ers of
the community by denying them the right to vote and of membership in these
Assemblies and their committees--all these are to be associated with the
first stirrings of a community that had erected the fabric of its
Administrative Order, and was now, under the propelling influence of the
historic judicial sentence passed in Egypt, intent upon obtaining, not by
force but through persuasion, the recognition by the civil authorities of
the status to which its ecclesiastical adversaries had so emphatically
borne witness.

That its initial attempt should have met with partial success, that it
should have aroused at times the suspicion of the ruling authorities, that
it should have been grossly misrepresented by its vigilant enemies, is not
a matter for surprise. It was successful in certain respects in its
negotiations with the civil authorities, as in obtaining the government
decree removing all references to religious affiliation in passports
issued to Persian subjects, and in the tacit permission granted in certain
localities that its members should not fill in the religious columns in
certain state documents, but should register with their own Assemblies
their marriage, their divorce, their birth and their death certificates,
and should conduct their funerals according to their religious rites. In
other respects, however, it has been subjected to grave disabilities: its
schools, founded, owned and controlled exclusively by itself, were
forcibly closed because they refused to remain open on Baha'i holy days;
its members, both men and women, were prosecuted; those who held army or
civil service appointments were in some cases dismissed; a ban was placed
on the import, on the printing and circulation of its literature; and all
Baha'i public gatherings were proscribed.

To all administrative regulations which the civil authorities have issued
from time to time, or will issue in the future in that land, as in all
other countries, the Baha'i community, faithful to its sacred obligations
towards its government, and conscious of its civic duties, has yielded,
and will continue to yield implicit obedience. Its immediate closing of
its schools in Persia is a proof of this. To such orders, however, as are
tantamount to a recantation of their faith by its members, or constitute
an act of disloyalty to its spiritual, its basic and God-given principles
and precepts, it will stubbornly refuse to bow, preferring imprisonment,
depo