From Turkey, on whose soil, for well nigh three score years and
ten, were enacted some of the sublimest and most tragic scenes in
the annals of the Cause; Turkey, under whose rule Bahá’u’lláh twice
proclaimed Himself, was thrice exiled and banished, and finally
ascended to the Abhá Kingdom, and where ‘Abdu’l-Bahá spent more
than fifty years of His Life, in incarceration and suffering; has of
late been rudely awakened to a Call which it has so long obstinately
despised and ignored. Following on the overthrow of that effete
theocracy, resting on the twin institutions of the Caliphate and
Sultanate—those two sinister forces that have combined to inflict the
deadliest blows to our beloved Faith in the earliest stages of its
infancy and growth—an uncompromising policy aiming at the
secularization of the State and the disestablishment of Islám was
initiated and carried out with exemplary vigor. Religious institutions
and monastic orders which under the guise of religious propaganda
were converted into hot-beds of political intrigue and sedition
were peremptorily closed, their adherents scattered and banished,
their funds confiscated, their privileges and prerogatives abolished.
None, save the little band of Bahá’u’lláh’s devoted followers, escaped
the trenchant ax of the pitiless reformer; all, without fear or favor,
had to submit to his searching investigations, his dictatorial edicts,
his severe and irrevocable judgment. Lately, however, the Turkish
Government, faithful to its policy of ceaseless vigilance, and fearful
of the growing activities of the Bahá’ís under its rule, decided to
order the Police in the town of Smyrna to conduct a close investigation
into the purpose, the character and the effects of Bahá’í activity
in that town. No sooner were the representative Bahá’ís in that
locality arrested and conducted to the Law Courts for purposes of
investigation, than the President of the Bahá’í Spiritual Assembly
of Constantinople who, having read in the morning papers the report
of the Smyrna incident, had resolved unsummoned to offer the
necessary explanations to the authorities concerned, was in his turn
arrested and taken to the Police Headquarters where he soon afterwards
was joined by the other members of the Assembly. The
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official searching of their homes, the seizure of whatever Bahá’í
literature they had in their possession, their twenty-four hours detention
at the Police station, the searching severity of the cross-examination
to which they were subjected—all proved powerless to
alarm and shake the faith of those intrepid champions of the Cause,
or to evince anything detrimental to the best interests of the State.
On the contrary, they served to deeply impress upon the minds and
hearts of the officials concerned the sublimity, the innocence, and
the dynamic force of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh. So much so that
their books were returned, a genuine desire to deepen their knowledge
of the Cause was expressed by their examiners, and widespread
publicity, as reflected in the articles of about a dozen leading newspapers
of Turkey, was accorded by the Government, proclaiming the
innocence of the Cause and lifting up the ban that now so oppressively
weighs upon religious institutions in Turkey.
