‘Abdu’l-Baha comments on the “the utmost justice” that He received from Sultan Abdu’l-Hamid concerning the Commission of Inquiry

O thou who art firm in the Covenant! An article in the Broadway Magazine of September, 1906, written by G. A. Dobson and published in New York, was read. It is entitled, “The Strangest Religion in New York.” Unquestionably, you get that magazine and read it. The writer complains of the Ottoman government and its treatment towards the Bahai community. There is no doubt that this article will be read by His Excellency the Turkish Minister or the members of the Legation. The truth is that His Imperial Majesty the Sultan Abdu’l-Hamid Khan hath exercised the utmost justice toward Abdu’l-Baha. Although the internal and external enemies entered into an alliance, wrote reports full of pure calumnies and baseless impositions, became themselves the complainers and witnesses, a body of examiners came from Constantinople for the investigation of the true situation and that committee of commissioners became united with the outside and inside enemies, ratifying all the impositions and adding to those some more important matters, yet His Imperial Majesty Abdul Hamid Khan—may God assist him! —acted with deliberation until it became known and evident that all these calumnies were founded upon rancor and hostility. Therefore, he hath treated us, until the present time, with the utmost justice and because of this treatment we are exceedingly happy. If there were any other king beside His Imperial Majesty Sultan Abdul Hamid Khan, he would exercise his authority in another way in the face of these unjust imputations and the conspiracies of the external and internal foes. Nevertheless, the justice and equity of the Sultan prevented the attacks of the enemies and the reports of the people of oppositions and falsehood from producing any effect. Therefore, all the friends must pray from their hearts in behalf of their Imperial Majesties the Padeshah of the Ottomans and the Shah of Persia. As in these days His Imperial Majesty Sultan Abdul Hamid Khan is in a state of illness and indisposition, therefore the believers of God, in meetings and assemblages, in private and public, but invoke from the Threshold of Oneness swift recovery for him. The friends and strangers must know and realize that all the believers of God have the utmost love for His Majesty the Padeshah of the Ottoman empire and that they are entreating for him protection and confirmation. 

- ‘Abdu’l-Baha  ('Tablets of ‘Abdu’l-Baha, vol. 3')

Conditions under which a “Revelation, hailed as the promise and crowning glory of past ages and centuries” was born

A Revelation, hailed as the promise and crowning glory of past ages and centuries, as the consummation of all the Dispensations within the Adamic Cycle, inaugurating an era of at least a thousand years’ duration, and a cycle destined to last no less than five thousand centuries, signalizing the end of the Prophetic Era and the beginning of the Era of Fulfillment, unsurpassed alike in the duration of its Author’s ministry and the fecundity and splendor of His mission—such a Revelation was, as already noted, born amidst the darkness of a subterranean dungeon in Tihrán—an abominable pit that had once served as a reservoir of water for one of the public baths of the city. Wrapped in its stygian gloom, breathing its fetid air, numbed by its humid and icy atmosphere, His feet in stocks, His neck weighed down by a mighty chain, surrounded by criminals and miscreants of the worst order, oppressed by the consciousness of the terrible blot that had stained the fair name of His beloved Faith, painfully aware of the dire distress that had overtaken its champions, and of the grave dangers that faced the remnant of its followers—at so critical an hour and under such appalling circumstances the “Most Great Spirit,” as designated by Himself, and symbolized in the Zoroastrian, the Mosaic, the Christian, and Muhammadan Dispensations by the Sacred Fire, the Burning Bush, the Dove and the Angel Gabriel respectively, descended upon, and revealed itself, personated by a “Maiden,” to the agonized soul of Bahá’u’lláh. 

- Shoghi Effendi  ('God Passes By')

1938: Proof of “the celestial potency” of the North American Baha’i Community

A community, relatively negligible in its numerical strength; separated by vast distances from both the focal-center of its Faith and the land wherein the preponderating mass of its fellow-believers reside; bereft in the main of material resources and lacking in experience and in prominence; ignorant of the beliefs, concepts and habits of those peoples and races from which its spiritual Founders have sprung; wholly unfamiliar with the languages in which its sacred Books were originally revealed; constrained to place its sole reliance upon an inadequate rendering of only a fragmentary portion of the literature embodying its laws, its tenets, and its history; subjected from its infancy to tests of extreme severity, involving, at times, the defection of some of its most prominent members; having to contend, ever since its inception, and in an ever-increasing measure, with the forces of corruption, of moral laxity, and ingrained prejudice—such a community, in less than half a century, and unaided by any of its sister communities, whether in the East or in the West, has, by virtue of the celestial potency with which an all-loving Master has abundantly endowed it, lent an impetus to the onward march of the Cause it has espoused which the combined achievements of its coreligionists in the West have failed to rival. 

- Shoghi Effendi  (‘The Advent of Divine Justice’)

circa 1938 Baha’i community in Germany: “Its voice, alas, is now silenced, its institutions dissolved, its literature banned, its archives confiscated, and its meetings suspended.”

In the heart of the European continent a community which, as predicted by ‘Abdu’l Bahá, is destined, by virtue of its spiritual potentialities and geographical situation, to radiate the splendor of the light of the Faith on the countries that surround it, has been momentarily eclipsed through the restrictions which a regime that has sorely misapprehended its purpose and function has chosen to impose upon it. Its voice, alas, is now silenced, its institutions dissolved, its literature banned, its archives confiscated, and its meetings suspended. 

- Shoghi Effendi  (‘The Advent of Divine Justice’)

In a Tablet to Czar of Russia, Alexander II, Bahá’u’llah proclaims His station

In the Tablet addressed to the Czar of Russia, Alexander II, we read: “O Czar of Russia! Incline thine ear unto the voice of God, the King, the Holy, and turn thou unto Paradise, the Spot wherein abideth He Who, among the Concourse on high, beareth the most excellent titles, and Who, in the kingdom of creation, is called by the name of God, the Effulgent, the All-Glorious. Beware lest thy desire deter thee from turning towards the face of thy Lord, the Compassionate, the Most Merciful… 

Beware lest thy sovereignty withhold thee from Him Who is the Supreme Sovereign. He, verily, is come with His Kingdom, and all the atoms cry aloud: ‘Lo! The Lord is come in His great majesty!’ He Who is the Father is come, and the Son [Jesus], in the holy vale, crieth out: ‘Here am I, here am I, O Lord, My God!’, whilst Sinai circleth round the House, and the Burning Bush calleth aloud: ‘The All-Bounteous is come mounted upon the clouds! Blessed is he that draweth nigh unto Him, and woe betide them that are far away.’” 

- Baha’u’llah  (Quoted by Shoghi Effendi in ‘The Promised Day Is Come’)”

1951: First National Baha'i Convention of South America

(Baha'i News, August 1951)

1951: First National Baha'i Convention of Central America

(Baha'i News, August 1951)

Exterior and interior views of the Fort of Shaykh Tabarsí

Exterior and interior views of what was once the Fort of Shaykh Tabarsí in Mázindarán, Irán. It was here that the “lion-hearted Mullá Husayn" sacrificed his life for the World Order of Bahá’u’lláh. The tomb of Shaykh Tabarsí is shown in the interior view. The building in the center remains from those days of heroism in 1849. (Baha’i News, August 1949)

1953: The First Intercontinental Baha’i Teaching Conference in Kampala, Uganda, Africa

Picture is taken in front of the Kampala Hazíratu'l-Quds. 

(Baha’i News, April 1953)

April 2010: Baha’i world community accomplished the goal of 1,500 “intensive programs of growth”

With hearts filled with admiration for the followers of Bahá’u’lláh, we are pleased to announce that, as this most joyous Ridván season opens, there is in every continent of the globe a fresh complement of intensive programmes of growth under way, raising the total number worldwide over the 1,500 mark and securing the goal of the Five Year Plan, one year in advance of its conclusion. We bow our heads in gratitude to God for this astounding achievement, this signal victory. All who have laboured in the field will appreciate the bounty He has bestowed on His community in granting it a full year to strengthen the pattern of expansion and consolidation now everywhere established, in preparation for the tasks it will be called upon to undertake in its next global enterprise—a plan of five years’ duration, the fifth in a series with the explicit aim of advancing the process of entry by troops. 

- The Universal House of Justice  (Ridvan 2010 message; online Baha’i Reference Library of the Baha’i World Center)

April 1984: “NUMBER BAHA'IS KNOWN TO BE IN PRISONS IN IRAN TOTALS 704”

10 April 1984

To all National Spiritual Assemblies

PERSECUTION FRIENDS CRADLE FAITH PERSISTS, TAKING EVEN MORE INSIDIOUS TURN. IN MARCH AT LEAST THREE PRISONERS DIED UNDER MYSTERIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES, TWO IN TIHRAN AND ONE IN BAFT, KIRMAN, BODY OF MUHSIN RADAVI, 55 YEARS OLD, SHOWED EVIDENCE OF HANGING. OTHER TWO, GHULAM- HUSAYN HASANZADIH-SHAKIRI, 80, AND NUSRATU'LLAH DIYA'I, 61, WERE BURIED WITHOUT FRIENDS RELATIVES BEING INFORMED.

ARRESTS CONTINUE WITH LEAST AMOUNT PUBLICITY. SINCE LAST REPORT 17 JANUARY ALTHOUGH SOME BAHA'I PRISONERS RELEASED, 111 HAVE BEEN ARRESTED, MOST OF WHOM WERE MEMBERS OF SPIRITUAL ASSEMBLIES BEFORE THEIR DISSOLUTION LAST YEAR. NUMBER BAHA'IS KNOWN TO BE IN PRISONS IN IRAN TOTALS 704.

ACCURATE INFORMATION IN HAND DESCRIBES TORTURES PERPETRATED AGAINST SOME VERY PROMINENT BAHA'IS. FOR EXAMPLE ONE BAHA'I SEVERELY TORTURED UNDER EXTREME CIRCUMSTANCES FORCED CONFESS TO FALSE CHARGES. OTHERS SIMILARLY TORTURED RESISTED PRESSURES EXERTED ON THEM TO MAKE FALSE PUBLIC CONFESSIONS FOR BENEFIT RADIO TELEVISION. ...

UNIVERSAL HOUSE OF JUSTICE

(‘Messages from the Universal House of Justice, 1963-1986’)

3 September 1983: An Open Letter from the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of Iran about the Banning of the Baha'i Administration

(12 Shahrivar 1362)

[3 September 1983]

Recently the esteemed Public Prosecutor of the Islamic Revolution of the country, in an interview that was published in the newspapers, declared that the continued functioning of the Baha'i religious and spiritual administration is banned and that membership in it is considered to be a crime. This declaration has been made after certain unjustified accusations have been levelled against the Baha'i community of Iran and after a number of its members ostensibly -- for imaginary and fabricated crimes but in reality merely for the sake of their beliefs -- have been either executed, or arrested and imprisoned. The majority of those who have been imprisoned have not yet been brought to trial.

The Baha'i community finds the conduct of the authorities and the judges bewildering and lamentable -- as indeed would any fair-minded observer who is unblinded by malice. The authorities are the refuge of the people; the judges in pursuit of their work of examining and ascertaining the truth and facts in legal cases devote years of their lives to studying the law and, when uncertain of a legal point spend hours poring over copious tomes in order to cross a "t" and dot an "i."  Yet these very people consider themselves to be justified in brazenly bringing false accusations against a band of innocent people, without fear of the Day of judgement, without even believing the calumnies they utter against their victims, and having exerted not the slightest effort to investigate to any degree the validity of the charges they are making.  "Methinks they are not believers in the Day of judgement." (Hafiz)

“From its birth, government, clergy and people had risen as one man against” the Cause of the Báb

From its birth, government, clergy and people had risen as one man against it and vowed eternal enmity to its cause.

• Muhammad Sháh, weak alike in mind and will, had, under pressure, rejected the overtures made to him by the Báb Himself, had declined to meet Him face to face, and even refused Him admittance to the capital.
• The youthful Násiri’d-Dín Sháh, of a cruel and imperious nature, had, both as crown prince and as reigning sovereign, increasingly evinced the bitter hostility which, at a later stage in his reign, was to blaze forth in all its dark and ruthless savagery.
• The powerful and sagacious Mu‘tamid, the one solitary figure who could have extended Him the support and protection He so sorely needed, was taken from Him by a sudden death.
• The Sherif of Mecca, who through the mediation of Quddús had been made acquainted with the new Revelation on the occasion of the Báb’s pilgrimage to Mecca, had turned a deaf ear to the Divine Message, and received His messenger with curt indifference.
• The prearranged gathering that was to have taken place in the holy city of Karbilá, in the course of the Báb’s return journey from Hijáz, had, to the disappointment of His followers who had been eagerly awaiting His arrival, to be definitely abandoned.
• The eighteen Letters of the Living, the principal bastions that buttressed the infant strength of the Faith, had for the most part fallen.
• The “Mirrors,” the “Guides,” the “Witnesses” comprising the Bábí hierarchy had either been put to the sword, or hounded from their native soil, or bludgeoned into silence.
• The program, whose essentials had been communicated to the foremost among them, had, owing to their excessive zeal, remained for the most part unfulfilled.
• The attempts which two of those disciples had made to establish the Faith in Turkey and India had signally failed at the very outset of their mission.
• The tempests that had swept Mázindarán, Nayríz and Zanján had, in addition to blasting to their roots the promising careers of the venerated Quddús, the lion-hearted Mullá Husayn, the erudite Vahíd, and the indomitable Hujjat, cut short the lives of an alarmingly large number of the most resourceful and most valiant of their fellow-disciples.
• The hideous outrages associated with the death of the Seven Martyrs of Tihrán had been responsible for the extinction of yet another living symbol of the Faith, who, by reason of his close kinship to, and intimate association with, the Báb, no less than by virtue of his inherent qualities, would if spared have decisively contributed to the protection and furtherance of a struggling Cause. 

- Shoghi Effendi  ('God Passes By')

29 AUGUST, 1983: “IN UNPRECEDENTED MOVE REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENT THROUGH STATEMENT ISSUED ATTORNEY-GENERAL ANNOUNCED BAN BAHA'I ADMINISTRATION: - “SERVING IN BAHA'I ADMINISTRATION NOW SPECIFIED AS CRIMINAL ACT.” “NATIONAL SPIRITUAL ASSEMBLY IRAN IMMEDIATELY TOOK ACTION DISSOLVE BAHA'I ADMINISTRATION THROUGHOUT COUNTRY”

13 September 1983

To all National Spiritual Assemblies

SORELY TRIED COMMUNITY GREATEST NAME IRAN HAS IN RECENT DAYS SUSTAINED YET ANOTHER CRUEL BLOW OPENING NEW CHAPTER ITS TURBULENT HISTORY. ON 29 AUGUST IN UNPRECEDENTED MOVE REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENT THROUGH STATEMENT ISSUED ATTORNEY-GENERAL ANNOUNCED BAN BAHA'I ADMINISTRATION, RECITING USUAL FALSE ACCUSATIONS STATING EXISTENCE ADMINISTRATION OFFICIALLY CONSIDERED TO BE AGAINST LAWS CONSTITUTION COUNTRY. HOWEVER STATEMENT SAID BAHA'IS MAY PRACTICE BELIEFS AS PRIVATE INDIVIDUALS PROVIDED THEY DO NOT TEACH OR INVITE OTHERS TO JOIN FAITH, THEY DO NOT FORM ASSEMBLIES OR HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH ADMINISTRATION. SERVING IN BAHA'I ADMINISTRATION NOW SPECIFIED AS CRIMINAL ACT. THIS LATEST ONSLAUGHT DEFENCELESS COMMUNITY CLEARLY DEMONSTRATES IMPLACABILITY FANATICAL ELEMENTS IN THEIR DRIVE SUPPRESS LIGHT GOD'S INFANT FAITH IN LAND ITS FIRST GLEAMING.

CONFORMITY PRINCIPLE LOYALTY OBEDIENCE GOVERNMENT NATIONAL SPIRITUAL ASSEMBLY IRAN IMMEDIATELY TOOK ACTION DISSOLVE BAHA'I ADMINISTRATION THROUGHOUT COUNTRY THUS UPHOLDING INTEGRITY COMMUNITY DESPITE HEAVY YOKE CRUELTIES BORNE BY ITS MEMBERS FOR SEVERAL GENERATIONS.  CONFIDENT THAT STEADFAST TRIED AND DEVOTED FRIENDS THAT LONG-AGITATED LAND WILL FACE NEW SITUATION WITH RADIANT FORTITUDE.  AT SAME TIME BAHA'IS ELSEWHERE ENJOYING FREEDOM PRACTICE FAITH ACUTELY CHALLENGED TO VINDICATE BY THEIR RECONSECRATION TO IMMEDIATE SACRED TASKS UNABATED SUFFERING THEIR GRIEVOUSLY WRONGED IRANIAN BRETHREN. INDEED ALL NATIONAL ASSEMBLIES URGED TAKE STEPS STRENGTHEN FOUNDATION BAHA'I INSTITUTIONS THEIR COUNTRIES AS TRIBUTE SACRIFICES COURAGEOUSLY ACCEPTED MEMBERS COMMUNITY BAHA'U'LLAH'S NATIVE LAND.

UNIVERSAL HOUSE OF JUSTICE

(‘Messages from the Universal House of Justice, 1963-1986’)

“The judgment of God…on those who took a leading or an active part in the crimes committed against the Báb and His followers”

What, in conclusion, we may well ask ourselves, has been the fate of that flagitious crew who, actuated by malice, by greed or fanaticism, sought to quench the light which the Báb and His followers had diffused over their country and its people? The rod of Divine chastisement, swiftly and with unyielding severity, spared neither the Chief Magistrate of the realm, nor his ministers and counselors, nor the ecclesiastical dignitaries of the religion with which his government was indissolubly connected, nor the governors who acted as his representatives, nor the chiefs of his armed forces who, in varying degrees, deliberately or through fear or neglect, contributed to the appalling trials to which an infant Faith was so undeservedly subjected.

• Muhammad Sháh himself, a sovereign at once bigoted and irresolute who, refusing to heed the appeal of the Báb to receive Him in the capital and enable Him to demonstrate the truth of His Cause, yielded to the importunities of a malevolent minister, succumbed, at the early age of forty, after sustaining a sudden reverse of fortune, to a complication of maladies, and was condemned to that “hell-fire” which, “on the Day of Resurrection,” the Author of the Qayyúmu’l-Asmá’ had sworn would inevitably devour him.
• His evil genius, the omnipotent Hájí Mírzá Áqásí, the power behind the throne and the chief instigator of the outrages perpetrated against the Báb, including His imprisonment in the mountains of Ádhirbáyján, was, after the lapse of scarcely a year and six months from the time he interposed himself between the Sháh and his Captive, hurled from power, deprived of his ill-gotten riches, was disgraced by his sovereign, was driven to seek shelter from the rising wrath of his countrymen in the shrine of Sháh ‘Abdu’l-‘Azím, and was later ignominiously expelled to Karbilá, falling a prey to disease, poverty and gnawing sorrow—a piteous vindication of that denunciatory Tablet in which his Prisoner had foreshadowed his doom and denounced his infamy.

Examples of “the glaring ferocity of the atrocities perpetrated” against the Bábís during 1852

“My pen,” writes the chronicler of the bloody episodes associated with the birth and rise of our Faith, “shrinks in horror in attempting to describe what befell those valiant men and women.… What I have attempted to recount of the horrors of the siege of Zanján … pales before the glaring ferocity of the atrocities perpetrated a few years later in Nayríz and Shíráz.” 

• The heads of no less than two hundred victims of these outbursts of ferocious fanaticism were impaled on bayonets, and carried triumphantly from Shíráz to Ábádih. 
• Forty women and children were charred to a cinder by being placed in a cave, in which a vast quantity of firewood had been heaped up, soaked with naphtha and set alight. 
• Three hundred women were forced to ride two by two on bare-backed horses all the way to Shíráz. Stripped almost naked they were led between rows of heads hewn from the lifeless bodies of their husbands, sons, fathers and brothers. Untold insults were heaped upon them, and the hardships they suffered were such that many among them perished. 

- Shoghi Effendi  (‘God Passes By’)

“most of the preeminent embodiments of power and of sovereignty in His day became, one by one, the object of Bahá’u’lláh’s special attention, and were made to sustain, in varying degrees, the weight of the force communicated by His appeals and warnings”

• The Emperor of the French, the most powerful ruler of his day on the European continent, Napoleon III;
• Pope Pius IX, the supreme head of the highest church in Christendom, and wielder of the scepter of both temporal and spiritual authority;
• the omnipotent Czar of the vast Russian Empire, Alexander II;
• the renowned Queen Victoria, whose sovereignty extended over the greatest political combination the world has witnessed;
• William I, the conqueror of Napoleon III, King of Prussia and the newly acclaimed monarch of a unified Germany;
• Francis Joseph, the autocratic king-emperor of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, the heir of the far-famed Holy Roman Empire;
• the tyrannical ‘Abdu’l-‘Azíz, the embodiment of the concentrated power vested in the Sultanate and the Caliphate;
• the notorious Násiri’d-Dín Sháh, the despotic ruler of Persia and the mightiest potentate of Shí’ih Islám—

in a word, most of the preeminent embodiments of power and of sovereignty in His day became, one by one, the object of Bahá’u’lláh’s special attention, and were made to sustain, in varying degrees, the weight of the force communicated by His appeals and warnings. 

- Shoghi Effendi  (‘The Promised Day Is Come’)

Canada March 30, 2009: “members of Parliament, representing every one of the country’s political parties, rose in the House of Commons and spoke of the “plight” of the Iranian Bahá’ís “with eloquence and passion”

Recent action taken by the Canadian House of Commons provides a noteworthy example of the recognition accorded to all fair-minded people of your country, on the one hand, and the outspoken condemnation of the persecution you are forced to bear, on the other. For an hour and a half on the evening of 30 March 2009, members of Parliament, representing every one of the country’s political parties, rose in the House of Commons and spoke of your plight with eloquence and passion. While acknowledging the distinguished role your nation has played in the advance of civilization and expressing esteem for the people of Iran and admiration for the Bahá’ís, regarded as compassionate and conciliatory, they lamented the harm caused to your country by those who persecute you and your fellow citizens. By unanimous consent they adopted a motion which “condemns the ongoing persecution of the Bahá’í minority of Iran and calls upon the government of Iran to reconsider its charges against the members of the Friends in Iran, and release them immediately or failing this, that it proceed to trial without further delay, ensuring that the proceedings are open and fair and are conducted in the presence of international observers.” 

- The Universal House of Justice  (From a message dated 14 May 2009 to the Believers in the Cradle of the Faith; online Baha’i Reference Library of the Baha’i World Center)

2023: Translations of the Baha’i Writings

The Sacred Writings of the Faith have been translated into more than eight hundred languages.

- The Universal House of Justice  (From a message dated 28 November 2023 to the Bahá’ís of the World; online Baha’i Reference Library of the Baha’i World Center)