... a Haziratu'l-Quds is a building or apartment owned by
the Spiritual Assembly. If it is rented, it must be regarded as a Bahá'í Centre
and not as a Haziratu'l-Quds. However, it will serve the purpose of this goal
if your National Assembly will encourage Local Spiritual Assemblies in ..., as
soon as they become sufficiently consolidated, to establish their own Centres,
whether this be rented or be a room specially set aside in the home of a
Bahá'í. Then, in due course, as a local community grows, it can work towards
actually acquiring its own Haziratu'l-Quds which can, at first, be quite a
simple property owned by the Assembly as its administrative headquarters and as
the meeting place of the community for Nineteen Day Feasts etc. The time to
take each of the successive steps from the initial phase of meeting in the
friends' homes with occasional hiring of a hall, to renting a permanent Centre,
and then to actually acquiring a Haziratu'l-Quds must be decided in the light
of the needs and possibilities in each place, but the believers must always
have before them the vision of the time when they will have a fully-fledged
local Haziratu'l-Quds fulfilling at the local level those functions so
graphically outlined for the National Haziratu'l-Quds by the beloved Guardian
on page 339 of "God Passes By".
- The Universal House of Justice (From a letter dated 22 June 1981
written on behalf of the Universal House of Justice to a National Spiritual
Assembly; compilation on ‘Functions and Importance of the Haziratu'l-Quds’,
prepared by the Research Department of the Universal House of Justice)
