A Warning Unto All Nations

Islám, at once the progenitor and persecutor of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh, is, if we read aright the signs of the times, only beginning to sustain the impact of this invincible and triumphant Faith. We need only recall the nineteen hundred years of abject misery and dispersion which they, who only for the short space of three years persecuted the Son of God, have had to endure, and are still enduring. We may well ask ourselves, with mingled feelings of dread and awe, how severe must be the tribulations of those who, during no less than fifty years, have, “at every moment tormented with a fresh torment” Him Who is the Father, and who have, in addition, made His Herald—Himself a Manifestation of God—to quaff, in such tragic circumstances, the cup of martyrdom.

 I have, in the pages immediately preceding, quoted certain passages addressed collectively to the members of the ecclesiastical order, both Islamic and Christian, and have then recorded a number of specific addresses and references to Muslim divines, both Shí’ih and Sunní, after which I proceeded to describe the calamities that afflicted these Muḥammadan hierarchies, their heads, their members, their properties, their ceremonials, and institutions.

Shoghi Effendi, The Promised Day Is Come