g other things, to hold fast
to truthfulness, not to dissimulate their faith, observe the ordinances
prescribed for marriage and divorce, and suspend all manner of work on the
Holy Days ordained by Him, brought them, sooner or later, into conflict
with a regime which, owing to its formal recognition of Islam as the state
religion of Persia, refused to extend any recognition to those whom the
official exponents of that religion had already condemned as heretics.

The closing of all schools belonging to the Baha'i community in that
country, as a direct consequence of the refusal of the representatives of
that community to permit official Baha'i institutions, owned and entirely
controlled by them, to transgress the clearly revealed law requiring the
suspension of work on Baha'i Holy Days; the rejection of all Baha'i
marriage certificates and the refusal to register them at government
License Bureaus; the ban placed on the printing and circulation of all
Baha'i literature, as well as on its entry into the country; the seizure
in various centers of Baha'i documents, books and relics; the closing, in
some of the provinces of the Haziratu'l-Quds, and the confiscation in some
localities of their furniture; the prohibition of all Baha'i
demonstrations, conferences and conventions; the strict censorship imposed
on, and often the non-delivery of, communications between Baha'i centers
in Persia and between these centers and Baha'i communities in foreign
lands; the withholding of good-record certificates from loyal and
law-abiding citizens on the ground of their avowed adherence to the Baha'i
Faith; the dismissal of Government employees, the demotion or discharge of
army officers, the arrest, the interrogation, the imprisonment of, and the
imposition of fines and other punishments upon, a number of believers who
refused either to cast aside the moral obligation of adhering to the
spiritual principles of their Faith, or to act in any manner that would
conflict with its universal and non-political character--all these may be
regarded as the initial attempts made in the country whose soil had
already been imbued with the blood of countless Baha'i martyrs, to resist
the rise, and frustrate the struggle for the emancipation, of a nascent
Administrative Order, whose very roots have sucked their strength from
such heroic sacrifice.

Chapter XXIV: Emancipation and Recognition of the Faith and Its
Institutions

While the initial st