Talk:William McElwee Miller

The Baha'i Faith: Its History and Teachings

The third paragraph of the article, as originally edited in the article, is lifted word-for-word from the last two sentences of the "About the Author" section of this book. This has to be edited.

The "scholar" referred to here, Jalal (Jelal) Azal, is a descendant of Mirza Yahya Nuri Subh-i Azal and is not actualy a scholar in any sense of the word. Both L.P. Elwell-Sutton's (1976) review, and D. Martin's (1978) monograph, address the one-sided, biased, nature of this book.

"In fact what we are presented with is an all-out attack on, a merciless tirade against, Bahá'ísm, but treated not, as one might expect from the author's credentials (Presbyterian missionary in Iran for 40-odd years), from the Christian, but from the Azali point of view."

(Elwell-Sutton, 1978)

"The source on whom Rev. Miller most depends is the late Jelal Azal, a descendent of the notorious Mirza Yahya, Subh-i-Azal. Contrary to Rev. Miller's suggestion, Mr. Azal was not a recognized scholar, nor was he in any sense independent. Rather, he was a person who had long been engaged in a personal vendetta against the religion he is alleged to have been 'studying'.

...

Rev. Miller, on the contrary, places himself entirely in the hands of Mr. Azal, especially so far as the post-Babi period of his narrative is concerned, reproducing quite uncritically whatever his correspondent sent him, and turning large sections of his book into little more than an Azali tract."

(Martin, 1978)

This paragraph deserves expansion, crediting him with his due as a missionary, but clarifying that his work on the Baha'is was at least colored. MARussellPESE 19:43, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

The full quote makes it clear this review is stating that there are no npov accounts of the Baha'i movement. Leaving half the quote makes the impression that *other* books about the Baha'is are not colored. He is not stating that. To leave only half the quote is pov, since you're using it solely for the purpose of attacking Miller's credibility which the reviewer was not exactly doing. Wjhonson 03:26, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Actually, that's exactly what the reviewer does if you would read the entire review. In the 800+ word review, which includes phrases like "This is a polemical work.", and "... we have this detailed but surely one-sided account ...".

He notes Balyuzi once and then only in 46 words in the context of "Unfortunately we are no nearer to determining which of them is right." Including all of this, without the really rather strong comments on Miller is what's unbalanced. This selection gives a clear impression of Elwell-Sutton's conclusions:

"Since he [Miller] can hardly intend to advocate the Azali form of Babism as the One True Faith, we are bound to conclude that his purpose is to discredit Bahá'ísm by washing its dirty linen in public. ... But perhaps he ought not at the same time to convey the impression that he has produced an objective study; he would have done better to have given his book some such title as "Bahá'ísm unmasked" or "The truth about Bahá'ísm". Then the reader would have known what to expect."

He's accusing Miller of deliberate deception, isn't he?

Unless we're going to have the whole review included, hardly encyclopaedic, we need to properly digest Elwell-Sutton's review: which is clearly about Miller, not Balyuzi.

That, or we can digest Martin's review, which if less succinct, is a more detailed in the book's shortcomings. You may want to read it yourself as there are more than a few places where Miller ignored Browne's primary sources in favor of Azal's accounts. MARussellPESE 13:08, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Elwell-Sutton's review of Balyuzi's Edward Granville Browne and the Baha'i Faith shows the reviewer's sharp perspective. While he, correctly, notes that this particular book is "unashamedly polemical", he's far more charitable with Baluzi's work than with Miller's.

"His main purpose, in this as in an earlier work, is to present a corrective view of the birth and rise of a world faith ... That the task is a necessary one may be judged from the errors that the author [Balyuzi] in his introduction briefly quotes from six books recently published in the West by authors of standing in their field. ... Mr. Balyuzi's book is therefore apologetics, polemics, but not objective scholarship. And let it at once be added that it is none the worse for that. We may still await the definitive account of Babism and Bahá'ísm from a neutral pen, and perhaps we shall never get it. But in the mean time Mr. Balyuzi has produced a readable persuasive account that illuminates many dark corners."

MARussellPESE 13:44, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

His entire point being that Miller is doing nothing different than what all people who write about the Baha'i movement do. Leaving the cut quote, gives the impression that other Baha'i works are npov. The reviewer's point, is that none of them are. That is quite relevant to the point of the review. Otherwise we should simply remove the review entirely. Or maybe I could find fifteen other people who reviewed it well and paste them all here to overwhelm your one negative review. Why are you trying to war about this? Obviously the whole quote is more neutral than a snipped version which says almost the opposite. Wjhonson 04:05, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Huh? This reviewer is from the Royal Asiatic Society, about as neutral as you could possibly get. You're over-reaching here.

Did you read the review? Elwell-Sutton's point is that this book was not only biased, something it does share with Balyuzi's treatment of Browne; but deceptive and even mean-spirited, something it did not share with Balyuzi. As already noted, 95% of the article is about Miller's research and apparent motivation. This "context" of yours occurs within the last paragraph. What is possibly "balanced" in presenting that?

By the way, Elwell-Sutton makes no such statement that all Baha'i works are POV, just the particular author's.

The reason to keep this focused on Miller, is that this is an article about Miller — not an opportunity for you to take yet another shot at Baha'i apologetics. He was an evangelical apologist and the article already states, unequivocally, that evangelicals love him. What more do you want? What does a tangential statement of Elwell-Sutton's on Balyuzi have to do with Miller's biography or even his apologetics work on Baha'i? If you want to write about Balyuzi's POV, start an article about him. I have even given you a critical review to use. MARussellPESE 13:08, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Or for that matter, what does a review even belong here to begin with? Are we going to start putting reviews on every biographical page now? This article is about Miller's life, not what one reviewer thought of one work. This is about *emphasis*. Miller did a lot more than write one book about Baha'is, so already the review takes up far more space than it should based on the policy of emphasis. I would suggest that we create a new page, just for this book and link it to Miller's article. That would be in-line with other ways of addressing this, and allow an expansion of the opportunity to address the book itself, and leave Miller's biography in a more readable form. Does this seem like a middle-ground approach? Wjhonson 19:49, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

That idea has merit. I'd added the review here for two reasons:

1. Miller is known principally, if not almost exclusively now, for his apologetics viz. Baha'i.

1. An attempt to keep the proliferation of articles down. Not sure that an article on a single book, with one available NPOV review, is notable.

Yes, he did write more than one book about Baha'i. Here's one. But, if you include the works, then less than half the article's current size is taken up with the review. And the passage I added was half this size, and less than the length of the discussion of his missionary and apologetics work.

I'm not trying to bury this guy. I added the text on his missionary and apologetics work. Prior to that there wasn't any mention of it at all. If the passage's gotten large, who made it that way?

I did an Excite search on "William McElwee Miller" and turned up 54 hits. If one looks only at references to his books, and ignores all the Baha'i sites as well, The Baha'i Faith hits more than any other, and about as often as My Persian Pilgrimage and Tales from Persia combined. Doesn't seem unbalanced when that is what he's principally known for.

I wouldn't mind seeing something on these other books added. They look like fine books. But a key difference is that these seem to be memoirs while The Baha'i Faith masquerades as an un-biased history. And that's why an unbiased review belongs in a discussion of that book.

Don't other biographies discuss the subject's works? Your article on Sohrab goes on at some length about the New History Society. I don't see the consistency.

Totally aside: does a "Works" section really follow "References"? MARussellPESE 21:30, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Context

This article is about William Miller, and his work. The review by Elwell-Sutton, 1976 is about a lot of things, but the only part that is relevent to this artile is his review of William Miller's work. Adding information about Balyuzi does not give any more information about Miller or his work. No additional context is given. -- Jeff3000 16:35, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

It shows that Elwell didn't believe any reference work existed that was unbiased. Saying "you're a whore" is quite different from saying "you're a whore but so is everyone else". Don't you agree? Wjhonson 17:18, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

I'd agree if if the article were about a group of people, not an individual.

If you'd read Elwell-Sutton's review of Baluzi's work, you'd see that he treats the two authors very, very differently. He's chiding with Baluzi, but scathing with Miller. And I agree with most of both reviews, by the way.

Once again, this article is about W.M. Miller, isn't it? It's not about whether or not there are POV or NPOV accounts of the Baha'i Faith, although you seem to insist that it should. There's a great deal of discussion above about how introducing Baluzi is out-of-context, undue weight, and just plain off-topic. But here, as elsewhere, no matter what, you seem to have to shoe-horn some criticism in no matter what the content, context, or veracity of the source. MARussellPESE 17:55, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Elwell's belief of things that are not about William Miller have no place in this article. -- Jeff3000 20:47, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Well would you two object if I post other review of the book then? Since we're being neutral and all right? I don't think the Journal is the sole reference that could be called neutral. Wjhonson 23:12, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Nobody's ever said that that would be objectionable. Their neutrality would be subject to consideration naturally. I'm certain you could find any number of evangelical reviews that wax poetic. That would actually support the assertion that evangelicals love this work. MARussellPESE 21:21, 22 June 2006 (UTC)