Shoghi Effendi is also sending you an account of the
doctrines of Shí'ah Islam from which the Movement originally sprang. It will
help you to connect the origin of the Movement with the tenets and beliefs held
by the Shí'ahs of Persia. The Bab declared Himself at the beginning of His
mission to be the "Bab" by which He meant to be the gate or
forerunner of "Him Whom God will make manifest", that is to say
Bahá'u'lláh, Whose advent the Shí'ahs also expected in the person of "the
return of Imam Husayn". The Sunnis also believe in a similar twofold
manifestation, the first they call "the Mihdi", the second "the
Return of Christ". By the term Báb, the Báb meant to be the forerunner of
the second manifestation rather than, as some have maintained, the gate of the
Qá'im. When He declared Himself to be the Bab, the people understood by the
term that He was an intermediary between the absent Qá'im and His followers,
though He Himself never meant to be such a person. All He claimed to be was
that He was the Qá'im Himself and in addition to this station, that of the Bab,
namely the gate or forerunner of "Him Whom God will make manifest".
- Shoghi Effendi (From a letter dated 30 November 1930, written on behalf of
Shoghi Effendi; printed in ‘The Unfolding Destiny of the British Baha'i
Community’)
