The Baha'i Faith is a 19th-century religion founded by Mirza Husayn-Ali Nuri (Baha'u'llah) in Iran, teaching the unity of all religions and the progressive revelation of God through successive Manifestations. Its predecessor, the Babi religion, was founded by Sayyid 'Ali-Muhammad Shirazi (the Bab) in 1844 and was a Messianic movement within Shi'a Islam. After the Bab's martyrdom in 1850, the religion split: the larger Baha'i branch followed Baha'u'llah; the smaller Azali branch followed his brother, Mirza Yahya Nuri Subh-i-Azal. Both traditions were persecuted in Iran.

alt.religion.bahai was the primary English-language Usenet forum for Baha'i discussion from its founding through the mid-2000s. What the archive reveals is a community in intense internal conflict: anti-Baha'i polemicists attacking the faith's history, schismatics from several rival branches arguing their legitimacy, and a persistent anti-censorship campaign against the parallel moderated group soc.religion.bahai. Beneath this noise, a small but remarkable body of Azali theological writing emerged — some of the only sustained English-language exposition of Bayani doctrine ever posted to a public forum.

The Group and Its Community

alt.religion.bahai was created in the late 1980s as an unmoderated alternative to soc.religion.bahai, which was moderated and controlled by Baha'i institutions. This dual-group structure — moderated orthodoxy alongside unmoderated chaos — defined the forum's character throughout its active years. The Internet Archive's snapshot covers 23,254 posts from June 2003 to June 2014, with peak activity in 2007 (5,354 posts) and rapid decline after 2010.

The group's demographics were unusual. The top posters by volume include several dedicated anti-Baha'i campaigners — the account "Baha'i Censorship - See Website" (1,403 posts) was a sustained effort to document alleged institutional misconduct — alongside defenders, seekers, and eccentric voices. Raymond Karczewski (544 posts) was a prolific poster of personal spiritual revelations. "vic bonds" posted streams of mystical word-association in a distinctive voice that was neither scholarly nor polemical but something entirely its own. The genuine theological content was sparse in proportion to the total volume.

The Azali-Bayani Thread

The most significant body of theological writing in the archive came from Nima S. Hazini, an Azali Babi practitioner posting as "Sufi Babi" and later "Abraxas," and also under his religious name Wahid Azal. Hazini was (and is) the principal figure of what he called the Ecclesia Gnostica Bayani Universalis — a contemporary Azali organization. His posts to alt.religion.bahai in 2003–2005 represent some of the only sustained English-language exposition of Bayani esoteric theology available to a general readership.

The Azali tradition — named for Subh-i-Azal — holds that the Bab designated Mirza Yahya as his successor, not Baha'u'llah, and that the Azali lineage preserves the authentic Bayani religion. Hazini's theology is formally Neoplatonist: the cosmos is a series of graded emanations (theophanies) from an unknowable first principle, the Godhead, through the Primal Will (al-mashiyyat al-ula) — equivalent to the Plotinian Nous and the Logos of the Gospel of John — down to the material world. Each prophet and saint is a successive and increasingly perfect manifestation of this Primal Will. The Bab stands as the supreme theophany of the present age, followed by the yet-to-come "He Whom God Shall Make Manifest."

Hazini's sources are drawn from Isma'ili philosophy, classical Sufi metaphysics, Neopythagorean numerology, Islamic Hermeticism (the Shams al-Ma'arif of al-Buni), and Plotinian Neoplatonism. His posts cite the Usul min al-Kafi (the great 10th-century Shia hadith collection), Isma'ili Imam Hasan II of Alamut (who proclaimed the spiritual Resurrection at Alamut in 1164), the Hermetic Poimandres, and the Zoroastrian Vohuman alongside the Bab's own writings.

The Censorship Wars

A significant portion of alt.religion.bahai's traffic documented the internal politics of Baha'i internet spaces — specifically the controversy over who controlled the moderated soc.religion.bahai. The institutional Baha'i position was that soc.religion.bahai existed to facilitate practice-oriented discussion without polemics; critics argued that moderation functioned as institutional censorship, expelling critical voices.

This conflict produced more heat than light for purposes of archival preservation. The theological substance worth preserving is almost entirely separate from the censorship debates and exists in a distinct register — formal, scholarly, devotional — that stands apart from the forum's noise.

The Archive

Six gems have been preserved from alt.religion.bahai. Five are by Wahid Azal; one is by Baha'i scholar Susan Maneck.

The Bayani Talisman — A Mandala of the Primal Volition (Jan/2004) decodes the layered cosmological symbolism of the Bab's composite haykal-da'ira talisman — comparing it to the Kalachakra mandala and the Sephirotic Tree of Life, then analyzing each concentric ring and magic square through the lens of Bayani Neoplatonism.

Visitation Prayer of the Pre-Eternal Holiness of the Bayan (Jul/2004) is a 28-verse devotional prayer addressed to Subh-i-Azal, composed in Arabic and translated by Hazini himself. Its triple-repetition formulas (dhikr) and its progressive escalation of Pre-Eternal epithets into deliberate theological neologisms enact Bayani doctrine through linguistic performance.

Unity 14, Gate 5 — Bayani Marriage Law and the Sacred Rights of Women and Children (May/2004) presents Hazini's Bayani law for the "second cycle": equal treatment of same-sex unions, matrilineal naming, abolition of dowry, a 13-month reconciliation period before divorce, women's right to decide on abortion, and absolute prohibition of violence against children — one of the most equality-forward legal texts in any Usenet religious tradition.

Unity 14, Gate 6 — Bayani Meditation Practice and the Qiblah of the Heart (Aug/2004) prescribes a complete daily contemplative practice: Bayani greetings, ablution prayers with nine divine names, visualization of the Greatest Name with pranayama breath-clearing, chakra descent with divine epithets, kundalini invocation, and the relocation of the qiblah (direction of prayer) from Mecca to the heart.

Commentary on the Intelligence — Tafsir al-Aql (Dec/2005) is a formal theological commentary on the Shia hadith "the first thing the Godhead created was the Intelligence," reading it through Isma'ili, Hermetic, and Neoplatonist lenses to argue that the outward Imam is the theophany of the inward Intelligence — and that gnosis is the recognition of this Intelligence as one's own Celestial Self.

Theocracy, Scripture, and the Baha'i State — A Review of McGlinn's Argument (Jul/2003), by Susan Maneck (Jackson State University, Baha'i Studies), is a rigorous scholarly critique of Sen McGlinn's argument that Baha'i teachings support separation of church and state. Maneck argues that McGlinn systematically omits authoritative sources — including Shoghi Effendi's The World Order of Bahá'u'lláh — that directly contradict his thesis. A rare example of substantive intra-community theological debate archived from the group.

Colophon

Compiled from the Internet Archive Giganews snapshot (alt.religion.bahai.20140618.mbox.gz, 23,254 posts, 2003–2014) for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.

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