Juan Cole

Juan Cole

Dr. Juan Cole (b. October 23, 1952) is an American academic who published several works on Bahá’í topics and produced some provisional translations of the Writings.

Background

Cole began studying Arabic in 1972 and the same year he discovered the Bahá’í Faith and became a Bahá’í. He lived in Beirut, Lebanon, for a time in the 1970's and during the decade he completed a MA in Arabic studies and history before returning to America in 1979 where he completed a Ph.D.

In the 1990's Cole began to clash with the Bahá’í administration and in 1996 he resigned due to no longer believing in organized religion. In 1998 Cole's book Modernity and the Millenium was published which argued that Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá were influenced by western thought and modernist ideas and criticized later Bahá’í leaders for fostering what he described as literalism, conservatism, and fundamentalism.

In August 1999 a letter was written on behalf of the Universal House of Justice which included the following commentary on Cole and Modernity and the Millenium:

"As a participant in various Internet discussion groups over the past five years, and particularly in the last year or two, you cannot but be aware from these exchanges that Dr. Cole has embarked on a deliberate assault against the Bahá’í Cause, in which he has not hesitated to attack its institutions, to misrepresent its fundamental teachings, and to abuse the trust of Bahá’ís who had been led to believe that they were engaged with him in a detached and scholarly search for the truth. These same Internet exchanges exposed you, like other participants, to a flood of calumny and invective against a great many of your fellow believers, on the part of Dr. Cole, that is scarcely credible in rational discourse.

Had such a book as Modernity and the Millennium been written by a disinterested non-Bahá’í scholar, its misconception of the nature of Bahá'u'lláh's Mission and its other shortcomings would have represented no more than understandable weaknesses of an honest attempt to explore a religious phenomenon as yet little understood in the West. Indeed, in this context, such an attempt to make the Bahá’í Faith comprehensible to the Western academic mind, however inadequate it might appear to knowledgeable Bahá'í scholars, would surely have earned its author a measure of genuine Bahá'í appreciation for the writing and research skills deployed in devising it.

As you — like other participants in certain Internet discussion groups — are well aware, however, the book's author is not a disinterested scholar. Rather, he is a deeply embittered individual who, as his book was in preparation, had just denounced in the most intemperate language an apparent twenty-year allegiance to Bahá'u'lláh, in the wake of a failed attempt on his part to impose his private ideological agenda on the Bahá'í community's study of Bahá'u'lláh's Message. Modernity and the Millennium represents an effort to provide the current stage of this long-running scheme with the underpinnings of scholarly rationalization.

What is this rationalization? Although distorted by its evasion of Bahá’í Texts that contradict its main assertions, and blurred by reliance on speculations peculiar to its author's purpose, the thesis appears to run somewhat as follows: Bahá'u'lláh's work and Writings represent essentially one of several efforts by Middle East thinkers to work out a "response" to the challenges posed by European modernity in the form of rationalism, revolution, nationalism, economic upheaval, feminism and other contemporary developments."

In 2002 Cole started Informed Comment, a website on which he posts commentary on Middle Eastern issues.

Bibliography

Books

• 1984 - From Iran East and West, edited with Moojan Momen.
• 1998 - Modernity and the Millennium: The Genesis of the Bahá'í Faith in the Nineteenth-Century Middle East

Translations

• 1981 - Miracles and Metaphors by Mírzá Abu'l-Fadl.
• 1985 - Letters and Essays, 1886-1913 by Mírzá Abu'l-Fadl.

Articles

• 1981 - Muhammad `Abduh and Rashid Rida: A Dialogue on the Bahá'í Faith
• 1982 - The Concept of Manifestation in the Bahá’í Writings
• 1983 - Rashid Rida on the Bahá'í Faith: A Utilitarian Theory of the Spread of Religions
• 1985 - Shi'i Clerics in Iraq and Iran, 1722-1780: The Akhbari-Usuli Conflict Reconsidered
• 1986 - Mafia, Mob and Shiism in Iraq: The Rebellion of Ottoman Karbala 1824-1843 with Moojan Momen.
• 1988 - Review of In Iran: Studies in Babi and Bahá'í History, Vol. 3
• 1989 - Ideology, Ethics, and Philosophical Discourse in Eighteenth-Century Iran
• 1993 - I am all the Prophets: The Poetics of Pluralism in Bahá'í Texts
• 1994 - The World as Text: Cosmologies of Shaykh Ahmad al-Ahsa'i
• 1995 - Tablets to the Rulers (Surat al-Muluk)
• 1996 - A Zen Gloss on Baha'u'llah's Commentary on "He who knoweth his self knoweth his Lord"
• 1998 - Autobiography and Silence: The Early Career of Shaykhu'r-Ra'is Qajar
• 1999 - The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Bahá'í Scriptures
• 2004 - The Azálí-Bahá'í Crisis of September, 1867

Provisional Translations

• 1991 - Surah of the Companions by Bahá’u’lláh.
• 1994 - Commentary on the Surah of the Sun by Bahá’u’lláh.
• 1996 - He who knoweth his self hath known his Lord: Commentary by Bahá’u’lláh.
• 1997 - City of Radiant Acquiescence (Lawh-i-Madinatu'r-Rida) by Bahá’u’lláh.
• 1997 - Ode of the Dove by Bahá’u’lláh.
• 1998 - Treatise on Leadership by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.
• 1999 - Tablet of the Holy Mariner by Bahá’u’lláh.
• 1999 - Tablet of the Maiden by Bahá’u’lláh.
• 2000 - Tablets Concerning the Divine Test by Bahá’u’lláh.
• 2001 - Tablet of the Son (Jesus) by Bahá’u’lláh.