|
<<previous |
next>> |
|
|
Bahá'í Administration
|
Pages 132-134
|
|
Letter of April 27, 1927.
| |
1 |
To the beloved of the Lord and the handmaids of the Merciful
throughout the United States and Canada.
| |
2 |
Dearly-beloved friends:
| |
3 |
With feelings of horror and indignation I communicate to you
the tale of yet another tragedy involving the shedding of the blood
of a martyr of the Faith on Persia's sacred soil. I have before me,
as I pen these lines, the report of the local Spiritual Assembly of
Ardibil, a town on the north-east confines of the province of Ádhirbayján,
not far distant from those hallowed spots where the Báb
suffered His last confinement and martyrdom. Addressed to the
National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá'ís of Persia, this report
recounts in simple but moving language the circumstances that have
led to the cowardly crime committed in the darkness of the night
at the instigation of the fanatical clergy--the deadliest opponents
of the Faith in that town.
| |
4 |
Our martyred brother, Aminu'l-'Ulama' by name, had for some
time past become notorious in the eyes of the Muslim inhabitants of
Ardibil for his tenacity of faith by openly refusing at every instance
to vilify and renounce his most cherished convictions. In the latter
part of Ramadán--the month associated with prayer, pious deeds
and fasting--his use of the public bath (that long-established institution
the amenities and privileges of which are as a rule accorded
only to the adherents of the Muslim Faith) had served to inflame
the mob, and to provide a scheming instigator with a pretext to
terminate his life. In the market place he was ridiculed and condemned
as an apostate of the Faith of Islám, who, by boldly rejecting
the repeated entreaties showered upon him to execrate the Bahá'í
name, had lawfully incurred the penalty of immediate death at the
hands of every pious upholder of the Muslim tradition.
| |
5 |
In spite of the close surveillance exercised by a body of guards
stationed around his house, in response to the intercession of his
friends with the local authorities, the treacherous criminal found
his way into his home, and on the night of the 22nd of Ramadán,
corresponding with the 26th of March, 1927, assailed him in a most
atrocious and dastardly manner. Concealing within the folds of
his garment his unsheathed dagger, he approached his victim and
claiming the need of whispering a confidential message in his ears,
plunged the weapon hilt-deep into his vitals, cutting across his ribs
and mutilating his body. Every attempt to secure immediate medical
assistance seems to have been foiled by malicious devices on the
part of the associates of this merciless criminal, and the helpless
victim after a few hours of agonizing pain surrendered his soul to
his Beloved. His friends and fellow-believers, alarmed at the prospect
of a fresh outbreak that would inevitably result were his mortal
remains to be accorded the ordinary privileges of a decent burial,
decided to inter his body in one of the two rooms that served as his
own dwelling, seeking thereby to appease the fury of an unrelenting
foe.
| |
6 |
He leaves behind in desperate poverty a family of minors with
no support but their mother, expectant to bring forth her child, and
with no hope of relief from their non-Baha'i relatives in whose eyes
they deserve to be treated only with the meanest contempt.
| |
7 |
It appears from the above-mentioned report that the merciless
assailant has been arrested, waiting, however, as has been the case
with similar incidents in southern Persia, to be sooner or later
released under the pressure of bribery and intimidation sedulously
exercised by an impenitent enemy.
| |
8 |
Dearest friends! Any measure of publicity the concerted efforts
of the Bahá'í Spiritual Assemblies of the West, on whom almighty
Providence has conferred the inestimable benefits of religious toleration
and freedom, can accord to this latest manifestation of unbridled
barbarism in Persia will be most opportune and valuable. It
will, I am certain, confer abiding solace to those disconsolate sufferers
who with sublime heroism continue to uphold the traditions
of their beloved Faith. Our one weapon lies in our prayerful efforts,
intelligently and persistently pursued, to arouse by every means at
our disposal the conscience of unheeding humanity, and to direct
the attention of men of vision and authority to these incredibly
odious acts which in their ferocity and frequency cannot but constitute
in the eyes of every fair-minded observer the gravest challenge
to all that is sacred and precious in our present-day civilization.
| |
9 |
Your true brother,
| |
10 |
SHOGHI.
Haifa, Palestine,
April 27, 1927.
| |
|
|
|