The weekly intelligencer. [volume] (Lexington, Mo.) 1891-1901, 1896-10-17
BANDED FOR ASSASSINATION.
Society to Which tho Slayer of the Shah
of Persia belonged.

Society to Which tho Slayer of the Shah
of Persia belonged.
The fanatic who assassinated the.
shah of ofPersiaawhi hile.ago was member
of the Babist society, and the French
man CASTOR Dujarric, who has made a
special study of the many sects of Mo
hammedism, has been telling what
Babism is. 1t was this society which
the shah so sorely persecuted after Le
began his reign.
Over SO years ago Ali Mohammed, an
exceedingly bright and eloquent young
man, on returning from pilgrimage to
Mecca, began to preach in Persia the re-
| form of Islam and the publication of
the lives of the people. He took the
surname Bah, which signifies 'The
Gate" and his followers called him
"The Gate of the Truth" The reforms
he preached won great popular favor,
and in 1884 the shah, father of the recent
ly murdered ruler, ordered the Bah into
his presence that he might hear from
his own mouth the doctrine that he
preached. He heard and approved. lie
declared that the new sect should be
protected throughout Persia. But lie
died that year, and Nasr ed-din, a boy
of II years, came to The throne.
The rich and powerful Persia feared
the reformer and his tenets and the
young rhah sided with them. He was
ferocious in his repression of the sect.
Hundreds of the Bab's followers were
cruelty put to death. The .beb himself
was taken prisoner in 1s49 and exc
cuted. Here are some of the proposed
reforms that were thus repressed with
heavy hand, and no one in any part of
the civilized world can fail to admire
them:
The Bab professed to be most faith
full follower of the prophet, but he be-
lieved evils had crept into practice of re-
ligion, and many social usages should
be reformed, for the world had out
grown many things that were admissi-
BILE in Mohammed's day. The fervent
PRAYER is more agreeable TO God than
the paIroting of passages from the
Koran. Charity is Il duty, but men
dicity should be prescribed. No per-
son should be prescribed. No person
should he put TO death for his religious
belief. There should be freedom of
conscience. A man should be the hus-
band of only one wife. Concubinnge
should he prohibited. Woman is the
equal of man. Like him, she has a des-
tiny, personality, n mission. She
should be taken out of the harem. She
should be fitted for the social life and
mingle in it with uncovered face.
These statements are but a small
part of the Bab's philosophy. Some of
it was doubtless Utopinn, and much
of it was far ahead of the Persian age
in which he lived. But the martyrs the
young shah made were the seed of the
faith. Babism grew under the blood
lest persecution. Many were tortured
to death. One of the most conspic-
uous martyrs was the famous heroine
of the reform, Kuretr el Ayn, a beauti-
full woman, who had preached the new
faith with burning zeal wherever she
could get hearing, and particularly in
the harems, where her sex secured ad-
mission for her without difficulty.
When she fell under the ban of the shah
her life was promised to her IL she
! would abjure the new teachings. She
refused to purchase her life at such a
price, and was sentenced to be burned to
death. Before the flames had touched
her body her executioners, more merci:
full than the shah. choked her to death
with woman's veil, the veil she had re-
jected contrary to tho law and custom
of her people.
The sect, thus bloodily suppressed,
ceased to be an open branch of Moham-
mechanism and became a secret society.
1t has spread among all classes. It
seems intangible to the outer world, but
it is powerful and active. 1t is no longer
merely a religious sect. 1t is a party,
and into the secret folds are gathered,
! besides many of the best among Per-
, SLAMS, the disappointed, the dreamcrs,
the cranks. It was one of these cranks
who, in 1852, attempted to kill the shah.'
and it was years later that the shah re-
gretted the cruelties of his early reign
and ceased to persecute the Babists.
One day the shah asked a Babist how
"Your majesty" said the man, you
may be sure that wherever two Persians
are seen together one of them is a Bah
ist." This, of course, was a great exag-
geration, but there are many thousands
of them.
The other day Babist, in the name of
his society, killed the shah. 1t is an
other illustration of the fact that even
the most humane and liberal philoso-
| ply may enlist in its support fanatics
who, for the cause of their propaganda,
NAV commit deeds that make the world
shudder.-N. Y. Sun.