No matter who we are or what sort of life we lead, the time must come when we feel excluded.  It happens to each of us at some point.  The occasion may be different, but the sensation is the same.  A list gets made, whether guests for a party, a shortlist for promotion, nominees for the Nobel Peace Prize, or an indictment for war crimes at The Hague, but whatever the specifics, the essential never changes.  You’re not included, you’re not on the list.  We all know how it feels, we all know what it’s like.  How we may react varies from person to person.  One of us gives up while another is challenged to further efforts at recognition – I’m looking at you, Mr. Cheney! – but the feeling is universal.

In my case, the occasion for my sense of exclusion is the latest article by Dr. Moojan Momen.  For those who don’t know – and this included me until three days ago – Dr. Momen is one of those highly respected Baha’i scholars we’ve never heard about but, we can rest assured, is highly respected in the Baha’i community all the same.  He’s written several important but unreadable books and as many articles, about which I could probably say more if I was actually willing to look at them.  Which is my first problem with the present article.  Apart from its great significance, the most pertinent quality of Dr. Momen’s most recent contribution to Baha’i scholarship is that it is very, very boring, and I lack the mental discipline to read more than a sentence or two.  So I’ve had to rely on a friend who picked the piece up accidentally – he thought he was reading a new tax code – to fill me in on the details.  This hasn’t been easy – my friend still insists that the article reads better as tax law, or perhaps as the minutes from an exceptionally lifeless city council meeting – but I’ve mastered the relevant facts.

The name of Dr. Momen’s latest article, published in the prestigious journal Religion, is Marginality and apostasy in the Baha’i community.  At the heart of this article is a list of ‘apostate’ Baha’is.  These are people, according to Dr. Momen, who used to be Baha’is, and having left the Baha’i Faith spend all their time angry about the state of the very same Baha’i Faith which they’ve left.  “The apostates described here, whatever their differences, share an obsessive hatred of their former religious community.”  According to Dr. Momen, the ‘apostates’ and their allies within the Baha’i community, the ‘marginals’, are distinguished, defined even, by this “obsessive hatred.”  He says that they are “engaged in a continuous chain of acts of revenge against their own spiritual past.”  This essentially means that they care more about criticizing the Baha’i Faith than cultivating a belief in anything positive.  They are motivated by something that Dr. Momen, borrowing a term from “the German social philosopher Max Scheler,” calls ressentiment.  Apart from illustrating this theory in greater detail, the excerpt below also serves as an excellent warning to anyone still thinking of reading the entire article for themselves.

Although Scheler’s work has been criticised for elitism and excessive nationalism, his insights into human motivation and particularly into ressentiment remain penetrating and perceptive... The sociologist Lewis A. Coser has summarised Scheler’s concept of ressentiment thus: ‘Ressentiment denotes an attitude which arises from a cumulative repression of feelings of hatred, revenge, envy and the like... Ressentiment leads to a tendency to degrade, to “reduce” genuine values as well as their bearers.  As distinct from rebellion, ressentiment does not lead to an affirmation of counter-values since ressentiment-imbued persons secretly crave the values they publicly denounce.’

Dr. Momen follows this engaging treatment of ressentiment – my friend swears the original is much, much longer – with a list of twelve ‘marginal’ and ‘apostate’ Baha’is.  One by one, he discusses the careers of those select individuals who have distinguished themselves through their “obsessive hatred” and their dedication to spreading their “spiritual venom” across the Internet.  You might call it a ‘who’s who’ of ressentiment.  And here’s my issue.  As you’ve probably guessed by now, when Dr. Momen was deciding who should have a place in his article, he left me out: I’m not on the list.  Twelve other people, some I know personally, made the list – it includes Karen Baquet, Steve and Alison Marshall, Juan Cole, and Bill Garlington – but not me. 

This is painful for several reasons, the first of which is garden-variety ego.  We all like to see our achievements recognized by others, and it’s never easy to have them ignored.  And I’ve done my time, or at least I thought I had.  It only takes a brief search of bahaisonline.net or even bahai-library.com to see the kind of pathological bitterness I’ve displayed, not once but time after time, consistently venting my adolescent resentment upon defenseless Baha’i institutions.  That Dr. Momen has neglected my expressions of malice and spite towards my former religion is a difficult burden to bear, and it’s only made harder by the special characteristics of my spiritual condition.  As one of those “ressentiment-imbued” people Dr. Momen discusses, those who “secretly crave the values they publicly denounce,” I’m principally motivated by negative attention, particularly from individuals in positions of authority.  To put it another way, none of my mischief affords me any pleasure unless someone important gets worked up about it.  Nothing is more frustrating than failure to be recognized as the kind of corrosive public trouble-maker that I aspire to be.  What’s the use of ridiculing the goals of the zillionth Five-Year Plan if everyone carries on with the plan without paying me any mind?

So my first question to Dr. Momen is a simple one.  What can I do to make the list?  How can I prove that I have what it takes?  Do I need to make a public bonfire out of Ruhi books, feast letters, and Ridvan messages?  Do I need to name my father’s pigs after my favorite Continental Counselors?  Do I need to devastate my carefully constructed popsicle-stick model of the ITC buildings with a solution of baking soda and bleach?  Just name it, and I’ll do it.  The first edition of the article has already gone out to print, but I’m willing to do whatever is required to make it into the second.

But even apart from my own purely selfish feelings, I have more noble and disinterested motives for concern with Dr. Momen’s article.  Perhaps I’m not ready for inclusion among the Faith’s inveterate critics: in rare moments of clarity and humility that’s something I’m willing to admit.  Perhaps it will take years of “cumulative repression” for my poor sense of resentment to ripen, like a fine wine, into full-blown ressentiment.  But what about all the others, all the unsung heroes of “obsessive hatred” whom Dr. Momen has cruelly and perhaps deliberately neglected in compiling his list?  What about the people who have spent long years inventing puerile and disrespectful names for the supreme institution, ‘the Ununiversal House of Injustice’, ‘the UH$’, ‘the infallible member’, and so on?  Where’s Dr. Momen’s recognition for those who habitually refer to Peter Khan as ‘Peter Con-Job’ and ‘Pistol Pete’?  If childish insults aren’t evidence of repressed “hatred, revenge, envy, and the like” I don’t know what is!  And that’s just the internet!  Another problem with Dr. Momen’s approach is that it entirely neglects those who spread their “spiritual venom” not online but in real life.  I’m talking about the people who describe the members of the House as ‘those b*****ds’ in casual conversation and who turn to Haifa every day not to pray but to shake their fist in anger and frustration.  I’m talking about the people who are still officially enrolled but who use the issues of Baha’i Canada they receive to line their birdcage and who warn friends, family, co-workers, and even casual acquaintances to steer clear of all things Baha’i.  Where are they on your list, Dr. Momen?  How can you seriously discuss individuals “engaged in a continuous chain of acts of revenge against [their] own spiritual past” and leave out the richest material of all?  It’s true that some people you meet online may seem angry or crazy, but experience shows that the most embittered nutjobs are to be found in real life.  I should know, because I’m one.

So in conclusion, I would have to say – had I actually read Dr. Momen’s article – that it fails to achieve its declared purpose.  Dr. Momen sets out to chronicle the various ‘apostates’, ‘marginals’, and assorted malefactors who inhabit Baha’i cyberspace, but he falls considerably short of his mark.  Which isn’t to say that his latest monument of learning and piety is entirely without value: not even I could be so resentful, or rather ressentful, to suggest that!  People who have been familiar with Religion for many years assure me that it’s a journal of the highest quality, which means that the article is printed on absorbent paper very useful for picking up the sort of spills and stains that present a problem even in ‘apostate’ and ‘marginal’ households.  And my friend who took the time to read the article for me has also enjoyed great success folding it into paper airplanes: he’s ready to testify under oath that they fly very well with a good draft and plenty of room to glide.  And if this weren’t enough, I’ve even heard at second hand that in a pinch Dr. Momen’s article can serve as a passable coffee filter, although I’m also told that it requires no small courage to drink the coffee that results.   In either case, what matters is that Dr. Momen can take comfort in the thought that his efforts, however inadequate in some respects, are not entirely wasted.  I for one hope that he writes something new soon, preferably in a journal with paper well adapted for wrapping Christmas gifts, or at least flammable enough to kindle a wood stove on the kind of cold, winter morning we have so often here on the Canadian prairie.

	1. Written by This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it on 27-11-2007 10:18 - Registered
	I for one lack the courage to drink the coffee made from the filter of Dr Momen's diatribe!   Brendan - wonderful, humourous and a great pointy stick to puncture his balloon of pomposity!  The earthworms are still rolling over in merriment and are looking forward to feasting on that thankfully shortened quote once I print it out.  Applause applause, you have always been on my A List!  White Hanky

	2. Written by Brendan Cook on 28-11-2007 11:48 - Registered
	WH,    I'm glad to know that I'm on someone's list! For what it's worth, I'd rather be on your list than Moojan's any day. And if I ever make a list of spiritually toxic heretics myself, I promise to put you right at the top.    But I'm actually kind of worried. That Moojan is comparing 'apostates' to CBs and arguing -- so I'm told -- that there's no use even discussing things with us because we're just criticizing for the sake of criticizing... that bothers me. All we can do is laugh, I guess.    Brendan

	3. Written by sonja on 19-12-2007 17:59 - Registered
	A response to Brendan’s “A Momen-tary Lapse of Judgment” posted on November 26th    Hi Brendan and others who might read this.   I enjoyed the beginning of your post on the wows of not making it onto Momen’s List of “Anti-Bahais.” I loved your banter about lists being this or that (and the Sneetches parody was just wonderful), while we all know the only use of a list is selection and when applied to individuals, a way of herding, useful when there’s a principle involved.    And speaking of principle, I then found it a –what I hope is a momentary - lapse when you launched into an attack on Momen’s scholarship and previous publications. Just because this paper is obviously unscholarly, not only because it makes false claims about individuals but also because its whole tenor seems to treat the Bahai Faith as if it was a cult, turning diversity into “apostasy” and, however one defines ‘orthodoxy,’ the orthodox into “core” believers. These are Momen’s terms and as a thinking Bahai, I can challenge such terms by looking at the Writings for myself.    Brendan, while I can appreciate that you didn’t want to waste time reading the essay, there’s no need to slam his earlier work. Momen has written some very readable and insightful work. Perhaps he might again. I used to admire Momen as a scholar. I did read his essay and I kept thinking of the word “libel” in connection with the individuals I know, and know how he has misrepresented them in print. Others have written on some of his misrepresentations in relation to individuals he calls names and here are some links:    Karen Bacquet    K Paul Johnson     Alison’s blog entry “crikey” helped me see beyond the pessimism brought on by reading the essay.     But I’ll just refer to what Momen writes about this community, “Bahais Online”   “He [Steve Marshall] runs his own web-site which is also a portal to marginal and apostate material (bahaisonline.net, viewed 24 June 2006).”   First I need to state here what Momen says himself what he means by “apostate”: He begins his paper with: “the word \"apostate\" now used to refer \"not to ordinary religious leavetakers . . . but to that subset of leavetakers who are involved in contested exits and affiliate with an oppositional coalition\" (Bromley, 1998b, p. 5). It is this latter definition that is the meaning of the word in this paper.”    So what Momen is claiming is that bahaisonline is a portal for an oppositional coalition. We all know this is nonsense (just look randomly at various postings for proof of the diversity of views and articles here. The vast majority celebrate the affect of the Faith in individual’s lives).     I wonder why Momen goes to such extremes? Bahais shouldn’t lie, should they? Or does Momen really see diverse discussion or parody (Brendan, I realise that your post most likely was intended as parody, b.t.w., but you can respond and correct me) or humour or debate is a sign of “oppositional coalition” to the Bahai Faith?     In my book is it a sign of life, or community, trust, flexibility, spirit...   I do not consider myself a marginal Bahai, and even though my view of what is an active Bahai is obviously broader than Momen’s definition, that shouldn’t stop any Bahai from stating their allegiance. I mean, if someone calls you “apostate” or “marginal” and you love the Faith, don’t let their name calling limit your sense of Bahai community spirit. It’s the affect we have on the world around us that matters. Let’s not let allow name-callers or list-makers make us or others in our Faith into victims.  Refuse to accept that the Bahai Faith is a cult that has no room for civil discourse and current affairs type of posts that appear on Bahais online.    Sonja    bahaisonline

	4. Written by Brendan Cook on 25-12-2007 22:48 - Registered
	Sonja,    It's good to hear from you, as always. I want to say right away that you're very justified in calling me to account for dismissing Momen's earlier work. It's ignorant, not to say spiteful, for me to reject what I'm sure are many fine contributions to Baha'i scholarship without even having read them. But that's my point. Who but a true 'apostate' burning with the inner fires of ressentiment would do such a thing? It was wrong of me to speak that way, I agree, and this only confirms my reasoning in requesting that Dr. Momen include me in the next edition of his paper. I certainly deserve it based on my continued pattern of behavior.    I also want to say that while I appreciate your sympathy for your friends whom you feel Dr. Momen has misrepresented, I have to ask you to reconsider. You may have felt that they were good Baha'is at one time, but that was before the article decided matters. I used to think that Karen and Alison and many of the others were nice people too: but if Moojan doesn't like them, well, they must have done something wrong. Surely you perceive the irrefutable logic of my argument?    As for whether people are on the inside or the outside of the Baha'i Faith, 'marginal' or 'core' or otherwise, I can't speak for anyone but myself. I'm not wanted in the Baha'i community and so I am outside the Baha'i community: that's the long and the short of it. I'll always love the writings, I'll always believe in the inspired character of what the Bab and Baha'u'llah wrote, and I'll always have great affection for Abdu'l-Baha. But since there's not a place for me in the Baha'i community, I'm resolved to find a place somewhere else. I've attended services with a United Church congregation near my house and it's certainly nice to pray with people again, nice to be welcomed without being concerned about having the things I write online obsessively scrutinized. I'm glad that you still don't feel marginalized, but I admit that I kind of did, and this is why I've had to move on.    Brendan

	5. Written by This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it on 25-12-2007 23:45 - Registered
	Sharing the Ressentiment Hi Brendan,    It is unfair that you weren't named, but lots of others missed out, too. Think of all the work that Barry Smith did, creating and touring a comedy show called "Jesus in Montana" that recounted his three years as a Baha'i. OK, he wasn't a Haifan, but I think he ticks more boxes than most of the crew actually named by Moojan. He was counting on being named and getting a lot more publicity for his show. Instead, he'll have to tour with a new show next year.    And what about Dan Jensen (Forum for Baha'i Investigation), Baquia (Baha'i Rants) and Angst (Baha'i Angst)? No recognition for them, either. http://ncag.org.nz

	6. Written by Brendan Cook on 27-12-2007 13:51 - Registered
	Sharing the Ressentiment Steve,    I'm way ahead of you on this one. There's no doubt that Moojan snubbed a lot of people besides me, folks who really earned a spot. It's like I said    "Perhaps I’m not ready for inclusion... But what about all the others, all the unsung heroes of “obsessive hatred” whom Dr. Momen has cruelly and perhaps deliberately neglected in compiling his list? What about the people who have spent long years inventing puerile and disrespectful names for the supreme institution, ‘the Ununiversal House of Injustice’, ‘the UH$’, ‘the infallible member’, and so on?"    I have the humility to acknowledge that there are all sorts of people who deserve the 'apostate' label even more than me. You mention Baha'i Angst, well that's who I was thinking of when I mentioned 'the UH$'. He's way more childish and spiteful then me, let's give credit where credit is due. And Baquia? That site is pure ressentiment. I'd like to say that I deserve it more, but in my heart I know its not true.    Brendan

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