With
greetings to the distinguished
scholars and elders of religious
learning. I would like, if I
may, to address a few words to
you.
The
anniversary of the Green
Movement and the people’s
Judgement Day is approaching,
and the people have growing
expectations of righteous
clerics. The movement’s
prisoners and martyrs have a
message to convey to the knights
of the showground of religion
and learning:
We know that
you, the poles and pillars of
religion, are yourselves among
the wronged victims of the
Islamic Republic. Since this
tyrannical State’s sins and
crimes have also soiled your
good names and religion’s pure
countenance, we know that you
are inwardly enraged and
outwardly dejected; that you
quell the searing fire within
you with droplets of patience;
that you bite your tongues and
withdraw to this or that corner;
that you pray that God will make
things easier for you to bear;
that you flee the admonishing
glances and questions of your
disciples and loved ones, who
ask you why you promised them
honey and delivered vinegar
instead. We are in no doubt
that, in your private moments,
you remonstrate with God,
saying: You gave us influence
and authority—for which a
thousand thanks—but why in these
times and in these
circumstances? When we can
neither criticize nor engage in
innovative thinking [ijtihad].
When we don’t even have a free
hand in writing our religious
treatises because we are
hamstrung by the State’s fatwas
and commands. When fiqh
has lost all its credibility and
integrity, and the seminaries
have lost all their sanctity and
independence. When hojjat
ol-eslams are called ayatollahs
and ayatollahs have become
playthings in the hands of
power.
And why
shouldn’t you be aggrieved and
dejected? Intimidated and
oppressed, and occupying a
position of grave
responsibility, you try to keep
heart and soul together as you
see how religious tyranny has
taken a stick to people’s faith
and morality; has placed
religion at the service of
politics; and has left justice
broken and meaningless. The
economy’s belly is distended
with religiously-forbidden
deeds, religion’s countenance is
distorted, the rivulet of
culture is muddied, the air of
politics is poisonous, the sky
of freedom is grey, art’s eyes
are weeping, learning’s heart is
seething, honour is cheaply
traded, and deceit, bribery,
lies, sycophancy, jailing,
banning, shaming, aggression,
ignorance, superstition,
lawlessness, terror, insults,
toadying, duplicity, cheating
and discrimination are the coins
of the realm and brute force is
the State’s prime power.
There is no
justice left in the judiciary,
nor thought and courage in the
legislature, nor skill and
talent in the government. And in
the eloquent words of the leader
of the pious: “The ignorant are
honoured and raised up, while
the learned are silenced.” (Nahj
al-Balaghah)
We know that
you, too, feel compassion for
Iran’s good people, who remain
ensnared in the clutches of the
ogre of tyranny; who have no
smile on their lips, no joy in
their hearts, no bread on their
tables, no learning in their
books, no source of pleasure, no
cure for their grief. What’s
left for them other than a heavy
heart and a tearful eye? The
constabularies have robbed them
of their smiles and the
preachers have robbed them of
their faith. The corrupt have
left them no bread and the
ignorant have torn up their
books. They have nowhere to go
for redress and justice. They
are overburdened with duties and
deficient in rights. Their
leaders bellow night and day
about the importance of justice,
and lecture the world about
benevolence and governance, but
they themselves have filled the
jails with the poor and the
wretched, and infected the land
with duplicity and lies.
Murderers have no fear of being
exposed and thieves can steal in
full freedom. Any word of advice
is said to be voiced by the
enemy and any word of opposition
is said to come from the devil.
They seem to see themselves as
the peacocks of the supernatural
world and everyone else as the
spies of the West. Vices are
seen as virtues and virtues are
seen as vices.
You,
righteous clerics, can be the
smiling face of Islam by acting
against injustice and by
conveying religion’s comforting
message to the exhausted masses,
so that they can see that you
are always on the people’s side;
that you plan to lay no snare
for anyone under the guise of
Islam; and that you have no
personal ambitions.
The
guardian’s lackeys and power’s
eulogists are disdained by the
Creator and disliked by His
servants. But you, the
custodians of religion and the
heirs of the Tradition of the
Lord of the Sent Ones, must
abide by your oath to the
Creator and His servants. For,
this is what’s expected of you;
nothing more and nothing less.
And rest assured that neither
Iran’s Islamism nor its
independence hinge on the
survival of this bunch of sham
rulers, and that supporting
these “tin pot Taliban” will
neither please the nation nor
bring honour to the clergy.
As if the rot
and the tyranny were not enough,
insolent, interfering
Revolutionary Guards have been
creating or crushing religious
authorities at will. They have
conferred religious authority on
a “know-nothing”, who is a
certified madman, so that he can
eulogize the leader and liken
him to a river in paradise. And,
at the other extreme, in the
early days after the current
leader had taken up the post of
guardianship and was putting on
airs and graces as a religious
authority, a true faqih who
advised him against “issuing
fatwas without knowledge” was
made to pay for his courage with
endless hardship. And all of
then pulled your heads into your
shells, grieved the lost
sanctity of the faqihs and
religious authorities, and opted
for silence. Now, you must not
allow your honour to be further
sacrificed for the sake of the
sinister whims of the
Revolutionary Guards. You must
not allow yourselves to be seen,
unwittingly, as the supporters
of religious tyranny.
The
courageous ones in the realm of
the greater jiahd have sharpened
their tongues and attacked the
usurper government. They have
done the masses a service and
gained felicity for themselves.
Now, it is your turn, you who
are silent and unhappy. The
oppressed and the deprived
expect much more from you than
to sit silently, dejected and
enraged; enduring the
admonitions of the tyrants in
public and remonstrating with
the Crusher of Tyrants in
private. Endlessly whispering “I
seek refuge in God” and “there’s
neither might nor strength but
in God” will not get you
anywhere. And entreaties and
pleas have ceased to be
effective. Your silence in the
face of tyrants has made them
more bellicose. Now that you
neither have any say on anything
nor dare oppose anything, the
best thing for you to do is to
emigrate. Embark on the
lesser jihad. They may have
barred you from speaking, but
they haven’t barred you from
leaving.
Granted; it
is a difficult thing to do. But
look past the hardship to the
relief; think of the repose
after the flight; think of the
good and the deliverance of the
masses, who look to you to see
how you conduct yourselves.
Respect and re-read the angels’
words of admonition to those who
endure oppression. “And those
the angels take, while still
they are wrongdoing—the angels
will say, ‘In what circumstances
were you?’ They will say, ‘We
were abased on the earth.’ The
angels will say, ‘But was not
God’s earth wide, so that you
might have emigrated in it?’
(Al-Nisa, 97)
You must act
or else, on Judgement Day,
abased faqihs may incur God’s
wrath, such that the way to
contrition is barred to them and
they are condemned to damnation.
Over the
years, emigration—as a religious
and Koranic recommendation, as a
method of civil protest and as a
way of escaping jail and shaming
the jailers—has become a
recognized element of the code
of conduct of scholars of
religion, and the emigration of
the ulema from Iran to Iraq or
from Iraq to Iran has been
established as a laudable
tradition over the past century.
“The Shah’s colonels”, who watch
over you, take your meek silence
to mean consent and support. The
loud cry of emigration will
break the lock of your ambiguous
silence and will cleanse you of
the shameful suspicion of
surrender.
After a brief
period of stagnation and
inactivity, Najaf’s Shi’i
seminary is now returning to its
thousand-year-old track record
and is thinking of renewed
splendour. Now, Najaf can
liberate Qom. It can welcome any
of the ulema who are living
silently and in fear in Qom and
Mashhad, and allow them to carry
out their religious and
historical mission fearlessly.
Then, unafraid of religious
tyranny’s army of lackeys,
murderers and marauders, and the
so-called nameless (shameless)
soldiers of the Hidden Imam, the
liberated ulema can recount the
tale of Joseph caught in the
clutches of the wolves. They can
speak about both the badness of
tyranny and the goodness of
freedom. And they can experience
practising religiosity in a free
environment, with ample
competition. And they can offer
their innovative ideas [ijtihad]
to those who are hungry for
spirituality. And, of course,
“Iraq and Najaf” are anywhere
where the free-minded can live
safely and speak freely.
Then, the
only ones who will remain at
home will be the guardianship’s
lackeys, the court preachers,
the servants of Satan, “the
religious elders who are bereft
of love” and the lowly beings
who bow down, morning, noon and
night, before the leader, who
pray with their backs to the
qiblah, who associate with
the usurpers and plunge their
hands into the blood of the
usurped, and break their oath to
God.
“… that God
may distinguish the corrupt from
the good, and place the corrupt
one upon the other, and so heap
them up all together, and
put them in hell.” (Al-Anfal,
37)
And the
people, for their part, will be
able to distinguish their
servants from the traitors, to
take back Solomon’s gemstone
from the hands of the devils and
to pull down the ogres from the
thrones of the princes.
“Upon the day
the evildoer shall bite his
hand, saying, ‘Would that I had
taken a way along with the
Messenger! Alas, would that I
had not taken such-and-such for
a friend!’” (Al-Furqan, 27-28)
We know that
power’s footmen, the
guardianship’s lackeys and State
broadcasting’s thought-engineers
have deafened people’s ears and
filled them with foreboding that
if the canopy of the arbitrary
rulers’ mastery ever collapses,
Iran will be conquered by sin
and immorality, on the one hand,
and by foreigners and their
agents, on the other. And that
the world’s only Shi’i State
will fall. But this is no more
than an old lie and a worn-out
trick.
The
villainous system of despotism
is itself the biggest immorality
and sin, It is an evil tree
which attracts a range of
malevolent insects. It is only
the joyous spring of rule by the
people that will put the seal on
this grim autumn of violence and
vice.
Granted; the
times seem to revolve around
criminality and thieves and the
unclean are lying in ambush. But
let the ulema of Islam take
courage and let them rest
assured that Iranians’
nationalist pride, religious
zeal, commitment to the good and
love of their country will never
allow this gemstone to be
entrusted to evildoers; they
will safeguard Iran for
Iranians.
The story of
a Shi’i State and the danger of
its decline, too, is no more
than a ruse and a fairy tale.
There is no resemblance
whatsoever between this State
and the conduct, tradition and
religiosity of the Lord of the
Just, Imam Ali. How can such a
State claim to be modelled on
Ali and his followers? Imam Ali
said on numerous occasions that
“a society in which the weak are
unable to demand their right
from the powerful without
stuttering is an unclean
society”. (Nahj al-Balaghah,
Letter to Malekashtar). And, in
all truth, the system of
theocratic guardianship has
produced nothing but an unclean
society, in which the judiciary
counts for nothing and butchers
count for everything. Today, you
pay with a life for any
criticism. Critics are punished
and eulogists are esteemed.
And, anyway,
does a State’s legitimacy hang
on it being called Shi’i or
Sunni? Legitimacy has only one
central pole and that is
justice; everything else is
secondary. In the words of the
late Ayatollah Montazeri, may he
rest in peace, the Islamic
Republic of Iran is now neither
Islamic nor a republic.
Imagining it to be religious and
Shi’i is a distortion of the
truth and a great injustice to
religion’s way.
And although
the current system of theocratic
guardianship and its irate brand
of Islam have made most Iranians
ashamed of being Muslims, the
smiling, humane, justice- and
learning-loving,
superstition-combating face of
religious intellectualism and
pious clerics are so enchanting
that no one would flee from them
or choose infidelity over faith.
Here, too, that late ayatollah’s
words will serve as our credo:
in the absence of religious
tyranny, Iran will belong to all
Iranians, all citizens will have
equal rights, and anyone from
any ethnic groups will rise and
prosper based on merit.
Nor should
you be afraid of “infidelity’s
assault”. Believers have strong
arguments. Human nature and
history are on their side.
Reason and cause are at their
service. For four centuries now,
the most biting and the most
devastating attacks have been
made and are being made on
religion in the West, but the
lights are still burning
brightly in the churches, the
wheels of religion continue to
turn, thoughtful religiosity is
thriving and learned books on
exegesis and on the history and
philosophy of religion are being
published far more and far
better than in Iran. Certainly,
the clergy no longer runs the
affairs of the State; nor do
they pitch the canopy of the
State on the pillar of religion.
Religion has taken up its
rightful place; not at the head
of things and not at the bottom
of things. To the extent that
science, art, philosophy and
modern criticism allow, people
believe in and are committed to
religion. Infidels persist in
their infidelity and believers
persist in their faith. And,
ultimately, that which is
lasting will endure and that
which is ephemeral will
disappear like foam on a wave.
The
springtime of rule by the people
and the autumn of arbitrary rule
are our historical dispositions,
and, tomorrow, when the people’s
Judgement Day is entrenched,
when the post-theocratic State
arrives in full splendour, when
the sun of rule by the people
rises, when the crowns fall from
the heads of the wicked, when we
rejoice the crumbling of
religious tyranny, when the
victims of rot and tyranny place
the chains on the feet of the
chain-makers and expose the
collusion between the piety
peddlers and the proponents of
theocratic guardianship, as well
as the complicity between the
triangle of the truncheon, lucre
and the worry bead, then, the
arbitrary rulers and their
lackeys will hang their heads in
shame.
And a
postscript for the devout and
the good-hearted:
The ruling
usurpers have themselves
infested our land with tyranny
(which is the biggest of
cardinal sins) and have tied the
people’s hands and feet with the
chain of injustice. Then, their
wicked preachers have spread the
idea that an earthquake is on
the way and that the “low-cut
blouses of attractive ladies”
will gash the earth and produce
tremors. And the piety peddlers
have spread their wares and are
seeking to milk this idea for
all its worth. They can see the
earthquake that is ripping
asunder the pillars of
theocratic guardianship but try
to hide it; instead, they rant
and rave about nature’s
tremors and people’s
imaginary sins.
But history
does not reveal any occasion on
which the Prophet, peace be upon
him, scared the people about
possible earthquakes. Nor did he
teach people a special prayer
against earthquakes! Instead,
religious narratives testify
that what the Prophet did fear
and what he wanted his followers
to fear was “the mastery of
merciless rulers”. And he hardly
ever left a gathering without
uttering the following prayer: “Dear
God, put enough fear in our
hearts that we refrain from sin…
And do not allow people who have
no mercy to gain mastery over us”.
In other words, in the
inward-seeing eyes of this great
teacher of piety and monotheism,
the domination of oppressors was
a hundred times more frightening
than an earthquake. And, in
fact, if we should pray to God
for anything, it is precisely
for the fall of our merciless
rulers; rulers who have put the
Mongols and the Taliban to shame
with their killings, usurpation,
rape, pillage, plunder,
cheating, duplicity, calumny,
torture and hangings.
Let all
worshippers and everyone who
prays—wherever they may be—let
loose the arrows of their
prayers and, in proud obedience
to the noble Prophet, engrave
these words on their hearts and
on their tongues. And, openly or
in secret, in the daytime or at
night, at home or in the
streets, in their prayers and
entreaties, in any dialect or
language, ask most merciful God
to rid our poor nation of mean
and merciless rulers and to
bring back joy to people’s
tearful eyes and grieving
hearts.
Poets,
artists and calligraphers, too,
must use their skills and
inscribe these blessed words on
canvases and pages, on walls and
on fences, in the media and on
computers, with embellishments
and adornments, to gladden the
hearts of the oppressed and to
demoralize the oppressors.
May 2010
Abdulkarim
Soroush
**Translated
from the Persian by Nilou
Mobasser
|