Dear Baha'i friends,
The Universal House of Justice has received your letter of 14 April 1980 enclosing the copy of that part of page 15 of the issue of the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung for 14 March 1980, on which the letter from Francesco Ficicchia was published.
The House of Justice feels that the best course is to ignore this disgraceful attack on the Faith, rather than to make any rebuttal. Your Assembly should, however, be prepared to answer any inquiries that you may receive as a result of this article, whether from Baha'is or non-Baha'is. To assist you in this, we enclose extracts from a letter written on behalf of the Universal House of Justice, which touch on matters raised by Mr Ficicchia. You are also, no doubt, aware that a Russian translation of the Kitab-i-Aqdas by A. G. Tumansky was published in 1899. A translation of the complete text into English, made by two former Presbyterian missionaries in Iran, was published by The Royal Asiatic Society in 1961; it is accompanied by highly prejudiced and misleading footnotes and introduction, and the inadequacy of the translation itself is immediately apparent to anyone who compares passages with those that Shoghi Effendi translated. The existence of these two published translations, however, demonstrates the falsity of Ficicchia's statement that no complete translation exists. A far clearer understanding of the contents of the Most Holy Book, however, than given by either translation, is presented in the Synopsis and Codification of the Kitab-i-Aqdas which gives not only the laws of the Aqdas themselves, but also includes the elucidations given by Baha'u'llah Himself in the "Questions and Answers," and contains many explanatory annotations provided by the House of Justice.
With loving Baha'i greetings,
Department of the Secretariat
(‘Messages from the Universal House of Justice, 1963-1986’)
