The community of man hath the right to defend and protect
its rights. Furthermore, this is defined as the imposition of a legal
punishment, not as the wreaking of vengeance.... It is incumbent upon human
society to expend all its forces on the education of the people, and to
copiously water men's hearts with the sacred streams that pour down from the
Realm of the All-Merciful, and to teach them the manners of Heaven and
spiritual ways of life, until every member of the community of man will be
schooled, refined, and exalted to such a degree of perfection that the very
committing of a shameful act will seem in itself the direst infliction and most
agonizing of punishments, and man will fly in terror and seek refuge in his God
from the very idea of crime, as something far
harsher and more grievous than the punishment assigned to it...
- ‘Abdu’l-Baha (quoted in a Memorandum from
the Research department of the Universal House of Justice dated 16 October
1994)
