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The Silence that Speaks: An analysis of Bahá’í sectarian motivations in the Bennett–Cannabis Culture affair

 

 The Baha’i Administrative Order Explained

One of the most revealing aspects of the recent smear campaign launched by Chris Bennett—first through Cannabis Culture,  through his Substack series and Facebook wall, and then private emails he sent to my local organisations promoting his screed—has not been Bennett’s conduct alone, but the conspicuous silence of the Haifan Bahá’í administration and its aligned academic–parapolitical apparatus. This silence is not incidental. It is not neutral. It is not a product of ignorance or disinterest. It is a calculated form of sectarian opportunism whose contours become unmistakable once the events are placed within the broader historical context of Bahá’í attitudes toward the Bayān (Azalī Bābism) and its adherents. This essay examines the motives behind that silence, the strategic calculations it reveals, and why the Bennett–Cannabis Culture incident has inadvertently exposed the internal logic that has long governed Bahá’í sectarian behaviour.

 

The Dolgorukov Forgery Harms Bahá’ís—Yet They Remain Silent

This is the first and most striking contradiction. The Dolgorukov forgery is not merely an attack on the Bayān. It is also an attack on the Bahá’í faith. For decades, Bahá’í scholars and apologists have insisted—correctly—that the Dolgorukov material is a malicious fabrication. They have published articles, encyclopedia entries, academic papers, apologetic pamphlets, and online essays[1] explaining that:

  • the alleged Russian diplomat never existed,
  • the memoirs are a modern fabrication,
  • the narrative originated in 19th-century anti-Bābī clerical propaganda,
  • and the forgery has been weaponised against both Bābīs and Bahá’ís.

Yet in November 2025,[2] when Chris Bennett openly revived this forgery on a mainstream Canadian platform, citing it as historical fact, the Bahá’í apparatus did nothing. Not a whisper. Not a correction. Not a clarification. Not a distancing. Not even a disavowal of CESNUR’s involvement in the ordeal. This silence is the first piece of evidence.

This shows that the Haifan Bahá’í administration’s commitment to “truth” is always contingent, selective, PR-oriented and entirely instrumental. Their relationship to historical accuracy is never governed by scholarly integrity or concern for the integrity of the Bāb’s legacy, but by a calculus of institutional political advantage. They care about debunking the Dolgorukov forgery only when that slanderous narrative threatens their own public image or undermines their tightly managed internal mythology. When the same forgery harms the Bayānīs more than it harms them, they suddenly discover the virtue of silence. When the circulation of falsehood serves their sectarian aims—by delegitimising the Bayān, erasing Bayānī (Azalī Bābī) continuity, and humiliating a contemporary representative of that tradition—they are content to let it spread unchecked. This is not neutrality. This is sectarian calculation dressed up as academic aloofness. Of course, the partisans of Baháʼu'lláh (d. 1892) perpetrated precisely these sorts of things during the height of the Edirne period (1863-9) when fabricating pamphlets against Ṣubḥ-i-Azal (d. 1912) and distributing them amongst Ottoman officials as an underhanded way to trigger Ottoman retaliation against the Bāb’s legitimate successor.[3]

This, in itself, is a telling historical parallel to Bennett’s behaviour and is documented in one of the most politically consequential episodes of Bābī history, documented by E.G. Browne in his citation of the hasht bihisht. In the 1860s, leading partisans of Mírzá Ḥusayn-‘Alí Núrí (Bahá’u’lláh)—including ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Áqá Mírzá Āqá Ján, and Mushkín-Kalám—fabricated a series of letters in multiple handwritings that they secretly planted around Istanbul. These documents falsely claimed that 30,000 Bābīs in disguise were preparing to seize the Ottoman capital, depose the Sultan, and install Mírzá Yaḥyá Ṣubḥ-i-Azal as “king.”  The intention was clear: to provoke Ottoman panic, discredit the Bayānī leadership, and weaponise state authorities against a rival claimant. The Ottoman reaction was swift. Believing the letters authentic, they moved to exile the leaders of both factions—not for any real conspiracy, but for one manufactured by Bahá’u’lláh’s faction itself. This was the precise reason for the exile of Bahá’u’lláh and his partisans to Palestine and Ṣubḥ-i-Azal and His family to Cyprus as of 1869.

This episode is not an obscure footnote; it is the prototype of a sectarian strategy that has echoed for over a century. The Istanbul forgeries reveal the earliest instance of Bahá’í-aligned disinformation, showing a willingness to fabricate evidence, incite hostile authorities, and frame the Bayānīs as politically dangerous or unstable. It is precisely this historical pattern that is reproduced today through pseudo-academic platforms such as CESNUR/Bitter Winter, and now through Bennett’s writings. The tropes he deploys—pathologising Bayānīs, insinuating danger, recycling discredited narratives, erasing the continuity of the Bayān—mirror the same tactics used in the 1860s to isolate, marginalise, and ultimately erase a rival religious lineage, even getting some of its adherents killed.

Therefore, what Bennett presents as “research” is simply a digital-age reenactment of a long-standing sectarian playbook. The same method of delegitimisation—fabrication, sensationalism, and appeal to hostile authorities—has been used repeatedly against the Bayānī community from the Qājār era forward. The forged Dolgorukov memoirs he relies upon belong to this lineage of falsification just as the Istanbul conspiracy letters against Ṣubḥ-i-Azal did. Both were designed to stigmatise the Bayānīs, to portray them as unhinged or subversive, and to justify subsequent repression—and even murder.[4] Bennett’s revival of these narratives does not occur in a vacuum; it is the latest manifestation of a continuous historical effort to erase Bayānī identity by attacking its representatives.

For this reason, Bennett’s actions cannot be understood as mere theological disagreement or personal animus. They echo a documented, centuries-old pattern of sectarian hostility that has repeatedly weaponised falsehoods to marginalise the Bayān and its custodians. The Browne passage cited in the note below exposes that pattern clearly: the Bahá’í faction once fabricated an entire political conspiracy to destroy Bayānī credibility. Bennett has now revived the same tactic—substituting AI-generated exotic imagery, racist caricatures, and discredited polemics in place of forged Ottoman letters, but serving the same underlying purpose. His behaviour falls squarely within the historical continuum of attempts to delegitimise a vulnerable minority tradition through misrepresentation, incitement, and reputational harm.

But the silence over Bennett’s revival of the Dolgorukov forgery is all the more revealing because the Bahá’í apparatus has historically been hypersensitive to any slight, misrepresentation, or inaccuracy concerning its own founders, its history, or its institutions. Bahá’í media centres, national assemblies, apologetic websites, and affiliated academics frequently mobilise to correct even minor historical inaccuracies. They issue statements, commission articles, intervene in public discussions, and activate global networks of supporters. Yet in the Bennett affair—where a forged, thoroughly debunked, deeply harmful narrative about the Bāb was broadcast to an international audience—they chose to do absolutely nothing. Their sudden passivity is not an oversight; it is a signpost. It shows that their long-proclaimed defence of “truth” is, in fact, always highly conditional and governed by sectarian interests rather than principle.

More importantly, this silence exposes the longstanding posture of the Bahá’í administration toward the Bayānī/Azalī community: a stance of erasure and cultural genocide, not engagement. For over a century, Bahá’í historiography has depended on minimising the presence, continuity, and legitimacy of the Bayānīs. The Azalī Bābīs are depicted either as extinct, irrelevant, deranged, corrupted, or sectarian anomalies destined for historical oblivion. This narrative is crucial for the Bahá’í faith, because it constructs a teleological story in which the Bāb’s revelation has only one legitimate successor and one legitimate future—Bahá’u’lláh and Haifan Bahā’ism. The existence of a surviving Bayānī community contradicts this narrative, destabilising the neat progression from the Bāb to Bahā’u’llāh, which is false. Thus, anything that undermines Bayānī legitimacy—even if it involves forgeries—serves a broader institutional purpose. This is why the Bahá’í silence in the Bennett affair is not merely strategic—it is doctrinally aligned because erasure of the Bayānīs is a theological imperative within Haifan ideology, not merely a political convenience. Acknowledging Bayānī continuity would require confronting several inconvenient truths: that the Bāb appointed a successor in Ṣubḥ-i-Azal that they refuse to acknowledge; that Azalī scholarship, texts, and communities exist; and that their own historical narrative depends on suppressing these facts. Therefore, when Bennett revives a poisonous clerical fabrication that delegitimises the Bayānīs while incidentally staining the early Bahá’í narrative, the Bahá’í apparatus instinctively chooses erasure over accuracy, silence over correction, sectarian advantage over truth. The deeper irony is that their silence tacitly aligns them with the very Qājār-era clerical smear machine that persecuted both Bābīs and then the Bahá’ís alike. The Dolgorukov forgery did not distinguish between Azalī and Bahá’í identities—it was a weapon wielded against the entire early Bābī movement. Yet the modern Bahá’í establishment now finds itself benefiting from the circulation of that same slander because, in the present moment, its venom is aimed more at the Bayānīs and myself than at them. This selective moral vision reveals not only opportunism but an astonishing lack of solidarity with the very heritage they claim to uphold. They safeguard the Bāb only insofar as safeguarding Him serves their institutional narrative; when defending Him would require acknowledging Bayaānī legitimacy or protecting a contemporary Bayānī from sectarian slander, they prefer indifference.

Yet this pattern of opportunistic silence fits seamlessly into the Bahá’í movement’s historical modus operandi: publicly professing universalism, fairness, and interfaith harmony, while privately engaging in or benefiting from sectarian strategies of exclusion, suppression, and narrative domination. Their refusal to correct a harmful, widely circulated forgery—one that undermines the integrity of 19th-century Iranian history and the dignity of all Bābīs—reveals a culture in which truth is subordinate to institutional interest, and justice is invoked only when it advances the aims of the Haifan hierarchy. In this light, the Bennett–Cannabis Culture incident is not an anomaly but a crystallisation of a long-standing pattern: a movement that claims to champion the oneness of humanity is willing to tolerate—even quietly enable—sectarian smear when it serves the project of erasing a rival tradition.

 

Their Silence Exposes a Hierarchy of Priorities

If a Bahá’í scholar or apologist had been the target of Bennett’s article, the response would have been immediate and coordinated. The following would have occurred without hesitation:

  • A public statement from Bahá’í institutions
  • Social media mobilisation
  • Outreach to the publisher
  • A correction demand
  • Activation of CESNUR and allied “new religious movement” networks
  • Quiet diplomatic complaints at the highest levels
  • An online defence campaign

But because the target was an Bayānī (Azalī Bābī), none of these mechanisms activated. This reveals the internal hierarchy governing Bahá’í institutional behaviour and their operative hypocrisy:

1.     Suppress the Azalī tradition

2.     Protect Bahá’í institutional legitimacy

3.     Defend historical accuracy only when it benefits their PR narrative

4.     Remain silent when inaccuracies harm the Bayān more than they harm Bahá’ís

The silence is therefore not absence—it is presence. It is strategic. It is revealing.

This selective activation of outrage demonstrates that the Bahá’í administration’s professed universalism masks always a highly instrumental ethic of truth. When a falsehood threatens their own institutional image, they mobilise instantly; when that same falsehood harms their historical rivals, they quietly allow it to circulate. This is not merely passive bias—it is an active calculus of advantage, one that has defined their behaviour toward the Bayān for more than a century. The erasure of Azalī voices, the monopolisation of Bābī history in the West, and the sanitisation of nineteenth-century schisms are not accidental by-products of “misunderstanding.” They are deliberate components of a larger strategy to establish the Bahá’í narrative as the only authorised account of Bābī beginnings. Moreover, the silence around Bennett’s defamatory work reveals a deeper fear within the Bahá’í apparatus: the fear that any defence of the Bāb which benefits the Azalīs will inadvertently acknowledge the continued existence, legitimacy, and intellectual vitality of the Bayānī community. To correct Bennett’s distortions would require conceding that:


• The Dolgorukov forgery is false
• The Bāb’s writings condemn narcotics such as hashish and opium
• The Bayānī tradition survived independently of Bahá’u’lláh
• Modern Bayānī scholars exist and are active

This is precisely what the Haifan administrative line cannot publicly admit. Their silence is thus not indifference, but preservation of a narrative monopoly—a refusal to validate the living continuity of the tradition they broke away from.

In fact, Bahá’í institutional behaviour has long relied on a strategy of erasure through omission rather than confrontation. By refusing to acknowledge the Azalīs, they hope to render the Bayān invisible. By refusing to correct sectarian smears when those smears target an Azalī, they allow the damage to accumulate unopposed. It is the same logic that animated earlier episodes of suppression: delegitimise the rival by refusing to recognise them, and allow external hostile forces—the Qājār clerics, the Orientalists, or in this case, Chris Bennett—to perform the work of discreditation on their behalf. This dynamic becomes even more apparent when contrasted with their public rhetoric. The Bahá’í administration constantly proclaims universalism, human unity, the elimination of prejudice, and the spiritual equality of all religious traditions. Yet when confronted with an opportunity to defend another minority faith from demonstrable slander—especially one that shares their scriptures, history, and geographic origin—they remain silent. That silence cannot be reconciled with their stated principles. It exposes the uncomfortable reality that Bahá’í universalism is often deployed outwardly, toward public relations and interfaith diplomacy, while internally maintaining a strict hierarchy of tolerated identities. Note that I have been saying such things for three decades now.

Worst of all, their silence aligns them—tacitly but unmistakably—with the very propagandists whose tactics they have historically denounced. The Dolgorukov forgery has harmed the Bahá’ís for decades; they have complained loudly when Islamist polemicists weaponised it against them. Yet when Bennett weaponised it against us, they stood back and let it burn. This reveals the true nature of their commitment: it is not fidelity to historical truth, but fidelity to institutional self-interest and self-preservation. When truth and institutional supremacy diverge, truth is the first casualty. In this sense, Bennett’s actions did not merely expose his own sectarian alliances—they exposed the Bahá’í administration’s as well. His distortions, his reliance on a proven forgery, his theatrical Orientalism, and his reckless disregard for scholarly integrity were all met with silent approval from a community that should have been the first to object. Their silence is an endorsement—not of Bennett himself, but of the effect his smear campaign was intended to produce: the marginalisation, ridicule, and erasure of the contemporary Bayānī identity.

 

Their Academic Allies Are Not Neutral—They Are Parapolitical Assets

When Bennett openly admitted to corresponding with Massimo Introvigne—co-founder of CESNUR and editor of Bitter Winter—he exposed something the Bahá’í world prefers to keep concealed: its reliance on external parapolitical structures to shape narratives because for thirty years, CESNUR has served as:

  • a “neutral academic” front,
  • a clearinghouse for pro-Bahá’í apologetics,[5]
  • a legitimising shield for Bahá’í pseudo-historiography,
  • and a platform for rehabilitating Bahá’í propaganda as “scholarship.”

Introvigne’s endorsement of Bennett’s polemic—calling it a “tour de force”—is damning for CESNUR’s credibility. But the Bahá’í silence in response to this embarrassment is even more damning for them. It confirms that CESNUR’s value lies not in intellectual integrity but in strategic utility.

When CESNUR commits an error, no matter how egregious, the Bahá’í administration looks the other way. Because the apparatus is useful. This is not the behaviour of a religious community. It is the behaviour of a political machine. Thus, the Bahá’í administration’s reliance on CESNUR is not accidental—it is structural. CESNUR performs the ideological labour that Bahá’í institutions cannot openly do without compromising their carefully cultivated image as a “non-political” faith. Through CESNUR, the Bahá’í apparatus externalises its polemics, outsourcing controversial attacks, historical revisions, and sectarian framing to a supposedly independent academic body. This allows the Bahá’í institutions to maintain a façade of neutrality while benefiting from the circulation of narratives that suppress, distort, or delegitimise the Bayānī tradition. Bennett’s admission merely exposes the mechanism: CESNUR is not observing Bahá’í history; it is ruthlessly manufacturing it via its Canadian Canabis Culture mouthpiece.

What makes Introvigne’s embrace of Bennett’s polemic so revealing is its sheer carelessness. An organisation that claims expertise in “new religious movements” should have immediately recognised the Dolgorukov forgery as a classic piece of anti-Bābī agitprop. Instead, CESNUR applauds Bennett’s use of it. This is not a scholarly oversight—it is a political alignment. CESNUR endorsed the smear because it aligned with an already established Bahá’í institutional narrative: that the Bayān is a defunct historical curiosity, that contemporary Bayānīs are marginal or delusional, and that Bahá’í history must be protected even at the cost of falsifying the origins of the very movement they claim to inherit. CESNUR’s function, therefore, is not to clarify the historical record but to enforce the Bahá’í version of it. Rosita Šorytė pretty much insinuated as much herself in her Bitter Winter diatribe of August 2025 against me.[6] Yet the Bahá’í silence in the face of such an egregious misstep by their closest parapolitical ally is itself an act of complicity. A religious community that truly valued truth would publicly dissociate itself from CESNUR’s endorsement of a proven forgery. A community committed to fairness would object to the misuse of hostile sectarian sources. A community concerned with integrity would correct the record. Yet the Bahá’í administration did none of these things. Their silence is not benign—it is confirmatory. It signals that the preservation of their narrative monopoly is more important than intellectual honesty or interfaith ethics.

This pattern also reveals a deeper institutional pathology: the Bahá’í administration depends on external shield organisations precisely because it cannot withstand open scholarly scrutiny on its own. CESNUR and Bitter Winter function as reputational armour, ready to intervene whenever historical questions threaten the coherence of the official Bahá’í storyline. When Bennett’s polemic appeared, CESNUR’s endorsement acted as a stamp of legitimacy—no matter how fraudulent the underlying material. This is how propaganda ecosystems work: credentialed intermediaries transform disinformation into “expert opinion.” The Bahá’í administration’s endorsement-by-silence is simply the final step in this chain.

Nevertheless, this episode exposes something far more unsettling: the Bahá’í administration and CESNUR are engaged in a mutually reinforcing project of narrative control. CESNUR protects Bahá’í institutional interests under the guise of academic neutrality; the Bahá’í institutions grant CESNUR privileged access, legitimacy, and circulation. Bennett’s involvement shows how easily an external actor can be drawn into this apparatus—and how eagerly that apparatus amplifies any voice willing to promote its preferred storyline. The result is not scholarship, not dialogue, and not interfaith understanding. It is a coordinated system of sectarian gatekeeping and disinformation designed to keep the Bayān invisible, illegitimate, or absurd in the eyes of the public whilst boosting Bahá’í institutional lies.

 

Their Silence Confirms the Larger Historical Pattern

For 170 years, the Bayānī community has endured a consistent pattern of erasure:

  • confiscation or destruction of Bayanī manuscripts and texts by Bahá’ís,
  • unconscienable historical revisionism
  • consistent defamation of Bayanī figures
  • exclusion from “official” Bābī histories
  • suppression of Bayanī voices in academia
  • selective use of scholars to promote Haifan narratives
  • misrepresentation of Bayānī theology
  • delegitimisation of Bayanī writers and translators

 

The Bennett affair is thus more of the same and it is simply a digital-age continuation of an old sectarian project: the systematic marginalisation of a minority tradition whose very existence threatens the coherence of the Bahá’í narrative. What happened in 2025 follows the same blueprint used in the 1860s and beyond—only updated with new tools, new intermediaries, and new forms of information warfare. Instead of Qājār clerics issuing pamphlets, we now have Substack posts issued by deranged cannabis psychedelic celebrities. Instead of Pahlavi-era propagandists producing forged memoirs, we have digital pseudo-historians recycling them with AI assistance. Instead of Bahá’í institutions directing librarians to “remove” Bayanī materials (as they did with Browne’s 1910 edition of nuqṭat’ul-kāf), we have social-media operatives and allied organisations quietly amplifying narratives that delegitimise the Bayān. The form has changed; the function has not.

What makes the present episode especially revealing is the ease with which the old tropes were seamlessly translated into the digital environment. Bennett did not invent new accusations—he revived the oldest ones. He did not uncover original research—he reproduced discredited polemics. And he did not create a new sectarian alignment—he fell into an existing gravitational field maintained by CESNUR, Bitter Winter, and the Bahá’í PR apparatus. In this sense, the Bennett affair is not merely an attack on an individual; it is evidence of how successfully the century-long project of erasure has migrated onto contemporary platforms. The infrastructure was already in place. Bennett simply activated it.

The deeper concern is that the Haifan Bahá’í establishment benefits from precisely this kind of proxy hostility. By allowing non-Bahá’í actors like Bennett (or CESNUR’s wider orbit) to circulate defamatory narratives, the institutions can maintain plausible deniability while enjoying the consequences: the weakening of Bayānī legitimacy, the pathologising of its representatives (as an underhanded mechanism to incite violence and even murder against them), and the reinforcement of their own claim to be the sole “authentic” inheritors of the Bāb. This indirect strategy has always been central to Bahá’í sectarian management. For over a century, they have preferred to outsource their harshest polemics to intermediaries—missionaries, Orientalists, pseudo-scholars, and now online cannabis activists—while preserving a façade of civility for official communications. Moreover, the pattern of erasure persists precisely because Bayānī identity complicates the foundational Bahá’í storyline. The Bayān is not a harmless historical prelude to the Bahá’í faith; it is a distinct revelation with its own metaphysics, its own law, and its own claims to authority. Recognising this would destabilise the Bahá’í myth of seamless succession. Therefore, the more the Bayān is ridiculed, pathologised, or depicted as delusional, the safer the Bahá’í narrative becomes. This is why manuscripts were destroyed or confiscated. This is why Bayānī histories were suppressed. This is why Bayānī scholars vanish from bibliographic citations. And this is why—today—digital actors are enlisted, knowingly or not, to reproduce that same erasure.

In this light, the Bennett affair becomes a moment of crystallisation. It exposes, in one clear incident, the entire architecture of suppression: the forged sources inherited from Qājār polemicists, the Bahá’í-aligned parapolitical outlets laundering those sources as “scholarship,” the mobilisation of white-supremacist and orientalist stereotypes, the silence of Bahá’í institutions when the harm is directed at us, and the willingness of fringe media ecosystems to host defamatory narratives without fact-checking. Far from being an isolated event, it is the latest chapter in a long, unbroken chain of efforts to write the Bayān out of history by delegitimising the living heirs of the tradition.

 

Silence Is the Strategy

The Bennett–Cannabis Culture affair has exposed more about the sectarian motives of the Haifan Bahá’í administration than any polemic ever could. Therefore, what we have witnessed is not an isolated incident but the resurfacing of a long-standing pattern:

  • truth subordinated to strategy,
  • accuracy subordinated to narrative,
  • solidarity subordinated to sectarian interests,
  • and history subordinated to institutional self-preservation.

Their silence in the face of a forgery that damages them is not accidental—it is revelatory. It reveals that the real priority is not truth, not historical integrity, not interfaith respect, and not the defence of their own prophet. The real priority is the erasure of the Bayān. But history has a long memory, and documents have a longer one. The evidence is now in the open. And for the first time in many years, the apparatus finds itself confronted not by polemic, but by its own reflection—unmasked, unvarnished, and undeniable.


[2] See Bennett’s Getting High With The Báb – The Drug Infused Origins of The Bahá’í? (Some Notes) https://www.cannabisculture.com/content/2025/11/05/getting-high-with-the-bab-the-drug-infused-origins-of-the-bahai-some-notes/

[3] See E.G. Browne A Traveller’s Narrative Written to Illustrate the Episode of the Bāb, volume II, Note W (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1891): 360. To wit,

 

Some while after this, says the author of the Hasht Bihisht, Mírzá Ḥusayn ‘Alí [i.e. Baháʼu'lláh] devised a new stratagem. A number of letters were written in different handwritings by Áká Mírzá Áká Ján, Mushkín Kalam, ‘Abbás Efendí, and other partisans of Mírzá Ḥusayn ‘Alí to sundry Turkish statesmen and officials to the following effect:—‘About thirty thousand of us Bábís are concealed in disguise in and around Constantinople, and in a short while we shall rise. We shall first capture Constantinople, and if Sulṭán ‘Abdu’l-‘Azíz and his ministers do not believe [in our religion], we shall depose and dismiss them from their rule and administration. And our King is Mírzá Yaḥyá Ṣubḥ-i-Azal.’’ These letters were left by night at the Sulṭan’s palace and the houses of the different ministers by Mushkín Kalam and other partisans of Mírzá Ḥusayn ‘Alí resident in Constantinople. When next day these letters were discovered, the Turkish Government, which had treated the Bábís with kindness, and afforded them shelter and hospitality, was naturally greatly incensed. The letters were forthwith laid before the Persian Ambassador, and, at a joint assembly of Turkish and Persian officials, it was decided to exile the Bábí chiefs to some remote island or fortress on the coast.

Online https://archive.org/details/TravellersNarrativeVol.2 (retrieved 1 December 2025).

[4] Ibid., 361-4.

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