But I'm going to break with tradition and talk now about my disenrollment. This is because someone was asking me recently for my views on it. I said I didn't want to get drawn into a discussion on it but that I'd put some thoughts up on my blog. In particular, I realised that there was one argument that my detractors like to put about that I've never responded to. It goes like this: when Alison was disenrolled, she said that she was happy and that she didn't mind. Therefore, Alison was not treated unjustly. She didn't lose anything, for she is happy to have lost her community membership. A variation on this is that because I wasn't an active member of my local community when I was disenrolled, no injustice was done to me when my membership was taken away.
First up, I'll deal with that last one. If being an inactive Baha'i alone justifies your disenrollment, then there's plenty of Baha'is out there who ought to be deeply concerned. But, for some reason, they aren't being disenrolled in any systematic fashion. So, there must be more to it than that.
It's true, though, I do have two seemingly contradictory responses to my disenrollment. I am both content about it and not content about it. In a nutshell, this is because the two responses come from different perspectives. If I see my disenrollment from the point of view of detachment from the world and contentment with the will of God, then I am content. If I look at it in terms of the standard one would expect of the governing bodies of the Baha'i world and the New Zealand Baha'i community, and their duty to act in accordance with equity and justice, then I am not content.
My position about being detached from, and content with, my disenrollment is based on passages from Baha'u'llah such as this one, which has been very influential on me:
"Adorn yourself with My character, in such wise that should anyone treat you unjustly you would take no heed of him, nor oppose him. Leave him to the judgment of your Lord, the Powerful, Omnipotent and Self-Subsisting. Be at all times a wronged one, for this is one of My attributes, though none but the sincere are aware of it. Verily, the sighs of patience uttered by one wronged are more precious to God than any other deed, did you but know. Therefore, be patient in the face of whatever befalls you, and set your trust in your Lord God in all your affairs." Surah of Blood, paragraph 5Another influential passage is this Arabic Hidden Word, and the ones immediately before it about the way we should respond to adversity:
"O son of man! My calamity is My providence, outwardly it is fire and vengeance, but inwardly it is light and mercy. Hasten thereunto that thou mayest become an eternal light and an immortal spirit. This is My command unto thee, do thou observe it." AHW 51Also extremely influential on me is the example Baha'u'llah gives us through his own response to injustice. He met with injustice all his life; so, how did he respond? Again, you get the two perspectives: one, contentment with the will of God; and the other, where he tells the Shah and the Sultan in no uncertain terms that they have treated him unjustly. I won't go into how they did that; we all know about how they imprisoned him and exiled him from place to place without bothering to talk to him or dispassionately weigh the evidence against him. Here's a passage that illustrates both perspectives:
"I have seen, O Shah, in the path of God what eye hath not seen nor ear heard... How numerous the tribulations which have rained, and will soon rain, upon Me! I advance with My face set towards Him Who is the Almighty, the All-Bounteous, whilst behind Me glideth the serpent. Mine eyes have rained down tears until My bed is drenched. I sorrow not for Myself, however. By God! Mine head yearneth for the spear out of love for its Lord. I never passed a tree, but Mine heart addressed it saying: `O would that thou wert cut down in My name, and My body crucified upon thee, in the path of My Lord!'... By God! Though weariness lay Me low, and hunger consume Me, and the bare rock be My bed, and My fellows the beasts of the field, I will not complain, but will endure patiently as those endued with constancy and firmness have endured patiently, through the power of God, the Eternal King and Creator of the nations, and will render thanks unto God under all conditions." Tablet to Násiri’d-Dín Sháh in Summons of the Lord of Hosts, paragraph 268And so, this is my position too. On the one hand, I am detached from what's happened to me. I know that, in reality, it is an honour to suffer in the path of God. On the other hand, however, it is also true that I have been wronged. Just like Baha'u'llah, I was exiled (only for me, it was from the Baha'i community) without first being spoken to, and I was the victim of people scheming against me behind closed doors.
What my detrators like to do is mix the two perspectives up. The mixture turns out compelling for those who don't understand the spiritual perspective of detachment. The result isn't bothered with the subtleties and leaves a potion easy for the simple-minded to swallow: Alison is content over the decision to disenrol her, therefore no injustice was done to her. But would those detractors use the same logic in the case of Baha'u'llah? Baha'u'llah was thankful to God for the imprisonment and exiles that were ordained for him, therefore he wasn't treated unjustly? Or perhaps it could be applied to the martyrs in Iran: they used to kiss the hands of their executioners and couldn't wait to die, therefore the Iranian government did not wrong them when it had them killed? In fact, now that the idea is out there, I'm just waiting for the day the Iranian government starts using it to justify its actions. It can thank the Baha'is for thinking the argument up.
