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O thou who art firm in the Covenant ! The general historical report about the Cause of God in that country,1 that thou hast forwarded to Menshadi,2 became very acceptable. Undoubtedly you must, every few months, write a report about the general conditions and attitudes of the Cause of God in America and forward it to Acca, so that we may send it to Persia to be printed and spread among the people. (491:1) O thou yearning servant of the Beauty of ABHA! In the time that all the ulemas and sages, leaders, merchants and traders, nay, even the public itself from the highest to the lowest have taken refuge in the British Legation and began to complain and clamor that they are oppressed, His Royal Highness Shoa-Us-Saltanah, the son of the Shah, cried in the Assembly of Nobles: These ulemas and Sheite leaders were always stigmatizing the Bahais, saying, 'They are the ill-wishers of the government and the corruptors of nations!' Now consider ye with the eye of justice! Sixty years have rolled by and the Bahais have been the object of the sword of affliction and the target of the arrows of oppression. Thousands of houses have been destroyed, children became captives, women became prisoners, property was pillaged and not even a small child remained safe; yet, notwithstanding all of this, not one single Bahai took refuge under the flag of a foreign power! Now these Sheites, though they have always been treated with the utmost favor and benefit by the government, yet without the slightest reason they went under the protection of a foreign power and brought down such humiliation and dishonor upon the nation and the government If they presented primarily their petitions to the government, their wishes would be complied with in a better and! more effective way. This is the difference between the Sheites and the Bahais!"
(491:2)
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