Bahá’í Administration
Letters from Shoghi Effendi, Guardian of the Bahá’í Cause
come, but it behooves us, while expectantly watching from a distance the moving spectacle of the struggling Faith of Bahá’u’lláh, to seek abiding solace and strength from the reflection that whatever befalls this Cause, however grievous and humiliating the visitations that from time to time may seem to afflict the organic life or interfere with the functions of the administrative machinery of the Bahá’í Faith, such calamities cannot but each eventually prove to be a blessing in disguise designed, by a Wisdom inscrutable to us all, to establish and consolidate the sovereignty of Bahá’u’lláh on this earth.
Bahá’u’lláh’s House at Baghdád
What we have already witnessed in connection with the latest developments regarding the case of Bahá’u’lláh’s House in Baghdád affords abundant evidence of the truth of the observation that has just been made. In its initial stages appearing to the superficial observer as a petty dispute submitted to an obscure and antiquated Shiite court, the case has gradually evolved into a paramount issue engaging the attention of the highest tribunal of ‘Iráq. In its latest stages, it has gathered such strength, secured such publicity, and received such support from the chancelleries of Europe, as to become a subject fit for the consideration not only of the specific international Commission ultimately responsible for the administration of Mandated Territories but of the leading Signatories of the Covenant of the League of Nations that are represented in the Council of the League itself.
Few if any among those closely associated with the case did at first imagine or expect that dwellings which to outward seeming appeared only as a cluster of humble and decrepit buildings lost amid the obscure and tortuous lanes of old Baghdád could ever obtain such prominence as to become the object of the deliberations of the highest international Tribunal that the hand of man has thus far reared for the amicable settlement of his affairs. Whatever the decision of the world’s highest Tribunal regarding the petition submitted to it by the Bahá’ís of ‘Iráq—and none can deny that should its verdict be in our favor, a triumph unparalleled in its magnitude will have been achieved for our beloved Faith—the work already accomplished is in itself an abundant proof of the sustaining con-
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