The voice of 'Abdu'l-Baha, the Center of the Covenant of God, has, likewise, been raised, announcing the dire misfortunes which were to overtake, soon after His passing, the ecclesiastical hierarchies of both Sunni and Shi'ih Islam. "This glory," He has written, "shall be turned into the most abject abasement, and this pomp and might converted into the most complete subjugation. Their palaces will be transformed into prisons, and the course of their ascendant star terminate in the depths of the pit. Laughter and merriment will vanish, nay more, the voice of their weeping will be raised." "Even as the snow," He moreover has written "they will melt away in the July sun." (93:1)

The dissolution of the institution of the Caliphate, the complete secularization of the state which had enshrined the most august institution of Islam, and the virtual collapse of the Shi'ih hierarchy in Persia, were the visible and immediate consequences of the treatment meted out to the Cause of God by the clergy of the two largest communions of the Muslim world. (93:2)

The Falling Fortunes of Shi'ih Islam
Let us first consider the visitations that have marked the falling fortunes of Shi'ih Islam. The iniquities summarized in the beginning of these pages, and for which the Shi'ih ecclesiastical order in Persia is to be held primarily answerable; iniquities which, in the words of Baha'u'llah, had caused "the Apostle (Muhammad) to lament, and the Chaste One (Fatimih) to cry out", and "all created things to groan, and the limbs of the holy ones to quake"; iniquities which had riddled the breast of the Bab with bullets, and bowed down Baha'u'llah, and turned His hair white, and caused Him to groan aloud in anguish, and made Muhammad to weep over Him, and Jesus to beat Himself upon the head, and the Bab to bewail His plight - such iniquities indeed could not, and were not to, remain unpunished. God, the Fiercest of Avengers, was lying in wait, pledged "not to forgive any man's injustice." The scourge of His chastisement, swift, sudden and terrible, was, at long last, let loose upon the perpetrators of these iniquities. (93:3)

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