1848 — Conference of Badasht, Iran

Rise, brother, the Qur’an is fulfilled and a new era has begun. AmI not your sister, and you my brother? Can yo not look upon me as a real friend? If you cannot put out of your mind evil thoughts [because her face was not behind a heavy veil], how long will you be able to give your lives for a great cause? Are you aware that this custom of veiling the face was not enjoined by Muhammad (peace be upon him) so rigorously as you seem to observe? Do you not remember the in some matters he used to send his disciples to go and ask his wife? Let us emancipate our women and reform our society. Let us rise out of our graves of superstition and egoism and pronounce that the Day of Judgment is at hand; then shall the whole earth respond to the freedom of conscience and new life! The blast of this trumpet of Resurrection, it is I.

Source: “The Cry of Tahira,” by Khwaja Masud in Táhirih in History: Perspectives on Qurratu’l-‘Ayn from East and West, ed. Sabir Afaqi, with Jan T. Jasion (Los Angeles: Kalimát Press, 2004), p. 76.