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World-Wide Reverberations- Mysterious dispensations of ever-watchful Providence, hastening, through turmoil and trial, the triumph of His undefeatable Faith, dictating at this critical hour the sudden deterioration of the situation confronting the largest community of the Baha'i world, as evidenced by the violent recrudescence of the persecution afflicting intermittently, for over a century, its members residing in Baha'u'llah's native land. (88:1) Following the seizure and the destruction of the dome of the community's national administrative headquarters, the occupation of similar institutions in all provinces, the government declaration to the Majlis outlawing the Faith and a virulent press and radio campaign, distorting its history, calumniating its Founders, misrepresenting its tenets and obscuring its aims and purposes, a series of atrocities has been perpetrated in rapid succession throughout the length and breadth of the land against members of a sorely-tried community. (88:2) The House of the Bab, the foremost Shrine in Iran, has been twice desecrated and severely damaged; Baha'u'llah's ancestral Home at Takur occupied; the house of the Bab's uncle razed to the ground; shops, farms plundered; crops burned, livestock destroyed; bodies disinterred in the cemeteries and mutilated; private houses broken into, damaged and looted; adults execrated and beaten; young women abducted and forced to marry Muslims; children mocked, reviled, beaten and expelled from the schools; boycott by butchers and bakers imposed; fifteen-year-old girl raped; eleven-month-old baby trampled underfoot; and pressure brought to bear upon believers to recant their Faith.
(88:3)
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