Abstract Pre-publication review is a long-standing practice in the Bahá'í community. When questioned about it in the past, the Universal House of Justice has defended review and stated that it will continue for the foreseeable future. This paper argues that the current provisions for review may be anachronistic and that the benefits of deregulation might outweigh the possible damage. Origins of review On 5 March 1922, writing to his "Fellow-workers in the Cause of Bahá'u'lláh," Shoghi Effendi states his "firm conviction" that "the dignity and unity of the Cause" should be the focus of the love and dedication of the Bahá'ís.(1) He reviews 'Abdu'l-Bahá's guidance on consultation and on the obligations of Spiritual Assemblies, and the Master's strictures on the necessity of submitting to their authority. Shoghi Effendi recalls that 'Abdu'l-Bahá directed Shaykh Faraj to submit his translation into Arabic of the Ishráqát, corrected by 'Abdu'l-Bahá in his own handwriting, for approval to the Spiritual Assembly of Cairo. He comments: This is indeed a clear indication of the Master's express desire that nothing whatever should be given to the public by any individual among the friends, unless fully considered and approved by the Spiritual Assembly in his locality.(2) Shoghi Effendi emphasises the need to present a "solid united front to the world" and, in so doing, he exhorts the Bahá'í community to be a disciplined body that will promote Bahá'u'lláh's Cause. The interests of the Cause transcend personal freedom as a value, important as that value is.

Justifications for review and current regulations This discipline has most certainly had the effect of protecting the Bahá'í Faith from the spread of distorted versions of its teachings. The benefits of this protection have been both external and internal: pre-publication review has ensured, by and large, a consistent presentation of the Faith to the rest of the world at a time when the Bahá'í community was very small indeed and extremely obscure; review has also been a means by which the believers' knowledge of Bahá'í doctrine could be improved. Needless to say, these two aspects reinforced each other. One Bahá'í scholar has persuasively argued for the role of review in the future: at this still formative stage in the world-wide development of the Bahá'í Faith when we seem to be on the verge of "entry by troops" in many parts of the world, I think it would prove unwise to do away with review at this time. As "entry by troops" continues to happen, we can envision all kinds of people entering the Bahá'í Faith–unity notwithstanding–amidst a great welter of cultural backgrounds, dissimilar attitudes and various temperaments. In the intellectual realm, such a mix can lead to powerful ideological storms which may serve to undermine the very unity the Bahá'í Faith aims to create.(3) The Universal House of Justice, in defending the continuation of the practice of review, now and into the future, has made the same moral appeal as did Shoghi Effendi. It has done this in a number of documents, notably in Individual Rights and Freedoms in the World Order of Bahá'u'lláh (of 29 December 1988),(4) and in a letter dated 5 October 1993, written on behalf of the Universal House of Justice to an individual,(5) which restates the case for review in a specifically academic context. The 1971 Memorandum on Bahá'í Publishing(6) (supplemented by various other communications)(7) provides the clearest statement of the regulations currently governing the practicalities of review. It quotes statements of Shoghi Effendi in support of the obligatory and temporary ("in these days when the Cause is still in its infancy")(8) nature of review and gives as its purpose the protection of Faith from misrepresentation and ensuring dignity and accuracy of presentation. Review is to be applied to "all works by Bahá'ís which deal with the Faith."(9) What are reviewers to look for? How are they to judge whether or not a work is suitable to be passed for publication? The House states: "The standards to be upheld by reviewers are the following: (a) conformity with the Teachings, (b) accuracy, (c) dignity in presentation."(10) No definitions or criteria are prescribed for these key terms and it is left to the reviewing body to judge what constitutes "accuracy" and "dignity". Problems & questions There are considerable difficulties in interpreting these concepts. How "dignified" would a tape of rap songs be with Bahá'í content, recorded by a Bahá'í rap artist? Just such a tape was turned down by the UK Reviewing Panel as undignified. The Reviewing Panel's decision was appealed to the UK National Spiritual Assembly, which overturned the decision on the grounds that the presentation would be regarded as dignified by the audience for which it was intended, even if not by the middle-aged, middle-class reviewers. How "accurate" is a book written by a Bahá'í scholar who presents well-researched information about the history of the Faith unfamiliar to the reviewers, particularly if he constructs an argument about the development of the Faith which the reviewers find unpalatable, since it does not accord with what one might call "folk-wisdom" about Bahá'í history? Reviewers rejected one such book, and the decision was appealed to the National Assembly, which overturned the review and passed the book. Unjustified rejections by reviewers have made some scholars and artists reluctant to invest time, energy and emotion into work with Bahá'í content. Problems arise when the reviewers are not knowledgeable enough to make considered judgements, when their views about dignity are too "conservative" or even differ wildly from the views of the target audience or when the reviewers exceed their remit and begin to make editorial judgements about the suitability of the work for publication.(11) Is it possible to establish useful criteria for "accuracy" and "dignity" that would guide reviewers and be acceptable to both the competent institutions and the authors of materials under review? The dictionary, offering only circular definitions for these words, doesn't help us here. The central authority of the Faith offers no criteria. It falls, therefore, to the National Assemblies (or their appointed reviewers) to arrive at some definition. But how can they do this? Potential audiences for Bahá'í material are diverse; criteria for dignity are equally diverse. Furthermore, notions of dignity change over time, and perhaps never as quickly as now. So reviewers tend to fall back on the "we know it when we see it" kind of criterion–dignity as a form of justified prejudice, as illustrated in the case of the rap tape mentioned above. Defining "accuracy" is no more straightforward than defining "dignity", especially when the history and teachings of the Bahá'í Faith are subject to research and investigation by scholars, Bahá'ís and others, who are not constrained by the "received" understanding of the Bahá'í Faith with which many Bahá'ís tend to live. The case of the scholarly history I mentioned above shows how difficult it can be to judge "accuracy".(12) I submit that it would be impossible to arrive at a set of agreed criteria for either "dignity" or "accuracy". Definitions will be either (a) circular and therefore useless for practical purposes, or (b) so general as to be useless because they do not respect cultural differences, or (c) so local as to be useless because they run counter to the global nature of the Bahá'í Faith and of publishing in the late twentieth century. In addition, any criteria chosen may reflect the prejudices of a dominant group in the Bahá'í community–such as white males–who may lack understanding of the cultural expressions of other groups.

Review and Bahá'ís in academia It is amongst Bahá'í scholars that concerns about Bahá'í review have been most forcefully articulated. The point has been made repeatedly in discussions on an Internet mailing list called Talisman that having work on the Bahá'í Faith reviewed by a separate Bahá'í procedure poses serious problems for academics. One Bahá'í academic put it in this way: "Review" is problematic in academic terms because it constitutes a third-party intervention between the author (the truth-seeker) and the academic publisher (which will have the work refereed in any case, but solely for intellectual cogency and soundness of sources). While some publishers may accept it (Cambridge did, for Peter Smith's book), it is not the sort of thing other academics would approve of. Nor, in my view, should they. If it is the same as academic refereeing, it is redundant, since the press has referees. If it is not the same, then it is adding some criterion on to the publication process beyond simple intellectual cogency and accuracy, which is academically unacceptable.(13) The cost for Bahá'í academics of maintaining this practice can be heavy in terms of lost credibility with academic peers, loss of publication opportunities, and, in extreme cases, loss of access to tenured posts. Beyond this pragmatic concern, there is a matter of principle that concerns scholars. Some believe that review is a prime cause of what they see as the intellectual and spiritual stagnation of the Bahá'í community in the twentieth century. As a Talisman contributor wrote: Defenders of Review still have not replied to my major criticism of it, which is that it leads to intellectual and spiritual stagnation because it discourages thinking, writing and publishing. The Bahá'í Faith in 19th century Iran was a cauldron of imaginative thinking, which was actively encouraged by Bahá'u'lláh. There was then no review.... The best argument for getting rid of review is that Bahá'í thinkers would then feel free to think again, after the (Bahá'í) intellectual dark age of the 20th century. I know for a fact that some prominent Bahá'í intellectuals of the previous generation refused to write about the Faith because they could not reconcile Review with their academic consciences.(14) Another put it more starkly: Bahá'í review is censorship intended to protect the Faith from outside criticism. Personally, I believe that censorship is wrong on both moral and practical grounds except under abnormal conditions, as in a war.(15) There is anecdotal evidence(16) to suggest that the national institutions of the Faith have used review to suppress the work of Bahá'ís which has been perceived as threatening, possibly even as dissident, with respect to the Covenant. Artists and scholars who have asked "awkward" or unsettling questions, or who have produced material which challenges received or "orthodox" notions about the Bahá'í Faith, have found their material rejected by review and, therefore, unpublishable. In some cases, this may have led to their withdrawal from active participation in the community.(17) However, there is another side to this particular coin. Changes are taking place in the attitudes of at least some National Spiritual Assemblies, guided by the Universal House of Justice. Its letter of 14 May 1994 to the National Spiritual Assembly of the United States makes it clear that National Assemblies have to learn to relate in a more open and less authoritarian way to the believers. Concomitantly, the Bahá'ís themselves have a responsibility in this respect: The maintenance of a climate of love and unity depends largely upon the feeling among the individuals composing the community that the Assembly is a part of themselves, that their co-operative interactions with that divinely ordained body allow them a fair latitude for initiative...(18) Although some, perhaps most, scholars perceive themselves as being denied "fair latitude for initiative"–a perception that leads to anguish and anger–it has to be said that National Spiritual Assemblies have the difficult (perhaps impossible) task of reconciling conflicting roles: defending the Faith and co-ordinating its activities, for instance, whilst encouraging individual initiative, or maintaining confidentiality while remaining open to criticism. National Assemblies have tended to err–often heavy-handedly–on the side of caution (in order, as they would see it, to protect the Faith), with detrimental effects on scholars and scholarship. The above quoted letter from the House leaves National Assemblies in no doubt about how they have to change. But change in the Bahá'í community is the responsibility of all. Nothing will be resolved if scholars and institutions perceive themselves as being somehow in an adversarial relationship. In a letter written on its behalf to an individual (dated 5 October 1993) the Universal House of Justice acknowledges that it is aware of the effects of the continuation of review on both the good name of the Faith "in the eyes of certain non-Bahá'í academics"(19) and the careers of Bahá'í academics. However, the House believes that scholars and other Bahá'ís are well placed to taking a leading part in exploring new scholarly methodologies which will help solve the world's problems; the development–through consultation–of essential new resources and methodologies will protect the reputation of the Faith in the long run, whatever the short-term misunderstandings and criticisms. The letter seems, in part, to be intended to discourage special pleading on the part of Bahá'í scholars; it implies most clearly that Bahá'í scholars are not a special case and appeals to them to consider that they may have to make sacrifices in their lives, just as other Bahá'ís have had to do in the path of service to Bahá'u'lláh. I have to say that I am not entirely comfortable with this approach. By way of example, the letter sets up–unfairly, it seems to me–a parallel between Bahá'ís in academic professions and Bahá'ís in developing countries who have sacrificed political careers. The sacrifice of a career that is entirely off-limits to Bahá'ís seems to be reasonable (if difficult). But why should Bahá'í scholars have to sacrifice careers of importance to defend a temporary practice within the Bahá'í community? Bahá'ís who work in academic fields are far more likely to influence the development of the new methodologies called for by the House when they are in professional contact with other thinkers in their field than they would be if they were to sacrifice their professions. I cited above a Talisman contributor who blamed review for what he saw as the intellectual and spiritual stagnation of the community. It would seem clear that the Bahá'í community does not generally celebrate intellectual achievement. Nor is it universally humming with artistic and spiritual creativity, although there are, of course, many vigorously creative Bahá'ís. However, review cannot alone be held responsible for this; other factors, such as the conservatism of many Bahá'ís and their lack of understanding of scholarship and of the arts also have their effect. Probably the most potent stimulus for the development of a spiritually and intellectually vibrant community will come from the Faith's numerical growth. When the UK Bahá'í community, for instance, reaches six million instead of its current 6,000 members, the range of possibilities for high quality scholarly and artistic interchange will have grown out of all recognition.

Review and electronic publishing Another serious difficulty about the review process is that the guidance on review, even though it lists works of various kinds, seems to be based on an assumption that the work in hand is a book published in the traditional way. The Memorandum makes a distinction between author and publisher, assumes that publication takes time, that publication is in a relatively static form, that the finished work is easily recognised as a "publication", and that publication happens in one place and is geographically limited. None of these assumptions is any longer automatically true. Electronic and on-line media have eroded print-based assumptions and distinctions: an author may also be the publisher; publication can be virtually instantaneous; geographical boundaries no longer have any relevance; publication is dynamic and documents may change at any time and rapidly; there may be multiple and collaborative authoring; the distinction between "internal"/private and published documents is increasingly hard to maintain; publications may be open-ended and include a series of dynamic hypertext links that can change from day to day (in other words, there is no closed, contained document; indeed, a document may even consist mainly of links); even in a contained publication such as CD-ROM, the hypermedia links may be so extensive and labyrinthine as to be impossible to be sure that one has followed them all. In such a case the reviewer could never be certain that the presentation is "accurate" or "dignified" (whatever those terms are taken to mean). Even the more "traditional" non-print media, such as drama, radio, TV, films and recordings are difficult to review in the manner prescribed. Where the message is largely in the performance, review of the script alone could never be sufficient to certify accuracy and dignity, even if suitable criteria could be established. Furthermore performers and producers would be justifiably angered if their investment of time and money were to be negated by rejection at, say, dress rehearsal.

Where do we go from here? Between 1878 and 1896 British law limited the speed of mechanical vehicles to 4 mph and insisted that each vehicle be preceded by a man with a red flag. I believe that the provisions for review are now in a "red flag" law situation. Traditional "vehicles", such as books, are subject to review (the man with the red flag). But, newer faster vehicles are now increasingly coming into use. On the information super-highway the man with the red flag is in danger of being run over. What is to be done? The Universal House of Justice could (a) insist that the new "vehicles" obey the red flag law along with the traditional ones; (b) place the "vehicles" into different categories and make different regulations for each category; or (c) deregulate entirely and trust to the good sense of each driver. In many respects the Bahá'í community is being decentralised and deregulated as it grows in size and maturity. Its diversity and plurality are increasingly being acknowledged. Greater emphasis is being placed (by the House of Justice) on the need for individual initiative, and institutions are learning how to facilitate rather than control Bahá'í activities. These are processes that will continue and become more pressing as the community grows explosively in many places. I submit that it is no longer possible or right for National Assemblies to try to control the kinds of things Bahá'ís publish about their Faith. Sincere Bahá'ís will always have "the dignity and unity of the Cause"(20) at heart, even if they differ on how these are to be achieved. Responsible Bahá'í publishers of traditional printed matter and in the newer media will exercise (as most do now) editorial control and responsibility over what they publish. Attacks on the Faith can continue to be answered by individuals suitably briefed by the institutions or, indeed, by the institutions themselves and their agencies. In my view, the life and richness of the Bahá'í community will be greatly enhanced if it is freed from review as a form of control and is encouraged, instead, to explore ways of using consultation, formally and informally – within authorial and editorial teams, between individuals and institutions (and their agencies), and so on – to create new and exciting presentations about the Faith and to ensure that the best interests of the Cause are served.

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End Notes (Use [BACK] to return to article.) From a letter of Shoghi Effendi dated 5 March 1922, cited in Bahá'í Administration, 5th rev. ed., (Wilmette: Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1981) 18. Ibid. Jack McLean, personal communication with the author, 20 September 1995. Individual Rights and Freedoms in the World Order of Bahá'u'lláh, a Statement by the Universal House of Justice, dated 29 December 1988, addressed to the Followers of Bahá'u'lláh in the United States of America (Wilmette: Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1989). Cited in The Bahá'í Studies Review 3.2 (1994): 43-45. The Universal House of Justice, "Memorandum on Bahá'í Publishing," Ridván 1971. For example, unpublished letters written on behalf of the Universal House of Justice to Dr Moojan Momen, dated 23 December 1979, and to George Ronald Publisher, dated 16 October 1985. The Memorandum quotes from a letter written by Shoghi Effendi to the Bahá'ís in America and Great Britain (amongst other countries) on 12 March 1923–that is, over 70 years ago, when the Bahá'í community was small, weak, and almost entirely lacking the administrative framework that now exists. The Memorandum itself is now 24 years old. Universal House of Justice, "Memorandum on Bahá'í Publishing." Ibid. As one who has reviewed several works on appeal, I have to say that it is difficult indeed to bracket one's editorial and personal preferences when considering whether or not to pass the work. Indeed, one reviewer turned down this particular manuscript on the grounds that the facts and arguments presented would not be familiar to the least educated Bahá'í. It is worrying that a reviewer should consider the understanding of the least educated to be a suitable criterion by which to assess any work by a Bahá'í. Cited from an informal compilation of contributions to a thread on the subject of review on the Talisman Internet mailing list, sent to the writer by Seena Fazel, November-December 1994. Ibid. Ibid. It is not my intention to write here about particular cases. I refer to the evidence as "anecdotal" because I am not aware of any published critical research into the episodes which some have alleged strongly (indeed, with considerable outrage) as evidences of the repressive use of review. Such research would be difficult because it would require access to confidential minutes and other documents of the National Spiritual Assemblies concerned, and the scholar would have to take great care to present a balanced assessment of the situation. This assertion is based on "anecdotal" evidence. From a letter dated 19 May 1994 written by the Universal House of Justice to the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá'ís of the United States. Cited in The Bahá'í Studies Review 3.2 (1994): 43-45. From a letter of Shoghi Effendi dated 5 March 1922, cited in Bahá'í Administration 18.

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