the title
_The Dawn-Breakers_.

Baha'i pilgrims found spiritual enrichment of yet another kind in the Holy
Places and historic sites that the Guardian acquired--often at the cost of
protracted and wrenching negotiations--and lovingly restored. Shoghi
Effendi was equally responsive to unexpected opportunities that offered
themselves to his historical perspective. In 1925, a Sunni Muslim
religious court in Egypt denied civil recognition to marriages contracted
between Muslim women and Baha'i men, insisting that "The Baha'i Faith is a
new religion, entirely independent" and that "no Baha'i, therefore, can be
regarded a Muslim" (and therefore qualified to enter into marriage with
someone who was).(75) Seizing on the larger implications of this apparent
defeat, the Guardian made wide use of the court's definitive judgement to
reinforce the claim of the Cause in international circles to be an
independent Faith, separate and distinct from its Islamic roots.

* * * * *

As the Baha'i community was constructing administrative foundations which
would permit it to play an effective role in human affairs, the
accelerating process of disintegration that Shoghi Effendi had discerned
was undermining the fabric of social order. Its origins, however
determinedly ignored by many social and political theorists, are
beginning, after the lapse of several decades, to gain recognition at
international conferences devoted to peace and development. In our own
time, it is no longer unusual to encounter in such circles candid
references to the essential role that "spiritual" and "moral" forces must
play in achieving solutions to urgent problems. For a Baha'i reader, such
belated recognition awakens echoes of warning addressed over a century
earlier by Baha'u'llah to the rulers of human affairs: "The vitality of
men's belief in God is dying out in every land.... The corrosion of
ungodliness is eating into the vitals of human society...."(76)

The responsibility for this greatest of tragedies, the Guardian
emphasized, rests primarily on the shoulders of the world's religious
leaders. Baha'u'llah's severest condemnation is reserved for those who,
presuming to speak in God's name, have imposed on credulous masses a
welter of dogmas and prejudices that have constituted the greatest single
obstacle against which the advancement of civilization has been forced to
struggle. While acknowledging the humanitarian services