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The Opinion and Judgment of the Appellate religious court of Beba, delivered on May 10, 1925, subsequently sanctioned by the highest ecclesiastical authorities in Cairo and upheld by them as final, printed and circulated by the Muslim authorities themselves, annulled the marriages contracted by the three Baha'i defendants and condemned the mass heretics for having violated the laws and ordinances of Islam. It even went so far as to make the positive, the startling and indeed the historic assertion that the Faith embraced by these heretics is to be regarded as a distinct religion, wholly independent of the religious systems that have preceded it-- an assertion which hitherto the enemies of the Faith, whether in the East or in the West, had either disputed or deliberately ignored.
(365:1)
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