May
20, 2014
Ottawa
Bahá'ís participate in successful Reddit “Ask me Anything” discussion
Q&A
session about Bahá'í principles finds a receptive online
audience
 The Bahá’í community on Reddit,
a popular social media website, broke new ground recently when it
hosted an online question-and-answer session known as an AMA (“Ask Me
Anything”) on May 13th. Several Ottawa Bahá’ís participated in the
event, which attracted a substantial amount of interest and
wide-ranging discussion about the Bahá'í Faith.
AMAs are one-time events featuring an individual or group of
individuals who field questions from Reddit's userbase. Any user can
ask and vote for their favourite questions, which may range from the
profound to the mundane. The person, or people, giving the AMA then
answer those questions to the best of their ability. Many AMAs focus on
a certain topic, but others, most often ones involving famous people,
are completely open. Those who have given especially well-received AMAs
include U.S. President Barack Obama, naturalist Sir David Attenborough,
Microsoft founder Bill Gates, and astronaut Col. Chris Hadfield.
The Bahá'í AMA took place in a section
of Reddit devoted to religion, as part of a series to allow its users
to discover different faith traditions through discussions with
individual believers. A number of Bahá'ís from around the world
participated, fielding questions from members of many different faith
and non-faith traditions. A wide variety of topics were covered:
Bahá'u'lláh's vision in the Siyáh-Chál; the Bahá'í view of sexuality
and gender identity; progressive revelation; universal auxiliary
language; the unique station of the Báb; Bahá'í beliefs about the
after-life; Bahá'í Holy days; the persecution of Bahá'ís in Iran and
Egypt; and many more.
Those who attended called the event an excellent learning experience.
One Reddit user noted, "I certainly learned quite a bit about Bahá'í
beliefs that I wasn't aware of. My knowledge of the faith was rather
general prior to reading through the explanations. I learned about [the
Bahá'í Faith's] beginnings, the concept of a uniting religion for all
people... I certainly didn't know everything about the different faiths
as much as I thought I did."
Many of the Bahá'ís who attended found that the AMA was an excellent
way to engage in public discourse, and a wonderful way to spread
knowledge of the Faith. Indeed, not long after the AMA was complete, an
article appeared in the Huffington Post
summarizing its contents, entitled "Eight Things We Learned About
Bahá'ís From The Reddit AMA", generating even more interest. Overall,
this event provided a wealth of shared experience that should greatly
advance the Bahá'í community's ability to engage in public discourse on
the Internet.
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