In attacking the new Unitarian Baha’i movement, Sen McGlinn made the following absurd declaration:

http://senmcglinn.wordpress.com/2010/04/17/muhammad-ali-revived-2/

Do not be deceived: the latest attempt to rehabilitate Muhammad Ali is not due to some universal love and progressive ideas, or any great knowledge about Muhammad Ali: it springs from a desire to avoid the straight line that leads from authenticated texts by Baha’u’llah and Abdu’l-Baha, through inescapable reasoning, to the conclusion that the Universal House of Justice is the head of the Bahai community today. To avoid that conclusion, some people will bring forward anything, however implausible, that seems to offer an alternative.

Anyone who actually reads the Baha’i Faith section of this blog would know, if they were intellectually honest, that this claim is simply bogus postering. And there’s more:

http://www.uubahai.com/2010/03/ghusn-i-akbar-part-1-the-facts/

http://www.uubahai.com/2010/04/ghusn-i-akbar-part-2-his-significance/

Indeed, like most Baha’is, McGlinn takes at face value the profoundly one-sided narratives favored by the Haifan Baha’i Administrative Order about the conflict between Abdu’l-Baha (AB) and his brother Mirza Muhammad Ali (MA), never questioning them; never asking why, if MA was such a despicable man and AB was indeed so perfect in his ways, why nearly all the descendants of Baha’u’llah, even those descended directly from AB,  would reject the claims of AB and Shoghi Effendi and find themselves expelled from the Baha’i community rather than submit to the Covenant AB established in his Will and Testament. Also odd is that the mansion of Bahji, in which Baha’u’llah spent his last years, was lived in by MA after Baha’u’llah died, not AB! I’d think if AB was as highly favored by Baha’u’llah as the official Baha’i history claims, he would have been living in Bahji with Baha’u’llah and would have inherited it, but in fact, AB never lived there at all! Such logical gaps should be debated and worked over, not ignored and swept under the rug.

 People who operate like McGlinn have no business claiming to be reputable scholars on religion, unless they are promoting a scam.

And what is really ironic about this, is that McGlinn was actually expelled from the very Haifan Baha’i community he is still defending:

http://senmcglinn.wordpress.com/about/

In late 2005 I was removed from the rolls of the Bahai community, following a decision of the Universal House of Justice. I have put up some of the documents on a page here, in response to speculations about the reasons for the decision. I have applied to be re-enrolled periodically, and in the meantime continue as a believing and practising unenrolled Bahai. There are some informal reflections on being unenrolled in an email in my archive called ‘who belongs.’

Why would anyone continue to defend an organization that no longer even wants him around? To me, that is idiocy, and I do not respect idiots.