish easily the difference between a mere "allowing" of an activity (not forbidden) and a command to do it. Note the clear phrase "Do not shave your heads" above. Now note the likewise-clear command to "Wear sable, just as you wear silk..." The Elder-Miller translation has this as a command, like the command to wear perfume. Seeing how absurd this perfume command looks to our present culture the Baha'i administration altered the lines in significant ways:

"Ye are free to wear the fur of the sable as ye would that of the beaver, the squirrel, and other animals."

Official Baha'i, 1992

The Baha'i version turns it into a mere option; as something not prohibited.  The early Haddad version has Baha'u'llah both instructing them to wear furs while explaining that past Muslim priests only banned it because of misunderstanding:

"Attire yourselves with the fur of sable in the same manner as ye use silkware and the fur of minever and aught else. Verily it was not forbidden in the Koran, but was misunderstood by the divines. He is the potent, the omniscient."

Anton Haddad, 1901

According to Dictionary.com miniver is "an unspotted white fur derived from the stoat, and with particular use in the robes of peers." You see, this Most Holy Content is so irrelevant today I didn't know what miniver or sable even were! With all of the vexing problems facing mankind, how would we have gotten through the next thousand years without this instruction? It is interesting that neither of the earlier non-official translations contains the word "beaver" but the Wilmette version does. Later the Wilmette-Haifa people also elaborate on Baha'u'llah's falcon-hunting instructions.

Mankind's Guidance for a the Next Thousand Years:

The Baha'i Perfume Commands, Hunting Instructions,

Very Fancy Coffins, and Marriage-Verses, & Official Translation Monkey Business

Now the Baha'i perfume command. The Baha'is are trying to moot and sideline this one in very clever ways. The following analysis will demonstrate how the official Baha'i organization works systematically to create loopholes in their own laws and gradually "evolve" their text into something mooted or meaningless. First the earliest English translation by Haddad:

Anton Haddad: "Use rose water, then the pure attar of roses: 

This is that which God hath desired from the beginning which has no beginning, that from you may be diffused what was wished by your Lord, the mighty, the wise."

Elder-Miller: "Use rose water, then pure perfume. This is what God, who has no beginning, loved from the beginning. This is in order that there might be diffused from you the odour that your Lord, the Mighty and the Wise, desired."

Official Baha'i: "Make use of rose-water, and of pure perfume; this, indeed, is that which God hath loved from the beginning that hath no beginning, in order that there may be diffused from you what your Lord, the Incomparable, the All-Wise, desireth."   

Note the change to "Make use of." Neither Haddad nor Miller employed this blur-creating word device. The clever Official rendering is designed to sidestep the simple, patent intention of the verse -- as specifying the conventional use of perfume etc. on the body -- and open up loopholes for re-interpretation: Rose-water/perfume do not need to be something worn on the skin; they just need to be "made use of" some how or other. 

Instead of a good odour being diffused, 'something' would be diffused but it is not specified what. But Baha'u'llah clearly wanted the smell of rose water and perfume to be diffused from the Baha'is. Is this little nicety too much for a Manifestation of God to ask the People of Baha? Apparently so. Haddad had this as "attar of roses." Could it be this was what Baha'u'llah actually wanted? Rose smell and not just "perfume"? (Later Officialdom is found going cheapo on Baha'u'llah's intended World Class coffins for the Baha'i corpses.)

It's highly fascinating that in the straightforward Elder rendering Baha'u'llah is seen giving personal hygiene advice. He is instructing: 'First you use the rose water, people, then you apply the perfume,' specifying a sequence. As an insider to the upper classes (his daddy was the manager of a governor's house) he likely enjoyed sharing these royal niceties with his "People of Baha." His instructions about hygiene and applying applying perfume are an interesting moment in the Aqdas, and one of the few where we catch him speaking in an attitude that could be called paternalistic and human. But the materialistic, utilitarian Haifa/Wilmette sect covered up this almost charming moment. Perhaps it is too 'personal' for modern western Baha'i prospects to cope with: the whole idea of this guru giving them personal hygiene advice. Especially once they see the Itty-Bitty Beauty's glaring photograph in which he looks as if he just crawled out of a dark hole.

Elder-Miller Kitab-i-Aqdas

This is loophole-building. This spin-doctoring and effective alteration of inconvenient passages is frequent throughout the official translation and only the Elder-Miller version (and others) make this clear. Their belated 1992 version also contains a great deal of explanations, apologies, and padding to help to shift the meaning or outright annul Baha'u'llah's statement and help current Baha'is live with the strange text. This occurred early on with Baha'u'llah's apparent assumption of polygamy as a norm. The Baha'i administration wrote a treatment that says, essentially, 'This can't be so.' Indeed, the primary Baha'i work, when it comes to their Most Holy Book, is figuring out ways ignore it, annul it, or render it void. 

Indeed, one pleasure of the Elder-Miller version is reading it straight without the verbal emollients, filler, padding, and apologetics of faceless official Baha'i bureaucrats. One finds out that the original Kitab-i-Aqdas was a terse, thin volume. The original book is only 74 pages with 10-pt. type. The Baha'i administration and spin doctors added so much to their version that their Aqdas ballooned to 315 pages! Most of it written by the administration, not Baha'u'llah. The scholarly Elder-Miller version, intending to present the Arabic as it really was written, makes these  manipulations by modern Baha'is clear to see. That is its value.

Baha'is promote their religion as one that is superior due to access to the original founding texts. Further, they state that the problem with religions is that change creeps in, with the original texts and their meanings lost. The Baha'i Faith, is, they say, different. One of the interesting things about the Baha'i Book of Laws, given it is presented by them as full guidance for mankind for a thousand years, is the content it lacks. It requires that marriage be effected with a dowry. Adulterers have to give the Baha'i "House of Justice" "nine mithquals of gold." (Elder/Miller explain that this amounts to 1-7th of an ounce of gold.) But the Most Holy Book contains no advice or laws about the following urgent problems of mankind:

-- Nothing about technological manipulation, genetic and bio-engineering, or food monopoly

-- Nothing on pornography, incest, and nothing apparent regarding pedophilia (he only mentions boys), homosexuality, etc.

-- No guidance on bio-medical ethics or euthanasia

-- No punishments for rape or even acknowledgment of it as a human crime

-- Nothing about Industrialization, pollution, the environment

-- No guidance about forms of government

-- Nothing about mass media

-- Nothing on business or monopolies

-- Nothing on economics, banking, usury, or money

And a host of dire problems. God's Thousand-Year-Guidance for man has nothing at all about sex crimes. But it does contain rules for falcon-hunting and a great deal of regulations for funerals and how to get buried. Their royal founder Baha'u'llah enjoined Baha'is be buried in some fancy coffins!

Julian Curtis Lee Mickunas

March 2012, The Saint Francis

http://kitab-i-aqdas.info/