CHAPTER XXIV Originating in a country which can rightly boast of being the acknowledged center of both the Arab and Muslim worlds; precipitated by the action, taken on their own initiative, by the ecclesiastical representatives of the largest communion in Islam; the direct outcome of a series of disturbances instigated by some of the members of that communion designed to suppress the activities of certain followers of the Faith who had held a clerical rank among them, this momentous development in the fortunes of a struggling community has directly contributed, to a considerable degree, to the consolidation and the enhancement of the prestige of the Administrative Order which that community had begun to erect. It will, moreover, as its repercussions are more widely spread to other Islamic countries, and its vast significance is more clearly apprehended by the adherents of both Christianity and Islam, hasten the termination of the period of transition through which the Faith, now in the formative stage of its growth, is passing. (364:2) It was in the village of Kawmu's- Sa'ayidih, in the district of Beba, of the province of Beni Suef in Upper Egypt, that, as a result of the religious fanaticism which the formation of a Baha'i assembly had kindled in the breast of the headman of that village, and of the grave accusations made by him to both the District Police Officer and the Governor of the province-- accusations which aroused the Muhammadans to such a pitch of excitement as to cause them to perpetrate shameful acts against their victims-- that action was initiated by the notary of the village, in his capacity as a religious plaintiff authorized by the Ministry of Justice, against three Baha'i residents of that village, demanding that their Muslim wives be divorced from them on the grounds that their husbands had abandoned Islam after their legal marriage as Muslims.
(364:3)
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