مكاتبة الشيوخ الأوابين
In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful, through the ranks of the Qāʾim of the Religion. May God give good help to the pure and penitent shaykhs, make the paths of right guidance easy for them, and turn away from them the watchful eyes of the treacherous, impious enemies.
Brethren! The number of years granted to those unbelieving, renegade people has run out. The days of the impostors who led you to the pools of license and immorality have ended. They made you drink the cup of abasement and disobedience, exposed you to the swords of all the communities by violating inviolable things, and brought disgrace upon your reputations, reducing you in the eyes of everyone to the condition of cattle and sheep left to graze. May God hasten their destruction, uproot their foundations, and withhold mercy from them, just as through deception they mixed themselves into the minds and souls of people of piety.
God has favored us—praise be to Him—through the arrival of the excellent Muḥammad al-Sindī, who recounted what he witnessed of your noble conduct: the modesty, integrity, obedience and purity that now mark all your affairs.
By God, his report removed sorrow and distress from my heart, which had been burdened by the obscurity of these affairs and by uncertainty over those who had previously fallen into wickedness and disgrace. I praised the Possessor of glory, majesty and transcendence for the guidance and repentance that He granted you. I prayed to the awaited Qāʾim, who will distinguish the worlds and deliver them from the condition of those who associate others with God and liken Him to creation, that he might raise your community to the highest and most excellent degree of purity of intellects and souls, and make you avoid those whose corrupt souls have made reprehensible practices and the actions of the Magians appear permissible.
Brethren, be guardians and watchmen against the one who disgraced your reputations with his defilement and delusions, and led you from purity and the religion of truth by his falsehood and error. Begin anew in obedience before time changes and the day comes when no excuse is accepted and no one among humans or jinn has his stumbling forgiven.
By God, what seemed distant is now near. Whoever invented lies has been cursed and ruined. Letters have gone out to the shaykhs in all districts, cities and villages, commanding them to accept the request for pardon of someone who departed from justice and then repented to God and His Guardian, and to accept the return to truth of whoever returns in purity and uprightness.
Whoever, after asking forgiveness and repenting, returns once more to rebellion and disobedience, makes his separation plain through folly, apostasy, fabrication and hostility, is to be excluded and removed from the ranks of the believers. Speech with him is forbidden, and he is deprived of the favor bestowed upon the Unitarians.
What the people of obedience and religion among all the brethren must do, so that the filth of the Iblīses who spread doubt and associationism through the foundations of religion may be removed, is this: the people of each locality shall gather with their shaykhs in a protected place, privately and in secrecy. They shall call God and the Guardian of the Age to witness concerning themselves. They and their shaykhs shall implore forgiveness and ask release for their previous failure to dissociate themselves from the devils and Iblīses who corrupt souls and religions. They shall preserve secrecy, sound judgment, calmness, fine conduct, gravity and balance. They shall join together in modesty, integrity, obedience, purity and noble character, keeping apart from anyone who has reneged, doubted, acted hypocritically or turned to rebellion and flight.
Let the people of truth recognize, brethren, that I have given counsel as well as I could to a brother near and dear to me. I have exerted myself to rescue you from destruction, shown you the paths of truth and fidelity, and blocked from you the road that leads to falsehood. The messenger who counsels can do no more than strive and convey his message; it is for the Qāʾim over souls to grant aid and success.
Brethren, the time for rebuke, correction and delay has ended. Truth has been made clear, and false statements and actions have been discredited. God bears witness that I have offered to everyone the advice that He has enabled me to offer, and that He extends mercy and pardon to whoever has made his departure from the ranks of the Iblīses clear.
Praise belongs to God, who is exalted above the ability of intellects to comprehend the reality of His Guardian. Thanks belong to His Guardian, the Qāʾim, who inspired His friends with patience against whoever persisted in falsehood and ruined himself. He suffices His weak servant al-Muqtanā on the day when feet slip and the Qāʾim rises with the sword of justice against whoever has apostatized and turned backward.
Completed. Praise belongs to our Lord alone, and thanks to His Guardian, His guiding servant.