Note
Forty years have passed — forty years…
A precious and cherished jewel was right there, all around us, yet we were heedless of it and deprived of its blessing. A radiant jewel from the limpid ocean of the Wise Qur’an, a luminous jewel of the very substance of the Book of Light — for forty years it gathered dust, and its absence pained a people thirsting for the teachings of the Qur’an and the Ahl al-Bayt. A jewel without peer or match, named A General Outline of Islamic Thought in the Qur’an.
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In the closing days of the summer of 1353 (1974), the prayer leader of a small, half-finished mosque — the Mosque of Imam Hasan al-Mujtaba, at the far end of the Sarshur Bazaar in Mashhad — with the arrival of the month of Ramadan, draws up a new program for his mosque. Sayyid 'Ali Khamene’i, thirty-five years old, with his tall stature and his penetrating eyes, resolves that every day of the blessed month, after the noon and afternoon prayers, he will stand behind the lectern with the Qur’an in hand and deliver a lecture for one hour, on the subject of A General Outline of Islamic Thought in the Qur’an.
With the start of these sessions, the city of Mashhad is thrown into a stir. In the final days of summer — at the hour of the noon prayer, when the city normally empties out and people give themselves over to a few hours of rest — in one corner of the city an extraordinary bustle is afoot. People, old and young, women and men, from near and far, in the searing heat of the noon hours, with the parched tongues of those who are fasting, are on the move toward the Mosque of Imam Hasan. All of them eagerly make their way to this mosque so that they may drink deeply from the blessing-laden table of teachings that the young sayyid has spread out for them in the best month of God, and quench their thirst.
Each day the number of listeners to this young cleric grows, and his gathering becomes more crowded. Soon there is no longer even any room to sit in the very large garage behind the mosque. When you cast your eyes about, you see that people of every class are seated there: seminary student, university student, schoolchild, tradesman, local resident, woman, man — and most of them young. The medical students have hired a bus to bring them each day from the university to the prayer and then take them back after the session.
In the session of Sayyid 'Ali Aqa-yi Khamene’i, everything is fresh and new. Before the session begins, each person is handed a mimeographed sheet on which a summary of the session’s discussion has been written. The lecturer, contrary to custom, does not sit on the pulpit (minbar); he stands behind the lectern and each day, with a fasting tongue, for more than an hour, speaks with fervor and in a loud voice. After the lecture, a Qur’an reciter sits in a place that has been prepared for him atop the pulpit and recites — in a beautiful voice and tone — the verses that were taken up in that session’s discourse. The mosque’s session bears more resemblance to a classroom lesson than to an ordinary lecture.
These are years — years of suffocation, despotism, and the dictatorship of the Pahlavi regime; black years of torture and of killing under torture. In these dark years — during which Imam Khomeini was living in exile — it was impossible, in any religious gathering, to utter the slightest word about, or even allude to, the sensitive matters of the regime of the Taghut. SAVAK is at the height of its power and has informers everywhere. Reciting the verses pertaining to jihad and struggle is a crime, and if a lecturer mentions the name of the Children of Israel in a verse and makes any allusion to Israel, his gathering is shut down and he himself is imprisoned. For all that, the young cleric of the Mosque of Imam Hasan is a veteran of the struggle. He knows how to conduct the lecture-session so as not to be caught by SAVAK’s agents. With the utmost shrewdness and discernment, he opens a passageway for conveying the light of God’s word to a people kept far from the Qur’an. Mr. Khamene’i, with the greatest precision and astuteness, sets forth the entire body of Islamic beliefs in the language of the Qur’an in such a way that the people — beyond rebuilding their own beliefs upon the foundation of the teachings of the Qur’an — also begin to think about bringing an Islamic society into being! The young sayyid begins his discussions with Faith, carries them on to Tawhid, and then, by taking up Prophethood and Wilayah — and with the ending of the month of Ramadan — brings this pure and matchless course on belief to its conclusion. In these sessions the young sayyid was able, by sowing the seed of conscious Faith in the hearts and souls of the youth of Mashhad, to reconcile them with the Qur’an — and to draw the cherished Qur’an out of the estrangement of the mantelpiece niches, the marriage-contract spreads, and the funeral gatherings, and to place it in the hands of the young.
For years on end, certain people who had no correct understanding of religion had, with their rigid notions, kept the people away from the Qur’an under various pretexts and excuses — for instance, that understanding the Qur’an is not the business of ordinary people, and that the Qur’an should be read only in hope of its reward, and other such talk; talk that the governments welcomed. But Sayyid 'Ali Aqa-yi Khamene’i regarded these things either as the enemy’s plot or as the misunderstandings of the elite. He himself was enraptured by the Qur’an, a lover of the Qur’an, a devotee of the Qur’an, and he had girded himself to put an end to the Qur’an’s neglected estrangement. Firm and steadfast, with warm and captivating speech, he would take the Qur’an in hand, stand behind the lectern, and devote his entire being to the words of God. He wanted to revive pure Islamic thought once more, from the heart of the purest of divine texts, and to bring the Qur’an back into the hearts and the conduct of a Muslim people.
In the end, a few months after the sessions of the General Outline came to an end at the Mosque of Imam Hasan, and following the sessions explicating the Nahj al-Balagha, Sayyid 'Ali Aqa-yi Khamene’i is arrested and taken off to the capital of oppression; he is sent to one of the most terrifying torture-chambers of that era of the world: the "Joint Committee Against Sabotage."
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Now forty years have passed since that unforgettable month of Ramadan, and in these forty years that ocean of Qur’anic teachings has remained only in the breasts of those same few thousand Mashhadi listeners, and the rest of the thirsting were deprived of it. In these forty years, of those pure Qur’anic teachings there remained only a report and a trace — just enough that we might be certain they had once existed — and only a small booklet bearing the name A General Outline of Islamic Thought in the Qur’an.
Yes! Forty years were lost and gone. But thanks and praise be to God all the same that at last, after the passing of all these years, the dust has been lifted from this treasure-hoard, and that luminous jewel has lifted its head and come into view. Al-hamdu lillah…
A forty-year-old vintage has raised its dignity and its allure, while from every one of its words there rains down freshness and youth. Let us open our arms to this dear guest who has remained on the road for forty years. The treasure-hoard A General Outline of Islamic Thought in the Qur’an has reached us out of the dark, black years of utter suffocation — for today, for tomorrow, and for the tomorrows to come — so that it may illuminate hearts. Alas for the years that have gone by…
The Booklet A General Outline of Islamic Thought in the Qur’an
A General Outline of Islamic Thought in the Qur’an was the fifth written work of His Eminence Ayatollah Khamene’i, published before the Revolution, in the year 1354 (1975).
This booklet was a collection of those very mimeographs that had been handed out to those present at the daily Ramadan sessions at the Mosque of Imam Hasan in 1353 (1974) — together with a preface that the author himself had written upon it before publication. A preface in which the necessity and the indispensability of presenting a general outline of Islamic thought grounded in the Qur’an are well expressed, and its aims and fruits are mentioned and its accomplishments explained to the reader.
What is striking is that the text of this very booklet, for all its brevity and concision, set the individual and the social dimensions of religion squarely side by side and offered a fresh and original reading of the Qur’an. A booklet outwardly brief, yet with a profound content.
In addition to this booklet, after the Revolution, the content of six of the twenty-eight sessions of this collection was published in the form of a pamphlet titled Wilayat by the Islamic Republic Party in the year 1360 (1981); it was never reprinted and is not readily available.
How Sahba Came to Obtain the Tapes of the Sessions
For a long time, gaining access to the content of these sessions was one of our heart’s wishes and prayers — until one day we saw an interview with Mr. Murtada Sadat-Fatimi about his Qur’anic activity before the Revolution, and about a tape-sales center that he had had on Sanabad Street in Mashhad. He is among the country’s distinguished Qur’an reciters and masters who, in the period before the Revolution, were among the companions, intimates, and trusted associates of the Supreme Leader, and who after the Revolution likewise continue to enjoy his attention and favor.
At one point in the interview Mr. Sadat-Fatimi had said that at that time he had been in charge of the audio recording of the General Outline sessions. We did not hesitate; we went to Mashhad and presented ourselves before him. We brought up his interview and asked about the audio of the General Outline sessions. He told us that the audio of all the sessions had been recorded, that the book A General Outline of Islamic Thought had also been published, and that one could obtain the content of the sessions from that book. When we put it to him that the book contained only the content of the mimeographs and was empty of the text of the sessions themselves, he was astonished and lamented. We asked him whether he still had the tapes. The answer was yes — but the reels, which were the original source-documents themselves, had gone to the central archive holding the documents pertaining to the author, and he had only a single copy on a cassette tape.
Mr. Sadat-Fatimi, without any expectation in return, placed those tapes at our disposal, and we for our part were never able to thank him as we ought to have. He humbly did the very same thing that had been entrusted to him forty years before: distributing and reproducing the tapes for trusted associates. It was as though, after long years, once again someone had come from afar to the center for distributing religious tapes in order to procure Mr. Khamene’i’s tapes — and he did the very same thing he used to do in the years before the Revolution. May God preserve his luminous, Qur’anic being.
Because the tapes had been recorded over from the reels, they had certain defects: for example, they begin from the middle of the discussion rather than from the start of the session; or they generally end at the conclusion of the discussion and do not include the recitation of the Qur’an and the supplication of the author — for the sessions generally ran longer than an hour.
One option was to wait in the hope of gaining access to the reel tape — a thing all but remote and beyond possibility. After careful study of the content of the sessions, we reached the conclusion that nothing of the content had been lost, save to the extent of one or two percent. We therefore decided to publish the book, so that whenever, at any time, we found new audio bearing upon the content of the sessions, we might add it to the book.
The Value and Standing of the Book
The value of this book’s content will become ever more apparent to the reader through careful study, review, repeated reading, and supplementary reading. Here, by briefly setting out the book’s distinguishing features, we make the esteemed reader more keenly aware of the importance of publishing and studying it, so that — being conscious of the value of the book’s content — he may set aside suitable and sufficient time to study it, and apply himself to it with precision and keen attention.
The present book is a work unique in its correct and complete presentation of Islamic thought. This book differs from the numerous books that have been written under the title of Islamic Thought or Principles of Belief. Those books treat the doctrinal principles of religion largely as mental concepts, and set themselves to proving the correctness of these principles and answering the doubts that have been raised. In contrast to those books, A General Outline of Islamic Thought in the Qur’an introduces the essential matters of religion in a manner that engenders commitment. Hence the first feature is precisely this: that this book is not of the kind of theological (kalami) works that take up the course of proof and refutation.
The second feature of the book is its presentation of a general picture of Islamic thought to the whole world — not only to Muslims, but to each and every human being, whether a monotheist or not. Anyone, with any idea or way of thinking, can be an addressee of this book, because the course of the discussion and the points presented in the book are so logical and so far removed from any kind of bigotry that they will meet with the approval of every sound mind.
The third feature of the book is that in it a fresh definition of religion is given to the reader. A definition that does not regard religion as merely a collection of separate intellectual or practical principles, but rather defines it as a unified whole whose parts have been set side by side in a particular order.
This book is an eloquent testament to the efforts of His Eminence Ayatollah Khamene’i toward the revival of Islamic thought — in those years when the concepts of religion had been emptied of their true meanings and nothing remained of them but a husk. Although the movements and the words of certain Islamic thinkers had once again turned attention toward Islam and its profound concepts, what was lacking — or altogether absent — was a comprehensive outline of religion. An outline that could fill the intellectual void of Muslims in the face of the hollow, empty human schools of thought, and prepare the ground for the penetration of Islam among societies and free-thinking people.
His Eminence Imam Khomeini[1] was assuredly the reviver of Islam in this age. With the start of the Imam’s uprising, the name of Islam was once again on everyone’s lips, and the dormant hearts of the Muslims were awakened. After the Imam’s exile, this fervor and ardor that had been kindled became, for the Imam’s struggling disciples, a fertile ground for deep intellectual and faith-based work — for building a firm substructure of the pure thought of Muhammadan Islam.
The presentation of such an outline was not feasible save from a thinker who was aware and responsible, familiar with the concepts of the Qur’an and conscious of the purpose and the destination of religion. His Eminence Ayatollah Khamene’i — sensing this void and need in society, and with mastery over the works of Islamic thinkers and through association with the time-conscious scholars of the age such as the martyr Mutahhari, and with command over and devotion to the Qur’an — set forth the discussions of A General Outline of Islamic Thought in the Qur’an in the blessed month of Ramadan; discussions that, owing to their presentation of a comprehensive view of monotheistic thought and their consideration of the various dimensions of human life, are a gateway for entering the domain of Islamic thought. This is the fourth feature of this book.
The fifth feature of the book is its reflection of his fresh and original view of religious concepts. Although the words of the Qur’an are words that have reached the listener’s ear time and again, in his speech they take on a fresh life; a view that grants new dimensions to religious concepts — and that, in those days, came in for criticism:
"A certain group in Mashhad raised an uproar against me, asking why so-and-so had said these things under the word 'Wilayat' — whereas this was not a denial of the wilayat that they used to speak of. They said wilayat means love. Well, we accept the love of the Imams; wilayat means belief in the Imamate of 'Ali (peace be upon him) — that we did accept. There were certain things, over and above these, that we had discovered in the word 'wilayat.' I gathered together the verses of wilayat in the Qur’an — the verses in which the word 'wilayat' is used; for instance, imagine,
and many verses; from these verses I put forward, I set out, a new interpretation of the word 'wilayat.' Well, this ought to have been deemed a thing of value. In the field of medicine, if someone comes along and — suppose — puts forward a new idea about typhoid that adds to the previous knowledge, how do they treat him? Well, they honor him, they show him respect, they thank him. In religious matters, if a new word was put forward, if a fresh interpretation was set out on some question — even though it did not impugn the words of the past, simply by virtue of being new — a certain group would set about opposing it; and this state of affairs still persists in a certain group even now."[3]
The sixth feature of the book is the conformity of its discussions with the political-militant conduct (sirah) of the Imams (peace be upon them) for the establishment of Islamic governance. His view of the life of the Imams — gathered in the collection of episodes The 250-Year-Old Person — had led him, in the arena of struggle, always to keep three points in mind: first, expounding Islam in its correct form; second, speaking of the Islamic society and the 'Alawi government; and third, speaking of the ruler of the Islamic society and directing people to the actual exemplar. This book is an example of his shrewd manner of struggle in that dark era. "Under the former regime, at times when things became very hard for us and I was lecturing at the Mosque of Karamat or the Mosque of Imam Hasan in Mashhad, a point that I thought it would be severely harmful for the system and the regime for people to know, I would put forward without making the slightest allusion to the apparatus. Nor did I make any taunt or innuendo whatsoever against the apparatus. For instance, suppose that at that time we would say 'the 'Alawi government.' If we said 'Islamic government,' they would grow sensitive. We would say 'the 'Alawi order' or 'the 'Alawi government.' My discussions in those days were full of such expressions. It was as though we were slipping a crowbar under the root of the apparatus so as to wrench it out with a single heave. And the apparatus was not even aware of it, because it did not strike its trunk at all."[4]
The seventh feature of the book is its special attention to the chief affliction of human and Muslim societies — namely, the weakness of faith. By plunging deep into various verses of the Qur’an, he introduces the reality of Faith to his audience and explains that this conscious, commitment-bearing belief, if it is correctly known, is like the spirit that sets the body in motion: it brings beliefs onto the stage of life and human gatherings, and then this Faith becomes a maker of human beings and a maker of society.
The eighth feature of the book is the unity-engendering character of its discussions for the Islamic Ummah. The author at that time, with the insight he possessed, clearly perceived the hidden hands of colonialism at work in sowing discord among the Islamic Ummah; therefore, by relying upon the fundamental doctrinal principles of Islam, such as Tawhid, and by attending carefully to their dimensions, he prepared the ground for the unity of the Islamic Ummah in the face of the Taghuts of the age.
The author’s effort and striving to teach his audience the method of pondering (tadabbur) and going deep into the Qur’an is the ninth feature of the book. He would generally select a group of verses for his discussions and, while translating the verses, would encourage his audience to find the relation of the verses with one another. As he translated and explained the verses, he advanced step by step alongside his audience and impelled them to reflect upon and discover the connection among the verses. And by the interpretation that he offered of the verses, he created in his audience a fresh view toward the Qur’an.
The tenth feature of the book is His Eminence Ayatollah Khamene’i’s particular attention to the young. What emerges from his words in this series of lessons is that the principal addressees of these sessions are generally the young. "When I look at you dear young university students, I am reminded of the Mosque of Karamat and the Mosque of Imam Hasan al-Mujtaba; for there too these same people — these same people of you, of thirty-five years ago — would sit, and the exegesis of the Qur’an, the exegesis of the Nahj al-Balagha, and the foundations of the Islamic uprising were debated and discussed, written down and spoken. We got beaten for it too — both you got beaten, and we got beaten. The tyrannical apparatus of the Taghut could not, in those days, tolerate a seminary student sitting with a gathering of university students and speaking of religion — especially since our student gathering in those days was also a warm gathering; it was a populous and densely packed gathering. To be sure, these crowds that you see today, after the Revolution, formed nowhere and on no occasion before the Revolution; but compared to the sessions and assemblies of those days, perhaps no assembly in the country — no student assembly — possessed the unity, the uniformity, and the density of the assembly at the Mosque of Imam Hasan or the Mosque of Karamat, where I would give exegesis lessons for the students."[5]
Beyond all the unique features that have been mentioned, the importance of this book among the author’s works lies in two respects:
The first respect is that the content of these sessions, from beginning to end, is all arranged according to the author’s own view. From the selection of the title A General Outline of Islamic Thought in the Qur’an for the collection of sessions and for the booklet that was published, to the ordering of the sections of Faith, Tawhid, Prophethood, and Wilayat, the selection of a title for each session, the manner of entering into and exiting from a discussion, the selection of verses, and so on — all of it was according to his own view.
The second respect is that one may say there is no essential and important topic that has not been touched upon in this collection. More important than this is that this outline is, in truth, an expression of the author’s intellectual system. In the course of these sessions, he has set forth the foundations of his own intellectual system, drawn from the verses of the Qur’an and the conduct of the Imams. The truth of this claim becomes more evident when, with a careful eye, we examine the author’s words and orientations across these years. No general and fundamental line is to be found that does not have its root in this delineated system. Even the verses taken up in this series of sessions are among the verses that he ordinarily employs in his addresses. Hence the reader, by studying the present book, has taken an important step toward becoming acquainted with the author’s intellectual system.
"A few years ago I had gone to Mashhad; one of our old friends — who has been very much present at our private and public discussions, and whom I still see a great deal — gave me a tape and said, please, listen to this tape just as you are, sitting in the car. I said, very well. I put on the tape, and I saw that he had searched through my lectures of long-ago periods and had selected from each a piece in which there is the image of the future, the promise of the future, and the 'Alawi government — and he wishes to ask me: do you still have that same image in mind even now? Of course, his objection did not hold. Afterward I saw him in person and told him this objection does not hold. Even now, if I wanted to speak in that station, I would say the very same things, and my word has not changed.
I once held continuous sessions of lectures, thirty in all, for a month of Ramadan at the Mosque of Imam Hasan in Mashhad. At that time little importance was attached to recording lectures; but, exceptionally, all thirty of these lectures were recorded. These lectures are a fine source for catching me out! In those lectures, Tawhid, Imamate, Wilayat, Prophethood, and other fundamental topics are discussed — which even now I affirm. These were the intellectual foundations for bringing an Islamic system into being; although at that time we were not hopeful that an Islamic system would be realized in six or seven years' time. We would say that even if it is not brought about for another fifty years, in the end these are its intellectual foundations. That work was about giving direction to the thought of the young generation of those days."[6]
The Style of the Book’s Arrangement
While preserving the order of the sessions in the book, the course of the presentation of the material within a single session, the tone of the author’s speech, the material unrelated to the content within the sessions, and the inclusion of the mimeographs of that time — we have endeavored to make the content of the work itself convey the serial nature of the sessions, their style, the atmosphere of the sessions, the limited facilities, and the venue where the sessions were held.
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In arranging the content of this book, several things have been done:
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The main body of the book has taken shape from the setting side by side of the content of the sessions. The book has four main sections, named Faith, Tawhid, Prophethood, and Wilayat, beneath each of which the related sessions appear. To preserve the independent identity of the sessions, the session title and the date of the session’s holding have been inserted at the beginning of each session. The end of each session, too, has been marked by the placement of that session’s mimeograph.
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To preserve the flow of each session’s content, in the manner that the author had expressed it, we have refrained from breaking up his words and inserting subheadings. Thus the reader keenly senses the flow of a single session’s content.
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In most of the cassette tapes of the sessions, the opening sentences of the session were not recorded. In the audio of one or two sessions, the author began the session with the recitation of a few selected verses of that session. We too, in order that all the sessions might have a uniform opening, in light of the author’s method of reciting verses in those two sessions, have begun the sessions with verses of the Qur’an; but since we did not wish the reader to imagine that the author had recited these verses, the verses have been set in a form distinct from the body text.
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The tone of Ayatollah Khamene’i’s speech in the General Outline sessions of the year '53 differs in certain respects from the manner and tone of the author’s speech during the period of his Leadership. We for our part resolved to arrange the book in such a way that his tone would be conveyed to the reader. His tone of speech in those years is the tone of a revolutionary orator who, with great fervor and ardor, stands behind the lectern and speaks to a gathering of the young. His speech is warm and captivating, and his words are fresh and engaging. We therefore made our every effort, by inserting precise editorial marks alongside smoothing out the text, to convey the author’s tone of speech to the reader in the best possible way.
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Another thing that helps in conveying the atmosphere of the session and the circumstances of that period is the incidental material that the author expressed in the midst of his talks. Preserving this material within the main discussion causes interruptions and, in some cases, the losing of the thread of speech. On the other hand, in some cases the author touched upon points that are pleasant for the reader to hear and that make him aware, to some degree, of the circumstances of that period. To include this material, we have set it in a different typeface, within parentheses. The reader of the book is free to read these portions or to pass over them.
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Another of the book’s components is its mimeographs, which were handed out to those present at the beginning of each session. We have placed images of them at the end of the relevant session. After writing the material pertaining to the mimeographs, the author would give it to a person so that the material would first be written out in fine calligraphy and then mimeographed from that sheet. The style and the script of the writing of the mimeographs indicate that more than one person wrote these mimeographs. It was by God’s grace that, in the course of the project, we found seventeen of those mimeographs. Taking these mimeographs as a model — in terms of script and appearance — and using the text of the session summaries in the booklet A General Outline of Islamic Thought, we reconstructed ten more mimeographs and placed them at the end of the relevant sessions. The errors present in the mimeographs — especially in the verses — were also corrected.
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The main body of the book and its flow of content took shape through the arranging of the sessions side by side; but we felt it a pity not to include in this book the preface that the author wrote for the publication of the collection of mimeographs. Anyone who has read that preface will, with a glance at this book, confirm that the author’s preface was, more than it suited the case of that booklet, set down in writing for these sessions and the content expounded in them.
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Since the verses of the text are constantly broken up and repeated, or another verse is introduced amid them as a corroborating example, the reader may run into difficulty in correctly identifying the verses. To solve the problem: first, the verses of the Qur’an have been set in a different typeface; second, when the author reads the first portion of a group of verses for translation and explanation, the citation for that group of verses appears in the footnote. In this case, a footnote has been inserted only for those verses that, in between, have been recited from somewhere else. So that the narrations may be distinguished by their Arabic phrasing and terminology, they have been set in «» and in an Arabic font. Because there is an index of narrations at the end of the book, we have refrained from inserting their citations on the pages, and have referred the reader to the index merely by the mention of a number.
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At the end of the book there are two indexes: the index of verses and the index of narrations. The index of verses comprises the collection of verses that are cited in the text of the book. The verses are arranged in order of surah and verse number. In these sessions, the author recited more than three hundred verses. Owing to the observance of brevity and the mention of the meaning of the verses in the text of the session and in the mimeographs, the repeated mention of the meaning of the verses in the index has been avoided. In this index, the portions of a verse that the author recited are in black, and the portions that were not recited are in gray. This manner of presentation provides a context and a ground for the reader’s greater acquaintance and intimacy with the Qur’anic foundations of the topics taken up and the key verses in the thought of the Supreme Leader.
In the index of narrations, the order in which the hadiths are placed is, first, according to the order of the Infallibles, and, in the second stage, according to the page number of the book. The Arabic texts that are not a narration from an Infallible but describe a historical event are not in this index, and their citation has been inserted as a footnote in the main text of the book.
We also thank the esteemed masters, Messrs. Ghulam-Rida Khalaj and Mas’ud Najabati, who undertook the labor of the calligraphy of the book’s Bismillah and the design of the book’s emblem.
If someone takes a broad and deep look at the span of the luminous life of His Eminence Ayatollah Khamene’i — and especially at the period of his Leadership — and reflects upon the root of his orientations and actions, and searches for this root in his own words, he will find one of the most prominent and most effective roots to be "the verses of the Holy Qur’an."
The bond of His Eminence with the Qur’an, although it goes back to childhood and to the foot of his mother’s Qur’anic tales and his learning of the 'amma-juz' [the thirtieth part of the Qur’an] in the maktab-khanah [traditional schoolhouse], very soon turns into a bond of affection, of knowledge, and of practical application, and day by day its depth and effect increase. The "movement of return to the Qur’an" first occurs within His Eminence the Master himself, and the Qur’an becomes the most important and most practically useful road-map and the most reliable guide, illuminating for the human being the great and the small of thoughts, beliefs, faiths, orientations, traits, deeds, relations, and so on — in the individual, the social, and the governmental domain. The examination and recognition of this bond, in its outward dimensions (special attention to powerful and beautiful recitation, memorization, calligraphy, and so on) and in the meaning of the verses, is a most sweet and instructive undertaking that calls for a separate and ample occasion. We hope this important matter may come about among Sahba’s products.
The adoption of the epithet "Qur’anic Leader" for His Eminence Ayatollah Khamene’i is a claim that, on the one hand, goes back to the recognition of that bond and shows his deep and long-standing intimacy with the Qur’an; and, on the other hand, derives from attention to his addresses and to the original, precise, manifest, and disclosed Qur’anic uses within them, as well as from reflection upon his decisions and actions — which guides us to the Qur’anic wellsprings.
A General Outline of Islamic Thought in the Qur’an is perhaps the most important intellectual cornerstone for recognizing the thought of this "Qur’anic Leader" and for benefiting from his Qur’anic teachings. Yet this line has many points, great and small, and we hope that by moving along the luminous path of the school of the "Qur’anic Leader" we may benefit from them, and become Qur’anic to the extent of our own capacity.
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Our Leader, dearer to us than our own souls, is a grace from the holy and merciful being of His Eminence al-Rida (upon him be thousands of greetings and praise); for whatever our nation possesses is from the blessings of the Sun of Tus. "Sahba," from the very beginning, has set out by recourse to His Eminence 'Ali ibn Musa and has been a sipper at his threshold, so that it might take a single step in the weighty duty of conveying the teachings and lights of this Leader — this Ridawi gift — to the longing and thirsting people. We hope that, through the attention and prayer of His Eminence al-Rida, this small step may meet with the satisfaction of his precious son, His Eminence the Master of the Age and the Time [the Imam of the Age].
Fatimiyyah 1434 — Farvardin 1392 (March–April 2013)
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The Discourse "The Spirit of Tawhid: The Negation of Servitude to Other than God"
The tenth discourse of the collection of Sahba discourses is the discourse "The Spirit of Tawhid: The Negation of Servitude to Other than God." This discourse is an article that the author wrote at the request of a university student and in answer to the question "What role does belief in Tawhid actually play in a human being’s life?" This article was published for the first time in the year 1356 (1977) in a book titled The Monotheistic Worldview (Didgah-i Tawhidi). Although the title of this article bears a resemblance to the title of the twelfth session of this book, in terms of content it is deeper and is, in truth, a summary and a conclusion of all the discussions of the chapter on Tawhid.
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In response to the many requests of Sahba’s audience for listening to the audio of the book, an audio collection has been prepared. This collection comprises: the complete audio of the sessions, twenty-eight audio segments of the session summaries, ten thematic audio segments, and ten audio segments about the session and its margins. To obtain whichever items you wish, you may go to the address jahadi.ir/sahba/tarhekoli.
Urdibihisht-mah 1399 (May 2020)