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 Bahá’í 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 Bahá’í world appealed telegraphically to the
authorities, and all National Assemblies addressed written communications
to the _Sh_áh, 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 Bahá’í 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 Bahá’í 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
Bahá’u’lláh in His homeland.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account