AS167: Ex-Baha'i Sahar

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:31 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Atheistically Speaking. This is episode 167, and I'm your host, Thomas Smith. All right, I'm excited for this week. I always want this show to be a place where we can go, you and I both can go to learn something. And this week, it's definitely that, because I have a guest on who's of the Baha'i faith. Now, what is that, you ask? I don't know. I'm with you. I have no idea. Maybe some of you do, but I had no idea what it was. But we're going to learn all about it. With the help of an excellent guest. So let's get to that interview.

0:01:14 Thomas: With me right now is Sahar, how did I do? Ah, yes, okay, there was a, this, this. Right before this recording was hours of tutelage on How to pronounce your name. I'm told that people get Sahar's name wrong all the time and call her Sahara or anything like that, so, I, I, with, with the help of an expert, i.e., Sahar, I now know how to pronounce it. How are you doing, uh,

0:01:18 Sahar: Brilliant, you're perfect., Mm-hmm., I'm doing great, thank you for having me., Oh,

0:01:48 Thomas: Oh, Thank you for coming on. So I, uh, let's see, you emailed, I think, because, uh, I thought, oh, when, when was it, Josh or somebody, no, Nathaniel, he asked me, he asked me if atheism makes me a better person or something. I said I didn't really think it did, and then I guess that might have prompted you to email.

0:02:02 Sahar: Yes, yes., you're right, it wasn't, so, of all, I, I've been listening to your podcast for a while, and the parts of your podcast I really enjoy is when you talk to people from, it was like your podcast for the Mormons, a Scientologist, a Jehovah's Witness. And actually your discussion with Harley from Jehovah'S Witness was one of the podcasts that really touched me because I really feel for that guy and what he's going through.

0:02:34 Thomas: Yeah.

0:02:34 Sahar: But it helped me because for a long time, I've been having big conflicts with my faith. I'm originally from the Baha'i faith and I wanted to transition to atheism. So those specific podcasts really helped me put things in perspective and realize there is a life after when you leave religion. So that really helped me. Now, I have to admit, I didn't fully listen to your podcast with Nathaniel, but what really touched me at the end of that podcast, I think in that same podcast, you had a discussion. I can't remember who the gentleman's name was, but it was about, um, a funeral for his father and yeah, and essentially he was denied, uh, the, I think it was the pastor, they wanted to speak at the funeral the church denied him that pastor because they decided to, um, I don't know what this policy and

0:02:35 Thomas: Oh, yeah, yeah. Right. Yeah. They were worried about the gay marriage and they wanted to protect themselves from having to perform gay marriages, essentially. Yeah. That was Josh.

0:03:46 Sahar: Was Josh, okay. And that also really just, it hurt me to the core because it was around that time, um, I had recently discovered a website where gay and lesbian Baha'is, oh, and also bisexual, transgendered, I should include them in that too, um, they have this website where they tell their stories about how they are struggling with being who they are and being Baha'i. Some context here, in the Bahaite faith, homosexuality is considered a handicap that has to be overcome. So it's almost like a spiritual illness, which I have a story about that in my childhood.

0:03:47 Thomas: Yeah. Sure. Wow. Well, let me add, I was going to just say that I really, you already introduced some of it, but when I saw that you're coming out of the Baha'i faith, as you said, I thought, oh, I know nothing about that. I don't know what that is at all. So as I've had, like you said, I've had Mormons, I had Scientologists, Jehovah's Witnesses, but I have not had someone from the Baha'i faith. And I'm very curious. This is an opportunity for probably most of us, I would say, to learn. Maybe not all of us. But most of here listening to you to learn about what that faith entails and your journey through that faith. So go ahead. And I was going to give you more of an intro there, but you took it away, so it's OK. Go ahead.

0:04:58 Sahar: Hmm.

0:05:12 Sahar: Okay. So I do, I do go off on a tangent. So feel free to stop me and reel me back in whenever is you need to do that. But the Baha'i faith is, it has a very interesting history. I don't want to go into too much detail. If anyone's interested in the history of the Bacha'i faith, I encourage you to go read up about it. Essentially, it started in the Middle East, particularly in Iran around the 19th century. And this was during a time when I guess there's a lot of enlightenment going on. A lot of people were reading and, you know, knowledge was being shared more by people. And the Baha'i faith kind of took advantage of all this because the reason why it became so popular is because of this ability to spread messages quickly and everybody having the ability to read.

0:05:16 Thomas: Are

0:06:05 Sahar: It's an offshoot of the Babi faith, which essentially is an offshoot of Islam, Shi'i Islam. So in Shi'a Islam, there is this belief in the Twelver Imams. Essentially, these Twelvers Imams are, if I had to explain the most simplest form, is that they they communicate directly with Muhammad. Now, there are people who, no, no. But there's this idea that with the 12 imams, the last imam, who is known as the Mahdi, will return, it's sort of like a return of Christ scenario, he'll return and everything will be set aright and it's a day of judgment, so to speak.

0:06:29 Thomas: They current living people that communicate? Oh, okay.

0:06:47 Thomas: Right.

0:06:48 Sahar: Now, exactly, well, that's what,

0:06:48 Thomas: I'm sure that'll happen. I want to know. I want all these people, all these prophets to come back on the same day and be like, oh, wow, we should have timed this better. They're all like, wait, who should you go? I'll go. Do I go? I don't know who should go. They all have one.

0:06:59 Sahar: So that's it.

0:07:04 Thomas: Every, everyone has one. There's always going to be some, but I guess a lot of them are Jesus. A lot of the Christian offshoots are all saying Jesus is going to come back, but yeah, I

0:07:10 Sahar: Yeah. I've heard that from Islam too, that they actually technically believe in the return of Jesus Christ, but I'm, you have to get more Muslims on the show, particularly more ex-Muslims to talk about these things, because, um, but anyway, so in the, in the Shia faith, um, they believe that there are people who can communicate with these imams called babis, and, um, and babi essentially means gate in Arabic. I know it's not a, it sounds very funny. I know, if sounds fun, you know, and unfortunately we refer to the main guy as the Bob, so it's, yeah, I get it. Every time, please

0:07:19 Thomas: Would love to, I would love to.

0:07:37 Thomas: Oh, I thought it was a British police officer. Yeah.

0:07:53 Sahar: Bear with me, please bear so so anyway, around this time, around this time, and this was also a time of premillennialism, I, of course, said that incorrectly, but it was this time a lot of people were expecting Jesus Christ to return. So we're talking about the 1800s, mid-1800s.

0:07:53 Thomas: I like it. It's great. No, this is awesome. Hey, the goofier, the better.

0:08:10 Thomas: Roughly, when are we talking? Oh, okay. Okay.

0:08:17 Sahar: So anyway, this one Iranian man named Sayyid Ali Mohammed, who later became the Bab, which means the gate, yes, I know, claimed that he was heralding the return of the Mahdi, basically the 12th Imam. Um, he later, um, once he made this claim, I should rather say, once he made his claim, um he became very popular and once he was verified by 12 people who claimed that, yes, you are the Bab, uh, you can communicate with the, or at least you herald the 12th, the return of the 12th Imam. Um, He developed the Bab faith and this, the, the faith developed quite an attraction in Iran at the time that really upset the Iranian authorities.

0:09:06 Sahar: So there was a major clamp down on the Baha'is at this stage. And unfortunately, not the Baha'is, sorry, the Babis. And unfortunately the Babi's responded quite violently at times, but it wasn't like a group response. It was just different sects of the Babis who were responding violently. So Sayyid Ali Mohammed or the Bab was then arrested and later executed in hopes that they would finally quash the Babi faith. What makes it very interesting is that I think it was during his imprisonment that he actually essentially claimed that he was the Mahdi, that he wasn't the return of the 12th Imam, but then he was shortly executed afterwards. One of his followers was Mirza Hussein Ali, who became a very devoted Babi.

0:09:52 Sahar: And after this sort of government crackdown on getting the followers, he was then exiled to Baghdad. And over a period of time, he then claimed that he was the foretold by the Bob. So this made it very confusing for both Bobby's and future Baha'is. But he, sure, go

0:10:16 Thomas: I'm going to pause you for a few thoughts. Sorry, I'm not sure when to interrupt. I don't want to to wreck your flow.

0:10:21 Thomas: But, uh, I, this doesn't seem like it has a lot of parallels to Mormonism. I mean, it's like the same time period.

0:10:21 Sahar: For it. Go for it, I know. It might it

0:10:29 Thomas: It's a guy who comes along and yeah, he's like, Oh, here, I, I kind of have a, I've got a line on, on God. I know we haven't talked to him for a while, sort of roughly speaking. And then he's, he he's executed, I guess, uh Joseph Smith. Wait, was he, was He executed?

0:10:29 Sahar: Might Yeah. I Yeah.

0:10:45 Thomas: He died.

0:10:45 Sahar: I think he was executed. You're right. I think he was killed by an angry mob. If I remember, the

0:10:46 Thomas: Yeah. I was going to say, I don't think he was officially. Yeah, something like that. And then Brigham Young takes over. It sounds really similar. It's interesting. And the other thing I was going to say earlier is, when you talked about the Bob, yeah, I know, when we talked about him, I just thought to myself, man, if I were a dishonest person, it seems like it would be so easy to start a religion, or at least to rise to power within a current religion, maybe start a new sect or something. It just doesn't seem that hard. People are so dumb, like, and maybe they're not dumb, but what they're, they're so, you know, it's like you just make a claim, like, oh yeah, I can talk to that guy, I can talked to the uh, what was his name,

0:11:01 Sahar: I know, Yeah,

0:11:29 Thomas: Yeah, the Iman or something, I can't talk to him, yeah, I know, I talked to him the other day, it was uh,

0:11:35 Sahar: And It's a very good point that you make, but that's one of the reasons why I brought up, and I'm going to say it incorrectly again because I just can't roll off the L's on my tongue, but pre-millennialism. Oh, gosh. There was this, yeah, I'm sorry. Please look it up guys. Google it. It's very interesting look into how before the end of the 20th, no not the 20, but before the, I guess the endof the thousands or before before we got to the 2000, um, AD, a lot of people thought that Christ was coming back. So a lot people were expecting the return of Christ before 2000 AD. And I think that's one of the reasons why it was so easy for a lot these religions to start up.

0:11:45 Thomas: Right. Right. Yeah. It's a big milestone, unfortunately we don't, we probably won't have to worry about it for another couple thousand years, no, probably another thousand years, sorry, sorry guys, we had it wrong. 3000. It's gotta be around even year. I don't know why, but yeah.

0:12:20 Sahar: Um, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Exactly. So this caused a conundrum when Mirza Hussein Ali proclaimed himself to be the promised one foretold by the Bab. But a lot of the Babis accepted this at the time. There really wasn't too much conflict over this. And a lot of Babis became Baha'is. And this is what started the Baha'i religion, because Mirza Hussein changed his name to Baha'u'llah, which means the glory of God. And he essentially claimed that he was the manifestation of God, God's new prophet. And that probably we can go on to some of the principles of Baha faith. And sure.

0:13:13 Thomas: Okay. Let me, let me interject one more meaningless comment. I also was thinking that I don't know why they execute these people. They really shouldn't. Cause that's like the first, that's the best way to make a new religion. Just execute someone. And that's like, Oh, that guy. And then they can talk about him afterward and kind of, you know,

0:13:25 Sahar: You know what? And that's a very good point, because what they actually did with Baha'u'llah, the shah of the time of Iran, he didn't execute Baha'u'llah. Baha'u'llah died of old age in 1892, but he did exile him.

0:13:42 Thomas: Oh, but they, you said they execute the Bob though. I was, I was. That's who I was talking about, I just didn't make the comment on time, yeah.

0:13:45 Sahar: They did execute the Bab. Yeah. Oh, yes. Yes. Okay. Yeah. But, but it's funny that you mentioned that because when they, when they exiled Baha'u'llah, he was exiled to all sorts of places. He was exiled to Baghdad, Iraq. He went to Constantinople, which is sort of a modern day Istanbul, Turkey. If I remember my geography correctly, he was exiled to Akka in Israel. Uh, well, it was Palestine at the time.

0:14:16 Sahar: And He was able to spread his teachings all over the Middle East. It is so funny. It really is, because that's how the Baha'i faith gained so much traction, and that's what became one of the, at the time of, yes.

0:14:28 Thomas: But if you, yeah. Sorry, I was gonna let you face that sentence, but, but yeah, if you, if you are okay, I'm just gonna, this is a lesson out there to all those, you know, tyrannical kind of governments that want to shut down the new religion that's happening, don't execute the person, keep them, keep them alive, nice and healthy, just make them wear, wear the glasses, mustache, plastic combo thing all the time and just make him go out in public, or maybe just dress him like a clown and just be like, no, he's fine. We're not going to kill him. He's just not a prophet. Like he is just a clown. Look at him. Like, there's no, there's no way you could survive that. There's no way anyone could worship a guy in a clown suit. Like it's not goingto happen. I don't think. But if you execute him, then it's like, oh, he was martyred for the religion and et cetera, et cetera. So that's just a lesson out there to any, I know I have a lot of tyrannical governments that listen to the show, so just for them.

0:15:01 Sahar: Yeah. Yeah, well.

0:15:20 Sahar: And that was, well, it was a tyrannical, well back then, it was a monarchy. So yeah, I guess it's sort of a tyrannical government at the time. But it did, yeah, you know, it did help spread the teachings of the Baha'i faith. So it actually, it worked against the Shah at the time, and even the Ottoman Empire, to keep constantly, to execute the Bab in the first place.

0:15:44 Thomas: Right.

0:15:45 Sahar: Although, had the Bab remained, that would have been a huge conflict between the Bab and Bahá'u'lláh because they essentially both proclaim themselves to be the return of one. So despite

0:15:56 Thomas: Well, do you think if he was alive, though, the Bahala would have not made that claim? Yeah.

0:16:02 Sahar: How I feel about the Baha'i faith and some of the hypocrisy of their teachings, overall, I feel Baha'u'llah or Mirza Hussein was a nice guy. He was a very well-educated man. And what he tried to do was try to make sure the Baha'is never split like how other religions had split in the past, like Islam and Christianity. They all essentially split as soon as the prophet died. So he came up, and what essentially became the tenets of the faith, he came with the tenet that all religions are one and come from God. So essentially, there is one God, one main religion, and all of human race is one human race under one religion and one God, essentially. So this is what became known as the covenant.

0:16:07 Thomas: And

0:16:55 Sahar: And this sort of helped him in a way to explain that, listen, the reason why all these other religions contradict each other is because, you know, they were there to teach the people of the time. And once they were gone, the people, the leaders of the faith began infighting. We want you to know that we accept, except the teachings of Moses, the teachings of Jesus, the teaching of Muhammad. And the Baha'i is just another extension of this one religion from God. So, because of this, the Baha'is more or less stick together even after Baha'u'llah passed in 1892. I mean, the succession of his faith went to his son, and then from him to his grandson, and then from his grandson to an elected body.

0:17:43 Sahar: And we essentially have a kind of a government system that looks looks after us. But it's this one principle that everyone, all the religions of the past are one, all come from the same God that have essentially kept the Baha'i faith together and not split.

0:18:00 Sahar: So this was one of the main things about, and this is, I think, what really attracts a lot of people to the Baha'i Faith. I was born to the Bahá'í Faith, so I grew up in this. For me, this was all normal. But I was

0:18:11 Thomas: Do you mind me asking where you were born?

0:18:14 Sahar: Brought in the States. I wasn't born, thank God, I was not born in Iran so I do

0:18:15 Thomas: Okay. Right, yeah. Is that where your parents were born, though?

0:18:22 Sahar: Yes that's where my parents were born, they're now naturalized citizens, thank God, um, so I was born as a um, my, my parents are already naturalized citizens by the time I was born, so I'm not an anchor baby

0:18:34 Thomas: Oh, okay. Okay. So I'm just wondering, where's the main geographical area of this religion? Like, where is it strongest?

0:18:36 Sahar: Um It would probably be its strongest at this time in Iran and Egypt and Israel, only because Israel right now, Haifa, is, how do I explain it, but it's kind of where our governing, governing body is at, so Yeah, we have a governing body. Once the main prophet Baha'u'llah died, and it, the the leadership of the faith got passed on to his son, and after his son to his grandson, his his grandson, Shoghi Effendi, was very active in trying to create a sort of a government-like system that would be elected by the Baha'is, essentially, and kind of guide the Baha'is in the future. And they're supposed to be, obviously, under the influence of God. Sorry, I don't know where God came from.

0:18:47 Thomas: Okay. Huh.

0:19:34 Thomas: I thought you were introducing another character. Darn

0:19:37 Sahar: I know.

0:19:37 Thomas: It. Then there's God.

0:19:38 Sahar: There's no God.

0:19:39 Thomas: Okay. There's God and there's G-d.

0:19:40 Sahar: There's only one God. There is only one guy. So, um, he

0:19:41 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, well, all in all, I mean, I guess you did say that they are not too cool with homosexuality, but all in all, so far, if we, if we pretended that doesn't exist, it doesn't sound that, like, that bad of a religion. I mean, they're trying to unify people. It depends on how you interpret it, I guess. I mean, like anything, if they interpret the one God, one religion thing to mean you'd better be our God, you know, you better worship what we think is God, or if they're just saying, yeah, no, worship how everyone, it's probably all, it all gets filtered through the ether into the right God, so yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:19:57 Sahar: Isn't, you know, and that kind of where I think it's, it's sort of a little bit like Mormonism in the sense that we're all, Baha'is are taught not to be prejudiced against other, to be very accepting of others, except that they're gay. Um, we'll come back in a moment.

0:20:30 Thomas: There's always a caveat, yeah.

0:20:32 Sahar: I know there's always like an asterisk somewhere when it, but, Um. And that's what really attracts a lot of people to the faith, because a lot, a lot of people, they don't understand why are these religions fighting, and why, you know, there's this Allah and Jehovah, and what the Baha'i faith is essentially saying, well, Allah and Jehovah are all one God. They're just called different names. And it's very comforting to people to know that, oh, you mean Jesus and Mohammed came from the same God and they essentially were teaching the same things, but they can only teach what the people could understand at that time. It's, it's very comforting for a lot of people who want to look for that, you know, the, that's, you know, the, that all religion is actually one in harmony with each other, so the Baha'i faith provides that platform, and then other things that make the Baha'i faith very, uh, um, attractive to especially people of the modern society is that one of the tenets is that there has to be equality between Well, there's an asterisk to that one, too.

0:20:35 Thomas: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Oh.

0:21:34 Thomas: But, like, real equality, or okay. Good. Let's hear it, let's see here, let's here the, uh, yeah, the asterisks. No.

0:21:42 Sahar: So in the Baha'i faith, since we don't have a—our prophet is pretty much passed on, we have the main governing body, which is located in Israel, the Universal House of Justice. Under the Universal house of justice is what we call the national assemblies, who are also elected. Under the national assembly are the local assemblies. So we don't really have a church system. We don't have a priesthood. Essentially, Baha'is are elected to kind of govern themselves. And it's not like we there's elections every year. You can be elected in as many times as you like. Like, it's not like if you get elected, there's no term limit. Yes, exactly. You can certainly, if you don't want to be in any of these assemblies, you can certainly ask to not be in the assembly, but you can only do that once you get selected. You cannot say outright, please don't vote for me, or there's not campaigning in the faith when it comes to these elections. Now, the point I'm trying to get at is that women at first weren't, but then were later encouraged to be part of the local assemblies and national assemblies.

But and the rules of this are very confusing. Woman cannot be elected into the universal house of justice. Why? We don't know the reason why. Our faith's leader's son, whose name is Abdu'l-Baha, I'm sorry to confuse everybody with all these very Persian, or it's not Persian, sorry, Arabic names.

0:22:23 Thomas: No term limit? Oh,

0:23:16 Sahar: But Abdu'l-Baha says, says this will be cleared later on. Um, when is later on, I don't know. He passed, his son came, didn't really elaborate on it, and then he passed, and there is really nothing in the writings to say, uh, why women cannot be in the Universal House of Justice.

0:23:22 Thomas: Man I love, I, I love it, I mean, obviously it's, it's awful, it's discrimination, but I just love, love how people never fail. They're so consistent, especially men. Men in charge of people never fail to bring out the misogyny. So we got word in that, yeah, women aren't allowed. Why? What? Why? I don't know. Hold on. It'll become clear. It's still be very clear sometime in the future, but for now, just to be safe.

0:24:04 Sahar: Just take it on faith. What? You don't have faith? It's like, well, you know, I can't, because a lot of, of Baha'is that I've spoken to about this will say to me, well, maybe in the next manifestation, because Baha'is believe that there will be another God, I mean, another not God, sorry, another prophet in the future who will claim to be from God. And maybe this will be clear in the next manifestation is how they term it. I can't, we don't know when that will be. That could be a hundred years from now. That couldn't be a thousand years from now. You're saying woman cannot be in the universal house of justice until then.

0:24:05 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, probably. Yeah and you know what? If it's not cleared up in that one, maybe the next one, you know? It doesn't, it could be the next after that, you never, you don't know. But one thing's for sure, no women allowed. That's the only thing that's for certain.

0:24:35 Sahar: So yeah. Exactly. So yeah. That is the one thing. Now, that that being said, women do, uh, play a prominent role in the administration of the faith at Israel. They just cannot be a, a member of the, the nine members of the Universal House of justice. That's yes.

0:25:00 Thomas: So Israel sounds pretty cool with the religion then, I guess. Yes. Okay. There must be some interesting politics going on there, I'm sure.

0:25:04 Sahar: Yes. Um, um, you see, this is where it gets into conspiracy theories and I, and I rather not get involved because yeah, the main reason I, I just want to highlight this, as much as I disagree with some of the hypocrisies of the Baha'i faith, Baha'is are being persecuted and imprisoned and murdered in Iran today because of being Baha'i. And a lot of, uh, especially in Islam, uh, they always, well, not Islam, I should rather, I'd rather say the current Islamic regime in Iran associates the Baha'is with working with the CIA, with the Israeli intelligence, the Mossad, basically. So I kind of stray away into why the Baha'is were able to get so much luxuries in terms of the reason why they were able to set up in Haifa. But I do think that a lot of it has to do with the fact that the prophet Baha'u'llah was eventually exiled to the prison of Acre in what was formerly Palestine, which is now Israel.

0:25:15 Thomas: That's okay. That's interesting.

0:26:11 Sahar: And he was then put into house arrest after that. So and that's just the main reason why it developed and continued to flourish there.

0:26:19 Thomas: They didn't put them in the clown suit. That is the problem, I am telling you.

0:26:21 Sahar: No. Well, you know what? But they didn't – like I said, I don't – we made jokes, but I don't think at the end of the day he was – I really think he believed in what he – that he really thought he was a prophet. But he was sort of like the crazy

0:26:37 Thomas: Yeah, you never know. Maybe so. It is hard to tell. And certainly, I do not doubt that throughout history, many of these leaders actually thought they were that. Who knows? Knows but, uh, no, I'm just kidding, as that would have been a better way to eliminate the religion. I'm telling you, those glasses with a goofy mustache, if you just put the prophet in those, no, if Jesus was wearing those, could you take him seriously? There's no way, instead of crucifying him, just put those glasses on and say, "This is your punishment, you have to wear these all the time."

0:26:38 Sahar: – yeah. Yeah. Sure. Yeah.

0:27:06 Sahar: Well, they just didn't think that way. Thousands of – I guess Jesus was 1,000 years.

0:27:10 Thomas: They didn't have the zany

0:27:12 Sahar: Yeah. They Didn't They didn't they, you know, they didn't have television, didn't have internet, they didn't have these these social luxuries that we have now. So they all they could do, and especially, you know, there's a sad reality, is that in the Middle East, they take their religion seriously and and they are, unfortunately, they use religion as a grounds for, um, violence. And it, it's so, so so all I can say is that would have never occurred to them at all

0:27:12 Thomas: Sense of humor that they needed perhaps Yeah. Wait a minute. What?

0:27:29 Thomas: Yeah, no, that very much so.

0:27:43 Sahar: To try and it would, it would it, it, they, you know, the, I, again, I encourage people to read more about the history of the Baha'i faith is it very interesting history. And, um, um. I also just want to say that, you Know, even today Baha's continue to endure suffering, but that being said, um I, like I said, like, Oh, I now consider myself an atheist, and I just cannot accept the hypocrisy that I see.

0:27:44 Thomas: All right. You're probably right.

0:28:00 Thomas: Yeah.

0:28:10 Thomas: Well, I would love to hear about that. How did you, uh, when did you start having some, uh. Inklings that you might be an atheist?

0:28:17 Sahar: So The sad reality is, even though I had known about, well, women cannot be in the Universal House of Justice, that didn't faze me as much. What really got me was when I first learned about homosexuality and when I read up about it, because I was curious. I was a very young child at this point, and I really had no qualms against homosexuality in general, but when I became known to it, I always thought, well, what does the Baha'is believe in homosexuality? So I read up about it, and then when I read that homosexuality is considered a handicap, I started to get very scared as a young kid because I thought, a handicap?

But I've heard people saying they're born gay or they're bored lesbian, um, how can you be born something and it'd be considered a handicap? Essentially, they compare it to like a spiritual illness, and I became very nervous about this when I was a kid, because I was like, wait, it's an illness, can, is there a cure, can, is there a doctor who can cure me, do I just pray this away? I, I was very, very sort of unsettled about this as a kid.

But I was able to put it off my mind for as long as I could until I became what I consider myself to be an agnostic Baha'i. And at this point, I started to learn about the science of homosexuality. I was around my 20s at this moment. And I realized, oh, wow, there's actually a lot of evidence to suggest that, you know, homosexuality is actually actually pretty natural

0:29:49 Sahar: Form of sexuality and that it might have even existed in prehistoric times. So I thought, well, yeah, exactly. So, I, I realized that, okay, so this is, this can't be considered a spiritual illness. That, that can't been right. So I had come to the accept that homosexuality is just as normal as, um, normal as any kind of sexuality, I guess. And, um unfortunately, well so let me put it back into context. Another Another Baha'i belief is that there should be harmony of science and religion. If something is disproven, if some religious belief is disdriven by science, as Baha's, we should no longer believe it because now it's superstition. OK, again, this is a religion that started around Darwinism when Charles Darwin had published his book on the natural selection, I forget the name of the book, but it was around that time.

0:29:55 Thomas: There's no reason why not. Yeah. Yeah.

0:30:45 Thomas: Origin

0:30:46 Sahar: So the origin of species. Yes. So a lot of Baha'is actually adapted to some form, or at least adopted the belief of evolution at the time, which again made them a very forward-thinking religion. However, a lot that doctrine that was written about homosexuality was written in the 1950s, and it hasn't progressed since. And in the 1950s, the belief was that homosexuality was a disease and it could be cured by conversion therapy. The idea that homosexuality is not a disease was something that only came about around the late 1960s with the work of Dr. Evelyn Hooker when she, I know her last name is Hooker, but anyway, a pioneer woman in science and she was the one that proved that there is no difference between homosexual people and heterosexual people. Unfortunately at this stage, all the Baha'i writings were from the 1950s and the Universal House of Justice refused to change their stance on homosexuality last year, which was a tough year for me as an agnostic Baha'i, becoming an atheist was, uh,

0:30:46 Thomas: Of species.

0:31:52 Sahar: The reason why it was a tough year because there were gay and lesbian Baha'is submitted a letter to the Universal House of Justice around 9th of May, 2014, and asked them, could you please reconsider your stance on homosexuality in light of the current scientific evidence? The response letter from the Universal House of Justice was obviously something written by nine old men who, who have a grudge against sex in general, unless it's used for the act of reproduction, pretty much.

You can read this letter it's available on the Huffington Post okay last time I checked it's still there and I can even send you a leak if you like it's the yeah I'll send it to you later it's HuffPost Gay Voices and they actually did publish the letter and it's just it's just for me it just horrified me because I still had very good thoughts about the Universal House of Justice at the time and when I read the letter it was like This is just disgusting. These are just basically nine old men looking down at youth today and saying, oh, you youth today, you go around and just have sex whenever you want.

Because that's essentially what they think about it. Even when you read the writings, they group homosexuality the same as sex before marriage, the same same as adultery. It's just devious sex acts, basically. And I realized then and there, oh my gosh, this is not a house that is governed by God.

0:32:22 Thomas: Yeah, sure, sure.

0:33:31 Sahar: God is not leading this house. If he were, we would have been true to the tenet that there needs to be harmony between science and religion, one of the biggest tenets of the faith. And that's where it kind of collapsed with me. And I remember when I first heard about this, we were having a gathering, a Baha'i gathering, which we call the feast. We have a feast every 19 days. And when I heard about it, I, you know, something broke inside me and I actually wanted to cry there and then because I realized I can no longer be a, I realized then that my being a Baha'i had ended at that point. Again, it only came into realization to this year when I realized I'm not just an agnostic Baha'i or agnestic in general, I'm an atheist.

0:34:18 Sahar: And that came around about the time when I read, and again, I can send you this link, the Gay and Lesbian Baha'i Story Project, where current gay and lesbian and transsexual Baha'is submit stories about how they are suffering in the faith because the faith cannot acknowledge them. Okay, I rather should say the faith will will acknowledge them, but it will, it will say that, well, that's

0:34:40 Thomas: Well, it's not giving them the full dignity that everybody else gets.

0:34:43 Sahar: Exactly it. That's exactly, it's not, it's non-treatment of people. It's treat them like, well you, you have this disease and you need to go pray it away essentially. And reading these stories, it just, it just really touched me. And then hearing your story with, um, with Josh, it just, you know, that is something I can see Baha'is doing in the future pretty much. And And, yeah, I just couldn't abide by that hypocrisy anymore.

0:35:29 Thomas: So there you have it with the first part with Sahar. I really enjoyed that and I look forward to the next part as well. And I want to thank you guys for listening. Oh, I have some good announcements. First off, I'm bringing the bonus content back. I never meant to stop, but of course, as I explained, I had the house stuff and just my life was a mess for a bit. That's all explained in the next bonus content, which should be released shortly. So thank you to patrons for sticking with me through that. That. Also, in that bonus content, I talk a bit about some of the upcoming stuff. I've got some great stuff planned for this show. I have another parent panel. I'm going to get emails out to the parent panel right away to schedule that. I've also got some possible interesting guests.

0:36:16 Thomas: I just announced a debate between Justin Schieber and Robert Johnson. That will be the first moderated debate on Atheistically Speaking. I am incredibly excited for it. It's also going to be probably live streamed. It's going to, it's going to be a lot of firsts in atheistically speaking history, but I can't wait. It's gonna be really cool. I hope to do the job of moderator really well, in that I hope, to barely be noticed. That's my goal. So really looking forward to that. With that said, thank you for listening and I will see you on Thursday.