۹ فروردین ۱۴۰۳ |۱۸ رمضان ۱۴۴۵ | Mar 28, 2024
Imam Khomeini was the Imam of transformation

All praise is due to Allah, the Lord of the Worlds, and peace and greetings be upon our Master and Prophet, Ab-al-Qassem Al-Mustafa Muhammad, and upon his pure, immaculate and infallible household, especially the one remaining with Allah on earth

Hawzah News Agency - (Tehran - Iran) - The following is the full text of a televised speech delivered on June 3, 2020, by Ayatollah Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution, on the 31st demise anniversary of Imam Khomeini (greetings be upon him).

In the Name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful

All praise is due to Allah, the Lord of the Worlds, and peace and greetings be upon our Master and Prophet, Ab-al-Qassem Al-Mustafa Muhammad, and upon his pure, immaculate and infallible household, especially the one remaining with Allah on earth

Today, the commemoration anniversary of our magnanimous Imam’s demise is held in a different way than usual. However, it is not important how the ceremony is conducted, what is important is speaking about our magnanimous Imam, which is what we need for our country in the present time and in the future. After the passage of many years from his physical departure and demise, our magnanimous Imam is and should remain, alive. We should benefit from his presence, his spirituality, his thoughts and his guidelines.

Imam’s characteristics: being an advocate and a cause of transformation

Today, I wish to speak about an important quality of our magnanimous Imam. Of course, he was a comprehensive personality that had many outstanding qualities. The quality that I wish to speak about today is one of his most important and prominent qualities: having a spirit of advocating and bringing about transformation.

By nature, Imam was a person who advocated and who brought about transformation. As for bringing about transformation, his role was not confined to being a mere teacher and instructor, rather he played the role of a commander active on the field and leading in the true sense of the word. He brought about the greatest transformations in his era which covered numerous areas and fields. I would like to mention some of them today:

First of all, he had the spirit of advocating transformation since long ago. This was not something that emerged in him in the beginning of the Islamic movement in the year 1341. Since his youth, he was an advocate of transformation. An evidence for this is the piece he wrote at the office of the late Vaziri-Yazdi in his youth – when he was in his thirties. Later on, the late Vaziri-Yazdi showed me the same writing. I have seen it published and many people have access to it today. In that essay, he quotes this holy ayah: “I admonish you on one point: that you do stand up before Allah, in pairs or singly” [The Holy Quran, 34: 46]. This ayah invites the masses of people to rise for the sake of God. He had such a mentality. After that, he put his idea into practice and as I mentioned, he carried out a transformation. He entered the arena of transformation in action, not just in words and in commands. The changes that he brought about included exerting psychological influence on a group of young seminarians in Qom – I will expand on this issue later on – and urging the masses of the Iranian nation into action.

The psychological revolution that Imam created in the clergy’s hearts

The Qom issue revolves around his ethics classes. Before the advent of the Islamic movement, he used to teach ethics, apart from fiqh and usul and rational sciences, in Qom for years. He would hold classes on ethics. Of course, when I went to Qom, those classes had ended, but those who had participated in them recounted that – he had a class once a week at Feyziah School where youth would gather together to participate in his classes – when he began to speak, the whole class would be deeply moved. He would deeply move hearts. Of course, I saw this quality of Imam in his fiqh and usul classes as well. When he gave moral lessons in the middle of his fiqh and usul courses, the clergy would cry and shed tears. When he had a moral discussion, the clergy would weep. His words were touching and he possessed the talent to revolutionize hearts.

This was the method of prophets as well. Prophets also began their mission by revolutionizing people.. The Commander of the Faithful says, “…To fulfil the pledges of His creation, to recall to them His bounties, to exhort them by preaching, to unveil before them the hidden virtues of wisdom and show them the signs of His Omnipotence” [Nahjul Balaghah, Sermon 1]. “To fulfill the pledges of His creation” means that prophets awakened people’s hidden nature which acted as a force to guide their actions and their moves. Imam began his movement like this as well. Of course, I cannot say for sure that he held those classes in order to launch a great Islamic movement later on. I do not know this, but what is certain is that our magnanimous Imam’s method was to awaken spiritual instincts and human nature by teaching moral lessons, giving words of advice and keeping hearts prepared. This was how he began his movement which resulted in bringing about a transformation at a national level. He transformed the Iranian nation, in the true sense of the word, whether during the time of revolutionary activities or after the victory of the Revolution. I will cite some examples of these transformations later on.

Notice that his transformation addressed the whole Iranian nation. Before the beginning of Imam’s revolutionary movement, there were some political activities in Iran. There were different groups who had been fighting for tens of years, but their sphere of influence was confined to a few students. They could at most influence 100, 150 students and organize them for a small demonstration. However, Imam did not want to focus on a small group of people with a particular profession, rather he wanted to address the whole Iranian nation. A nation is like an ocean. Not everyone can move an ocean. You can do something to create waves in a pool of water, but doing so in an ocean is a gigantic task. A nation is like an ocean and Imam managed to move it. He succeeded in carrying out a transformation.

Transforming the people’s passivity and submissiveness

One transformation was changing the nation’s passivity and submissiveness. In my youth, during the time when the movement began to take shape, the Iranian nation was a nation that was not preoccupied with its fundamental issues. They had given up and they were passive. They did not have an opinion about their personal lives. There was no trace of dynamism, active presence and insistence, on big and important issues, in the behavior and conduct of our people. However, Imam aroused these qualities in the people. He turned the same submissive and passive nation into a determined nation that pursued its demands. His inspiring, stirring and stimulating speeches moved the people in a way that they turned into a people with demands. An example of this pursuance of demands is the events of the year 1341 – when the Islamic movement started – during which time, the people held massive demonstrations in different cities which ended in the events of the 15th of Khordad. On the 15th of Khordad, despite a large-scale massacre, the regime could not extinguish the movement. And the people continued to stage uprisings until the end. That was an astonishing transformation that had been masterminded by Imam.

Changing the people’s outlook and giving them a sense of dignity and national confidence

Another transformation was changing the people’s outlook towards themselves and their society. The Iranian nation used to have a feeling of humiliation. That one can overcome the will of powers and superpowers would have never crossed anyone’s mind. This was not particular to the will of global powers. The people could not imagine, in any way, that they could overcome the will of domestic powers and even the will of such and such a policeman or security agent. They could not think of overcoming those who had bitter and dangerous whims. Therefore, they had a feeling of humiliation and incapability.

Imam turned that into a sense of dignity and national confidence. He liberated the people from the thought of considering dictatorship as a natural phenomenon. At that time, people had such a notion. In those days, we used to think that the will of the ruler at the top is above everyone else’s will. We used to consider it a natural and normal fact. He turned the people into individuals who were able to determine their own government. The people’s slogan during revolutionary activities was Islamic system, Islamic government, Islamic Republic. The people determined what they wanted and they had demands. Later on, they chose those responsible through various elections. In other words, the feeling of humiliation that existed in the people changed into a sense of dignity and national confidence.

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