Des Moines Register: “THE BUTCHERY OF THE BABISTS”

“The news from Persia of the fanatical onslaught in the province of Yezd against the Babists, or “unbelievers,” as they are called by the members of the established religion, recalls in its atrocities the recent slaughter of the Jews in Kishinev. Religious beliefs are able to arouse the noblest as well as the basest in man’s nature, and too often, it would seem, they become pure fanaticism, which is the polite word for savagery.
“Babism is a comparatively new religion, but in its half century of existence has gained millions of converts among the Mohammedans of the east, and several years ago it became known that numerous Babist professors were proselyting in this country. The faith was founded by one Mirza Ali Muhammed, who was born about 1824. He assumed the name of Bab-ul-Din, which means the ‘gate of the faith.’ In 1843 the Bab returned from a pilgrimage to his native city of Shiraz, bring [sic] with him a new commentary on the Koran. He soon became engaged in a controversy with the regular priests, or ‘mullahs,’ and was forbidden to teach in public.
“The Bab taught privately however, made many converts, and gradually assumed more and more power to himself. He finally decided he was the ‘Nuntah,’ or ‘Point,’ which was also one of Mohammed’s titles. Among the Bab’s converts was a woman, known as Gurrad-ul-Ain, ‘consolation of the eyes,’ on account of her surpassing loveliness, which was further enhanced by her intellegence and purity. Babism, indeed, has always made an especial appeal to women. It recognizes the equality of the sexes to the extend that one of the nineteen prophets must always be a woman. The veiling of a woman’s face is not required, and women, indeed, are admitted to full social intercourse wit the men, and are freed from the degredations to which orthodox Mohammedanism subjects them.
Babism is not Mohammedanism at all, as is commonly believed. It is, in fact, a direct contradiction of Mohhamedanism, opposing, as it does, a materialistic, literal creed and a forensic morality with a system of speculative thought and an elevated ethical standard. The Babi doctrines are essentially a system of Pantheism. All individual existence is regarded as emanating from the supreme being, by whom it will ultimately be absorved. The sacred college, it is believed, cannot become extinct until the final judgement, since the death of any of its members is immediately followed by a reincarnation. The morals of the sect are good, which is another proof that civilization may be measured by the position of woman. Polygamy and concubinage are forbidden. Ascetinism [sic] is frowned upon, mendicancy is forbidden, and charity, abstinence from intoxicating liquors, drugs and tobacco, as well as prohibition of slave-dealing, are preached and practiced.
The first Bab was imprisoned and shot in 1853. Mirza Yahya, a youth of noble descent, and son of the governor of Teheran, was named as his successor. The Babists have never been free from persecution by the fanatics of the established religion. In 1852 a violent outbreak against them resulted in the slaughter of many, including the beautiful ‘consolation of the eyes.’ Although Babism today is probably not what it was in its beginning, when the first Bab was a man of great purity and uprightness in his life and of powerful inspiration as a teacher, to Christian peoples it seems at least mentally and ethically the superior of the established religion, whose fanatical followers persist in persecuting the Babists on the ground that they are ‘unbelievers.'”