“I plead with you!” Tahirih wrote imploringly to her father in 1846-7, “This humblest of people is your daughter. You know her, and she has been brought up and educated under your supervision. If she had, or has, a worldly love, that could not have remained a secret to you.”
Tahirih was defending herself against the rumors of her supposed immorality. Her assertiveness in teaching her unorthodox views gave those who opposed her the material they needed to slander her.
“Dear Father! So many times when I visit the holy shrine of the Imam, may peace be upon him, in the flood of my tears I pity you and pray for you that perhaps you may be saved,” but also admonished him that “If you fail to recognize the cause, there will be no benefit for you in all your acts of devotion.”
Tahirih continued to fearlessly proclaim the promise and the power of the new day of God and concluded this poem by speaking in a divine voice and finishing with a quotation from the Qur’an:
“Hear this! My one and only Cause is true.
The words I speak mean victory for you.
Off with rags of law and pious fashion!
Swim naked in the sea of compassion!
How long will you drift through this world of war,
far from the safety of your native shore?
Sing, Be! Our Cause stands strong, both clear and plain:
“What comes from God returns to God again!”