or burned to the ground. Among the atrocious acts committed in the same town we must record also the slaughter of Bahá’í women in the most shameful manner, and the cutting into pieces of the body of a Bahá’í child by the pitiless criminal’s knife.
The survivors of such fanatical outbreaks are perhaps more deeply to be pitied even than those who suffered martyrdom by fire and sword. Against them are closed all doors of mercy, of justice, even of the most elemental human association in any form. The civil authorities deny them the rights and privileges of the law of the land and all protection of local and provincial courts; the chiefs of Islám pronounce association with them a violation of the principles of the religion of Muḥammad; they are prevented from having access to shops which supply the daily necessities of existence; their homes, their property and their persons are abandoned to the will of the insane mob or of the worst criminal element in the community. Such are the conditions existing today in the town of Marághih, in the province of Ádharbayján, of your realm.
To recount the sufferings of the Persian Bahá’ís in detail, hundreds of pages would be required. Suffice it for the moment, to state that twenty of these unfortunate people have been slain within the past few weeks, while three were murdered during the previous year, with fanatical outbreaks more particularly in the towns of Qamsar and Fárán and the provinces of Fárs, Yazd and Khurásán. The anti-Bahá’í incidents preceding the assassination of Vice-Consul Major Robert W. Imbrie in the streets of Ṭihrán are becoming well known to the American people, through the extensive newspaper publicity following that unhappy but significant case.
If the slightest doubt should arise as to the number or grave character of these anti-Bahá’í outrages in Persia, we are prepared to file the complete record with any suitable authority your Majesty may care to name. The essence of the matter is this: at this very hour, under your Majesty’s rule, just as has been the case for more than eighty years under preceding sovereigns, the life of a Bahá’í in Persia is bereft of all those sanctions and guarantees which are written into the law of every civilized nation, and adhered to as a moral code even by peoples who have not developed to the state of formal law. The Persian Bahá’ís at any moment are subject to such shameful violence as hunters would not inflict upon beasts of prey.
The astonishing record of the martyrdoms undergone by the Báb and His followers, and by those who later acknowledged the spiritual leadership of Bahá’u’lláh, is extant in the libraries of America and Europe in the works of well-known scholars such as the late Professor Browne of Cambridge University, the late Baron Rosen of Petrograd, and Comte de Gobineau of France. The leading humanitarians and independent thinkers of the West are cognizant of the fact that in Persia during the past eighty years there has occurred the most heroic expression of the religious spirit which has glorified humanity for hundreds, perhaps for thousands of years. Animated by invincible faith, more than twenty thousand men, women and children have during that period of time voluntarily yielded up their lives to promote the Cause of Bahá’u’lláh.
Religious Freedom Guaranteed
If from local and provincial authorities, and from the religious leaders as well, the general justification has been attempted that the Bahá’ís individually and collectively are dangerous to the public welfare and their extermination a service to the people and state, we must be permitted to ask by what authority has their case been tried? Under what conditions has it been established beyond the right of appeal, that a Bahá’í as such is synonymous with a vital menace to Persia—nay, apparently, a menace to mankind? For every species of criminal, no matter how vile, the law assigns methods of trial and degrees of punishment. When