The Mighty Blast of the Trumpet

*A retelling based on **The Priceless Pearl** by Rúḥíyyih Khánum. Words in quotation marks are quoted from that book.*

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Rúḥíyyih Khánum writes that the worst crisis the Bahá'í community of Persia passed through in the thirty-six years of Shoghi Effendi's ministry came in 1955. In a long cable dated 23 August, the Guardian reported to the Hands of the Cause and the National Assemblies what had happened to the largest Bahá'í community in the world.

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The authorities had seized the National Headquarters of the Persian Bahá'ís in Tehran and destroyed its large ornamental dome; one of the country's leading divines and a general of its army "themselves took up pickaxes and went to work". Local Bahá'í centres all over Persia were then seized and occupied, the Parliament outlawed the Faith, and a press and radio campaign distorted its history, slandered its Founders and misrepresented its teachings.

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Attacks on the believers followed across the country. The House of the Báb in Shíráz, the foremost Shrine of the Faith in Persia, was desecrated and severely damaged, and the ancestral home of Bahá'u'lláh was occupied. Shops and farms were pillaged, homes looted, livestock destroyed and crops burned, and even the graves of Bahá'ís were desecrated. Adults were beaten; children were mocked, beaten and expelled from school; tradesmen refused to sell Bahá'ís food; believers were pressed to recant.

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The Guardian also reported that a mob two thousand strong had killed a family of seven, the eldest eighty years old and the youngest nineteen.

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At his instruction, more than a thousand Bahá'í groups and Assemblies around the world had already sent telegrams and letters of protest to the authorities in Persia, and every National Assembly had written to the Shah, the Government and the Parliament. No acknowledgement came.

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The Guardian then instructed the Bahá'í International Community, accredited to the United Nations as a Non-Governmental Organization, to take the matter to the United Nations in Geneva, and he himself chose those who would represent the Faith there. Copies of the Bahá'í appeal were given to the representatives of the member nations of the Economic and Social Council and to the Director of the Human Rights Division.

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In the United States, the National Assembly and all the local Assemblies and groups appealed to the President to intervene. Rúḥíyyih Khánum comments: "This was the first time in its history that an attacked Faith was able to fight back with weapons that possessed some strength to defend it."

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Shoghi Effendi wrote that whatever the outcome of these "heart-rending" events, one fact had emerged: the Faith, which since the passing of 'Abdu'l-Bahá had built up its Administrative Order and used it to spread across the world, was now "emerging from obscurity".

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He foresaw that later generations would hail the worldwide echoes of these events as the "mighty blast of God's trumpet", sounded through the Faith's "oldest, most redoubtable, most vicious, most fanatical adversaries", which would make governments in East and West aware of the Faith. He said these events would help free the Faith from the fetters of orthodoxy in Islamic countries and lead in time to the recognition of its independent character in Bahá'u'lláh's native land.

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For the relief of the Persian believers he opened an "Aid the Persecuted" fund with a gift of his own equal to eighteen thousand dollars. He also called for the building of the "Mother Temple" of Africa in Kampala, as a "supreme consolation" to the "oppressed masses" of our "valiant brethren" in the Cradle of the Faith. Rúḥíyyih Khánum writes: "He struck back at the forces of darkness swarming over the oldest bastion of that Faith in the world, with the greatest weapons at his disposal—the forces of creative progress, enlightenment and faith."

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She adds that he was in Switzerland when the attacks began, "all alone in his solitude", "with no advisers surrounding him to assist or comfort him at such a time". Alone he decided what should be done, cabled the National Assemblies their instructions, appointed the Faith's representatives to the United Nations, comforted the persecuted and raised money for their relief.

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*This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see **The Priceless Pearl** by Rúḥíyyih Khánum, chapter 13.*

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