| Benefiting from Ashura |
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| Tuesday, 15 February 2005 | |
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Page 5 of 6 As for the qualitative side, we must attain the necessary administrative and other skills to run these institutions in an organised and lasting manner so that the cultural institutions such as the Husseiniyas and mosques can be a source of thought and awareness including the scientific analysis of the events of Karbala and elsewhere, and linking the past to the present and the future. Without this, society will not be able to combat the dangers that surround it. The intellectual level of the pulpit must be deep so that the youth in particular can be protected from deviancy when it raises its ugly head. Often, it is a low intellectual level that is the cause of the deviancy of the youth and takes them to prisons and detention centres, and to the grave or exile. Hence, those who host gatherings and administrators must exhort the preachers to deliver the best possible psychological, social, historical, doctrinal, and other analyses. The speakers best equipped to carry out this task must be invited and their lectures must be recorded and published and distributed amongst the people to stir their emotions and direct them towards the good and the right and towards reform and so that a wealth of information is available in all fields and aspects. Islam is a world religion for the rescue of all people from darkness. It is not the religion of one thousand million Muslims only. However, this calls for great a deal of support. Is it not a source of regret that there are no more than one hundred Muslim missionaries working outside Islamic countries, whereas statistics show that the number of Christian missionaries in Africa is ten thousand and in Asia ninety thousand all equipped with all the aids and technology they need and whose task is to convert the Asians and Africans to Christianity? They have succeeded in converting tens of millions in these two continents. If we, then, were to take the month of Muharram as a starting point for these three tasks, we will have fulfilled what is incumbent upon us as far as possible, as well as bringing Muslims from slavery to mastery and many non-Muslims from the darkness to the light. This is in reality a world Islamic movement not merely a local or territorial one, which has begun to adopt these three tasks. Our condition today is as that of the person yawning as he is newly awakened from a long sleep. However, this is a sign of the beginning of an awakening rather than a preparation for sleep. The Muslims have slept long enough so that their lands have been divided up, their wealth plundered, their honour torn, and their blood spilt. Illegal laws have been placed over them and chaos, ignorance, illness, poverty, enmity and sectarianism reign. Now, thanks be to Allah, they have begun to rise and they are able to make a programme for this rising out of these three aforementioned tasks and starting from this sacred month of Muharram so they might reach their lofty goal if Allah wills. Among that which Ayatullah Shirazi strongly recommends as part of this programme is: |