It would be impossible adequately to report current Bahá’í activities throughout Persia without taking into consideration the larger factors represented by the general civil condition of the country. The interval of over eighty years since the declaration of the Báb has been for Persia an ever more rapid transition from medieval autocracy in church and state to representative government and to western ideals of education and progress. In effect, the rise of the Bahá’í Cause and its gradual penetration of Persia has paralleled the penetration of early Christianity throughout the Roman Empire, undergoing the dissolution of long established forms of civil authority and religious belief. It is a matter of the most intense interest to study in detail how the Bahá’ís of each country adapt the same teachings to conform to a different social and spiritual environment. The development of the Cause in Persia has necessarily been in the direction of a collective unity reproducing on the voluntary plane, all the elements of a civilization. What the country has lacked from the modern civil point of view, the Bahá’ís have been compelled to supply by their own endeavors. Thus, the Persian Bahá’ís have instituted a comprehensive educational program not at all required in countries of Europe and America where educational facilities have been made available to all. The dissolution of Persia has been economic as well as political, and the Persian Bahá’ís consequently have also drawn together to a certain extent for mutual co-operation in industry and trade.

While public recognition of the degree to which the Persian Bahá’ís are sustaining the responsibilities of civilization, is officially withheld, the fact remains that any progressive measures undertaken to re-habilitate Persia along the lines of modern liberalism and progress, would have to be based upon the Bahá’í community of that land for the same reasons compelling Constantine to base his public policies upon the Christian elements of his Empire.

It is the Persian Bahá’ís who have most ardently sought out and developed the advantages of modern education, including instruction in technical subjects; it is the Persian Bahá’ís who have psychologically overcome the traditional discrimination against women; and it is the Persian Bahá’ís finally, who, of all citizens, have cultivated the simple virtues of honesty, good-will and co-operation which are the vital elements in any democracy worthy the name.

Even by Bahá’ís, Persia is the least traveled of countries today. Practically the only eye witnesses of the numerical importance of the adherents in Persia have been Dr. Susan I. Moody, the much beloved and venerated American who for many years served at the Tarbíyat School for Girls in Ṭihrán, and by Mrs. Florence Evelyn Schopflocher of Montreal, Quebec, who has made journeys in the interior not duplicated by any other western woman.

In another part of this volume of The Bahá’í World is reprinted the letter written by the American National Assembly to the Sháh of Persia in July, 1926, to plead for justice in behalf of the persecuted Bahá’ís of that country, which throws some light upon the tragic conditions confronting the Persian believers almost continuously since the first public activities of the Bab in 1844.