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I will, if deemed proper and advisable, inform you of the manner in which the admiration and the gratitude of the National Spiritual Assemblies, representative of the divers communities in the Baha'i world, should be expressed and tendered to the authorities of the League of Nations who have been chiefly responsible for this noble, this epoch-making decision. For none can doubt that the published verdict pronounced by the Mandate Commission sets the seal of international sanction on the triumph of God's persecuted Faith over the ecclesiastical and civil powers of hostile Islam. Within the ranks of the orthodox Sunnis and of the bitter and fanatical Shi'ah, the chief sects of the Muslim Faith and constituting respectively the bulk of the ruling class and the population of Iraq, a feeling of consternation must necessarily prevail. For however obscured their vision they still can recognize in this historic judgment the herald of that complete victory which is destined to establish the ascendancy of what, in the words of the members of the Commission, is but "a small minority, drawn from a lower social grade, and possessing neither political nor social influence," over the combined forces of the Islamic population of Iraq
(179:2)
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