Mysterious dispensations of ever-watchful Providence, hastening, through
turmoil and trial, the triumph of His undefeatable Faith, dictating at
this critical hour the sudden deterioration of the situation confronting
the largest community of the Baha'i world, as evidenced by the violent
recrudescence of the persecution afflicting intermittently, for over a
century, its members residing in Baha'u'llah's native land.
Following the seizure and the destruction of the dome of the community's
national administrative headquarters, the occupation of similar
institutions in all provinces, the government declaration to the Majlis
outlawing the Faith and a virulent press and radio campaign, distorting
its history, calumniating its Founders, misrepresenting its tenets and
obscuring its aims and purposes, a series of atrocities has been
perpetrated in rapid succession throughout the length and breadth of the
land against members of a sorely-tried community.
The House of the Bab, the foremost Shrine in Iran, has been twice
desecrated and severely damaged; Baha'u'llah's ancestral Home at Takur
occupied; the house of the Bab's uncle razed to the ground; shops, farms
plundered; crops burned, livestock destroyed; bodies disinterred in the
cemeteries and mutilated; private houses broken into, damaged and looted;
adults execrated and beaten; young women abducted and forced to marry
Muslims; children mocked, reviled, beaten and expelled from the schools;
boycott by butchers and bakers imposed; fifteen-year-old girl raped;
eleven-month-old baby trampled underfoot; and pressure brought to bear
upon believers to recant their Faith.
More recently a family of seven, the oldest eighty, the youngest nineteen,
residing in Hurmuzak of the Province of Yazd, were set upon by a mob two
thousand strong, accompanied by music of drums and trumpets, which hacked
them to pieces with spades and axes. Meanwhile an official circular has
been issued by the Prime Minister, addressed to Government Departments
ordering the expulsion of all Baha'i employes refusing to recant.
This highly distressing situation threatens to worsen during Muharram and
Safar.
Reacting to these barbarous acts, over a thousand groups and local
Assemblies of the Baha'i world appealed telegraphically to the
authorities, and all National Assemblies addressed written communications
to the _Sh_ah, the government and parliament, pleading for justice and
protection.
Finding written pleas unanswered, an appeal has been lodged with United
Nations by representatives of the International Baha'i Community at
Geneva. Copies of the appeal were delivered to representatives of member
nations of the Social and Economic Council, the Director of the Human
Rights Division and certain specialized agencies of nongovernmental
organizations with consultative status. Furthermore, President Eisenhower
who, according to the newspapers, first mentioned the persecutions at a
Press Conference in Washington, has been appealed to by the National
representatives of the American Baha'i Community and all Assemblies and
groups in the United States to intervene on behalf of their oppressed
sister community.
Whatever the outcome of the present heart-rending events, one fact emerges
clear and indisputable. God's infant Faith, provided, through the
operation of a quarter-century-long process associated with the first
epoch of the formative age of the Faith, with the machinery of a divinely
appointed Administrative Order, and utilizing in the course of the
succeeding epoch, through the formulation of a series of national plans,
culminating in the launching of the World Crusade, the newly-born
administrative agencies for the systematic propagation of the Faith, is
now gradually emerging from obscurity in the wake of the ordeal convulsing
the overwhelming majority of the followers of the Faith.
The world-wide reverberations of this nation-wide commotion will be hailed
by posterity as the mighty blast of God's trumpet designed to awaken,
through the instrumentality of its oldest, most redoubtable, most vicious,
most fanatical adversaries, countless multitudes, and the Chancelleries
and Chief Magistrates of the East and of the West, to the existence and
implications of the Faith proclaimed by His Messenger in this Day. This
long-desired, ardently-hoped-for emergence, itself a long-drawn-out
process, is bound to pave the way for the emancipation of this same Faith
from the fetters of orthodoxy in Islamic countries, as well as the
ultimate recognition of the independent character of the Revelation of
Baha'u'llah in His homeland.
Owing to the grievous losses sustained, and the necessity to demonstrate
world-wide Baha'i solidarity, an "Aid the Persecuted" Fund has been
inaugurated for the purpose of bringing immediate relief to the despoiled
and homeless victims. Myself contributing the equivalent of eighteen
thousand dollars for this noble purpose. However conscious I am of the
manifold demands on the adherents of the Faith, I am impelled to invite
them to participate through contributions to be transmitted through their
respective National Assemblies.
Moreover, undeterred by the obstacles placed in the path of the crusaders
of Baha'u'llah, the historic decision has been arrived at to raise the
Mother Temple of Africa in the City of Kampala, situated in its heart and
constituting a supreme consolation to the masses of oppressed valiant
brethren in the Cradle of the Faith. Every continent of the globe except
Australasia will thereby pride itself on and derive direct spiritual
benefits from its own Ma_sh_riqu'l-A_dh_kar. Befitting recognition will,
moreover, have been accorded the marvelous expansion of the Faith and the
amazing multiplications of its administrative institutions throughout this
continent, a continent fully deserving of a House of Worship,
complementing the four national Haziratu'l-Quds already established,
wherein the spirit of an unconquerable Faith can dwell, within whose walls
the African adherents of the Faith of Baha'u'llah can congregate, and from
which anthems of praise glorifying the Most Great Name can ascend to the
Concourse of the Abha Kingdom.
Transmit message to Hands of the Cause and National Assemblies.
--Shoghi
[Cablegram, August 23, 1955]