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lovers of the Most Holy Abhá
Beauty of God. Blessed is the one
who achieves it and attains unto
that which has always been the de-
sire of the devoted ones through-
out centuries and ages. Therefore,
the oppression of the tyrants is a
bounty from God to His favored
servants. For it is by reason of
such cruelty that their station is
exalted, they are enabled to draw
nigh unto His sanctified and lumi-
nous Threshold, and the tongues
of the righteous greet those who
have attained it, gained admit-
tance, entered the paradise of His
good pleasure, and been counted
as among the sincere servants.
21
21 From a previously untranslated let-
ter written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi;
provisional translation.
True liberation and empowerment,
therefore, is realized when the op-
pressed refuse to permit the oppressor
to succeed in controlling their heart
and spirit.
As was seen in Bahá’u’lláh’s re-
sponse to oppression in His three dec-
larations, being subjected to tyranny
and injustice was not the occasion for
despair and surrender to dehuman-
ization but rather for turning crisis
into the crucible from which victory
emerges. Thus, the Bahá’í approach to
oppression is characterized by hope.
Such a view of the relationship of
oppression and empowerment is only
understandable within the context of
a spiritual worldview because, in the
end, that relationship is a mystical par-
adox. Even as the delicate and pure lo-
tus rises out of the crude and impure
mud, so too the human spirit, when
it refuses to surrender to the instinc-
tual forces of nature, rises out of its
encounter with oppression liberated
and transcendent. But the emergence
of the lotus is impossible without the
mud:
It is by reason of the cruelty of
the enemies that the fire of divine
love is enkindled within the hearts
and souls, and it is the oppression
of the adversaries that hastens
the souls unto the Faith of God.
It is by reason of the cruelty of
the enemies that the lofty station
of the friends is revealed amongst
the people, and it is the oppres-
sion of the adversaries that makes
manifest the exalted rank of the
The Journal of Bahá’í Studies 25.3 2015
52