After the Islamic Revolution, the Mostazafan Foundation – in English, the Foundation for the Oppressed – confiscated properties belonging to members of the Bahá'í community. The Misaghieh Hospital was among these properties. After its confiscation, the hospital's name was changed to Shahid Mostafa Khomeini Hospital. [Iran Wire]

Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognized freedom of religion as a central value of the post-World War II international legal order. The right was cemented in Article 18 of the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Every year on 9 December, the United Nations marks the adoption of the Genocide Convention, which is also the International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and of the Prevention of this Crime. [Ratification of the Genocide Convention]

The crime of genocide has three elements: 1. Acts of genocide committed with, 2. intent to destroy, in whole or in part, 3. a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. For more detailed information see Genocide Watch. On that site Dr Gregory Stanton lists the ten states of genocide: Classification, Symolization, Discrimination, Dehumanization, Organization, Polarization, Preparation, Persecution, Extermination and Denial. [Ten Stages]. iiiii

The notion of a Jewish state evolved during the nineteenth century and in the aftermath of the French Revolution, which generated the idea of nation states and nationhood in the modern sense. The first plans came from non-Jewish sources. Napoleon Bonaparte suggested the settlement of European Jews in the Suez region to safeguard a canal project he had envisaged. Lord Palmerstone, British Foreign Secretary from 1830-1841, seeking to halt French advances in the East, planned the establishment of a British-backed Jewish client-state in Palestine to stop their advance and block Muhammad Ali´s progress. Plans of this kind set up by the Powers for safeguarding their own interests were quite numerous. When the Germans were constructing the Berlin-Baghdad Railway in the years before its completion in 1940, plans were made to settle Jews in Asia Minor alongside the rails or bestow an Ottoman Pashaliq (Territorial administrative division) upon the territory occupied by them.

After the French Revolution the Jews of Central and Western Europe now felt that they were citizens of their respective countries. Orthodox Jews refused the idea of a Jewish state believing that only when the Messiah came that such a state could be founded.

But then anti-Semitism was on the rise in Europe from the early and mid 1800s with such beliefs as Social Darwinism, Eugenics, Scientific Racism, Racial Hierarchy: the Nazi Racial Theories and the lingering concepts of colonialism and imperialism. The horrors of the Holocaust played a significant role in discrediting and rejecting these racial and biological ideologies that were not based on sound scientific findings.

Jews had started to immigrate into Palestine after the first anti-Jewish pogroms in Russia in 1881 and more especially after the establishment of the World Zionist Organization in 1897, it was of a different, a political nature. The Jewish immigrants came now with the explicit aim to establish a state of their own and to the exclusion of the Arab inhabitants of the land.

"The Jewish Colonial Projects in Palestine" refer to the efforts by Jewish individuals and organizations to establish settlements and communities in the region of Palestine, primarily during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These efforts were part of the broader Zionist movement which aimed to establish a Jewish homeland in what was then part of the Ottoman Empire and later became the British Mandate of Palestine. These projects played a significant role in the eventual establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.

First Aliyah (1882-1903): The First Aliyah was a wave of Jewish immigration to Palestine that began in the early 1880s. During this period, many Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe and Russia settled in agricultural communities, known as "moshavot," in various parts of Palestine. They aimed to establish self-sustaining agricultural settlements and escape persecution in their home countries.

Baron Edmond de Rothschild's Support: Baron Edmond de Rothschild, a wealthy European financier, provided financial support to many Jewish settlers in Palestine. His contributions were crucial for the development of Jewish agricultural communities and wineries in the region.

Second Aliyah (1904-1914): The Second Aliyah brought another wave of Jewish immigrants to Palestine. Many of these immigrants were inspired by socialist and labour-oriented ideologies. They established kibbutzim and collective communities, which emphasized communal living and shared resources.

Jewish National Fund (JNF): The JNF, founded in 1901, played a pivotal role in acquiring and developing land in Palestine for Jewish settlement. It purchased and reclaimed land, planted forests, and financed infrastructure projects.

Balfour Declaration (1917): During World War I, the British government issued the Balfour Declaration, expressing support for the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine. This declaration laid the foundation for future Zionist aspirations.

British Mandate Period (1920-1948): After World War I, the League of Nations granted Britain the mandate to govern Palestine. During this period, Jewish immigration and settlement continued, despite tensions with the Arab population. The Arab-Jewish conflict over land and political control intensified.

Haganah and Israel Defense Forces: Jewish settlers organized defense forces, such as the Haganah, in the 1920s to protect their communities. They provided defence for Jewish communities and countered Arab attacks, facilitated the illegal immigration of Jewish refugees to Palestine, coordinated the various Jewish paramilitary groups and were involved in the acquiring and stockpiling of weapons and military equipment. These groups later evolved into the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

1948 Arab–Israeli War (1947-1949)

With the British Mandate coming to an end, the United Nations approved the partition plan for Palestine, leading to the declaration of the State of Israel on the 14th of May 1948. The following day a military coalition of Arab states, including Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Iraq, invaded Israel to prevent its establishment. They took control of the areas designated for Arabs and attacked the Jewish forces and settlements. As a result of the war Israel got all the lands mandated to them by the UN and 60% of the territory meant for the Arabs as well as the area that had been meant for an "international zone". Israel had retained its independence and had expanded its territory.

This period is known as "Nakba" ("catastrophe" in Arabic). Some historians estimate that around 720,000 out of the 900,000 Palestinian Arabs that had lived in the land that was to become Israel were expelled. Another estimate says the 400 Palestinian villages were destroyed, civilians were massacred and around a million men, women, and children were expelled from their homes at gunpoint. [The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappe; Colonialism, Nationalism and Jewish Immigration to Palestine: Abdu´l-Bahá's Viewpoints Regarding the Middle East by Kamran Ekbal p24; Palestinian Expulsion and Flight]

Further details on the conflicts, Causes, Key Events of the War, as well as Outcomes and Consequences can be found here.

The UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) is a UN agency established in 1949 that supports the relief and human development of Palestinian refugees. It's mandate encompasses Palestinians displaced by the 1948 Palestine War and subsequent conflicts, as well as their descendants, including legally adopted children. As of 2023, more than 5.9 million Palestinians are registered with UNRWA as refugees. [UNRWA]

Some objectives were;
  - To incorporate the National Spiritual Assembly
  - To establish national endowments
  - To increase to thirty the number of Local Spiritual Assemblies
  - To increase to one hundred the number of localities where Bahá'ís reside
  - To form a group in Newfoundland
  - To form a group in Greenland
  - To enroll (Eskimos) Inuit and (Native Indians) First Nations in the Faith

Some goals were:
  - To double the number of Local Spiritual Assemblies from fourteen to twenty-eight, increasing the Bahá'í membership in each community
  - To raise the number of localities in Germany and Austria where Bahá'ís reside
  - To deepen the understanding of the friends in the operation of the Administrative Order
  - To encourage deeper study of the teachings
  - To construct the National Hazíratu'l-Quds in Frankfurt
  - To enrich Bahá'í literature with two publications by March 1949, fifteen by March 1950, six by March 1951 and nine by 1952

Some goals were:
  - To raise to nine the number of Local Spiritual Assemblies
  - To raise to thirty-three the number of localities where Bahá'ís reside
  - To send pioneers to Tunisia, Algeria and Libya
  - To acquire property for a Bahá'í school
  - To issue a Bahá'í magazine
  - To consolidate the community in Ethiopia

One of his daughters, Dame Robin White, is a New Zealand painter and printmaker, recognized as a key figure in the regionalist movement of 20th-century New Zealand art. Her art is the subject of a book called Robin White: Something is Happening Here by Dr Sarah Farrar, Dr Nina Tonga and Jill Trevelyan.

The goals were:
   -To increase the number of Bahá'í centres
   -To complete the construction of the National Hazíratu'l-Quds
   -To raise contributions to support the National Fund
   -To establish ten new Local Assemblies
   -To encourage Bahá'í communities in the south of the country

The homefront goals were:
  - To establish two new Spiritual Assemblies in Australia
  - To establish nineteen groups in Australasia

1. Consolidation of all local Bahá'í communities.

2. Reestablishment of 62 dissolved Assemblies. (93 LSAs formed)

3. Formation of 22 groups. (37 established)

4. Creation of 13 new centres. (24 localities established)

5. Development of Assemblies from groups in three adjoining countries, namely in Kabul, Afghanistan, Mecca, Arabia and Bahrein Island, Persian Gulf.

6. The formation of groups in four localities on the Arabian Peninsula.

7. The sending pioneers to India and 'Iráq to assist in the formation of new groups.

The Bahá'ís of Tehran were called upon to send out 50 families into the pioneer field. (160 arose) Every individual Bahá'í was included in the operation of the Plan-as a volunteer, by deputizing a pioneer, by contributing funds, by circuit teaching or by providing hospitality to students whose parents had become pioneers. [BW4p34-35; BW11p34-36]

...the Bahá'ís should continue to apply, under all circumstances, for exemption from any military duty that necessitates the taking of life. There is no justification for any change of attitude on our part at the present time.

The Universal House of Justice amplified this later statement:

There is no objection in a Bahá'í enlisting voluntarily in the armed forces of a country in order to obtain a training in some trade or profession, provided that he can do so without making himself liable to undertake combatant service. [BW17:384–5]

The inability, under restrictions imposed by the war, to hold Convention sessions this year challenged the National Spiritual Assembly to maintain the important functions of the annual meeting through other means. Steps were therefore taken to provide for Voting by mail, with a committee of tellers to serve in the customary way, to conduct a public meeting or Bahá'í Congress in Foundation Hall during the Riḍván Period, and to provide the delegates with subjects for written suggestions and views. [BN No 174 April-May 145 p2]

Those elected to serve the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá'ís of the United States and Canada were: George O. Latimer (Chairman), Allen B. McDaniel (Vice), Horace Holley (Secretary), Louis G. Gregory (Recording Secretary), Roy C. Wilhelm (Treasurer), Dorothy Baker. Amelia E. Collins, Philip G. Sprague, Leroy Ioas. The Assembly appointed Siegfried Schopflocher to serve as the Treasurer of the Canadian Bahá'í Fund. [BN No 169 July 1944 p2; BN No285 Nov 1954 p3-4]

The Tablet of Naw-Rúz 101 has been named Lawh-i-Qarn (Tablet of the Centennial). It was unveiled in a solemn pilgrimage ceremony at the House of the Báb in the presence of the 91 delegates exactly one hundred years after the visit of Mullá Husayn.

A partial English translation of this Persian document can be found in Tablet of the Centennial by Shoghi Effendi translated by Khazeh Fananapazir. This paper also makes reference to the article below.

Dr Àlí Muhammad Varqa's article, Le Style persan du Gardien, was presented at the Association for Bahá'í Studies 9th Annual Conference in Ottawa in 1984 and can be found in the book of the proceedings of that conference, The Vision of Shoghi Effendi p209. In his paper he quotes from a number of Tablets to describe the style of Shoghi Effendi's writing in Persian, one of them is the Tablet of the Centennial.

On 28 November 2023 the Universal House of Justice, in a message to the Bahá'ís of the world, provided a review of the previous 100 years of the Formative Age.

She first heard of the Faith at the age of 21 in 1899 under miraculous circumstances. [Mable Ives & The Mysterious Trolley Car Ride]

In 1903 she married Theron Canfield Rice-Wray and had three children. They lived in California from 1909 to 1914 where her marriage ended and she returned to the East.

In 1919 she met Howard Colby Ives and they married in 1920 and she became known to many who loved her as "Rizwanea". For nearly twenty years they traveled and taught the Faith often teaming with Grace and Harlan Ober as well as Doris and Willard McKay in both business and the teaching work. It was their entire life. They traveled through the New England states, through Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, New York and many many more in Canada as well-always teaching, always leaving an established Assembly behind them." For example they came to Toronto in November of 1938 and stayed for about 10 months. During that time Mabel gave more than 150 lectures in Toronto and about 70 in Hamilton, Toronto's expansion goal. Howard, who was had had heart problems and who was rapidly losing for sight and hearing at the time, complemented her abilities by doing personal deepening with receptive souls. [TMLF62-67, SEBW139-154]

• See Fires in Many Hearts - Memoirs of an early American believer by Doris McKay.

See the story of how Mabel resolved the situation when she could no longer tolerate the itinerate lifestyle in the story When Mable Ives Could Endure No More, She Prayed .

See the tribute paid to her in the Canadian Bahá'í News No 202 November 1966 p4.

"Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups."

This study was an elaboration of ideas he first proposed in 1933 in his address to the Fifth International Conference for the Unification of Penal Law (1933), which argued that attacks on racial, religious and ethnic groups should be considered international crimes. Important for the prosecution of the Nazis, it helped to establish the framework for all subsequent efforts to punish crimes against humanity.

When Lemkin proposed a treaty against genocide to the United Nations in 1945, he defined it as follows:

"The crime of genocide should be recognized therein as a conspiracy to exterminate national, religious or racial groups. The overt acts of such a conspiracy may consist of attacks against life, liberty or property of members of such groups merely because of their affiliation with such groups. The formulation of the crime may be as follows: "Whoever, while participating in a conspiracy to destroy a national, racial or religious group, undertakes an attack against life, liberty or property of members of such groups is guilty of the crime of genocide."

Note:Amir Kabir was the 19th century Iranian Qajar minister who ordered the execution of many members of the early Bahá'í movement. [Iran Press Watch 1407]

After Abdu'l-Fadl passed away in early 1914 the American believers, in gratitude for the contribution he had made to the American Bahá'í community, collected a sum of money for the construction of a suitable monument for his grave. The work was interrupted with the Ascension of the Master and the money collected was reverted the National Fund. That money was now sent to the National Spiritual Assembly of Egypt. [BW9p89]

The publication in 1865 of the Comte de Gobineau's (1816-1882),Les Religions et Les Philosophies dans l'Asie Centrale created an interest in Europe. A scholar that was inspired by Gobineau was E.G.Browne. He travelled to Iran and also visited Bahá'u'lláh in Akka in the latter days of His life. He translated two histories of the new religion and published two other books as well as a number of articles. He also made an important collection of manuscripts that he gave to Cambridge University Library. Bahá'ís have criticized Browne's work for being too sympathetic to Azal, Baha'u'llah's half-brother and implacable enemy. One of the books that Cobineau for Les Religions... was Násikhu't-Taváríkh (the 'history to abrogate all previous historiies') by Lisánu'l-Mulk. This book had been condemned by Bahá'u'lláh as a falsification of history one which even an infidel would not have had the effrontery to produce. [SUR36-37]      

A.L.M. Nicolas (1864-1939) was a French consular official in Iran who researched and wrote a biography of the Báb as well as translating three of the Báb's major works into French.

     Just as the Báb was the centre of the scholarly interests of Gobineau, Browne and Nicolas, some Russian scholars who were more interested in Bahá'u'lláh. Baron Viktor Rosen (1849-1908), the director of the Oriental Department of the University of St. Petersburg was assisted by Aleksandr Tumanski (1861-1920). He spent a great deal of time with the Bahá'í community of Ashkhabad and with Mirza Abu'l-Fadl Gulpaygani. Although he did not write as much as Browne or Nicolas, what he did write was derived from a very deep and thorough investigation. [L&E43-83]

See An Officer and an Orientalist: Alexander Grigorevich Tumanskii and His Contribution to Russian Historiography on and Policy towards the Babi-Baha'i Religion by Soli Shahvar, Bahá'í Studies Review 20 (1), 3-19

     There was much interest in scholarship in the early days of the Faith because almost all of the most important disciples of the Báb were Islamic religious scholars, as were many of the leading converts to the Bahá'í Faith in later years. The most important of these was the above mentioned Mirza Abu'l-Fadl Gulpaygani (1844-1914). He was learned in the Zoroastrian and Jewish scriptures and spent some time in the Christian West at the request of 'Abdu'l-Bahá prior to His visit.

     During the 1930s to 1960s, a second generation of Iranian Bahá'í scholars, such as Fadil Mazandarani (1881-1957), 'Abdul-Hamid Ishraq-Khavari (1902-1972), and 'Azizu'llah Sulaymani (1901-1985) systematized Bahá'í theology and law, developed aids for scholars such as dictionaries of Bahá'í terminology, and wrote histories and biographies. This was of course a more traditional style of scholarship than is current in the West, but it continues to be useful to all present scholars.

     The above-described initial flurry of interest in the Bábí and Bahá'í religions in the West was not sustained and from the 1920s to the 1970s, there were no Western scholars who were as deeply engaged as the above-named ones and only a handful of studies that can be said to have done much to advance knowledge. From the 1970s onward, there gradually emerged a new stream of scholars who can be said to be a fusion of the above two groups, the Western and the Bahá'í scholars. This new generation of scholars mostly began as Bahá'ís, although some have subsequently left the religion. They use Western academic methodology and most operate from within Western universities but they have access to insider information and resources. Apart from these individuals, the Bahá'í Faith has been very little studied by Western scholars of religion.

     A word must also be said about what passes for scholarship on the Bahá'í Faith in Iran and to a lesser extent in the rest of the Middle East. Bahá'ís have been persecuted in many Middle Eastern countries and rejected by Islamic leaders, and one form of this discrimination has involved the manipulation of information. For most of the last 100 years, deliberately distorted or falsified information and documents have been created mostly by some within the Islamic religious establishment and then distributed as though these were facts about the Bahá'í Faith. Since the Bahá'ís have had no ability to respond to this material in the Middle East, these distortions have gradually become accepted in the Middle East as the truth. One example is the forged memoirs of Count Dolgorukov, the Russian ambassador to Iran in the 1840s to 1850s. This and other contradictions were so clearly spurious that even some Iranian scholars debunked them when they were first published in the 1940s. But despite this, they are often regularly cited by Middle Eastern writers up to the present day as though they are a reliable source for the history of the religion.

     Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, this manufacturing of disinformation and forged material has increased greatly with programs in the media, articles, and books appearing on a frequent basis, especially in the government-run media. The result is that there is almost nothing published in the Middle East that has reliable information about the Bahá'í Faith in it. A little of this sort of scholarship has also appeared in the West; some Christian missionaries, notably Reverend William McElwee Miller(1892-1993)(Also see WOB83) have written anti-Bahá'í material and ex-Bahá'ís have published academic work that is calculated to make the Bahá'í community resemble a cult as portrayed in the anti-cult campaigns that were carried out in the Western media in the 1980s. [The above was copied from the website Patheos and has been edited for brevity. It was contributed by Dr. Natalie Mobini]

"Sister Mehrangis [Mehrangiz] followed example Ruhi's sister. Justice demands announce believers her expulsion."(UD149)

There is evidence to indicate that Margaret Stevenson was not the first believer in New Zealand. Dr Robert Felkin arrived in New Zealand in early 1912 while Margaret Stevenson became a believer later in that same year. [BCIB119-120]

Supplementary Report

Shoghi Effendi called her "the spiritual mother of Canada" and Montreal the "mother city of Canada". [OBCC35]