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Cannabis Culture and Chris Bennett’s sectarian motivated attacks on the Bayān (Azalī Bābism)

 

 


It is easy for outsiders to assume that the smear campaign launched against me by Chris Bennett was merely a personal dispute, an ideological disagreement, or even a heated exchange between two individuals. It was not. In fact, it is far, far more than that.

What Chris Bennett did was something vastly more serious: he attacked a living religious tradition by pathologizing one of its representatives: me. Azalī Bābism (or the Bayān)[1] is not a historical curiosity or a footnote in the annals of nineteenth-century Iran. It is a continuous intellectual and spiritual lineage that has survived persecution, political repression, sectarian distortion, and systematic erasure. It remains alive through families, scholars, translators, and practitioners—those who preserve its texts, teach its history, and continue its metaphysical and ethical debates—even if quietly when avoiding persecution whether from Islamists or from Bahá’ís. But that Cannabis Culture would allow its official public platform to be weaponised in this way is far more troubling. A publisher has a duty—ethical, professional, and legal—to prevent its pages from becoming a conduit for sectarian smear, disinformation, and targeted attacks on minority religious communities and their representatives. By providing an unmoderated megaphone for material grounded in known forgeries, polemical tropes, and demonstrably hostile narratives, the publication abandoned even the minimal standards expected of a responsible media outlet. The result is not mere editorial negligence but the transformation of a public platform into an instrument of reputational harm, religious vilification, cross-border harassment and malicious sectarianism.

When Bennett first malevolently misrepresented the Bāb on the pages of Cannabis Culture in his 5 November 2025 article, Getting High With The Báb – The Drug-Infused Origins of the Bahá’í? (Some Notes), [2] he did not merely offer a mistaken historical reading. He stepped directly into a long-established genre of sectarian smear, distortion, and targeted misrepresentation. His piece follows—almost formulaically and verbatim—the same defamatory template used for over a century by Islamist polemicists seeking to denigrate the Bayān (Azalī Bābī) and its adherents: the selective quotation, the out-of-context caricature, the insinuation of drug use, the attribution of invented motives, and the erasure of the actual Bayānī/Azalī tradition in favour of a sensationalist fiction designed to provoke ridicule.

The moment Bennett relied on the forged Dolgorukov memoirs[3]—documents conclusively exposed as fraudulent by historians for over half a century now—he crossed the line from mere error into reckless disregard. Under both Canadian and Australian defamation standards, reckless disregard is established when a writer publishes allegations while knowing, or having every reason to know, that the sources are false, defective, or universally rejected within reputable scholarship. That Cannabis Culture failed in any editorial oversight in fact checking the piece, compounds the problem, because the Dolgorukov forgery fails even the most basic test of authenticity: no manuscript, no provenance, no corroboration, and unanimous academic consensus regarding its fabrication.[4] For Bennett to base defamatory insinuations on a source so thoroughly debunked demonstrates not only a lack of due diligence but an indifference to truth itself—precisely the standard courts use to infer malice, improper purpose, and aggravated liability. His reliance on this forgery is not a mistake; it is a deliberate reproduction of falsehood in the service of a harmful narrative—and by his own confession,[5] almost certainly at the behest of Massimo Introvigne and CESNUR who itself relies on false sectarian narratives produced by hostile Bahá’í sources.

Bennett’s use of this discredited Qajar-era forgery mirrors precisely the contemporary tactics championed by outlets such as CESNUR and its media arm Bitter Winter. These organisations specialise in laundering sectarian narratives and weaponising selective pseudo-history under the guise of “religious freedom reporting,” while consistently promoting official sectarian Baha’i interpretations as neutral fact. Bennett’s article reproduces their method point for point: the recycling of polemical sources long dismissed by serious scholars that are injurious to the Baha’is themselves; the framing of the Bāb and the Bayānī revelation through hostile, external narratives; and the erasure of Bayānī continuity in favour of a sensationalised mythology intended to delegitimise dissenting traditions. In adopting this template, Bennett is not analysing history—he is amplifying a sectarian apparatus that has spent decades misrepresenting minority religions and silencing the very communities it claims to describe.

Although likely fabricated during the Pahlavi era, Bennett’s reliance on the forged “Dolgorukov memoirs” places him squarely within the oldest and most discredited polemical playbook ever deployed against Siyyid ꜤAlī-Muḥammad Shīrāzī, the Bāb (d. 1850). Long before modern propagandists inscribed these fabrications, the Qājār-era fundamentalist clerics who opposed the teachings of the Bāb used the same forged narrative to paint him as a foreign agent, a degenerate, or a destabilising conspirator. By invoking these long-exposed fabrications, Bennett does not engage in historical analysis at all; he reproduces—almost verbatim—the anti- Bāb smear literature of the reactionary mullahs who orchestrated the suppression, imprisonment, and ultimate execution of the Bāb with the mass murder his followers. His dependence on this forgery is not accidental. It is a continuation of a polemical tradition whose purpose has always been to delegitimise the Bayānī revelation by drowning it in conspiracy theories and slander.

When later labelling Azalī perspectives “madness,” “paranoia,” or “delusion”; when he relied on racist orientalist tropes, defamatory stereotypes, Bahá’í propaganda and sectarian misinformation in order to discredit me personally; when he misrepresented doctrine in order to invalidate a tradition through its steward—he was not merely insulting an individual. He was reproducing a long historical pattern that both Islamists as well as the Bahá’í machinery itself has been systematically pursuing against the Bayān: the delegitimisation by attacking their teachers, reducing their perspectives to pathology, ridiculing what is not understood.

This is how vulnerable traditions are erased. Not always through violence, but through caricature, derision, and the public shaming of those who carry them. His subsequent articles, his rhetoric, and his attempt to contact my local community to tarnish my reputation all functioned as a contemporary form of religious vilification. The target was not only my character —it was the credibility and dignity of a living faith tradition because for small religious communities, the attack on a teacher is an attack on the tradition. For traditions that have survived erasure before, such behaviour is not merely defamatory—it is existentially harmful. But based on Bennett’s own public statements on his Facebook wall and elsewhere, this was precisely his expressed intention. This is why his actions cannot be dismissed as mere argument or disagreement. They belong to an old pattern of sectarian hostility and cultural prejudice, now updated for the digital age. And that is why I have responded, documented, and escalated the matter between two continents. Not only to protect myself, but to protect the integrity of a tradition that has survived far greater threats than this—and will continue to do so after this debacle is over.

Now, given Bennett’s obvious sock-puppetry acting on behalf of CESNUR and the Haifan Baha’i apparatus in order to erase the very contemporary existence of the Bayānī community. I reproduce an important piece of evidence from the author of one of the sources Bennett deceptively cited: Denis MacEoin (d. 2022). In 1976, Denis MacEoin—then a young scholar at King’s College, Cambridge—wrote a respectful letter in Persian to a senior member of the Bayānī community of Iran. The letter 1. recounts how he became interested in Babism; 2. it verifies that Azāli Babī identity existed openly in academic circles even in the 1960s; and that 3. He has been researching Babism seriously. He explains that around ten years earlier, while studying in London, he met an Iranian female student who openly identified as an Azali Babi, and this sparked his interest in researching the Babi religion in libraries like Azāli Babī Cambridge. He tells the addressee that:

  • He worked on Babism while writing his book on Shi‘i minorities.
  • He has since completed a large manuscript that includes 70–80 pages specifically on the Azali Babis.
  • The manuscript is long and not yet printed, but he hopes it will be published soon.

This shows: MacEoin treated Azāli Babīs as a serious, surviving religious community worthy of dedicated scholarship.

i. He emphasises the importance of Azali/Bayani historical sources

He mentions that the individuals and sources used in the Azali sections are rare and often appear only in marginal references in manuscripts or royal chronicles — signalling the scholarly value of the Azali archives.

ii. He invites further questions and promises a copy of the book

He expresses willingness to discuss any issues the community wishes to raise and says he will happily present a complimentary copy once the book is published.

iii. He expresses respect, affection, and a desire to visit

He ends by saying he wrote out of affection and respect, hopes the letter is useful, and looks forward to meeting the Azali community again on his next trip to Tehran.

            Here I reproduce a scan of the whole letter in full. To wit (see next page),

 

Additionally, during 2019 journalist Alice Moldovan of the Australian ABC’s Religion and Ethics section, directly mentioned our community in an ABC (Australian Broadcasting Service) article about Tahirih Qurratúl-Ayn (d. 1852), when stating,

 

The Babi movement, also known as Bayanis or Azalis, preceded the Baha'i faith in Persia, where many followers became Bahai — though the two religions remain separate today.[6]

 

During 2022, the Bayān and I were both mentioned by name in the late Peter Lamborn Wilson’s (d. 2022) final two books.[7] Moreover, Australian scholar Milad Milani mentioned the Fatimiya Sufi Order and I by name in his 2023 E.J. Brill published contribution in the volume Sufism in Western Contexts (ed. M.K. Hermansen & Saeed Zarrabi-Zadeh), entitled Sufism in Oceania, when he says:

 

The Fatimiya Sufi Order is in effect a form of New Age syncretic esotericism…, initially founded in 2002 and established in 2005 in Australia. Its founder and master is Nima Wahid Azal who is of Iranian descent and currently residing in Queensland, Australia… He attests…[that the Fatimiya Sufi Order]…is the formal organization umbrella for the religion of the Bayān (397-8).[8]

 

As such, Bennett’s campaign, Cannabis Culture’s publication of it, and the wider CESNUR/Bitter Winter nexus he has openly aligned himself with, reveal something far more serious (and dare one say, more sinister) than a dispute over theology or “internet drama.” They reveal a coordinated pattern of erasure directed at a small, historically persecuted religious minority: the contemporary Bayānī/Azalī community. The forged Dolgorukov memoirs, the recycled Qājār and Pahlavi smear tropes, the sectarian Baha’i narratives laundered through pseudo-academic outlets, the racist and pathologising language, the attempt to contact my local community in Brisbane to do reputational damage—all of this fits a single, recognisable template. It is the old project of making a tradition disappear by first making its representatives seem mad, dangerous, or ridiculous.

The MacEoin letter reproduced above decisively contradicts that erasure. It demonstrates that, even in the 1960s and 1970s, serious scholars recognised the Azalī Bābīs as a living, self-identifying religious community, one worthy of extended, respectful study. It shows that there were known adherents, that there were elders in Iran safeguarding the tradition, that its archives were seen as historically precious rather than disposable, and that the Bayān was not some defunct curiosity but a continuing intellectual and spiritual lineage. In other words, it establishes—on the authority of a scholar Bennett himself cites—that the very premise underpinning his treatment of me and my work, namely that Bayānī identity is somehow fictive, delusional or obsolete, is factually and historically false.

Once that is understood, Bennett’s writings and Cannabis Culture’s decision to host them can no longer be plausibly read as neutral “opinion” or clumsy controversy. They become a case study in reckless disregard for truth and in religious vilification directed at a vulnerable minority tradition that has already endured a century and a half of persecution, misrepresentation and forced marginality. Whether Canadian and Australian authorities ultimately characterise this behaviour in civil, criminal, or human-rights terms is for them to determine. But on any sober analysis, the pattern is clear: an online platform was used to amplify a sectarian apparatus whose aim was not to clarify history, but to delegitimise a living faith by destroying the reputation of one of its contemporary stewards. My response—documenting, rebutting, and escalating across two legal systems—is therefore not merely self-defence. It is an insistence that the Bayān and its people will not be written out of history yet again, and that those who try to do so in the 21st century will be held to account in the light of documentary evidence, legal scrutiny, and the unbroken continuity of the tradition they have sought to erase.

There is a deep irony—one bordering on tragicomic—in the fact that Cannabis Culture, a publication rooted in a countercultural movement that has long positioned itself as a marginalised “cannabis spirituality” or “entheogenic liberation” community, would allow itself to be weaponised against another vulnerable religious minority. For decades, cannabis-based spiritualities have sought recognition as legitimate expressions of belief and practice, often appealing to principles of tolerance, minority rights, freedom of conscience, and resistance to mainstream distortion. That such a platform would willingly echo the very dynamics of caricature, demonisation, and sectarian smear historically used against marginalised traditions—precisely the dynamics its own readership has claimed to resist—reveals a profound contradiction at the heart of this episode. In elevating Bennett’s polemic, the publication abandoned the solidarity that minority traditions typically extend to one another in the face of dominant narratives.

The contradiction goes deeper still. Communities associated with entheogenic or cannabis-centred spirituality have often argued that their own beliefs are misunderstood, pathologised, or dismissed by mainstream institutions. They have highlighted the dangers of being reduced to stereotypes—“drug users,” “fanatics,” “degenerates”—and have rightly insisted that such tropes have historically fuelled criminalisation and stigma. Yet here, the same publication that claims to defend against these misrepresentations amplified Bennett’s pathologising of a completely unrelated minority faith, presenting forged sources and orientalist tropes as if they were legitimate scholarship. The result is a painful reversal: a platform born from a struggle against marginalisation became, for three moments, an instrument of marginalisation—turning the very tactics once used against its own community upon another vulnerable tradition. This is not merely contradictory; it represents a failure of the ethical obligations that bind minority spiritual movements to resist, rather than reproduce, the logics of erasure.

 

Notes

 

[1] https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/azali-babism/ Although germane here, there are also numerous inaccuracies of interpretation and fact in MacEoin’s EIr entry. Here Azalī Bābī and Bayānī are used interchangeably because they refer to one and the same thing.

[5] To wit,

Wahid Azal opens his response to my article Questions about the 2014 Iranian ‘Psychedelic Fatwā and Wahid Azal? Part 1 of this 3 part series, with the bogus claim “Chris Bennett… appears to have aligned himself with CESNUR (Centro Studi sulle Nuove Religioni)”. Prior to gigging into Wahid’s sordid past, I had no knowledge or contact with this group, although since sending my articles on Wahid there way, we have corresponded. Massimo Introvigne the Italian academic and sociologist of religion, who co-founded CESNUR, who sociologist Roberto Cipriani “one of… the world’s leading scholars of new religious movements”, called the series a “tour de force’. Massimo, who has written in the defence of Ayahuasca, was very kind and supportive, and was interested in looking at some of my books on the role of cannabis and religion. So thanks for that new academic connection Wahid!

https://substack.com/home/post/p-179978814 (retrieved 1 December 2025).

 

[7] See False Messiah: Crypto-Xtian Tracts and Fragments (Autonomedia: Brooklyn, 2022), esp. 76-7; and Peacock Angel: The Esoteric Tradition of the Yezidis (Autonomedia: Brooklyn, 2022), passim. See also our 2020 communication when he formally converted to the Bayān and entered the Fatimiya Sufi Order,

https://archive.org/details/plwto-nwazal-11apr-2020

https://archive.org/details/forwarded-message-2 (retrieved 1 December 2025).

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