Letter to Australian government regulatory body
3 July 2025
Dear X,
Further to my email of X, I am writing today to submit supplementary material relevant to the complaint I recently lodged with your office. This submission highlights a possible ideological context of longlasting duration - specifically within the Bahá’í Faith’s administrative structures - that may be relevant to the patterns of interference and targeting I have endured over the past two decades, and which I have described in detail in my primary complaint.
Background Document of Concern
In 2001, the Universal House of Justice, the global
governing body of the Bahá’í Faith, published an official directive titled “The
Institution of the Counsellors”, previously available at the following (now
defunct) link:
http://bahai-library.com/published.uhj/counsellors.html (WayBack
Machine link: https://web.archive.org/web/20161003211428/http://bahai-library.com/uhj_institution_counsellors).
Of particular concern is the section titled “Protection of the Cause” (pp. 15–16), which openly authorizes and encourages Bahá’í officials - specifically members of the Auxiliary Boards for Protection - to:
- Monitor and investigate the actions of individuals considered to be dissenters or critics;
- Feed intelligence reports through internal religious channels;
- Counsel or warn individuals about the “consequences of their actions”;
- And in some cases, coordinate intervention with higher officials if the situation is deemed serious.
It also speaks of an impending global conflict between the so-called “Army of Light” and “the forces of darkness,” suggesting a theological imperative to preemptively counter perceived enemies - internal or external. For reference, I quote the relevant section in full:
Although deepening the friends' understanding of the Covenant and increasing their love and loyalty to it are of paramount importance, the duties of the Auxiliary Board members for Protection do not end here. The Board members must remain ever vigilant, monitoring the actions of those who, driven by the promptings of ego, seek to sow the seeds of doubt in the minds of the friends and undermine the Faith. In general, whenever believers become aware of such problems, they should immediately contact whatever institution they feel moved to turn to, whether it be a Counsellor, an Auxiliary Board member, the National Spiritual Assembly or their own Local Assembly. It then becomes the duty of that institution to ensure that the report is fed into the correct channels and that all the other institutions affected are promptly informed. Not infrequently, the responsibility will fall on an Auxiliary Board member, in coordination with the Assembly concerned, to take some form of action in response to the situation. This involvement will include counselling the believer in question; warning him, if necessary, of the consequences of his actions; and bringing to the attention of the Counsellors the gravity of the situation, which may call for their intervention. Naturally, the Board member has to exert every effort to counteract the schemes and arrest the spread of the influence of those few who, despite attempts to guide them, eventually break the Covenant.
The need to protect the Faith from the attacks of its enemies may not be generally appreciated by the friends, particularly in places where attacks have been infrequent. However, it is certain that such opposition will increase, become concerted, and eventually universal. The writings clearly foreshadow not only an intensification of the machinations of internal enemies, but a rise in the hostility and opposition of its external enemies, whether religious or secular, as the Cause pursues its onward march towards ultimate victory. Therefore, in the light of the warnings of the Guardian, the Auxiliary Boards for Protection should keep "constantly" a "watchful eye" on those "who are known to be enemies, or to have been put out of the Faith", discreetly investigate their activities, alert intelligently the friends to the opposition inevitably to come, explain how each crisis in God's Faith has always proved to be a blessing in disguise, and prepare them for the "dire contest which is destined to range the Army of Light against the forces of darkness.
As a long-standing public critic of the Bahá’í administrative system and a former adherent, I believe this directive and its implications are relevant to the ideological motives that may underlie hostile actions taken against me, potentially even within institutional frameworks of the Australian government or intelligence-linked entities.
As I mentioned in the last email, I am a Bayānī (a post-Islamic theological tradition otherwise known as ‘Azalī Bābism’ https://iranicaonline.org/articles/azali-babism) and there is an established historical precedent by Bahá’í leaders of targeted harassment of Bayānī figures, including murder and political assassination (see, https://bayanic.com/lib/typed/hist/others/BahaiAssassinations.pdf) (originally: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1478-1913.1914.tb01380.x ).
Implications
Note that the 2001 directive from the Universal House of Justice cited above legitimizes:
- Faith-mandated reporting of dissenters.
- Long-term tracking of expelled or critical former members.
- Covert information gathering, including actions that may result in reputational harm, psychological pressure, or disruption of one’s livelihood and life circumstances. All of these have happened in my case.
This could theoretically extend into secular institutions if:
- Bahá’ís in positions of influence within the Australian Commonwealth government acted on these instructions,
- Or if “Protection” actors formed informal alliances to pursue ideological enemies beyond the bounds of the faith community.
If such a thing has indeed occurred, it could amount to:
- Sectarian abuse of power,
- A violation of the Australian Public Service Code of Conduct (which mandates political and religious neutrality),
- Discrimination based on religious/political belief,
- A potential criminal conspiracy.
I underscore again, that such harassment has been ongoing for two and a half decades.
Recent Circumstances of Concern
In support of this concern, I also wish to briefly draw your attention to the recent episode I mentioned in the previous email involving the woman named R…, a self-described psychotherapist based in Victoria. Between late May and June 2025, and although claiming to be an ꜤAlawite ShiꜤa Muslim, she entered into communication with me under personal and spiritual pretenses, only to later defend the Bahá’í Faith repeatedly and forcefully - minimizing or gaslighting my well-documented grievances against the Bahá’í administration. During these conversations, she appeared to steer our discussions toward ideological alignment with her views and, ultimately, maneuvered me into a hostile correspondence with individuals connected to far-right, identitarian circles in Europe - ironically resembling the same constellation of actors involved in the broader pattern of interference I had previously described. This later action appeared to constitute an attempted entrapment tactic.
I have reason to believe, based on timing and behavior, that this episode was not random, and that R. may have been acting in concert with, or at the very least on behalf of, an ideological agenda overlapping with Bahá’í-aligned interests.
While I understand that…does not involve itself in interpersonal matters, the pattern of soft infiltration, ideological manipulation, and boundary-crossing behavior exhibited here closely mirrors the behaviors outlined in the Universal House of Justice's directive, suggesting a continuing informal application of these surveillance and control tactics - possibly even involving actors embedded within institutional settings.
Request for Consideration
I submit this material not as proof of misconduct by any specific agency or official, but as contextual evidence of ideological systems and networks that may inform certain actors’ behavior, particularly where the line between private belief and public responsibility may have been blurred.
I respectfully request that this document and the original directive by the Universal House of Justice be attached to my complaint file for ongoing consideration. I am available to supply further documentation, timeline records, or clarifying testimony should your office deem it necessary.
Sincerely,
Wahid Azal
