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So this is the way the non-Muslim religious scholar conceives the birth of a religion which has lasted for centuries and has changed the world. But how strange that the amalgam of such disparate elements became so characteristic, peerless and full of vitality as to be capable of transforming its followers into such a specific and homogeneous type of people. In this context, let it be noted that the Baha'i Faith, too, when it is not bluntly dismissed as a reformed sect of Islam, is looked upon by religious historians as a syncretic formation. Rosenkranz has earnestly endeavoured to trace its alleged Greek-Neoplatonic-Islamic-Sufi origins. The theologian Willem Visser't Hooft regards the Baha'i Faith as the outcome of an artificial synthesis which in the end leaves nothing but an insignificant common denominator of all religions: "Baha'i is therefore a new, religious mixture which replaces the old religions."
(145:1)
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