Today, God willing, we take up from the Qur’an a discussion about prophethood. We have set before ourselves several topics in this field, so that, relying on the blessed verses of the Qur’an and seeking their help, we may come to understand them. Prophethood, of course, is one of the principles of every religion. And yet to call it merely a principle among the principles of religion is to say too little; one must say something higher. I do not mean that anyone would deny that it is a principle — no. It is more than a principle: without belief in prophethood, religion has no meaning at all. Religion means that program, that path, that creed which has come by way of a messenger from God the Exalted. So the coming of a messenger — a coming from God’s side — is among the essential elements of religion; the very subsistence of religion rests upon it. That is why prophethood deserves our discussion as one of the important and fundamental matters of religion.

In the field of prophethood there is a whole series of standard, customary discussions. Pick up any book written about prophethood and look at it: you will find them there. Out of all those discussions, we have taken up just one — only one — and that too with a particular slant, for this series of ours. That is precisely our subject today. The rest of the discussions carried on around prophethood in the various books of theology (kalam) are, in their own place, correct points — indeed necessary ones. But that a point is correct does not compel me to raise it here, at this time, under these circumstances, with these needs. Many of the points scholars make are correct. And here let me offer a general teaching that governs all our intellectual and research work: among the correct things, we must see which is necessary; among the necessary, which is more necessary; among the more necessary, which is urgent; among the urgent, which is pressing and vital. That is what we take up first; once we are free of it, we move on to the later discussions in the same order, until at the end we reach discussions that, though correct, do not feel necessary or urgent to the same degree.

Concerning the discussion of prophethood: it is true that the question of how much divine or human knowledge a prophet possesses is itself a discussion; or the question of knowing whether our Prophet — who did not write and did not read, as the speaking Qur’an states: “And you did not write any book with your right hand, otherwise the falsifiers would surely have fallen into doubt.”^[359][360]

The Prophet neither wrote nor read. Was it that he could not — that in today’s ordinary terms he was entirely illiterate? Or was he able to, and simply chose not to? That is a real question. So too is which religion, which creed among all the religions and creeds of the world the Prophet of Islam believed in and practiced before his prophethood and his Bi’thah. These are discussions, yes — but how necessary are they for us? How necessary is the one before them, or the one before that? Not necessary at all.

Once a person has learned everything that bears on prophethood and religion, there is no harm in coming, at the very end, to work out which religion the Prophet followed before the Bi’thah. But we are still in the bend of a single alley.^[361] Our society still does not know the meaning of prophethood, the meaning of the Bi’thah, the aim of the Bi’thah, the outcome and conclusion ^[362] of the Bi’thah, the path of the Bi’thah, and the watchword of prophethood; it does not even know that it is afflicted with this condition. The Muslim does not know the aim of the Muhammadan Bi’thah — and that is why his affairs are the way they are. If he knew the aim of his Prophet’s Bi’thah, he would go after that aim. We are still in the first matters, the preliminary matters, the fundamental matters in the field of prophethood. Are we then to grasp at the secondary matters, the ones of the fourth and fifth degree? That is why, in our discussion of prophethood, we raise none of those debates the theologians have conducted and go on conducting in their books. Those books exist; go and read them. We have no doubt that such discussions are necessary, nor that they are good. But we have just as little doubt that their necessity falls far below the necessity of many other discussions that ought to be raised today. That is why we set them aside.

The first matter we discuss concerning prophethood is the philosophy of prophethood. Why must there be a prophet? Why must someone, from the side of the Lord, gird himself to guide humankind? Can a person not do it himself? Are human knowledge and human thought not enough? Why a prophet? Why a messenger between the unseen (ghayb) and the witnessed (shuhud)? This is a question we must answer. Without the philosophy of prophethood, the rest of the discussions about prophethood are left almost suspended in mid-air. So first we must know: prophethood for what? This is our first discussion today. In the notes I wrote, we have set this question down briefly, in a few concise sentences, and the verses we recite today bear upon it.

Concerning the philosophy of prophethood we need not say much; it comes down to one thing: a person’s senses, instincts, and intellect all fall short of guiding him and taking him by the hand. Some creatures can be managed by their senses alone. A few animals we perhaps know to be of this sort, drawing only on their outward senses. Most kinds of animals, though, are guided by their instincts. The honeybee’s instinct tells it: go and alight upon the fragrant flower, and suck from its perfume and its essence; then return to the hive; build the houses in that six-cornered, hexagonal ^[364] form; and there, by certain arrangements, enter the houses and exit; and keep a queen and helpers ^[365] and guards — in short, a whole bee civilization. Suppose you imagine that one day the bees sat down together, convened a great conference of the chiefs of the hives and regions, and asked, "How is it better for us to build the house?" — one said octagonal, one said square, one said hexagonal; then they studied it and saw, no, the hexagonal is more suitable. If you imagine it happened this way, I must tell you: you are mistaken. No such thing ever occurred. “And your Lord revealed to the honeybee: Take houses for yourselves in the mountains, and in the trees, and in what they build as trellises. Then eat of all the fruits, and tread the paths of your Lord, in humble obedience.”^[363][366]

This is divine revelation (wahy) to the bee. It does not mean that the bee sits down and Gabriel descends upon it; it means that the bee’s very structure, the bee’s very instinct, is like this — an instinctual pull that draws the bee and compels it, so that it cannot do otherwise. By nature and by instinct the bee is compelled, fashioned ^[367] to build its house, to build it in this form, to find flower and plant in such-and-such a place and suck from them. Should a bee deviate — should it smell and suck foul, rotten plants instead of flower and plant — the others would behead it right there at the entrance of the hive. All this is their nature (fitrah) and their instinct.

For the bee, instinct is enough. Maurice Maeterlinck ^[368] sat for years studying the life of bees and ants and termites. Take the very termite you complain about so much: it keeps a certain arrangement inside those ceilings of yours; in your usurped house it has built an organized structure. You would rather it not settle on the beam of your house and build there — the house is usurped — yet in this usurped house it does its work all the same. It builds a house of a particular shape, in a particular order. And here is the strange thing. Suppose you could find one of the termites' houses, or a hive of the honeybees, from the time of Noah’s flood — or ten centuries before Noah’s flood — and set it beside one of the hives in the pleasant, fine-aired highlands of present-day Mashhad. You would see that this hive does not differ from that one by the breadth of a needle’s point in its arrangements. Evolution, advancement, progress — these do not exist in the work of the honeybee, nor in the work of any other animal. What does exist is the revelation of nature, the revelation of instinct, the guidance built into the very quality of its creation, which draws it, moves it, shows it the way, points out the obstacles, until it can do its own work. There is nothing other than instinct.

You too use instinct, but little. When you first came into the world, your state — with all due distinction — was the state of one of these very animals. It was by instinct, by the pull of nature (fitrah) and disposition, that you found the store of your food in your mother’s breast, and when they placed it in your mouth, you sucked. No one had taught you to suck; you had not learned the practical, auditory, and visual steps of it somewhere — this was your instinct. As you rose out of childhood, this tool, this eyeglass, this weapon whose name is instinct gradually grew weak, became ineffective, became of little use. In its place came something more effective, stronger, more powerful — reason and intellect ('aql wa khirad) — and you became a reasoning being. Instinct no longer runs your life now; it is not instinct that tells you, "Sir, go and open your shop, or close it at such-and-such an hour, or answer the customer this way, or study the lesson this way, or teach in that manner" — these are not instinct, these are instructions you took up from thought and from knowledge, learned, and used to find your way of life.

But does this intellect, this human thought, suffice to guide you and bring you to the destination of felicity? Is human reason adequate to guide you? Sound reason, if it is open, if it thinks, if it does not become bigoted, if it wishes to judge without ulterior motive, will say no. It is like a court that rules on its own case and finds it has no jurisdiction — a court that says, "I have no competence to judge in this matter." Sound human reason, free of ulterior motive, judges that it is not competent to guide humanity on its own. You want proof? We have two kinds. One is that human reason is limited, not infinite, whereas the needs of human beings are infinite. How could a single intellect understand every need well enough to meet it, or to legislate for it? Human reason cannot do this work; it is too weak, too incapable, too inadequate to recognize every pain and supply the remedy for each one.

The other proof is historical and scientific fact. Were the great intellects ever equal to it? Could intellects like Aristotle’s^[369] or Plato’s^[370] or Socrates’s^[371] manage humankind? Plato the thinker sits and thinks, consults, studies, researches, and sketches an ideal city — a utopia. But that ideal city is good only for the mind and the private strongbox of the honorable Plato himself, because it was never put into practice, anywhere, for a single moment. And if you set Plato’s ideal city today against the arrangements of the present world, it looks unacceptable and ridiculous.

Look at the rational and philosophical schools, how they array themselves one against the other. See that humanity cannot reach the way to guidance and felicity unless it is connected to a source and a point higher, loftier, and deeper than human reason. This is the meaning of prophethood: human beings need a force higher, a guidance stronger and deeper than the guidance of the senses, of instinct, of reason. This guidance comes — and what does it do? Does it come to compete with your senses? Does it come to oppose your instinct? Does it come to dash the head of reason against a stone? Never. It comes to guide reason, to nurture reason, to bring the buried reason out from beneath the tons of dust.

Our Commander of the Faithful, may God’s blessings and peace be upon him — I misspoke — the Commander of the Faithful of all humanity (let us not confine the Commander of the Faithful to ourselves); he is the teacher of humanity, the Commander of the Faithful is the great one of humanity. According to what is in the Nahj al-Balaghah, he says that God sent the prophets so that they might urge human beings to remain faithful to the covenant of their nature (fitrah), bring to their remembrance the forgotten blessings, and then "unearth for them the buried treasures of the intellects" (wa yuthiru lahum dafa’in al-'uqul).^[372] The prophets come to bring out these buried treasures, to stir up these buried intellects: the intellects, the reasons, the understandings, the consciousnesses of the human societies that had been buried by the Pharaohs and the Nimrods and the great ones and the powerful. Pharaoh does not like the people to possess intellect; he does not like them to understand — because if they understand, his existence becomes void and a fable, which we will see explained in the later discussions of prophethood, God willing. That is why Pharaoh buries the force of intellect: he cannot afford the people to employ it. How he buries it is a matter for the later discussions, God willing. The prophets come to extract these buried treasures, these hoards, these hidden and concealed treasures; they refine them, and they place them in the people’s hands.

So the prophets, with the force of revelation they carry, do not go to war against reason. The one who imagines that religion is at variance with reason either does not know religion or has no reason. By contrast, one who possesses reason — one who has tested reason and also knows religion — knows well that religion cannot, and does not, have any variance whatsoever with human knowledge and human reason. None at all. What religion says, sound intellects understand and approve. Some ignorant people, in the name of defending religion, say things like, "Sir, you must not seek the rationale of religion; you must not seek argumentation in religion; you must not seek philosophy in the matter of religion." They imagine that raising philosophy — asking for reasons — diminishes the worth of religion. They must know that this is not the case at all. Sound religion, when it is presented before the complete intellect, has no variance and no conflict with it whatsoever. Today the great intellects of humanity understand religion’s tawhid, its prophethood, its prayer, its fasting, its zakat, its secondary rulings.

When human intellect and the experience of human knowledge recognizes alcohol, knows its harms, understands the injury it does to the body, to the nerves, to the spirit, and to the general condition of society — why should I not have the courage to recite the verse of the Qur’an with power? “Indeed, wine, gambling, idols, and divining-arrows are an abomination from the work of Satan, so avoid it.”^[373]

Why should I not raise the verse of the Qur’an? Why should I not appeal to what human knowledge has understood in this field? Why should I not say that it is from the work of Satan — that is, it is the satans who give this to you, and it is the satans who profit from the drinking of that wretched drinker? Why should we not say this?

You have heard that Imam al-Sajjad, may God’s blessings and peace be upon him, said, "The religion of God is not attained by the intellects" (din Allah la yusabu bi-l-'uqul)^[375] — but its meaning is something else. It means the divine creed cannot be discovered by reason. And what does "cannot be discovered" mean? It means that if you have no narration (riwayah) telling you the noon prayer is four cycles, you cannot work out by reason that the noon prayer is four cycles — and this is a very sound point too. Take the time of prayer: if the Qur’an itself does not state it — “Establish the prayer from the declining of the sun until the darkness of the night, and the Qur’an of dawn (the dawn prayer and its supererogatory prayer).”^[374][376]

If the Qur’an does not state this, you cannot work out by reason and ordinary intellect when the time of prayer is. The Qur’an must state it; the hadith must state it; revelation must state it to us. This is what Imam al-Sajjad means, and the outward sense of his statement is just this — "The religion of God is not attained by the intellects." His meaning is not that we cannot see the rulings of religion and the teachings of religion through the vision of reason and human intellect — so that a group of ignorant people, in the name of defending religion, with fervor and heat, cry out, "Sir, do not set forth a philosophy for religion!" Why not? Why should we not set it forth? Of course we always say, we repeat, we confess that what we understand is not a thousandth of the deep teachings of religion; what we can apply and explain is far less than what may in reality be done and exist — there is no doubt in this. But I say one word, the next person says one word, the person after him says one word. Reckon along the lengthwise line of human history, and after two hundred years, five hundred years, you see that humankind is far more believing, more confessing, more acknowledging of the depth of religion than in the age when these thoughts and reflections and applications had not yet come to it.

Religion, then, does not come to crush reason; it does not come to abrogate ^[377] reason and drive it out of life. So what does it come for? It comes to guide reason, to take reason by the hand. Reason exists — but when caprice sits beside it, it cannot judge correctly. Reason exists — but when greed stands shoulder to shoulder with it, it cannot see correctly. When an ulterior motive is beside it, it cannot understand correctly. Religion comes to strip away from reason the caprices, the greeds, the fears, the ulterior motives; it strengthens sound, whole reason, confirms it, so that it may understand well. Turn to Islam and you see that Islam, from beginning to end, is full of the manifestations of reason. In the Qur’an, how often we meet "Will you not reason?" (a-fa-la ta’qilun), how often "Will you not reflect?" (a-fa-la tatafakkarun) — so that you may understand, so that you may know — how often "Indeed in that are signs for those endowed with understanding" (inna fi dhalika la-ayatin li-uli l-albab), for the people of reason. And in the narrations: "Indeed God has two proofs over the people" (inna li-Llahi 'ala l-nasi hujjatayn)^[378] — God has two proofs over the people: the prophet and the reason. Reason again. Of reason we will say no more now.

In sum, keep this one word in mind. Without the guidance of revelation, without revelation coming to his aid, man cannot bring himself to the destination of felicity. And when revelation comes, it does not suppress reason, just as it does not suppress instinct, just as it does not destroy the outward senses. No — it comes to strengthen the outward senses, the human and mortal instincts, and the force of man’s intellect and thought; it refines them, purifies them, takes their hand, teaches them. This is the task of revelation. And this is the philosophy of prophethood.

Because it is so — because we are deficient, because human knowledge and insight fall short of our guidance — a hand must reach out from the unseen and guide us. This is the place for that hand to reach out, not the place where, having gone a little hungry, I refuse to go after a morsel of bread and instead wait for a hand from the unseen. It is not the place where, confronted with a sin, I content myself with regret and grief and wait for a hand to reach out from the unseen for me. It is not the place where I neglect my divine duty — do not enjoin good, do not forbid evil, do not tread the path of God — and wait for a hand to reach out from the unseen and do something ^[382] — against the verse of the Qur’an: “Have you seen the one who denies the Religion? That is the one who drives away the orphan and does not urge the feeding of the needy.”^[379] Of such deniers it is said: “We were not among those who prayed, nor did we feed the needy.”^[380] “And we used to deny the Day of Judgment.”^[381]

The verse of the Qur’an counts among the deniers of religion those who do not urge the feeding of the destitute — who do not rouse the people to feed the destitute and, with a broader, deeper view closer to the very text of Islam, to uproot poverty and hunger. Whoever does not conform to this verse takes not a single step on the path of eliminating hunger, advances not a single pace toward destroying the root of poverty, and sits waiting for a hand to reach out from the unseen and do something. Such people must know that if a hand did reach out from the unseen, it would first strike their own brains — to throw these spoiled, void existences away and bring them down. A hand does reach out from the unseen and does do something, and this is exactly my point. For the guidance of man, a hand must come from the unseen, and that is the hand of the prophet, the hand of prophethood. That is the skill of the messengership: it comes and guides human beings in just the manner we have stated, rousing the force of reason within them.

Then several other matters arise here, of which I have briefly written down a list.^[383]

One is this. What concept does prophethood carry? What is its relation to the Bi’thah, to being raised up (bar-angikhtagi)? We say the prophet was sent (mab’uth), was raised up — but what does "raised up" mean? Is there a stirring (angizish) in prophethood? Is there a movement? This too is a discussion, and in the discussions related to prophethood we never encounter it.

What is the starting point of the prophets' work? From where do they begin their reform and aid to human beings? How does their endeavor conclude? Where do their works arrive? Just this — that they laid him against a tree and sawed him, and it was finished and over?^[384] They cut off the head of Yahya before that tyrant (taghi), and it was finished and over? Is the end of the work of prophethood just this? No — another conclusion, another ending for this beginning is conceived and envisaged. The Qur’an alludes to it, and there are matters here that we will of course raise gradually, one by one, in the coming days. Concerning the philosophy of prophethood, this much that I have stated is, in my own view, sufficient — and it was the briefest expression that could be set forth in this field. If anything here has not become clear to you, ask me, so that this may become clear: what fundamentally is the philosophy of prophethood?

The verses in this field are very pithy and full of meaning. My first thought was to explain this one verse in detail today. But I saw two obstacles. If I explained it, what I wanted to say about prophethood would go unsaid, put off to tomorrow or the day after — and even then I could not fully draw out the meaning of this verse in a single hour. It is a fascinating verse, and I urge good minds to study it in the light of the Qur’an,^[386] where there is a fairly good discussion of it. So I will content myself with a brief translation. “Mankind was one community (ummah).”^[385]

The people were all one ummah, one group. The commentators dispute this among themselves at length. Were they one ummah — a good ummah? Or one ummah — a bad ummah? Either way, both sides face an objection. Some say that "Mankind was one community" alludes to the primitive, original communalism (ishtirakiyyat) of the prehistoric eras. I say there is no evidence for this reading — only that the name of that communalist, primitive era is on people’s tongues, and we feel it a pity that our Qur’an should have no share of that cloak.^[387] That is all it amounts to. Otherwise, "Mankind was one community" would allude to an era when human beings lived in that primitive, original communalism — as the gentlemen say — like animals, if I may put it so: naked, in herds, roaming the deserts, performing feats of strength, scraping stone with their claws, catching animals and eating them, and sometimes eating one another too. Are we to take such a creature, or ourselves, as the referent of this verse "Mankind was one community"? No, never. We never try to graft onto our Qur’an something from elsewhere. What we understand from our own Qur’an is enough for us; if we grasp even that, we have done a great feat. Our Qur’an needs no marginal note or appendix from the sayings and cultures of others to be exalted by it. No — the Qur’an does not want that kind of exaltation.

"Mankind was one community" can carry several meanings. Two of them are in In the Light of the Qur’an, which you can consult; a third occurs to me, the one I gave in this translation. It means that human beings were all in an equal, identical state — in their needs and in their capacities. Every human being was of one kind of need, and every human being had one measure of capacity — and social reality is always like this. All human beings have reason, thought, intelligence, a sixth sense, outward senses, inward senses. All feel hunger and thirst, feel sexual desire, want a house, want clothing, and the like. The needs are all equal, almost of one kind, and the capacities are alike. If one human being was raised in a better upbringing and his capacity blossomed, that is another matter. Some young nobleman is born in an aristocratic house, with a private tutor at home teaching him at six or seven to speak Indian and Chinese like a nightingale, while the child of some laborer in the kilns does not know even Persian properly at seven or eight — that too is another matter. It proves nothing about one child’s capacity being greater than the other’s. This one’s capacity was drawn out; the capacity of that poor child remained, never drawn out. Take the oil deposits in a given region — northern, southern, in such-and-such a country. It is not certain they are richer or more abundant than the deposits at some other point that has never been tapped. This one’s oil has been extracted; it comes into the lamps, its gasoline runs the automobiles; everyone knows it, its name is famous. That one’s oil, poor thing, has not yet been extracted — and it may even be richer.

So human beings, naturally and ordinarily, were one community (ummah wahidah), with identical needs and equal capacities, as we have specified in the translation. “So God sent the prophets” (fa-ba’atha Llahu l-nabiyyin).

Among these human beings of equal capacities, God the Exalted raised up the prophets. From among these people of the same level, the Lord of the worlds singled out one — higher, stronger, deeper, more ardent, of greater capacity — and raised him up. To do what? "as bearers of glad tidings" (mubashshirin) — bringers of good news — "and warners" (wa mundhirin) — and givers of warning. Of what do the prophets give glad tidings? They give the glad tidings of Paradise, of the felicity of this world, of the ideal city, of the establishment of security, of the disappearance of poverty and despair and fear and insecurity and ignorance. And at last they give human beings the glad tidings of a virtuous government and a righteous city, and after that the glad tidings of going to Paradise and connection to the good pleasure (ridwan) of the Lord. And they are warners; they frighten. They frighten of the fire of Hell, of the narrowness of the bridge of Sirat, of the wretchedness of this world, of the domination of the demon ^[388] of ignorance and poverty, of the fall into the valley and slope of corruption, of the destruction of the human capacities. They are bringers of warning, they are warners. “So God sent the prophets as bearers of glad tidings and warners, and He sent down with them the Book with the truth” (wa anzala ma’ahum al-kitaba bi-l-haqq).

But it is not enough that they should say "People, fear" and "People, glad tidings be to you." What do you have with you? A book from the side of the Lord. He sent down with them a book by the truth, in accordance with the truth. I have explained "the truth" (haqq) several times. In sum, that which conforms with the nature (fitrah) of the world, that which accompanies the natural course of the world — that is the truth. That which conforms with the nature of man and the disposition of the universe — that they call the truth. The book of the prophets too is the truth; it drives man forward on his natural, innate path, on his ordinary and evolutionary course; it advances him, it aids him. The book of the prophets carries the truth with it. “He sent down with them the Book with the truth, that it might judge among the people concerning that wherein they differed” (li-yahkuma bayna l-nasi fima ikhtalafu fihi).

The book comes so "that it might judge" (li-yahkuma) — so that it may judge among the people in those things about which they differ with one another. After all, people are never free of difference; difference among human beings is a custom (sunnah), and its existence is necessary. Know this: the existence of difference is good, because difference is a cause of evolution. But that other thing I said — that the absence of difference is harmful — I must reconsider; I do not know whether it is harmful or not. In any case I would have to elaborate and interpret. Its existence is beneficial; as for "its absence is harmful," I do not know — I take that statement back. The book comes to judge among the people, to render judgment, concerning the things about which they have differed. What do we understand from this? We understand that the government the prophets bring into being is not the government of the individual prophet, not the government of one person, not the government of despotism; it is the government of law, the government of the Book. When the prophet comes, he makes a society in which the ruler, in meaning and in reality, is that very book — that is, the law. “that it might judge among the people concerning that wherein they differed. And none differed concerning it except those who were given it” (wa ma ikhtalafa fihi illa lladhina utuhu).

Concerning this book no difference arose — "except those who were given it," except the very people to whom the book had been given, for whom this heavenly book had come. They themselves differed over it. And what does that show us? It shows the existence of distortion (tahrif) in the heavenly religions, among the sayings of the prophets. The prophets came and brought the book, the law, the school; then the very people to whom it had been given differed about it. To differ means this: one side spoke the truth, and one side spoke against the fact. So there are those who follow a religion and speak in its name, yet speak against the fact — an allusion to the existence of abrogation (naskh) and distortion (tahrif) in the religions. “after the clear proofs had come to them, out of mutual envy” (min ba’di ma ja’athumu l-bayyinatu baghyan baynahum).

Out of enmity and transgression against one another. “Then God guided those who believed to the truth concerning that wherein they differed, by His leave” (fa-hada Llahu lladhina amanu lima ikhtalafu fihi mina l-haqqi bi-idhnih).

Those who believe, who have inclined to the true religion — God guided them, by His leave, to the answer over which the others had differed. “And God guides whom He wills to a straight path” (wa Llahu yahdi man yasha’u ila siratin mustaqim).

And God guides whomever He wills to the straight path.

Now to Surat al-Jumu’ah, in the twenty-eighth part (juz'): “In the name of God, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate. Whatever is in the heavens and whatever is in the earth glorifies God, the Sovereign, the Holy, the Mighty, the Wise.”^[389]

This is Surat al-Jumu’ah, up to "and God is the possessor of mighty bounty" (wa Llahu dhu l-fadli l-'azim). I have given a brief commentary on this surah more than once before, both here and in that mosque,^[390] and the translation stands written in the papers before you.

So what have we understood so far? We have understood the philosophy of prophethood — that it is a principle in all religions, indeed the mother principle. Without it, religion can have no correct meaning or concept, because religion is that which comes from the side of the Lord, by way of a messenger, a bearer of revelation.

Here is the subject of our talk today. The moment the burden of messengership (risalat) and prophethood (nubuwwat) is placed upon the prophet’s shoulders, after he receives the message of God — what state, what condition, comes into being within him and in the world around him? We are not greatly concerned here with the prophet’s own inner qualities and conditions. We raise the matter to draw a subtle, precise benefit from an ordinary, common word that is present in the Qur’an and in the usage of the religiously learned^[391] — a word that, incidentally, illuminates for us one dimension of the question of prophethood.

You know that in the Qur’an, whenever there is talk of a prophet’s coming, generally the talk is of his bi’that — his being commissioned and sent forth. As the verse says: “We raised up a messenger in every nation.”^[392]

We commissioned Moses, Abraham, and the other prophets. Bi’that — what does this bi’that mean? And what is the relationship between bi’that and prophethood? Today’s discussion is titled "The Bi’that in Prophethood." Within prophethood there is a bi’that. What does bi’that mean? What is this bi’that? If within prophethood there is a bi’that, to whom does this bi’that belong, what is it, what is its benefit, and so on?

Bi’that means a being-roused, a being-stirred-up. What does being-roused mean? It means motion — movement after lethargy, slackness, and stagnation. Take a dead person who has lain for years in some graveyard, whose bodily parts have become dust: when by the power of the Lord he rises up on the Day of Resurrection, they say he has been raised up. As the verse says: “This is the Day of the Raising-up.”^[393]

It is the day of being-roused. Picture a human being who had been asleep in his house, or who in the ordinary course of social life merely moved along — in whom there was no fervor, no striving, no activity, nothing contrary to the customary state of society. He was in reality like a plank of wood, like a lifeless plant, like a wisp of straw cast upon the ordinary flood of society, which carried him this way and that. Then he comes to himself. He emerges from this state of indifference. He senses that this path, this natural current, this ordinary stream, need not necessarily be one hundred percent reassuring and convincing to him — that perhaps another current can be sought out, one that will bring him to the destination of felicity. And when, as a result of these thoughts, he awakens, becomes alert, finds striving, finds movement — this human being, they say, has been raised up. In smaller, more particular examples: when you awaken from sleep and rise, you say "he was roused." When you come out of slackness, laziness, and lethargy and busy yourself with movement, they say "he was roused." This is the meaning of being-roused; ba’th means this.

The Day of Resurrection, as you know, is called "Yawm al-Ba’th," the day of being-roused, or in another expression, the Day of Rising. The Rising — that day of standing up, that day of coming out of slackness and listlessness, that day of movement, the day on which human beings, from the moment they emerge from the grave until the moment their final destiny is determined, are continually in striving, in agitation, in movement: this is what they call Yawm al-Ba’th, the Rising. In prophethood there exists exactly such a state.

I want your vision of prophethood to become a fundamentally new one. Some imagine prophethood like this: a preacher enters a city to expound for its people a few matters of religion or of something else; or a teacher of religious rulings rises up among a people to tell them a few subsidiary points of law; or some orator — a rabble-rouser — enters a gathering to stir up a bit of clamor and hold a rally.^[394] They usually imagine the prophet to be a person of this sort — a learned, clerical, well-bred man among a group of people. Except that these people, too, sometimes recognize his worth — these are the good folk, and they are called believers; and sometimes they do not — these become unbelievers, and they are called polytheists. This is the kind of thing we have imagined the prophet to be.

But in prophethood there is a transformation, an upheaval — indeed two of them. The first is in the very being of the prophet himself. The bi’that — the rising, the revolution, the transformation — first comes into being within the inner depths and essence of the prophet, within his own inner self. First he is changed; first he emerges from the state of stagnation. A resurrection is set up within his spirit. A rising comes into being within the soul of the prophet. All the brimming reserves God deposited within him are awakened — like a spring from which, at every instant, billions of streams of water are drawn forth and pour out, though before this instant all those waters lay hidden within it. In short, the prophet himself becomes a Muslim; he himself comes under the influence of the transformation of divine revelation. Then this very spring, this very transformation, this very fervor, this very revolution, this very rising pours out from that overflowing, surging fountain that is the spirit and inner self of the prophet into society; it is transmitted into the very text of human society. After a transformation has come into being within him, a transformation comes into being in society. After a mighty rising has been set up within his inner self, a still mightier rising is set up within the text of society. After a revolution has come into being within his heart, by his hand a revolution comes into being in society, and the bi’that in its true sense is realized. So you see that in prophethood, whatever there is, is fervor and transformation and upheaval and rousing and being-roused.^[395]

What is the prophet’s condition before prophethood? Concerning the life of every prophet before prophethood, two points exist that seem to contradict each other. When I say "contradictory," I do not mean there is a real contradiction; it may merely appear so. The first is that the prophet, even before he is commissioned, possesses very strong and deep human reserves — more than the rest of the people. His capacity for understanding, for movement, for outburst is not comparable to that of others. And his capacity for the worship and servitude of God, his readiness to be God’s servant, reaches a degree inconceivable for other people. All the reserves that draw a person out of the abasement^[397] of being mere dust and raise him to the summit of “Truly we belong to God, and truly to Him we return”^[396] — that is, of being a true servant of God, adorned with the character-traits of God — all these are present in the prophet more than in others.

Now, why do they hold more than others do? Did God commit some injustice here, some act of discrimination? That is a separate matter, and to it we can offer a brief, summary reply: in the end, to bear the burden of prophethood, a heavier, stouter frame and a more powerful reserve was required. The burden of messengership is no penny-trifle of a task.^[398] To carry the burden of prophethood — to convey God’s message to the people and transform a society from one of ignorance (jahili) into one of monotheism (tawhidi) — is a task of enormous magnitude, and in the end some group must bear it. Who will bear it? Ordinary people? Or someone who, by virtue of his environment, family, climate, and kin, possesses greater capacities and greater possibility? Because God sees the greater possibilities in this being, He helps him, grants him grace, bestows favor upon him, and places at his disposal every means of nurturing, so that two hundred maunds of burden may rest upon a hundred maunds of the prophet’s bone^[399] — He makes of him a person ready for this work. In the end, had the Messenger of God not taken up this heavy burden, it would have stayed on the ground, because lifting it was not the work of you and me. It was not the work of Gandhi^[400] and Lumumba^[401] to lift; it was not the work of Socrates and Plato and Aristotle. A frame more powerful than all these frames is necessary to lift this heavy burden — which is named messengership and prophethood and bi’that — and the detail of this, of course, runs very deep. The prophet lives among the people with reserves such as these. This was the summary of the first point: that the reserves in the prophet, in the messenger, are more brimming, richer, deeper, and more usable than the reserves of ordinary people.

The second point is this: before the bi’that, before prophethood, the prophet is, in the ordinary course of life, a companion and partner of the people; they are moving along in one and the same current. From the beginning he is not preoccupied with thinking, "What shall I do to overturn this society?" He may well be discontented — and indeed he is. An intelligent person is, of course, discontented with the class division of his time, with the ignorance of his time, with the poverty, the oppression, the foolishness — and, to put it in Islamic terms, with the jahiliyya (state of ignorance) of his time; discontented he certainly is. But this discontent stays at the level of discontent. It does not rise to the level of bringing about a transformation, a revolution, of forging a path that runs counter to the ordinary social path.

You see Moses son of 'Imran — peace and blessings upon him — living in Pharaoh’s house. As one of the elders of years past put it, he was eating Pharaoh’s pilaf and roast, even playing the young nobleman; and in the marketplace, out of zeal for the lineage of the Children of Israel and for those who believed in his idea, he even kills a man. Later, on his way back from Shu’ayb and Midian, he is commissioned there to prophethood and messengership — and about that killing he says: “…and I was among those who go astray.”^[402]

What does "I was astray" mean? It means: I had not yet found this path that runs precisely counter to the ordinary path of the Pharaonic society of that age. It does not mean that killing one of the Pharaoh’s men is a sin — no, not at all. He means: on the day I killed him, I was not a person pursuing a correct revolutionary orientation out of a definite idea. I was a man among other men; I was a walker among other walkers; I was striving, mixed in with the strivings of others; I was moving, alongside the movements of others. Today my path has changed; today I condemn that general movement and that collective course of society. Today I have become a person who sets up a rising in society. When? After the bi’that.

Take the Noble Prophet himself — God’s blessings be upon him and his Family. The verse of the Sura "By the Forenoon" makes the matter quite clear. (It is in the mimeographed handout;^[404] and I will explain it now.) The commentators have said various things here, and there are also narrations beneath the Sura, which I examined: the narrations are interpretation (ta’wil), not exegesis (tafsir). What the narration beneath the noble Sura "By the Forenoon" says — like ninety percent of the narrations beneath the verses of the Qur’an — is not exegesis of the apparent wording. The apparent wording gives its own meaning, which we will now explain and which we wrote there. The narration is ta’wil: it adds a point to the points of this verse; the verse itself is otherwise clear. The Imam — peace and blessings upon him — does not wish to construe the apparent wording of the verse against its plain sense. Rather, that plain sense stays preserved in its place, and he wishes to add something. What you and I miss in an ordinary glance at the verse, the Imam — peace be upon him — teaches us; this is what is called ta’wil. Part of this very discussion is that our recitation today is "By the Forenoon." “By the forenoon.”^[403]

By the brightness of the mid-morning. Al-duha means before noon. Notice: this oath itself is meaningful; this very swearing by that time carries meaning. Perhaps there is an allusion in it. Since the discourse is about the bi’that and messengership of the Prophet, this "forenoon" alludes to that light which, through the bi’that of the Prophet of Islam and the prophethood of Islam, encompassed all the horizons of the world.

“By the forenoon, and by the night when it grows still.”^[405] By the night, when its darkness covers all the horizons.

“Your Lord has not forsaken you, nor does He despise you.”^[406]

After revelation had begun and a period had passed, it was cut off. The Prophet had been roused within; fervor and excitement had risen in him; he had grown intimate with the bearer of God’s revelation, Gabriel — and now, suddenly, he sees that the revelation has stopped. He was struck with grief. How long did the fatra, the interval, last?^[407] Some have said forty days, others up to two or three years. Then the Sura "By the Forenoon" comes — the first Sura of glad tidings addressed to the Noble Prophet: “Your Lord has not forsaken you, nor does He despise you”. Your Lord did not abandon you, did not cast you off, did not grow angry with you.

“And surely the Hereafter is better for you than the former [life].”^[408] The future is better for you than the past; the end of your affair is better than its beginning.

“And surely your Lord will give to you, and you will be satisfied.”^[409] Your Lord will give to you as much as will make you well-pleased. There is a narration beneath it that what is meant is intercession (shafa’at) — and that is correct, too. Intercession is one of the things given to the Prophet of God, and it is given to such a degree that he becomes well-pleased. But in this world too, so much was given to the Prophet of Islam that he became well-pleased: the guidance of human beings, the establishment of the virtuous city (madina fadila), victory over bloodthirsty, obstinate enemies, the conquest of lands, the setting of Islamic society onto its evolving course — these were all blessings of God to the Prophet of Islam.

In sum: “Did He not find you an orphan and give shelter?”^[410] God Most High found you an orphan — without kin, without refuge — and gave you shelter. You had no father: before your birth he had departed this world; your mother followed a short while later; your grandfather too, after a few brief years, was gone. You remained alone, you and you alone, under the guardianship of your uncle Abu Talib. And we sheltered you, the orphan — who were an orphan from the very beginning — at every moment; we kept you in the embrace of our affection and love, O our Prophet. This is giving hope. It means: God’s shelter is always with you. It was there from childhood, and it is here now, when a burden of messengership this heavy rests upon your shoulders and in your hands. Do not fear, do not be apprehensive, never imagine that God has abandoned you — never. God will not abandon you now, when on that day He gave you shelter.

“And He found you lost (astray), and guided you.”^[411] And He found you lost and guided you. Several narrations bear on this — though some are weak — along with sayings of the commentators that have become mixed in with the narrations. They read it this way: "And He found you lost, and guided you." What is meant is not intellectual or spiritual lostness. Rather, once the Prophet, in his childhood, had become lost in the mountains of Mecca, and then God guided his grandfather, who was able to find him; or in another episode he had become lost, and a certain woman came and found him; or "you were unknown among the people of Mecca, no one recognized you, and God guided the people of Mecca to you." They construed it in these senses. We do not deny them — grasp the point here. These senses may indeed be the case; if a sound narration in accordance with any one of them should come, then with all respect, very well. The existing narrations may, at the root, be weak, or they may be sound. And if sound narrations should come for any one of these meanings, of course it is acceptable, and one can accept it. But even granting one of these meanings on the strength of a sound narration, the apparent meaning of the verse is still other than this. Accepting a narration that gives us this meaning does not conflict with accepting the apparent meaning of the verse.

The apparent meaning of the verse is something else. Plain and explicit, in plain Persian, it is saying: "You were astray, you were lost; we guided you." What does "you were astray" mean? Does it mean you were an idolater? Never! A deviant person? Never! A sinner? Never! Then what? It means: this straight path that was presented to you through the bi’that and prophethood was not at your disposal. Is it not so? Those bodies of knowledge, those laws, those thoughts, those ideas, that became clear and manifest to his holy heart when revelation came upon the Prophet — did they exist for that great one before prophethood and before the bi’that? Certainly not. This is what "You were lost" means, and this is the apparent meaning of the verse. And there is no problem at all in construing the noble verse — whose apparent sense is this — from the standpoint of the ta’wil meaning, as referring to "having been lost among the people of Mecca," "getting lost in the mountains around Mecca," "getting lost while herding certain sheep along a path," for example — just as is found in some of the narrations and reports. Did you grasp it?

Now: “And He found you lost, and guided you. And He found you in want, with dependents, and made you free of need.”^[412] He found you needy, with a family to support, and made you free of need. What, then, was the purpose of this verse and of laying out this Sura in this writing? It was this: that the Noble Prophet — just as the apparent purport of the verse says — was lost; he was moving among ordinary people, walking and journeying among society. He was distressed by the conditions. He suffered from the fact that the young nobles of Quraysh would seize the slave-girl of some destitute man and forcibly take possession of her — which is why he founded the Hilf al-Fudul,^[413] the pact of the chivalrous. He did not for an instant associate any partner with God, nor pay homage and humble himself before these idols. He did not for an instant make peace with the bullies and the men of brute force, and he lived in that society like a chivalrous human being. Yet with all these conditions, what the Prophet did stayed within the ordinary course of the life of that society.

The Prophet lives along the ordinary course of that society’s collective life — and suddenly the divine revelation arrives. A deep transformation comes into being within him. It is so strange, so intense, that it even affects the Prophet’s body, even his nerves. When the Noble Prophet, on the Mountain of Light (Jabal al-Nur), was struck by the first flame of revelation upon his soul, he caught fire; he saw that the bearer of God’s message was saying: “Read!”^[414]

The Prophet, since he did not know how to read, said: "But I cannot read"^[416] — what shall I read? Or, I do not read, I cannot read — that is, "ma" being either negating "ma" or interrogative "ma"^[417] — "and what shall I read?": “Read in the name of your Lord who created — created man from a clinging clot. Read, and your Lord is the most generous — who taught by the pen, taught man what he did not know.”^[415]

Fire is set to the Prophet’s soul, and it brings about a transformation. Within this thinking, upright, ready man it suddenly produces a revolution, a rising. He is no longer the same person at all; he is not the man of a moment before. Muhammad was not the Muhammad of an instant before; he was not the person of an hour before; he was something else entirely, another element, another essence. First the bi’that came into being within him — the revolution and transformation within his inner self — and then that very revolution became the source by which he could draw a whole world into transformation. Had he not changed himself, he could not have changed the world. This is a lesson for the followers of the Prophet: until they themselves change, they cannot change the world. Let them know that:

You, who have carried away no share of being for yourself, who have taken no benefit from this divine fervor, from this glow of the Lord’s grace and the blessing of His light — what do you wish to give to the people? First become fire yourself, become molten, become aflame, so that you may be able to kindle and set alight the coals, the cold ones, the black ones.

The Prophet — first the fire was set to his own soul, first his own heart was transformed and overturned, first the fervor of resurrection came into being within his own inner self — and only then could he draw the world into that same fervor. He was able to fashion a human being who would give up his life but would not give up his thought. Is it a trifle? Is it a trifle that they would come and throw down dark-skinned Bilal the Abyssinian and beat him — not some trifling blow or two, but those beatings, and how they beat him! Then, right there beneath the lash, right there beneath the torture — not one minute later, not one hour later — he would cry out, "Ahad! Ahad! One! One!" Rendered into Persian, the sentence that carries the same force would be: "Death to you, death to you, death to you" — this is what Bilal’s "Ahad! Ahad!" meant.^[419] The Prophet cannot fashion an Abu Dharr;^[420] he cannot, out of nothing, fashion a Bilal, or a Miqdad,^[421] or an 'Abdullah ibn Mas’ud, in the early days of Islam and the bi’that — first he himself was transformed. Now let us see what this melody of the first revelation did to the Prophet, and what it contains.

Another portion is the Sura "Read." “In the name of God, the All-Merciful, the Ever-Merciful. Read in the name of your Lord who created”.

Read in the name of your Lord, the One who created. Notice how it begins an orderly sequence. For a God-worshipping human being like our Prophet — who even before the bi’that was a God-worshipper, not a polytheist — the first thing that can rouse his attention toward God and draw his heart to Him is the simplest subject of all: creation. "Read in the name of your Lord who created." Creation belongs to Him; all these vast manifestations of creation are from Him.

Once this settles in the mind, it goes up one step and establishes something higher than creation: “Created man from a clinging clot.”^[422]

He created man — and man, moreover, from a clinging clot. How great is the difference between man and the other creatures! At first a person does not notice it. As you walk down the street, a car passes by, a human being passes by; when you are riding in a car, ten people pass by your side, ten trees pass by the side of your car — through a kind of error in the way a person perceives. He pays no attention; when he looks closely at the difference between man and non-man, he does not give it much thought. Well, man too is a being — a more precious being, of course, a better, higher one; but those too are beings of a sort. The tyrants of the world do not, even to the very end, grasp the difference between man and non-man — because in their eyes thousands of human beings are not worth as much as thousands of ants. A person destroys thousands of ants with two pennies' worth of kerosene; these people destroy thousands of human beings with a single decree, a single order, a single bomb. Let us leave that aside.

At first, then, man does not grasp the importance of man or the astounding difference between man and the other creatures; but when he looks closely, what happens? He sees it, and it astonishes him. The chasm between man and the other creatures is a very deep one. A chasm of what? What distinguishing mark, what differentiating feature, does man possess that sets him so far apart from the other creatures? The power of intellect, of reason, the cognition of universals, the deriving of conclusions from particulars. Something the tree does not do, nor the stone, nor the animal: innovation, novelty. For without innovation and novelty in man, he would always remain at one level, like the other creatures — as I gave the example of the honeybee yesterday. Then there is the power of will and decision, free choice — man does whatever he wishes, unlike the other creatures, which are compelled to follow their own instinct. Whatever its instinct dictates, the animal does; there is no question of willing. Man is able to act precisely against his own instinct. His instinct is to eat food; his instinct is to satisfy his sexual appetite — these are instinct, are they not? Yet you see a human being who, throughout his entire lifetime, does not satisfy his sexual instinct even once; this is against instinct, this is ascetic discipline. A human being lives for days on end on a single almond; only man is capable of this — man can act against his own instinct.

In short, the power of thought, of free choice, of will, of innovation in man — these are what have set man apart from the rest of the creatures. Man is altogether something else compared with them. Even the materialist scholars have, in recent times, more or less arrived at this point: they call man an astounding species. They draw no distinction between him and the rest, yet still they concede — an astounding species. And all these distinctions in man come from the outpouring^[424] of God’s spirit within him, the manifestation of God’s spirit in man, as in the verse: “And I breathed into him of My spirit.”^[423][425]

In sum, God suddenly draws the Prophet’s attention to something higher than dry, bare creation: the creation of man, the creation of reason, the creation of the power of understanding and perception — and out of what? “From a clinging clot.” From clotted, congealed blood — think of the distance! "What is dust and what is the Lord of lords!"^[426] How is it that something with no soul, no power of movement, no power of understanding, is transformed into an Einstein! Into a great human being, into a Socrates, into a thinker, a philosopher, a prophet — how does this happen? Is it anything other than the mighty handiwork of the Lord in the world?

“Created man from a clinging clot”. At the very beginning of revelation, they drew our Prophet’s attention to this crucial point. Notice: it wills a transformation to come into being within him. It wills to put a shoe of steel upon his foot and a staff of steel in his hand, so that he may go on until fatigue no longer has any meaning for him. From the very start they fashion him with these words.

“Created man from a clinging clot” — from clotted, congealed blood.

“Read… and your Lord is the most generous.”^[427] Read; God is higher than even this. "And your Lord is the most generous" — He is greater and more noble and more bounteous than even this. "Read, and your Lord is the most generous" — read, and your Lord is the most generous of all.

“Who taught by the pen.”^[428] The One who taught by means of the pen. Once again He raises for the Prophet the matter of teaching in man. And you know this: had there been no pen, no writing, mankind would never have progressed. What lays the advancement of one generation before the next — so the next generation may use it like a staircase, set its foot on the experience of those before it, and build yet another experience of its own — is nothing other than the pen. If the scientific discoveries and scholarly research of one generation were not placed at the disposal of the next, the next could add nothing to it. Had the book of Aristotle not been at the disposal of Avicenna (Bu 'Ali Sina),^[429] Avicenna — who stands higher than Aristotle — would never have become Avicenna. Had the jurisprudential book of Shaykh Tusi,^[430] or 'Allama Hilli,^[431] not been at the disposal of Shaykh Ansari^[432] and Mirza Shirazi^[433] — men more accomplished and more learned than those forebears, more learned than the scholars of a thousand years before them — then without their predecessors' books and the fruit of their research at hand, they too would never have reached that level. Take an example. The first person has five tomans; he gives it to the second person, who, with his own five, makes it ten; he gives that to the third person, who also has five, and it becomes fifteen. The third is now wealthier than the first — he has fifteen tomans. But where does that fifteen come from? Had the first person never existed, would he have it? Had the second never existed, would he still have fifteen? Never — he would have had even that five only by his own force. It is the product of man’s past experiences and discoveries that reaches later generations — and by what means? By the pen, by writing and inscription.

“Who taught by the pen, taught man what he did not know.”^[434] So, higher than the very principle of creation and bringing-into-being, there is something in God.

“Read, and your Lord is the most generous.”^[435]

“Who taught by the pen — taught man what he did not know”. He gave instruction by means of the pen; He taught man the things he did not know. These are God’s blessings toward man. So man ought to give thanks for them. God has taught man, has shown him the way, has given him the pen, has made him rational and instructed him — so man ought to climb toward the loftiest summit, without a single instant of decline, without any more backsliding and misery. Is it so? The next verse answers, as though confronting an imagining of this kind: if God creates and nurtures humanity in this way, and gives it the pen, and shows it grace, and treats it with such generosity — then mankind ought to have no misery, no waywardness, no corruption, no error. Has it turned out so?

“No indeed!”^[436] No, it is not as you suppose and as you say. What, then, is the state of mankind? No; rather:

“No indeed! Truly man transgresses when he sees himself self-sufficient.”^[437] What made mankind wretched was the transgression of mankind — the rebellions and arrogance of feeble human beings and of the tyrants (taghuts) against the merciful ones, the battle-lines they drew up. These transgressions are what kept mankind from reaching guidance. They would not let mankind make the fullest use of the Lordly reserves, be nurtured and reared as God had wished, and become what God had willed. The transgressors would not allow it. When they saw themselves free of need, they transgressed, they rebelled, they left the path of God. Notice — once again the Prophet is being fashioned. He attends to the grace of God, to the nobility of God, to the teaching of God; to the fact that God is the Creator, the Teacher, the Most Generous; to the fact that humanity has not reached where it ought to reach — it has not reached, as "No indeed!" conveys — and to the fact that the fault is the transgressors'.

And transgression arises from the sense of being free of need. Self-sufficiency, wealth, the amassing of riches, the heaping up of treasures — this raises up necks; and once the necks are raised, once un-divine powers come into being and take shape, mankind no longer reaches that destination. Notice — these are the inspirations of God at the outset of the rousing; this is that very flame which set the Prophet of God ablaze, set him afire.

“No indeed!” No, it is not as you suppose. You imagine and expect that mankind has reached a state of being set in order? No!

“Truly man transgresses” — man assuredly transgresses and grows arrogant.

“When he sees himself self-sufficient.”^[438] — because he sees himself as free of need.

“Truly, to your Lord is the return.”^[439] Will these transgressors triumph in the end? No! The return is to your Lord; the end belongs to God; the outcome falls to God and the divine front. Along that very path which the Lord of the world has appointed, mankind will in the end reach the destination — of this there is no doubt: “Truly, to your Lord is the return”.

The noble Sura holds other matters too. In sum, notice with what truths these matters bring about, in our Prophet, the revolution and transformation — and it is this very transformation that is reflected in the very text of society.

In the Sura "By the Star," from which we cited a portion of its verses, there is again an allusion to this same inner transformation of the Prophet. There are many other verses as well, which I saw no need to cite in full here. But this is a very precise, subtle, and sweet discussion, and in the studies I had worked through I had not myself come across this point being attended to with such precision. So I wanted to explain it a little more — for knowing it is useful for acting on it too.

“In the name of God, the All-Merciful, the Ever-Merciful. By the star when it sets.”^[440] By the star, at the moment it sets.

“Your companion has not gone astray nor erred.”^[441] Your companion and comrade has not gone astray, nor inclined toward falsehood. This bears on the matter of the Mi’raj (the Ascension), as many of the commentaries record. Though it alludes to the inner transformation of the Prophet and to the state of receiving revelation, the occasion of the Sura "By the Star" is this: when the Prophet would recount the episodes of the night journey, the journey of the Ascension, these people would not listen. The verse speaks in that context.

“Nor does he speak from caprice.”^[442] He does not speak out of whim.

“It is naught but a revelation revealed.”^[443] It is nothing but a revelation that has reached him from the Lord.

“Taught to him by one mighty in power.”^[444] He has been taught by that one of surpassing power, that one possessing great strength. "One mighty in power" (shadid al-quwa) means the one who is very powerful: that one of great might has taught him.

"One mighty in power" means surpassingly powerful.

“Possessor of sagacity (dhu mirra).”^[445] That sagacious, wise one — "mirra" meaning sagacity, wisdom, and judgment — which the commentators have said alludes to Gabriel: what the Prophet reports, he reports on the authority of Gabriel, and God taught him these things through Gabriel.

“…so he stood upright”. This divine revelation came to him, and he stood erect upon his own feet.

“And he was on the highest horizon.”^[446] And he was on the loftier, higher horizon. "Highest" means the most lofty; the horizon, too, is clear. The Prophet stands upon a loftier horizon.

“Then he drew near and came down.”^[447] Perhaps it can be construed this way. "And he was on the highest horizon" means the Prophet stood on a higher level, one that let him become a prophet. As we said, the Prophet, before prophethood, lived among ordinary people with reserves more brimming than theirs. "Then he drew near" — he approached; "and came down" — he drew nearer still. On the supposition that the one meant is the Prophet, this reads: the Prophet drew near to God, and nearer — through acts of worship, through ascetic disciplines, through reflection, and through the special graces God had bestowed on him, his spirit drew near and nearer to God and became ready to receive revelation. Others have said that "he drew near" means Gabriel drew near to the Prophet, and "came down" means he hung over him — that is, he brought himself to the Prophet to convey the revelation. Either way it makes no difference; but the first meaning seems to us nearer and more apparent, and it is the one I myself prefer.

“Until he was at the distance of two bows' lengths, or nearer.”^[448] The Prophet drew near to God, and so he reached the distance of two bows' lengths, or less. Do not ask, "What does 'two bows' lengths' mean — what special significance does it have?" As if it were two bows, each a meter long, at a distance of two meters from God. Where was God, that the Noble Prophet reached within two meters of Him? No — these are figurative expressions. He drew near to Him, but not in respect of place; "two bows' lengths" means he drew very near, very near. The holy spirit of the Prophet drew so near to God that nearer than that is inconceivable for any human being — the very nearest of the near.

“Then he drew near and came down, until he was at the distance of two bows' lengths or nearer, and He revealed to His servant what He revealed.”^[449] So God revealed to His servant what He revealed.

“The heart did not lie about what it saw.”^[450] Whatever the Prophet’s heart observed, it did not lie to him about it: it saw correctly, it did not see in error.

“Will you then dispute with him about what he saw?”^[451]

These, in any case, are verses from the noble Sura "By the Star." In sum, it is after this inner, innermost rousing that the path of the prophet changes and his striving takes on another color, and he strives on with continual effort. And what is it he strives to bring about? That in society, in the very text of human beings' lives, a rising and a transformation should be brought into being from the foundation up. Having created a transformation within himself, he now endeavors to create one in society — and this is precisely the responsibility of messengership, the very work the Prophet exists for.

Today’s recitation is drawn from two places: one from the blessed Surat al-Qasas, and the other from the blessed Surat al-Saff. So that some of the brothers who have not yet found a place in the prayer hall may be able to find somewhere, look at these verses on the printed sheets while I read the Arabic text once.

Drawing on these verses and the verses of Surat al-Saff, we mean to discuss one matter, and its best title is exactly the one we chose: the social resurgence of prophethood.

Our task, of course, is to explain what that resurgence is. You heard some of the groundwork on earlier days, when we said that the Bi’thah — the commissioning, the arising of a fervor and a stirring within the inner being of the Prophet — begins in his heart with the onset of revelation. This servant is God’s chosen one, and because of the deep and abundant capacities he possesses, God has appointed him to a mission of such magnitude and weight. Once divine revelation descends upon such a servant, a surging comes into being in his spirit; a revolution is created within the very spirit of the Prophet. In his ordinary life, in his comings and goings, in his social orientation — in short, throughout his entire being — a resurgence rises up, a revolution comes into being. The man after revelation is not that man of yesterday, or of two hours before.

Some writers who do not believe in the Prophet of Islam — orientalists, some of them perhaps impartial, though others certainly biased — claim, regarding his life, that before his Bi’thah the Prophet spent his years studying, thinking, reflecting,^[452] and that it was these reflections that brought him to the revolution he created. On its face, this claim is false — a lie — unless they mean something else by it.

The Prophet did not arrive at the Islamic revolution and call through reflection and meditation at all. Only after this call, this revelation, this arising came into being in him did he become another being, another human, taking on another state. And not only that Prophet — all the prophets. Moses had taken his wife and child and set out on an ordinary journey; in the middle of the desert, at that critical moment when divine revelation descended upon him, Moses forgot everything else. At the moment he senses the mission, Moses is a human being other than the human of a moment before; within him another fervor, another surging, another stirring comes into being. Whoever makes the orientalists' claim has no belief in prophethood, in the Bi’thah, in revelation, or in the prophets' connection to the unseen world. It is a claim the unbelieving or biased orientalist writes down, and the ill-informed, uninvestigating writer then repeats it — in his book, in his writing, in his speech.

In any case, the Bi’thah thus means a stirring, a revolution, a transformation, a change, an upheaval, a resurgence — whatever expression you wish to line up — in the being of the chosen Prophet. Once this revolution has come into being in the Prophet, it is time for that same revolution to be carried out in the external environment.

That same transformation created in the spirit of the Prophet must, in some particular way, be carried out in the very fabric of society’s reality — and this is exactly what we have named the social resurgence of prophethood. Once we have explained this transformation, other discussions concerning prophethood will follow. One of them is very important: the goal of the mission and prophethood — for what aim, with what purpose, for what work this social resurgence is carried out. And that, in turn, entails still other matters, which I will present in the days to come.

Now, what can be said about this resurgence that we conceive for the Prophet? Today the word "revolution," in the sense it carries in modern culture, is a clear and significant word. What it means, plainly, is a transformation — a deep, fundamental change from the root in a society. The word "revolution" does not, by any necessity, contain conflict; it does not, by any necessity, contain bloodshed and killing; it does not, by any necessity, contain dispute and clash. A dispute may arise, a clash may come into being — but the word "revolution" does not itself carry the meaning of dispute and clash.

The meaning of revolution is this. Take a very small, simple, tangible example: suppose this mosque, in its condition — its building, its walls, its structure — is of a particular form. Its foundations and footings were laid to fit, say, a rectangular building bounded on the east at one limit and on the west at another — the hall of the mosque’s prayer chamber, without internal partitions. The foundation beneath these walls was laid for the sake of those things. If, instead of a prayer hall, this were meant to become a residential building, the foundation would certainly have been poured differently, the footings laid differently. If partitions were to be built inside this prayer hall, so that five, ten, twenty rooms appeared in it — as an inn, for example — then the foundation and footings would have had to be laid differently again. But because it was readied for this work, built entirely for the purpose of a gathering, the footings and foundation and the rubble-grouting ^[453] and the wall and base are of a particular form.

Suppose it were decided to demolish a building that has been fully finished — a hotel, for instance — and convert it into a mosque; or to convert a bank building into a lecture hall; or to convert a residential house into something that is not for family residence. What would they have to do? They would have to change all the foundations and substructures beneath it. They cannot say: we will give it a coat of paint, take it out of the form of a house, and make it a mosque. No! Such a thing cannot be done. They cannot say: we will gather up these middle walls so that the National Bank becomes such-and-such mosque, for the gathering of Muslims and prayer and worship. It cannot be done. Why? Because the way the building’s foundation was laid was not made for a mosque. For this building to become a mosque requires a special grouting, a special foundation-laying, a special walling, a special partitioning, a special roofing. To convert a building raised for one purpose into a building for a purpose entirely contrary to the first, they inevitably have to carry out a revolution. And what does revolution mean? It means they change the bases, foundations, main sections, frames, and essential underpinnings of this structure into other frames, other underpinnings, other walls, other bodies, other limbs. This is what is called revolution.

Take a society — fifty thousand people, five hundred thousand, fifty million, it makes no difference. A society means that number of people living together on one course, under one general program. It has a top and a bottom, but the path is one path, bound together in a single social direction. That is what we call a society, a unit. And a society like this — fifty thousand, five hundred thousand, five million, fifty million people — can be built in two ways. In general there are two, though within each there are various kinds and sorts.

Two ways, then, that a population can be built, that a social form can come into being. The first: among the fifty thousand, or the fifty million, who live in a certain place, a class of people, a minority, are the rulers and masters of every affair of the rest. They set the people’s path, they lay down the people’s laws. If the people act against their wishes, they take severe revenge. If the people so much as dare to object, they discipline them harshly. If some event arises in this society, they turn it to their own benefit, even to the detriment of everyone else. And if it is decreed that this community should be struck by some calamity, they make the people their shield against it and step off to one side. This is one kind of society. What lies at the foundation of any society is precisely this question: whether or not it has class difference.

Suppose, then, a society that has class difference. The term sounds pompous to some ears, but class difference is exactly what I just described — it was simple, you saw how easy its meaning is. In such a society the people are not equal in rights, not on one level in the possibilities and advantages of life. One group can take more, take better, speak better, bully, and do exactly what they want. A larger group are forced to watch the hands of those people, to be at their command, to stand before them with hands folded at the waist, to prostrate in the dust before them. A society in this form is what we call a class society. Its economy is a class economy; its government works to the benefit of the upper classes; even its basic rights are class-based, weighted toward those above. This is one kind of society.

The society of some number of people, from five thousand to fifty million, is sometimes in this form and sometimes not. And how is it then? Among the fifty million living in this society, no one has the right to bully anyone else. There is no class set above the rest — no, not one person! You cannot find a single person in this entire society who, if you asked him, "Sir, why did you do such a thing?" would answer, "I felt like it." "I felt like it" does not exist here. No one holds domination, mastery, bullying, or the plunder of another’s rights over anyone else; and in turn no one suffers, before anyone else, abasement, weakness, submission to force, or being wronged — these have no meaning for him. All the people in that society, from five thousand to fifty and five hundred million, obey the command of one power, and that power is higher than any human power. Who is it? It is God. This too is one kind.

We have two kinds of social structure. In one, the people — all of them, or most of them — are slaves and captives before other humans. In the other, the people are all free of captivity to any power. In the first, when you reckon it up, the economy serves that same upper class, the government rests in the hands of that same upper class, and the basic rights and advantages of society belong to that upper class alone, or to whoever is close to them. The second society is the reverse. In this classless society, where no one bullies or dominates anyone, the economy is shared, and government — in the sense of governance — is shared, held in the hands of all. Basic rights are shared, they are for all; in short, whatever is good is for all, and whatever is bad concerns all. If discomfort arises, all share in it; if a good thing comes about, all share in it — and the world is a paradise.

Two kinds of society can be conceived. Both of these kinds we have described for you, and both have existed throughout history.

Consider these two kinds. One is the class society: a place of oppression, of injustice, of class difference, of exploitation,^[454] of domineering, of brutishness, of discrimination. The other is the classless society: a place of justice, of humanity, of freedom. I lean especially on freedom, and for a reason — some of the classless societies named in the world have, by their own claim, everything except freedom. A classless society, then, has welfare and above all freedom: no one is anyone’s servant, no one is anyone’s slave, no one is subject to anyone else’s word. Both these kinds of society have existed in history — both.

The societies of the first type, the ones marked by discrimination, are the societies that the Qayasirah and the Akasirah^[455] of the world and the tyrants of history brought into being. The societies of the second type — prosperous, free, without discrimination, humane — are the very societies that the great divine prophets brought into being throughout history. You say: did the prophets really form societies? We reply: yes, they did. In the Qur’an the signs of the societies the prophets formed are abundant: the affair of Solomon, the affair of Saul (Talut), the affair of Moses and his coming to the Holy Land, the affair of Moses and his demand to bring out the Children of Israel. Where did he want to take them? He wanted to take them so as to form a society, a virtuous city. These are the subject of discussions I may touch on tomorrow and the day after; for now I wanted only this brief reference.

We have two kinds of society, and both kinds have existed in history. The bad type — the one that reason deems bad and that humanity condemns — the anti-religious political powers of the world and history have always had; the good type, the divine and spiritual powers of history have always had — that is, the prophets. When the prophets come into a society, what do they come for? They come to convert that first type into the second. This is the substance of our discussion today.

Most often people picture the prophets differently. They imagine that when a prophet appears in a society, he is like a wise, learned, eminent sage — a mountain of knowledge — who comes into society, takes a house, and sits in a corner so that people may come in groups to benefit from the harvest of his grace and his knowledge. That is the person, the being, they imagine the Prophet to be. Take Abraham the Friend of God (Khalil Allah), say, or Moses the Interlocutor of God (Kalim Allah): in this picture, the Prophet enters a society and takes a house — dignified or small or large, it hardly matters — and sits there. He sets aside an hour for meeting believers and non-believers, and whoever comes to him he enjoins to good and forbids from evil: "People, fear God; people, God exists." He argues with them, debates with them, reforms a number of people, and then departs from the world. That is what they imagine the Prophet to be.

The Prophet is not of this sort. When the Prophet is commissioned in a society — that is, is made to arise — a resurgence comes into being in his inner being and in his spirit, as I explained, and he enters society a man who knows not his head from his foot, a man who has no rest and no repose. He has been turned into a blazing, searing whirling torch.^[456] He casts a glance at the condition of society, and he sees — ah! — this structure is wrong, this edifice was badly built, wrongly founded; its walls and its footings and its grouting were laid incorrectly and contrary to the architectural method of human nature (fitrah). He understands that this must be changed, that this edifice must be converted into a good edifice. Meaning what? He understands that this society — this class society, where there is discrimination, oppression, disorder, inhumanity — must be changed and converted into a tawhidi (monotheistic) society.

What is a tawhidi society, sir? We spoke of it in the discussion of Tawhid. We pointed out that Tawhid is the negation of classes. Divine Tawhid means the power and government of God; it means that everything — law, custom, regulations, manners, culture — must be inspired from the side of God. Divine Tawhid means that all people are servants of God and that alone, not the servant of anyone else, and that the servants are free from the servitude of other servants. When the Prophet enters society, he enters with this idea, this aim, this thought: to transform that class society, to demolish it, to break it apart, and to bring into being a tawhidi, classless, non-discriminatory, non-oppressive society under the government of the Lord of the worlds. The Prophet comes for this work.

If I wanted to give examples of famous figures and personalities other than the Prophet, I could easily cite the ones that students of the subject know more or less already; I just don’t like inserting non-religious names into a religious discussion, and pinning down their limits would take time. He comes into society to transform it — I do not say he comes for bloodshed, never; I do not say he comes for slaughter, never; I do not say he comes to set people at one another’s throats, never. It is not so. As I said, the word "revolution," the word "transformation," the word "change," does not even contain the flowing of blood from one person’s nose. In all the ordinary affairs of life, bloodshed may possibly occur, and it is also possible that it may not. For what did the First World War come about? A small assassination against one gentleman, one master, in one corner of the world, dragged the whole world into the maw of war and fire — was it not so? The crown prince of Austria and I-don’t-know-what. A small assassination may set a whole world on fire. Of course, in a revolution too there may be bloodshed, and it is also possible that there may not be. The word "revolution" does not contain bloodshed, killing, or setting people at one another’s throats.

If the Prophet, when he entered society, when he uttered his revolutionary speech — that is, when he said to Pharaoh that you must not sit there and must not put the Children of Israel under so much pressure and must not build different social classes — if Pharaoh had said, "Certainly, I am ready, I hear your command, I will come down from there," then the Prophet would begin, with his own powerful, skilled hand,^[458] to build society, and not a ripple of water would be stirred. Conflict and clash arise in the revolutions of the prophets — as God says in the Qur’an, “And how many a prophet there was alongside whom many devoted servants of God fought.”^[457] — and jihad is legislated in Islam, because that affluent class, the class toward whom the sharp edge of the revolution is directed and from whom privileges are being taken away, is not willing to accept this revolution. Otherwise the Prophet would in no way be compelled to resort to slaughter and conflict. If that class became reformed, if it truly understood the truth — like many of the great political, economic, and financial figures of history who suddenly, under a beautiful and good transformation in their spirits, turned into ordinary human beings — if all those who stood against the prophets and against the call of the prophets had submitted and had come down from that summit, there would be no compulsion at all.

So when the Prophet comes into a society, he comes for this transformation. The Prophet comes to create change. Meaning, to do what? Meaning, for example, in the Arabia of the Prophet’s time, to say: why must the sources of wealth in this society, the springs of surging riches, be in the hands of a minority of aristocrats? Why? Why must slaves and bondsmen be those who toil under the whims of the masters? Why must the weak be the burden-bearers and beasts of burden of the inclinations of the Walid ibn Mughirahs and the Abu Jahls and the Abu Lahabs? Why? Why should these not all be on one level?

«al-nasu sawasiyatun ka-asnani l-musht»^[459] — take a comb in your hand: from the first tooth to the last, do you see one of them enjoying any greater privilege? All at one limit, all at one level, all of one size, all of one shape, equal — and how beautiful! Humanity is precisely this. «al-nasu sawasiyatun» — humans are equal — «ka-asnani l-musht» — like the teeth of a comb. This is the call of the Prophet: «kullukum min Adam, wa Adamu min turab»^[460] — humans are all the children of Adam. That gentleman who has raised a palace in some corner of Mecca must eat well, drink well, keep trade reserved for himself, make others his slaves and camel-drivers, take the profit himself, and chart the destiny of Mecca himself. That gentleman, for all his grandeur, is no different at all from the lowly servant in his house. They have no difference at all; in human element and essence they are equal, no difference whatsoever. Why must the field for that man’s benefits be so wide, while this wretch cannot even flap a single wing in his cage? Why? The field must be open before all equally.

You see, these are the claims of the Prophet. In every society where a prophet appeared, he appeared with this claim: he came to convert society from a wrong form — an unbalanced form, a form coupled with oppression and tyranny — into a balanced form, a beautiful form, a just form. This is one matter. This is what the resurgence of prophethood means. Every prophet who was commissioned and appeared in any society appeared with this aim — know this. There has never been a prophet who came merely to expound for the people a handful of secondary matters and minor details of life.

Of course, the great prophets — the ones we call the prophets of firm resolve (ulu al-'azm), the title by which we know them — were the poles of the divine revolutions. As for the other prophets: some came to take up the continuation of their revolution, some to complete their work, some to bring their work to fruition, some to turn back the regressions that set in after a revolution had borne fruit and to launch a new revolution once again. This is the very work that the executors (awsiya') of our Prophet performed after his passing: the work of the Commander of the Faithful (Amir al-Mu’minin), the work of Imam Husayn, the work of the other Imams, the work of the scholars of the Ummah of Islam, and finally the work of the Lord of the Age (Sahib al-Zaman), the Master of the Era (Wali al-'Asr) — God’s blessings and peace be upon him.

Here is another matter about this resurgence worth attending to. We ask: what is the problem with the order of ignorance (jahili) remaining in place? With this just order never being established? This Prophet who comes, who suffers so much, who throws himself into water and fire to turn a wrong condition into a beautiful and good one — what would be the harm if he did none of it? What would be the harm if he left things as they were? Why is that condition bad? Why is it wrong? What standard gives you the right to judge? "al-haqqu li-man ghalab"^[461] — right belongs to whoever prevails. Whoever became dominant, whoever seized power, may it be sweet and wholesome to him; and the one who gets slapped on the head, to hell with him — he had only to refuse, he had only not to be there. Now that he is there, let them carry out whatever plundering raids^[462] they wish. Why does the Prophet throw himself into water and fire? Why?

It is another question. You may say no one asks it. True — no one asks it aloud. But in the inner being and the spirit of most people, who face disorder without the prophetic stance, this question lives, and it has gone unanswered. Here is the answer: the Prophet does not move without cause, does not throw himself into water and fire without reason. What he sees of the existing condition of his time is a false condition, contrary to human and universal nature (fitrah); what he wants to bring about is the condition of right (haqq) — that is, one in accordance with universal and human nature.

Right (haqq) and falsehood (batil): you meet these two words again and again throughout the Qur’an. Dozens of its verses embody and specify them, naming the instances where the battle lines are drawn between right and falsehood. What do right and falsehood mean? We already offered the explanation. The human being — this being who, with this form and this stature, walks about in the world — was made and built with certain characteristics. The human being has certain characteristics, certain possibilities, certain needs; in short, he came into existence with a fixed measure of his own special characteristics and possibilities. Keep this in mind. The world the human being lives in was likewise structured with certain conditions and characteristics, given a certain movement toward a certain direction. This world that you look at and see with your eyes — each of its things seems to have fallen into some separate corner: its sun sits millions of leagues away from such-and-such a planet; its human, its plant, its animal appear to have no connection with one another. But in the view of a God-worshipping, God-knowing person, this is an indivisible unity.^[463] This entire world is one thing; the parts of this world are the parts of one body. Just as in one body a single movement runs through all its parts, so it is in this world.

In a human being, the stomach does one task, the eye another, the liver another, the brain and nerves another — but the sum of all these tasks is one single, shared thing. And what is that? It is that this human being stays alive, moves, strives, and goes on living. The sum of all the movements you observe in this world too — above and below, this sphere and the others — comes out as one single thing, one single movement. (These matters need some reflection. Do not expect, in these discussions, to drink something down like running water and be nourished by it; consider them in need of digestion, in need of effort — reflect and think on them a little.) The rest of the beings, having no consciousness, no will and no choice, advance willy-nilly along this path, along this general movement. It is the human being who possesses choice — who can be obstinate, withdraw himself from this caravan of the world’s things, and move in the opposite direction. Only the human being can fail to follow this caravan — this caravan of the world which, as we said, has one single direction — can fail to set out, fail to advance. Only the human being. The rest of the beings, even when at some point they leave their natural course, it is the human who takes them out of it. When they split the uranium and, instead of using it to cure thousands of ailments, make an atom bomb, drop it, and kill millions of humans — the human does this; the uranium itself never transgresses or oversteps the natural course of the world, but moves along its ordinary path. When this substance LSD,^[464] which ought to be used for the healing of ailments, is turned into a narcotic and put into the mouth of some youth, leaving him dizzy and oblivious for hours to what is going on around him — this is the fault of the human, not of that plant, not of that substance, not of that thing itself.

In this caravan we have depicted for you — in which the sun is one part, the earth another, the galaxies and the small and great beings of this vast world each elements and parts of it — they are all going their way with heads bowed, all going. It is only this one being, the human, who is mobile and active, who possesses choice, who sometimes bends his own path crooked, turns back the opposite way, veers left and right. Sometimes, too, he drags along the hand of other speechless beings and takes them with him: he takes uranium, he takes LSD, he takes morphine. Morphine, which ought to work to man’s benefit, works to his ruin; the plant that ought to give him life gives him death instead. It is not the thing itself that does this — this too is done by the same human who has turned back from the path and left the course. This is the characteristic the human possesses.

Because a person has this characteristic — he has choice, he has will, he can change his own path — a law must be set for him. A line of travel must be marked out, and he must be told, "Sir, you must move along this line of travel, so that you have set out behind this caravan. If you transgress it, if you go outside the map we draw for you, know that you have left the course of this caravan." Meaning what? Meaning that this person needs a law. And this law that accords with the line of travel of the collective movement of the beings of the world — what is its name? Have you guessed it? Right (haqq). Right means the law that conforms to the nature of the world; and because it conforms to the nature of the world and the universe, it conforms to the nature of the human too — for a person too is one of the parts of this world, a part of the parts of this great body. And because this law conforms to the nature of the human and the universe, it also turns out to his good and welfare.

What is falsehood (batil)? Falsehood is that course, that law, that way and custom laid down contrary to the nature of the universe and the nature of the human. Falsehood is what the brutes and the satans and those who want to deviate from this course make. The prophets always bring right so that falsehood may be removed. Take the society Pharaoh makes, dividing people into classes, pressing down on one class of them, keeping one class affluent while oppressing the others — that condition, that order, that social form is the form of falsehood. The prophets come to overturn that form of falsehood. They come to dismantle it, to do away with it, to give its place to right. So when the Prophet throws himself into water and fire, it is for the sake of right, because right is the thing he says and the thing he wants. It is for the sake of right that he places himself in such discomfort and exposes himself to hardship. It is for the sake of substituting right in place of falsehood that the prophets never for a moment set down their striving, never forget it, are never for one moment idle. The matter comes to this: the substitution of right in place of falsehood. This is the interpretation and analysis of the work of the prophets.

Let us sum up the matter. The prophets want to convert the jahili order into a divine order, into a tawhidi social mold — to convert it so that society becomes the domain of the government of God, not the domain of the government of caprices and lusts. (For all these negative traits taken together — being class-based, being oppressive, being exploitative, being inhumane, and points of this sort — the best word is "jahili"; jahiliyyah means the unjust, un-natural (ghayr-fitri), inhumane order.) This is the outcome of the work of the prophets. The prophets come to convert a wrong social order into a correct one; their slogan of Tawhid too is for this very reason, and their struggles against the false deities (tawaghit) too are for this same purpose. And the struggles of the false deities against them are for this same purpose too. This too is a chapter of this continuous discourse; one day, God willing, we may set forth who the classes opposed to the prophets were, and what the motives of their opposition and resistance were.

The verses I chose from Surat al-Qasas describe this very condition — the jahili condition, the condition of the Pharaonic government and the Pharaonic society — and the condition Moses wanted to establish in its place. But the verses do more than set these two conditions against each other. They also give a glad tiding to those who move in the direction of the Mosaic condition: that ultimately the will of the Lord has settled on one outcome — the Mosaic ones of the world, that is, the tawhidi ones, the divine ones, shall be successful and victorious. And the reason is clear. This too is the subject of another discussion, among the titles we intend to set forth in turn: the outcome of prophethood — what is the final end of the work of prophethood? Conquest and victory. And why? Because it accords with the nature and disposition of the universe and the human.

In summary, this is what these few verses mention, and this is what is intended. So now we present their translation. “In the name of God, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate. Ta Sin Mim.”^[465]

This cipher at the opening of the surah is, of course, among the very minor questions that may be raised about some of the verses of the Qur’an — namely, what these ciphers are, as the commentators have said. We have no business with that.

“These are the verses of the clear Book.”^[466] — these are the verses of the clear, clarifying Book.

“We recite to you something of the account of Moses and Pharaoh, in truth.”^[467] We recite to you a portion of the important story of Moses and Pharaoh. A portion of that important affair is to be set forth. This is the method of the Qur’an: in each section where it narrates the affair of a prophet, it has a particular purpose, and from whatever dimension it looks at the story, it selects a special portion to narrate in keeping with that purpose. Here it mentions a very short portion, because it has a particular purpose — the victory of right over falsehood. We will not bring the rest of the story into today’s discussion, and we did not bring them.

We recite to you a portion of the important story of Moses and Pharaoh — "in truth," in accordance with right, in accordance with reality, far from fable and legend — "for a people who believe." What we set forth and recite to you is not useless, of little effect; rather, for the believers who have inclined toward you, it is extremely effective, beneficial, and profitable. When they hear this story with this insight and understand the divine custom (sunnah) at work in it, they determine their path.

The gist of the matter is this: "Indeed Pharaoh exalted himself in the land." Pharaoh sought superiority in the land, sought greatness for himself, took on loftiness ('uluww). What does it mean that he took loftiness? Standing at this level — equal with other humans — he suddenly rose up, sat upon that ledge, took himself to be higher than the rest. All were equal, all on the same level; and he took superiority over the other servants. "Indeed Pharaoh exalted himself in the land" — on the face of the earth he attached superiority and greatness to himself and chose it for himself, "and divided its people into factions." Having set himself in the upper degree, he then partitioned the land, classified it, made it into groups: one group nearer to himself — the class of Haman and classes resembling his; one class lower, then another lower still. He made classes in his Pharaonic society, on the face of God’s earth. "Oppressing a group among them" — beyond making society class-based, with its various groups, he especially bore down on one class. "Oppressing" — he made a group of them oppressed (mustad’af). Here a Persian equivalent for "oppressing" occurred to me, which I wrote: he took one class under tyranny, in the grip of weakness and incapacity — istid’af. Istid’af cannot be rendered "making wronged," though I did write "subjected to tyranny," because the mustad’afin are usually understood as those counted as wronged. He kept these in the grip of weakness; within society he stripped away their possibilities, stripped away their powers, made them weak and held them there. "Oppressing a group among them" — one class of the people of society he held severely in the grip of weakness and incapacity, casting them into the maw of weakness, into the maw of incapacity. "Oppressing" — he counted them weak, took them as contemptible, in various expressions; the upshot is that within society he deprived them of every possibility of growth and progress. And if you are familiar with social issues and social books, you see and grasp this fully in the world — especially in these Third-World countries. All the possibilities of growth and progress fall into the monopoly of a chosen few; the rest cannot grow, cannot breathe, and even if they do grow, their growth is in the service and exploitation of that chosen class. "Oppressing a group among them" — a group of them he took severely under pressure, in weakness and incapacity.

And his pressure was this: "slaughtering their sons" — he killed their young men. He would not let their young generation rise. He sensed a stirring among them, and he knew that the one who could carry that stirring through to its end was the young generation. And in that era, under the social conditions of that age, the women perhaps had no part in these social matters; the burden fell on the shoulders of the sons — so the pressure fell heavier on the sons. You know this from outside the verse: in the accounts and narrations that have come down on this subject, we have heard and have word that he knew a Moses was to come forth from among these very youths, and that it was this Moses who would in the end transform and overturn the world upon him. Either he knew it specifically — as the narrations make plain — that a soothsayer had told him, "A son with these traits will be born whose name is Moses." Or he did not know it specifically, but he was a clear-sighted man. He understood — he understood that ultimately, from among this young generation living in the Pharaonic society among the Children of Israel, seething with fervor and idea and uproar, a Moses would rise: a great man, a self-sacrificing man. And he feared this, so he killed the young men.

“and sparing their women.”^[468] And he kept their women alive — either to corrupt them, or to drag their lineage into vice, or to destroy the soundness of their stock (nasab); for the daughters of the Children of Israel apparently did not marry the sons of the Israelites. He wanted no young men, only daughters, so that the lineage would grow mixed and the Children of Israel would be absorbed into the Pharaonic society, into Egyptian society — would dissolve, disappear, be wiped out. For four hundred years, as I have said before in the opening verses of Surat al-Baqarah, the Children of Israel had held firm within that disordered, unbalanced Pharaonic society and had preserved their own noble ideals.

So the lines are drawn between these two groups. On one side stands Pharaoh, whose condition the end of the verse names: "Indeed he was of the corrupters." Truly and certainly he was of the corrupters, the fomenters of corruption. He created corruption in nature (fitrah), in society, in the world — as that other verse in Surat al-Baqarah says: “And when he turns away (or gains authority), he strives to spread corruption in the land and to destroy crops and offspring; and God does not love corruption.”^[469]

The mark of Pharaoh’s kind is that they create corruption in the land and bring ruin. By every means they can, they block the maturing and ripening of this world’s spiritual reserves; or if they do bring them to fruition, they do it in a wrong and twisted form. And Pharaoh too was of this sort.

Now, in contrast, what is right? On what has the will of God settled, and in which direction has the divine custom (sunnah) been set? "And We desired" — and We desire — that is, this is Our creative custom and will. "And We desired to show favor to those who had been oppressed in the land." He does not say "We had desired" (wa aradna), which would tie this will to the Children of Israel alone — no, it holds for always, for all of history. We have desired and We desire to bestow favor upon those same oppressed, that same class held in the grip of subjugation and captive to the claw of weakness — to deliver them from that lowliness, to bring them out of oppression. "And We desired to show favor to those who had been oppressed in the land" — that We bestow favor upon the oppressed of the earth. "And to make them leaders" — that We bring them up from the rear of society, from being followers, to leadership; that We give the oppressed of the earth mastery over the Akasirah and Qayasirah^[470] of the world, over the bullying powerful ones. "And to make them the heirs" — that We make them the heirs and inheritors of the good things of the earth; this too is Our will. "And to establish them firmly in the land" — that We make them settled and established in the land. "And to show Pharaoh and Haman and their hosts" — these are the representatives of two classes. Pharaoh is the exemplar of a privileged class — he belongs to the high class, indeed he is its eminent person — a class under whose authority and exploitation even Haman falls. And Haman is the symbol and representative of another class, a class that pours all its possibilities and forces into the service of Pharaoh — those the Qur’an apparently refers to as the mala', of whom we will speak in the future, God willing. "And their hosts" — their armies, those who strive on their behalf without seeing any good from them, yet remain in their service. That We show to them, "through them" — through these oppressed — "the very thing they were dreading." That same thing which Pharaoh feared, We bring down upon his head; that same thing from which Haman fled and shrank, We bring down upon his head. That is, We take these powers away from them and place them in the hands of the oppressed, in the hands of the dust-dwellers, in the hands of the destitute — who, of course, always constitute the majority of any society. This too is the will of the Lord.

Then it goes on to other matters: "And We revealed to the mother of Moses: 'Suckle him,'"^[471] which shows the power of the Lord. That other verse we chose for you from Surat al-Saff again points to the victory of the divine order over the jahili order — though its victory is not our concern in today’s discussion. Our concern is this: that against the existing jahili order, when the Prophet comes, he presents a divine and tawhidi order of right and strives to establish and settle that order of right.

O Lord! By Muhammad and the family of Muhammad, do not place us as followers of the false deities (tawaghit). O Lord! By Muhammad and the family of Muhammad, keep us alive as Muslims and make us die as Muslims. Cast no separation between us and the Qur’an. Grant us the grace to act upon the Qur’an. Sever and uproot the hands and elements opposed to the Qur’an. Make the enemies of Islam, in whatever spot of the world they are, abased and abject. Make the helpers of Your religion, the supporters of Your Qur’an, in whatever spot they are, victorious and exalted. Set the end and outcome of the matter to our benefit.

The verse of Surat al-Hadid is this:

The second verse is in the blessed Surat al-A’raf, verses 156 and 157:

“…And ordain for us good in this world and in the Hereafter; indeed, we have turned to You. He said: My punishment — I strike with it whomever I will, and My mercy encompasses all things; I shall ordain it for those who are God-fearing and give the alms-due, and for those who believe in Our signs — those who follow the Messenger, the unlettered Prophet, whom they find written down with them in the Torah and the Gospel; he enjoins upon them the good and forbids them the evil, makes the wholesome things lawful for them and forbids them the foul things, and relieves them of their burden and the shackles that were upon them. So those who believe in him, honor him, support him, and follow the light that has been sent down with him — those are the ones who prosper.”^[472]

These two verses, and several others in the Noble Qur’an, set forth the goal of God’s great prophets.

Our discussion of prophethood had reached this point: the prophet — the one roused up by God — does for society what he first does within himself. Just as he brings about a kind of resurrection in his own inner self, he brings about a resurrection in society as well, a change and a transformation in the very fabric of the community. Today we want to understand that transformation — its purpose and aim, and the aim behind all the work of the divine prophets. Knowing this is useful to us in several respects; indeed, it is necessary. What goal does the prophet pursue? What is it he runs after?

The prophet has one principal, primary goal. On the way toward it, other goals come up for him too, and one of these is more important than all the rest and more attractive to him. But that primary goal can be summed up in a few words: the prophets come into this world to bring the human being to the destination of his exaltation, to the perfection ordained for him. A being who possesses such talents and abundant energies can become something higher, loftier, more precious, and more noble than what he now is.

At bottom, from the first moment of his birth, from the beginning of his formation, in his own little world, the human being is always in the process of becoming complete — always advancing, always attaining greater perfection. You can observe this plainly in the body, in the outward frame. The newborn infant lacks many of the marks of a complete human being. He lacks teeth, a strong hand, a powerful jaw, legs that can run, the inner apparatus of digestion that would let him carry his life forward as a grown person does, a powerful brain and nervous system. Then, after a while, all of it comes into being for him. And nothing is given to him from outside: it is that same little jaw that grows strong and powerful, that same weak hand that grows large and strong, those same little delicate feet that become firm, steady steps, those same weak nerves that later become powerful, that same feeble brain that later becomes the discoverer of life’s most important and most complicated problems. Nothing comes from outside. It is he himself, it is his own talents, it is the latent, hidden capacities within him that gradually — with the passage of time, as he is placed in particular conditions — blossom, flower, and come into the stage ^[473] of manifestation. Within him was the talent of speech, which later makes him a speaker. Within him was the talent of understanding things, of becoming a thinker, a scholar — and later all of it comes about. So the human being is always becoming complete. What he was not, he later becomes: he was not powerful, then he becomes powerful; he had no intellect, then he comes to have intellect; he had no experience, then he comes to possess it, and so on.

In matters of the body — as you have all now noticed and can affirm — a person is always in the state of becoming complete: always acquiring things that were not prepared for him before, that he did not yet possess. In spiritual matters, in the realm of the soul and the human virtues, it is exactly the same. A whole world of talent lies latent within a person. Think of him as a very strong, deep, abundant mine: dig into it and you find many things within — but until you have dug, it is a mere existent, a dry and barren plot of land with no beautiful display of life.

Let me give an example. In such cases I usually liken a person to those mosaic tiles they pour at the edge of a pool, on the threshold behind a door. Have you noticed? They pour the mosaic. When they first pour it, they set the mold and spread the material there and it dries; and when you look at it, you see no sign of beauty or delicacy in it. It is a dark, grimy, lustreless, charmless mass. Then comes the turn to grind it, under special machines or by hand; they begin to grind these tiles down. Once a certain amount of grinding has passed, you suddenly see that this dark mass has turned translucent through being ground — which is natural enough; many dark things turn translucent when you grind them. But that is not all. You find in it something you never suspected: now that you have ground it, you understand that beautiful stones, of many colors and various patterns, with interesting and pleasing hues, existed within the very belly and depths of that dark mass — stones you could not have seen, could not have prized for their beauty, could not have shaped into anything ornamental. Now that it is ground, all of them have come out. Set a fine, ground piece of mosaic before yourself and you see a beautiful design, lovely indeed — whereas before the grinding there was nothing. Liken the inner talents of a person to those very glittering, beautiful particles that lie deep within the belly of that dark mosaic.

This person you see — this unhewn, unpolished creature in the market, in the street, this little child who cannot yet speak, who has not a particle of refinement for anyone except his father and mother — this very one you are looking at is a rich and abundant mine. In him are materials of grace, in him are displays of beauty, and these are the talents of a person. It is the very thing they meant when they said, in the old poetic tongue: "You have seen the flight ^[474] of the bird — you, from the fetter of lust: / Come out, that you may see the flight of humanity." ^[475]

This is the very thing that poets and others, mystics and others, have told us from of old in every tongue — and it is right, and it is true. They said that these human displays raise a person higher than the angel and the celestial spirit; they make him a gushing wellspring of goodnesses, of talents brought to light, of interesting and attractive powers; that is, they make him the complete human being, the upright and perfected and exalted human being. The true goal of the prophets is to make human beings into this — the very thing that, in the Qur’anic expressions we have set down here, is named "purification" (tazkiyah) and "instruction" (ta’lim). They purify human beings of bad traits, draw them away from their caprices, and rescue them from the displays of a brutish, animal way of life. As Rumi said: "O you who have torn the cloak of the Josephs: / you shall rise from this heavy sleep a wolf." ^[476]

Those who wear a human exterior but do the work of a wolf, those who show a beautiful, adorned human face on the outside but do the work of beasts of prey, ^[477] dogs, savages, and ogres — these cannot be called human. That human being for whom bloodshed is a pleasure, that human being for whom destroying the lives of others is a means of amusement, that human being for whom the spectacle of others' suffering brings no distress, that human being who sees the sorrow of others and feels no sorrow — this is not a human being, whatever his exterior may be. Is he very learned? Is he very wealthy? Is he very powerful? Is he very tidy and well-pressed in appearance? Even if he is all of these, none of them is humanity. It is tidiness, it is learning, it is power; being a human being is something else.

The prophets come to purify human beings. In the environment of the prophets' call you see no trace of brutishness; in the environment of the prophetic life you observe no sign of the displays of an animal, savage way of life. There, whatever there is is the light of purity and humanity, and this is the art and the great miracle ^[478] of prophethood. People look for the miracle of prophethood in extraordinary deeds — deeds that do not ordinarily occur in the natural order: the splitting of some wall, or some body, or the springing-forth of a tree. Very well, let those things be too — there is no objection. But the great miracle of the prophethoods lies in making good human beings, adorned ^[479] with virtues. This is the greatest miracle of the prophethoods, and it is no joke.

Look, and you see people brimming with every disposition to crime and corruption. When they come under the grindstone of the call of Islam, when that grinding apparatus the prophet sets in motion falls upon them, you suddenly see that the very savage of yesterday, the very criminal of yesterday, that same unhewn, unpolished man of yesterday on whom you would have staked nothing at all, becomes a human being of immense grandeur.

Who was Abu Dharr? Was he anything more than a rough, desert-wandering man, indifferent to humanity, unaware of it? He was a man of whom, had you seen ten thousand of his like before you, it would not have troubled you if all ten thousand perished in a single earthquake. A man who neither understands nor wishes to understand, with not a particle of human grace in him, not a particle of interest in becoming good — barefoot, dirty, rough, grown up in the desert. Set such a man before you — not you, but any great reformer, any figure of grandeur — and how much would the heart burn for him? The so-called great reformers of the world, those who count themselves reformers and great ones, complain even of men more substantial than themselves that "they did not appreciate our worth, they did not recognize us, they did not understand us." What they want is for people to circle around them like moths around their heads, to sacrifice themselves for them — and to what end? Whether these reformers have even carried out a portion of their own commitment, their own human mission, is itself in doubt. And when men of Abu Dharr’s kind are set before them, they assign them no value whatsoever.

The prophet takes this very creature, this black stone, this unhewn, unpolished boulder whose name is Abu Dharr, brings it under the grindstone of revelation and the call, and from it fashions a human being in whom there is a sign of every human virtue. This is the great miracle of the prophet. From him he fashions a human being whose whole self has been absorbed, dissolved, sacrificed on the way of the goal — that whole self, this "I," this "I" which for ordinary people is the axis of all activity, its every aspect. Can you find such a man? We want everything for ourselves, or for what is bound up with ourselves: for our shop, our title, our children, our good name — in the end it comes back to us. Abu Dharr sacrifices everything that comes back to himself for God, for the goal, for that direction in whose path he is moving. A human being of that kind is transformed into a human being of this kind. And what does this? The revelation of prophethood, the call of prophethood: out of black, dark stones it fashions clear, bright mirrors. This is the goal of prophethood — the making of an upright human being.

It is true that the formation of a sound system is a very interesting thing — and I am coming to this point; before you accept a statement or reject it, do not be hasty until we finish it. It is true that the formation of a prosperous system, free and flourishing, is a very interesting thing. But here is what I want to see. Suppose such a system — flourishing, free, prosperous, with equality and social justice and no class divisions — has been formed, and the people in that new, lofty, interesting society have busied themselves with living. To what end? And after that? For the human being, for humanity, after the era of reaching the ideal society, what goal have the materialist schools envisaged? What is the goal of humanity? People make sacrifices, deny themselves, strive and struggle to build a flourishing home out of this world. Now we have built it — and after that, what? In this flourishing home, what do we wish to do?

We toil and build this mosque; then, once it is finished, we must have a purpose. The purpose is that people should come here and pray, or listen to a lecture, or the like. It makes no sense to say we want to build a mosque — all the noise and clamor — we built it, we raised it up, and then, once it stands, now what do we want to do? Nothing — after that we have no goal at all. That is absurd; it is breaking one’s leg halfway down the road. The materialist schools have all broken their leg halfway down the road — every one of them.

The materialist schools say: let us make the world flourish, let us abolish poverty, let us abolish ignorance, let us build a lofty society, a human society, a society with no oppression, no classes, no exploitation, no discrimination. Very well — we have built it; now what does a person wish to do in this society? They have no answer. Where does humanity wish to arrive? They have no answer. Does it wish to eat and sleep? Does it wish to live comfortably — is that all? Does a person exist only for a comfortable life — that is, comfortably acquiring, comfortably consuming, and comfortably excreting? Is it for this that he must struggle, and is this to be his goal? Here is where the materialist schools' mount goes lame. ^[480]

The divine schools say: No, the goal lies beyond this. The lofty goal is the refining of the human being; the lofty goal is that the children of Adam should become human. The children of Adam are not the same as the human being. "Children of Adam" is this very creature that walks on two legs — with all its pretension, it is a child of Adam; but to become human means that all the virtues and wellsprings of talent within its being should come into flow. You ask: and after that, what? We answer: there is no "after that." A person is unlimited; because God’s power is unlimited, there is no "after that." "Indeed, we belong to God, and indeed, to Him we return." ^[481] Once a person has fallen into the course of perfection, there is no longer any end. This is the idea of those who worship God, the thought of the monotheists of the world and the religions of the world. It is always advancing, always progressing, always ascending, always perfecting and exalting — it has no end and no terminus, and the prophets come for this.

The prophets come to purify human beings of evils, of basenesses, of ignorances, of moral vices, of the keeping-hidden of inner talents; to deliver them; to fashion them into the complete and exalted human being — this is the prophets' primary goal. The Qur’an states it in several places; I did not cite the verses here, because one of them had already come up earlier.

“God has indeed shown favor upon the believers when He raised up among them a messenger from among themselves, who recites to them His signs and purifies them, and teaches them.”^[119] Refining a person, cleansing away the vices, adorning him with virtues — this is the goal of the prophets.

So you see that our Prophet says:

But the more important statement is the second. The first is one that gets uttered a great deal, and some people are very fond of having it repeated. Here is why: if the whole matter were merely refining — only purification (tahdhib) ^[483] and tazkiyah — then someone says, "Sir, we have found the way; we have understood where to go. Set aside the tumult of society, and 'excuse the war of the seventy-two nations, all of them'; ^[484] we will go off to the corner of a hermitage, busy ourselves with monasticism, and there purify and refine the soul, and save our own selves. And if someone comes who has the capacity for it, we will say a word in his ear too, draw him out of himself, and make him too into a real human being."

This statement gets repeated so often precisely because it can serve as a pretext — a pretext for laziness, for shortcomings, for self-preservation, for comfort-seeking, for the love of ease. The people are fond of it, and so are the leaders. Those upon whose shoulders rest the responsibilities of guidance and instruction are fond of this saying. Refining people is a trouble-free task, a flawless task, a task that does nothing to harm or injure the cattle and sheep of a person. You gather a group together, croon a lover’s lullaby in their ears, draw them out of themselves, refine them, purify them. And for the people too it seems easy — though of course it is not actually easy.

So up to this point in the statement, it is well-known; from this point onward, it is not well-known, it is not said. And what lies beyond this point? Here is the question: by what means did the prophets refine and adorn the people? What did they do? Did they come to the people and, one by one, take each person by the ear, take each person by the hand, and lead them off alone into the seclusion of a house, a chamber, a school, a maktab, to instruct and educate them? Did the prophets sit in their own monasteries, like the ascetics and mystics of the world, so that the people might come, observe their spiritual state, and fall into step with them as fellow-believers and fellow-travelers? Did the prophets, like the philosophers of the world, open a school, hang up a sign, and issue an invitation — "Whoever wishes to learn doctrine from us, let him come here and learn" — were they like this? No: the prophets do not believe in individual education, the prophets do not believe in fashioning human beings one by one, the prophets do not believe in tidy, neat tasks. Do not imagine that, like Socrates and Plato, Abraham the Friend of the Merciful, or Moses, or Jesus, or our Prophet would sit in a school and the people would go and benefit from him. They are not like this.

And the saints (awliya') are like the prophets — for in the matter of the Imamate I say that our Imam al-Sadiq too is of that kind. It is an error to imagine, as some heedless people do, that Imam al-Sadiq sat upon a pulpit with four thousand students at the foot of it. Here is how it actually came about. Ibn 'Uqdah, a renowned scholar of the old biographical traditions, counted four thousand persons among the students and transmitters ^[485] of the hadith of Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq, peace be upon him. From this, a group imagined those four thousand persons used to come and sit together — four thousand men filling a great enclosure while Imam al-Sadiq, the blessings of God be upon him, recited hadith from the pulpit, expounded rulings, and delivered admonitions. That is how they imagine it.

No — neither Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq, nor his grandfather the Prophet of Islam, nor any of the prophets of the world had this as their method. School-playing, admonition-mongering, and educating one person at a time are not the work of the prophets. The prophets have only one answer to this question: how can human beings be fashioned? How can they be educated according to the correct divine models? Their one answer is this: to fashion a human being, you must build a suitable environment, a sound environment, one that can nurture him within itself — that, and nothing else. The prophets say you cannot cast people in molds one by one; you must build a factory. They say that if they set out to fashion human beings one at a time, night would fall and a whole lifetime would pass before the work was done. A society is needed, a system is needed; human beings must be pressed into the desired shape by that system — that, and nothing else.

The prophets say a human being is like a tree, like a sapling. Consider a sapling — a date palm, or an orange. It has certain conditions, certain characteristics, and those characteristics require warm air, suitable air. Plant a date palm in southern Iran, in the southern regions of the country, or in Tabas, or in some of the Arab countries, and see what delicious, excellent dates it gives — an interesting thing, isn’t it? Why? Because this sapling needs air of a certain temperature, humidity at a certain percentage, soil of a certain kind, and dozens of other conditions besides. Those conditions come together in Tabas, they come together in Khuzestan, but they do not come together in Mashhad. What can be done about it? Go, take thousands of date-palm saplings, dig them up, bring them here, plant them in the ground, water them, give them air — is that possible?

You can do only one thing, and it is this: bring a single date-palm tree here into the garden of your house, or take an orange into a room, and toil over it, care for it, give it fertilizer, give it water, work on it so long that after a while — "O 'Ali, help!" — it gives you one or two dates. You say, "Yes, we too brought a date-palm sapling to Mashhad and got two, three dates." Well, why should we do this? Why should we do this? If instead we could establish and build a date-ripening, date-nurturing environment, there would be no need for all this care, no need for all this heartache, no need for all this fastidiousness — and moreover it would not give just two dates, it would give hundredweights, tons of dates. Is it not more reasonable, if a person is able, to build a suitable environment that nurtures dates itself, rather than tending to a single date-palm tree one by one in an unsuitable place?

The toil a person must bear to build a suitable environment is far greater than the toil he bears for a single date-palm, a single date-palm sapling. Far greater — but reckon its benefit, reckon its yield. Here you toil over one individual, you fashion one single human being; there you fashion a whole society, you build a whole system, you make millions of human beings, generations of humanity. This was the work of the prophets.

This is a point we have taken our stand on, one we insist on, and we believe the followers of the prophethoods must understand it. Reflect on it deeply; do not pass over it easily. Refer to the verses of the Qur’an, refer to the history of the prophets, refer to the narrations that exist concerning the prophethoods; scrutinize, reflect; neither accept it quickly nor reject it quickly. The matter is very important, because all the difficulties arise from precisely this point. A certain group cannot understand that the prophets wished to build a suitable, favorable environment; they imagine that the prophets wished to fashion human beings one by one — whereas fashioning human beings one by one is far beneath the station of the prophets.

What we understand from the Qur’an is the prophets' answer to this question — "How can human beings be fashioned?" that is, refined and adorned. The answer is that one must build a divine society, a monotheistic (tawhidi) society, a suitable environment, so that the human being may be fashioned within it — not one of him, not ten of him, not a thousand of him, but in groups upon groups — fashioned of themselves, by the natural warmth of the radiant light of the teachings of Islam.

“When the help of God and the victory come, and you see the people entering into the religion of God in throngs.”^[486] In the pagan environment of Mecca, when the prophet wishes to fashion a human being, he is compelled to fashion them one by one. To bring about such a system he needs a number of select persons, a number of cornerstones and a foundation, and these are first fashioned one by one. This does not contradict the prophets' overall plan. To fashion and hew the cornerstones of the civic society, the prophet in Mecca is compelled to engage in individual person-making: one Abu Dharr; one 'Abdullah ibn Mas’ud; another, and another, and so on — at most he fashions a hundred persons, two hundred persons.

These become the building stones for the future civic society — that is, the monotheistic and Islamic society. There, in that way, the prophet fashions human beings one by one — with what toil, with what hardship, with what heartache! Fathers prevent their sons from understanding anything; the sons set their hearts on the world, they do not come to follow the prophet to learn doctrine; and for everyone who develops a little inclination, there is toil and hardship and heartache. All these tasks are carried out. But when the turn comes for Medina — when that divine and Islamic society is formed in Medina, and the prophet stands at its head, ruling by the ordinances and commands of God — then God Almighty speaks in this way:

“When the help of God comes, and the conquest, and you see the people entering into the religion of God in throngs.” This is the upshot of the matter concerning the goals of the prophets.

Let me summarize. The prophets have two goals, two important goals. One is the fundamental goal: to fashion the human being — to purify him of evils, to adorn him with virtues, in short to make him human. This is the higher goal. The other lies halfway along the road to it: to form a monotheistic society, a divine system, the government of God, an order administered by divine laws and ordinances. This is the goal of all the prophets. Anyone who imagines that the great divine prophets did not have this goal should study the Qur’an, the hadith, and history more closely.

There are many verses in the mighty Book of the Lord from which this matter may be derived, but we have cited only two. These two repay reflection; they need to be scrutinized and pondered a little.

The first, as we mentioned, is from Surat al-Hadid.

“We have indeed sent Our messengers with the clear proofs.”^[224]

The statement of the prophets consists of clear arguments — nothing that an intelligent, thinking person fails to grasp. Everyone understands what the prophets say.

“And We sent down with them the Book.”

What is the Book? We have said it repeatedly: "the Book" means the collection of teachings and ordinances that constitutes the very essence of religion — the religious instructions and teachings, the comprehensive ideology of the religion. In brief, with a slight looseness of expression, ^[487] we can equate the Book with what the modern schools today call "ideology" — that is, the constructive principles and teachings, the intellectual principles that have a tangible, constructive effect in practical domains.

The Book is one thing; then, along with it, We also sent down “the Balance.”

The Balance means a scale. But what does this mean? That every prophet who came carried a scale under his arm, large or small? No. "The Balance" means the apparatus for creating social equilibrium — the instrument by which balance can be brought about in a society. Notice what this reveals: the regard is to society. If the prophet were not meant to stand at the head of a society and to form one, what would he need the Balance for — what would he need the very thing by which social equilibrium is established? An instrument has been sent with the prophet by which balance can be created in society. And what is that instrument? The divine judicial apparatuses; the judicial ordinances; the executor of the law, the guarantor of enforcement — the Balance can be applied to this as well. There exist ordinances, a guarantor of enforcement, and an overseer of that enforcement. It is exactly what the democratic countries today call the "executive power," which amounts to the government. In a country that has a government, a parliament, legislation, and an executor, the executive power is what supervises and oversees the enforcement of ordinances in society; the executive power may be this "Balance."

And in studying the narrations that comment on this verse, I found one of their interpretations of the Balance: it says, "The Balance is the Imam." ^[488] And I found it entirely correct — it applies, and we take inspiration from this hadith. The Balance is the Imam. The Imam is the one who must separate truth from falsehood in society; he must distinguish the ranks; he must establish social equilibrium. Why? Because he is the ruler of society. Now, some may hold crude, mistaken readings of this phrase and of that hadith — but we have nothing to do with those; we believe just as we ourselves say. The Imam is the Balance, the measure: evils and goodnesses are weighed by him, paths are gauged against him. Beyond that, he is the overseer in society, watching that people do not depart from equilibrium, and he supervises the ordinances. The narration confirms this too. So the Balance means the instrument by which social equilibrium is established — and this too We sent with the prophet.

Why did We do all this? What was the Book to accomplish for the prophet? What was the prophet himself needed for? What was the Balance to accomplish? The reason is this: “so that people may uphold justice.”

"Li-yaquma 'l-nasu bi-'l-qist" can be rendered into Persian two ways — both, of course, carrying one meaning. We have chosen one of them and rendered it here, and I will mention the other as well. "Li-yaquma 'l-nasu bi-'l-qist": so that people may establish a just life — in parentheses we wrote, and an environment of justice and equality. People should establish a just life; that is one meaning. The other is this: so that people may stand upright upon the basis of justice (qist), may live upon the basis of equality. The two meanings differ, if you scrutinize them, in Arabic parsing and construction — but their import is one. I wanted to explain this so no one finds any difficulty in some of its "kana-yakun" ^[489] (grammatical niceties).

"Li-yaquma 'l-nasu bi-'l-qist" — the upshot of its meaning is that people should live in a just environment, in a just society and system. This is what the prophet came for, first of all. So what did the prophet come for? To bring a just system into being. He came to make the world just, to bring a just society into being — it is precisely for this that the prophet came. And of course it is in a just system that people find the opportunity to attain perfection and exaltation. "Li-yaquma 'l-nasu bi-'l-qist."

Then, following it, He says: “And We sent down iron.”

Yes! We brought iron too. Is mere talking enough — mere preaching, "People, come, build a just system"? Suppose they did build one: would the devils and wolves and thieves and beasts of prey ever let such a just system stand? So We sent iron too. Why did We send it? So that the authentic values might be defended by force of iron. Here again we turn to the books of hadith, and we find that when the Imam, peace be upon him, interprets the verse and reaches this point — "And We sent down iron" — he says: "Weaponry (al-silah)"; ^[490] the sword, the spear, the weapon, all made of iron. Alongside the call of prophethood, God Almighty mentions weaponry. Alongside the preaching laid upon the prophets, alongside the very idea of forming a monotheistic and divine system, the Lord of the worlds mentions weaponry and coercive force. "And We sent down iron" — and, as the Imam, peace be upon him, says, weaponry and the weapon.

“In which is great force and benefits for mankind, and so that God may know who helps Him and His messengers in the unseen.”

The expression "so that God may know" — though God already knows — means that it may be made distinct, made manifest, determined in the external world. "Who helps Him and His messengers in the unseen" means those who help God and His prophets with faith in the unseen: they did not see God, and some did not even see the prophet, yet they believe in him and help him.

“Indeed, God is Strong, Mighty.”

Notice, too, how meaningful these closing phrases of the verses are. The ones you see at the end of every verse — "Indeed God is Strong, Mighty," "Indeed God is Hearing, Knowing," "Indeed God is Forgiving, Merciful" — are not there by chance, the way a poet finds some rhyme to stick at the end of a line. It is not like that. Each of these phrases at the close of a verse carries, in keeping with the content of the verse, a particular meaning and a particular point — did you notice? So in this noble verse too, the matter is just the same. "Indeed, God is Strong": do not imagine that the prophets came yet cannot bring into being the society we have sketched and establish the people upon justice. No — God, the very One who sends them, is Strong. Do not fear that they will struggle and contend against the prophets of God — let them. "Mighty ('aziz)" — God is invincible. I render 'aziz as "invincible." What the lexicon gives for 'aziz is "the Overcomer who is not overcome" (al-ghalibu 'lladhi la yughlab): the one who prevails, over whom no one prevails. The Persian expression we found for this is the word "invincible" (shekast-napazir), both beautiful and concise. God is Strong and invincible. This is one verse.

And now the verse of Surat al-A’raf. The preceding verses speak of Moses, peace be upon him. The preliminaries of that episode do not concern us; it is this verse we wished to interpret, and we have brought one verse from before it only so the matter may be clear.

The speaker is a believer, or believers, addressing God. What do they say? Pay attention, so that we reach the points in question. They say:

“And ordain for us good in this world and in the Hereafter; indeed, we have turned to You. He said: My punishment — I strike with it whomever I will” — I bring My punishment upon whomever I will and intend.

God’s will, though, is not haphazard ^[491] and arbitrary — as if He should wish to punish one and not another. No; the Lord’s will too follows criteria and standards that He Himself has laid down. It is the bad, evil-doing person whom God Almighty wishes to punish. "I strike with it whomever I will" — I bring harm; not quite "harm," for the word is "usibu," which means "I make to be struck," except that in the Persian we have rendered it with the word "harm." I bring harm by this punishment of Mine upon whomever I will.

“And My mercy encompasses all things. I shall ordain it for those who are God-fearing and give the alms-due, and for those who believe in Our signs.”

Which ones? "Those who follow the Messenger, the unlettered Prophet (alladhina yattabi’una 'l-rasula 'l-nabiyya 'l-ummi)" — those who follow the Messenger, the unlettered (ummi) Prophet. We have kept ummi in its very form, because its meaning is disputed. Some say ummi means illiterate; some say "of the common folk," of the masses — belonging to the ordinary mass of people, tied only to the mother, untouched by the surrounding cultures; some say "of the Mother of Cities (Umm al-Qura)," that is, Mecca. Because the meaning is contested, and I did not wish to present research on the question, we rendered ummi by the very word "ummi." "The unlettered (al-ummi)" — that unlettered Prophet — "whom they find (alladhi yajidunahu)" — "written down with them (maktuban 'indahum)" — in their own possession — "in the Torah and the Gospel (fi 'l-tawrati wa-'l-injil)" — in the book of the Torah and the book of the Gospel; for these two books gave glad tidings that the Prophet would come.

What is the mark of this Prophet? From here on, pay attention. "He enjoins upon them the good (ya’muruhum bi-'l-ma’ruf)" — he commands them to do good, the virtues recognized by the intellect and by the human primordial nature (fitrah). "And forbids them the evil (wa yanhahum 'ani 'l-munkar)" — he forbids them the wrongdoings, the things the human intellect and nature do not recognize. "And makes the wholesome things lawful for them (wa yuhillu lahumu 'l-tayyibat)" — he makes lawful and permissible for them the wholesome, good things — every good thing there is in the religion. "And forbids them the foul things (wa yuharrimu 'alayhimu 'l-khaba’ith)" — he makes the foul things forbidden to them; that is, he keeps them away from them, holds their hand back from bad things. And this is what the Islamic society is like.

In the Islamic society, everything good for a person — for his mind, his heart, his soul, his body — is within the reach of all. Knowledge, literacy, godfearing-ness, money — whatever is good and beneficial is available to everyone. And whatever is bad for a person is available to no one. "And forbids them the foul things" — either it is kept out of easy reach, or binding laws have removed it from their reach altogether.

“And relieves them of their burden.”

Among the characteristics of the prophet is this: he lifts the heavy load — the heavy load of ignorance, the heavy load of false traditions, the heavy load of foul, inhuman systems, the heavy load of dictatorships and despotisms and tyrannies and exploitations. Every heavy load he lifts from their shoulders.

“And the shackles that were upon them.”

What fetters and chains were these, then? When the prophet was raised up, had a chain been bound to the feet of every one of the people of Mecca? Had a shackle been placed on their necks? Were they all imprisoned? Clearly the shackles and chains were not of iron. They were shackles and chains — but of what kind? Think for yourself and find out. What kind of shackles and chains lay upon the hands and feet and necks of these people? The shackles and chains of bondage, the shackles and chains of submission to coercion, the shackles and chains of human-made traditions, ordinances, and impositions — and the prophet comes and undoes them. What is this but the forming of a human, monotheistic system?

“So those who believe in him, honor him, support him, and follow the light that has been sent down with him — those are the ones who prosper.” The light and radiance sent down with him is this Qur’an, and they follow after it. They are the victorious, the ones who partake of felicity (falah) and who have reached the goal.

In the name of God, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful.

Consider the verses appointed for today. The first is from Surat al-Nahl, the sixteenth sura, in the fourteenth juz' — verse thirty-six:

“And We did indeed raise up in every nation a messenger, [saying]: 'Worship God and shun the Taghut.' Among them were some whom God guided, and among them were some upon whom error became deserved. So journey through the earth and behold how was the end of those who cried lies.”^[392]

The second passage is from the blessed Surat al-A’raf — an extensive stretch of that sura, the part bearing on our discussion. Because those verses run very long, I could not quote them at full length; of the ones I have in view, I cite only the portion I shall translate for you here. It gives an account of the conversation one of God’s noble prophets — the prophet Hud — held with his people. Before it comes a verse concerning the prophet Noah, and if you follow closely, that verse will serve our purpose in quoting these two together. The first portion is this:

“Indeed We sent Noah to his people, [and he said]: 'O my people, worship God; you have no deity other than Him. Truly I fear for you the punishment of a tremendous day.'”^[492]

From here I again pass over the verses that follow, so that we may reach the story of the prophet Hud and the people of 'Ad. I have left out two or three verses that were not the place of our argument, but the ones after them are once again what we need. This is the verse we cite:

“And to 'Ad [We sent] their brother Hud. He said: 'O my people, worship God; you have no deity other than Him. Will you not then guard yourselves [against evil]?' The chiefs of his people who disbelieved said: 'Indeed we see you in foolishness, and indeed we reckon you among the liars.' He said: 'O my people, there is no foolishness in me; rather, I am a messenger from the Lord of the worlds. I convey to you the messages of my Lord, and I am to you a faithful, trustworthy counselor'”^[493] — and on to the end of the verses.

Today our purpose is to set forth one point: what was the first melody of the prophets' call? From the discussions of these past few days, anyone who has paid attention and given it thought now sees clearly what the prophets are about in this world — for what purpose they have come, how they carry on their work, and by what road they secure their aim. All of this should have grown clear over the course of those discussions. If you find that — God forbid — it has not, turn once more to the written notes. And if even then some ambiguity remains and the matter stays unclear, the fault is mine, for having written the notes deficiently or obscurely. Otherwise, these are the points those notes ought to yield: for what work the prophets come, what the benefit of that work is, and how they secure it. All of this we have already discussed.

Here is today’s discussion. God’s mighty prophets set out to accomplish a great work — to found a monotheistic government and society, to overthrow the order of ignorance and polytheism, to raise up a tremendous resurrection within the fabric of society. These are the aims of the prophets (peace be upon them). But where do they begin? The question of where to begin is exceedingly important. Think of all the undertakings that present themselves to a person, to a group, to a whole society — that we should perform such-and-such an act, carry out such-and-such a plan or program. Sometimes it faces a group, sometimes a handful of people bound to a certain idea or creed, sometimes a nation, sometimes a single individual. Among all these ideas and weighty undertakings, this question is one of the most important of all: from where shall we begin the work? The point of beginning is exceedingly important.

Choose the point of beginning correctly and aptly, and there is much hope this work, this plan, this program will reach its result. Choose it badly, and it is not that the load will never reach its destination and the work never come right — no; it may still arrive, but it will arrive with difficulty. This is why the point of beginning matters most: to a large extent, at a high percentage, it underwrites ^[494] and guarantees the success of the work that begins from it.

In the case of the prophets' work, knowing their point of beginning matters first because we cannot appraise their work without it. To grasp their work fully, we do well to know this too — where they began. Beyond that, it instructs us. If we have seen that the prophets all acted in one style and by a defined method, that becomes a lesson for us, since we are their followers and the successors of their schools and their way. On several counts, then, this question is worth pursuing.

God’s mighty prophets — as we wrote for you in the handout ^[495] at the end of the session.] — began by declaring the kernel, the marrow, the foundation and spirit of their school. At the outset of the social and doctrinal revolution and resurrection, the prophets never flattered ^[496] the people. They never kept the people confused for a time with some other talk, some other slogans, only to bring out the real slogan once they had gained a measure of success — no. From the very first, with sincerity, uprightness, and truthfulness, they declared their real and ultimate aim. And what was that aim? It was Tawhid.

As we explained in the past days, Tawhid is the whole of the school of the prophets (peace be upon them). Tawhid and the knowledge of God serve two ends. On one hand, they are the means of the perfection and exaltation of the human spirit — the lofty, ultimate aim of the prophets. On the other, the plan of Tawhid means bringing about a divine environment: a divine society and order, a just order, a classless order, an order without exploitation, an order without oppression. It means the formation of just such an order. And this is the very fitting environment we were speaking of yesterday — the environment necessary and indispensable for the nurturing of the human being.

Tawhid is the whole of the school of the prophets. Belief in Tawhid, in the existence of God and the oneness of God, secures the final and ultimate aim of the prophets, and also provides the environment they hold necessary for the making of human beings — for the operation of the factory of man-making. Tawhid is the best and most eloquent slogan, because a monotheistic society is a society in which God alone is master and lord. No one other than God acts as lord in it. No being in a monotheistic society imposes upon, lays obligations upon, or legislates for others. No other being in a monotheistic society calls the people to obey itself — not even the Prophet; not even the Prophet, who is the representative of God.

“And [recall] when God said: 'O Jesus son of Mary, did you say to the people: take me and my mother as two gods besides God?'”^[497]

God Most High addresses Jesus: did you teach the people such a thing? Did you instruct them to regard you and your mother as God and as objects of worship?

“He said: 'Glory be to You! It is not for me to say that to which I have no right.'” "Glory be to You, my Lord" — Transcendent are You, my Lord; I would never give such a false teaching, such a bad instruction — never. I take refuge in You from saying to the people what is not the truth and is not right.

“If I had said it, You would surely have known it; You know what is within my soul, and I do not know what is within Your soul.”^[498]

— to the end of the verse.

There is another verse in this connection, and it is, in fact, more fitting than this one: no prophet has the right to tell the people, "Be servants to me." The content of the verse is this — if you wish to find it in the Kashf al-Ayat [Quranic concordance], the phrase "Be servants to me" is in the verse;^[499] you can find this clause there. No prophet has the right to say to the people: O people, be slaves and bondsmen to me. Of course no prophet says this explicitly — "O people, be my slaves and my chattels." What is meant is that no prophet has the right even to call the people to his own command unconditionally; that is the exclusive right of God. And if even the Prophet was like this — if the chosen servant of God has no right to take any liberty within the domain of God’s rule and dominion, if the bearer of the Lord’s revelation cannot summon the people to obey himself in disregard of God — then the case of everyone else is evident. The political powers, the tyrants of history, the bullies who throughout the long span of human life imposed their will upon the people and loaded burdens upon their shoulders — all of these performed an act contrary to Tawhid. Tawhid negates all of this; this is the meaning of Tawhid. And if someone does not grasp this from Tawhid, he certainly either has not studied the question or has not had the requisite understanding of it. This is among the self-evident matters of Quranic Tawhid: Tawhid in worship, Tawhid in obedience — to which I alluded briefly in the discussion of Tawhid. When the prophets enter a society, as soon as they say La ilaha illa Allah [there is no god but God], the thumbs of friend and foe alike are alerted ^[500] as to what is afoot. Do you follow? This is a very important matter.

Here is what matters. Why did the people of the prophets' time see and feel so sharply, while the people of later times — like you and me — do not? As soon as the prophets came, from the very first step they took, their friends and their enemies stood apart. Consider our own Prophet. From the very first day he descended from the Mountain of Light and the Cave of Hira', and began — in the barren land of that graveyard of virtues — to go forth and lift up the melody of Tawhid, from that very moment they set themselves against him. Only the forms of their opposition differed. From the first his enemies stood out; from the first those who were bound to crush the Prophet understood that they must crush him, and it was hidden from no one. So too with everyone in that other camp who was bound to accept him — those whose perception and divine favor ran deeper. He too understood, from the first and as fast as he could, what the Prophet was saying and what he was calling people to. So from the very moment our Prophet was commissioned, both groups grasped his message: his friends and supporters, those whom he protected and for whom he existed, and his enemies, those whom the Prophet was to strike upon the head. Yet it is a message that you and I have still not properly understood. We must sit down — and here I must labor and cry out — to lay before you the self-evident truths of Islam, truths that are, I will not say new for the first time, but at any rate fresh, more unprecedented, somewhat less familiar than many other matters. What we must stand here and prove, argue, and clarify before you, the desert Arab or the townsman of the Prophet’s day grasped in the very first sentence.

Today we must tell you that the spirit of Tawhid consists of the negation of every power other than the power of the Lord. Abu Lahab understood this very point at the very, very first. Walid ibn al-Mughira al-Makhzumi, the lord of Quraysh; Abu Jahl,^[501]. He undertook many measures to prevent the spread of Islam, including the design of an unsuccessful plot to kill the Noble Prophet with the participation of various tribes. He was finally killed, together with a number of the chiefs of polytheism, at the Battle of Badr.] another lord of Quraysh; and likewise Umayya ibn So-and-so, and others besides, the lords of Quraysh — they were the first to understand this matter. They understood that this one who says La ilaha illa Allah, this one who says there is no lord, no object of worship, except God, was not calling people merely to a doctrinal matter, but to a social one as well: the abolition of Umayya ibn Khalaf,^[502], together with one of his sons, was killed at the hands of the Muslims at the Battle of Badr.] the abolition of Walid ibn al-Mughira, the abolition of 'As ibn Wa’il,^[503]. In response to him, God revealed the Sura of al-Kawthar. He has been mentioned as the father of 'Amr al-'As, the minister of Mu’awiya.] the abolition of So-and-so, So-and-so, So-and-so, the abolition of the lords of Quraysh. This they understood first; and because they understood, they opposed it.

Do you imagine that the disbelievers of Quraysh, the ringleaders of disbelief and error, opposed the Prophet for any reason but this — that they saw their own rank and social position in danger? Were their hearts aching for the idols? Were they that devout? We have never seen, among the upper classes of society, at any time, people who were truly believing, devotedly self-sacrificing for religion, for the sacred — any religion, any sacred thing. Whoever throughout time has claimed this has spoken vainly; experience has shown that he is lying. In a class such as the class of 'As ibn So-and-so and Umayya ibn So-and-so and Walid ibn So-and-so, it makes no sense at all that there should be people so attached and devoted to their religion that now, because the Prophet has shown insolence to their idols, they should, say, tear the Prophet to pieces, oppose him, contend with him. No faith that strong exists in them, or could. Of course, there was a little belief, there was bigotry — but the social considerations outweighed all else.

They saw that Tawhid would destroy the palace of their mastery and chieftainship. They saw that the negation of the false gods, the negation of the lords — that is, the founding of a monotheistic society — meant the exclusive sovereignty of God and exclusive obedience to God. They saw that Tawhid means the equality of human beings before the Lord of the worlds: if a person, a society, an order is based on Tawhid, then in that order there is no discrimination, no class difference, no oppression. They understood this, and because they understood it and would not come to terms with such an order, they opposed it. Their like is Pharaoh; their like is Nimrod; their like is the chiefs of the Children of Israel in the time of Jesus; their like is the affair of 'Ad and Thamud; their like is all the prophets whom the Quran has mentioned by way of a firm and solid testimony. When the Prophet enters society and says that there is no god but God — his first word is this word — they begin at once to draw up their ranks against it, to oppose it, to set themselves against it, even to destroy him; in some cases the matter did lead to his destruction.

The first melody of the prophets' call, the point where their work begins, is the proclamation of Tawhid; they utter the last word first. The schools and political parties of the world that have no connection with God and religion have no message that could justify keeping people chasing after "black chickpeas" [i.e., a fool’s errand] for years on end, warming their heads with hollow, empty slogans, gladdening them with vain hopes — only for us to see at last that the object and aim was never these things from the start, that the quarrel was over Mullah Nasr al-Din’s quilt.^[504] They have no real message. The prophets do. Straightforwardly and squarely, honestly and plainly, they declare the matter from the first. From the first they tell the people what their purpose is — the higher classes and the lower classes alike. From the first they say: we wish to bring those at the top down, to bring those at the bottom up, to make them all equal. From the very first they say this.

What is the benefit of speaking this way? What harm is there in the prophets' first putting the people off with delay?^[505] They could string the people along for a time, talk hollow talk for a time, make out that the people want what in fact they do not want, and then at the end secure their aim — what obstacle is there in that? The obstacle is that religion is bound up with awareness and insight. Religious faith, if it is blind and unaware, is of no benefit. Religion wants everyone who embraces it, everyone who enters its region, to know from the start where he is going and what work he is pursuing. Even that desert Arab who is uninformed about everything knows, from the first hour he comes to the Prophet and becomes a Muslim, what he wants; he is not pursuing an absolute unknown; he understands what he wants. This is the very reason he endures so, and is patient. This is the very reason he bears all that suffering and torture and hardship — because he knows what he is doing. And always — in struggles, in clashes ^[506] and conflicts, throughout the whole of history and everywhere in the world — the person who takes action will grow weary in those first moments if he is not aware, if he does not know what he wants, if he does not know what aim and what beloved he is running after. And this is only natural.

A group of people are running with great fervor; you are idle, walking along the street; you see them running, and you run too. After a few paces, you have the right to ask yourself, and you certainly will: why am I running? Where am I going, after all? We have run, we have panted for an hour — and what then? That thought breeds slackness in you. But they know where they are running. Suppose they are travelers whose vehicle is about to depart, and they are running to catch it. They are running to reach such-and-such goods in such-and-such a shop; the goal is clear to them. Until they reach it, they do not grow weary; and even if they do, they drag themselves there with effort, in proportion to how much that goal is worth to them. But you, who do not know why they were running, do not know what their goal was, just aimlessly fell in behind them and ran along for a while — at once you reflect to yourself, and even if you do not, they plant the thought in your mind: "Sir, why? For what? For the sake of whose heart?" There a person grows cold — unless he is aware, unless he has set out from insight.

Consider why a young man, comfortable and at ease, would kick aside everything that has value and importance for a human being, everything that was a means of his comfort and ease, and not regret it. Yasir and Sumayya, that woman and that man, that father and mother, those two exemplary Muslims — the father and mother of 'Ammar — kicked aside all the beauties of life and gave up their lives. How glorious these lives are! The cause of it was that it sprang from insight.

A while ago — a year or two or three back, I think — I read a Persian book about 'Ammar and Yasir, written by an Egyptian author. I found one or two mistakes in it, but it is a fascinating book. It is a book on the biography of 'Ammar Yasir and of his father and mother, Yasir and Sumayya. I think it is by Taha Husayn,^[507] or by one of these same Egyptian writers, and Mr. Ahmad Aram ^[508] in providing sound and faithful translations. After graduating from the Dar al-Funun, he entered the field of law but, after a time, abandoned it and busied himself with the study of medicine. In his final year, he abandoned medicine too and entered cultural activities. The master was one of the first authors of textbooks and educational books. He translated more than 140 titles from the English, French, and Arabic languages into Persian, including: the al-Hayat collection of narrations, The History of Science, the commentary Fi Zilal al-Qur’an, and others.] has translated it into Persian — a fascinating translation too. As I said, I found one or two mistakes in it, but on the whole it is very interesting. Read this book — its title is Va’da-yi Rast ["The True Promise"] — and see how, out of insight and perception and awareness, this faith had penetrated their hearts. See how vividly it explains the state of Yasir’s faith, how this man came to believe, and 'Ammar too, and their striving. First the wife believes; then she brings her husband to faith. It is an uproar, it is a whole affair. Without insight, they would never have endured.

From the very first, the religions declare the final word plainly — from the first they say why they have come, and hide nothing. And they do it for a reason: so that those who embrace religion and attach themselves to it enter out of awareness, out of insight, with no illusions warming their heads. This is the exact opposite of what is customary today in the world of religion. There, insight and awareness are a crime — a crime. And here is the strange thing: the religious person and the anti-religious person arrive at one and the same conclusion on certain religious questions. Both groups have come to believe, as it were, that religion means not understanding, that religion means not thinking at all, closing the eyes and ears. In appearance we say — and the religious say — that the principles of religion are demonstrative, that in the principles of religion no one should imitate anyone. But just dare not to imitate; dare to step a hair’s breadth away from imitation in some corner of the principles of religion, and see how at once you will be technically knocked out. We have all come to believe that religion means walking a road without insight, without awareness, without perception, with eyes closed, in servile blindness. Because we have heard and know that in the branches of religion [furu'] one must refer to a specialist, recognize the specialist, and follow him, we have imagined religion is everywhere like this — whereas it is exactly the reverse, exactly the reverse; the two differ by a hundred and eighty degrees.

Religion is fundamentally [a matter] of awareness and insight. It does not tell anyone: accept it for now, and go investigate later — never; in the world of religion there is no such talk. Even if you suppose you have accepted it, so long as your heart has not accepted it and it has not come out of awareness, you have not truly accepted it. And even if you have accepted religion, religion has not accepted you — not until your acceptance rises from insight and awareness. For religion sets a value on awareness, a worth on insight, a higher and loftier station on the person of insight. It wishes that all, from the first moment they turn toward God, turn consciously. It is for these purposes that the prophets, from the very start, declare their own aim.

There is another point we can draw from this. What we conclude in this discussion comes down to two or three matters. One of them was the very thing I just stated — that religion regards awareness and insight as fundamental and does not accept the unaware Muslim. Here is the second. Consider the followers of the prophets, those who regard themselves as the inheritors of the prophethoods — and not only the scholars. The scholars are, of course, the inheritors of the prophets, but all the divinely-oriented people of the world are reckoned among them too: everyone who walks in the path of Tawhid and accepts Tawhid as a [binding] resolution is a follower of Abraham, a follower of Moses, a follower of Jesus, and a follower of all the other dear and noble prophets of God. By what road do these followers of the prophets wish to enter? Where do they wish to begin — better, more decisive, and more fruitful than the point from which the prophets began?

Why, today, when religion is spoken of, do we not put Tawhid forward first? Why? This is a question that must be asked — is it not so? Wherever there is talk of religion, what percentage of the talk is of Tawhid? To make our own people religious — our own society, our own world — why do we not begin where the prophets began? We wish to make the people of the world believe in the religion of Islam, yet we enter by a road other than the one the prophets took. We must put forward Tawhid — the very Tawhid the prophets put forward. We may not be able to bring about that resurrection on the world horizon, on the international level — and of course we cannot do it easily — but at least we can tell the people, on that same international level and world horizon, that the aim and goal of the prophets is to bring about such a resurrection. This much we can say. Why do we not put it forward?

Why do religious speakers, instead of beginning from Tawhid — both in thought and in practice — busy themselves with secondary, second- and third-rank matters? This is a very noteworthy and important question. Often it is said to us: "Sir! If you have an objection to some of the religious propaganda, why do you not take it up with the propagandists themselves?" The answer is this: where are we to find the propagandists? Those whose manner of delivery we criticize — where are we to find them? And how much enforceable weight does our friendly, well-meaning advice carry?

Let me say this to you, however. I firmly believe in the authenticity of religious propaganda, and in the authenticity and necessity of the standard-bearers of religion — that is, the august clergy of the Shi’a. I love the clergy very much, and I believe the cleric is necessary. By "clergy" — though the word "clergy" [ruhaniyyat] is a mistaken one, I use it because it is common and current — I mean the scholarly and religious community of the Shi’a, the very body our dear clerics today belong to. And I believe that if this community did not exist today in the world of Islam, the affairs of the Muslims would become even more pitiable than they are. In short, some group must be girded for understanding and expounding the teachings of Islam, and that is precisely this scholarly and religious community. A young man, a tradesman, someone who has not made this work his special field may sometimes think, investigate, even express it or write it down — and may God confirm and preserve those who render these services to Islam — but he is not a permanent worker; he is an amateur ^[509] at this work. A professional is needed. There must be someone whose profession is this, whose specialty is this, whose work is this — and that is the scholarly and religious community of the Shi’a, that is, the clerics.

Therefore let there be no doubt about the existence of these people, their authenticity, their necessity — you, my young friends, who know that I do not speak out of bigotry but out of realism. The existence of an entity called the clergy is necessary; it is among the most necessary of necessities. But we also have this right, and we grant it to ourselves, to say a word to those who today stand in this path, in this garb.^[510] We acknowledge that a number of them act exactly as we would wish — a number of the clerics and propagandists truly act as they should. Yet there are also some who simply pay no attention, in any way, to the fact that today their starting point is not the starting point of the prophets' work. Matters of the tenth rank, of the eighth rank, of the fifth rank have, for them, more value and worth than the question of Tawhid — than the exposition of the Quran, than the principles of religion, than the lofty teachings of Islam.

A cleric is ready to discuss for hours how Nakir and Munkar [the two angels of the grave] come into the grave: do they stand on a person’s right side, or on his left, or facing him, or what? Yet knowing or not knowing this has not a particle of effect on a person’s being a Muslim, not the slightest effect on how we act and on the fulfillment of our Islamic commitments. And of this sort of question there are very many. These, too, they bring into the reckoning ^[511] of the necessities of religion; they put them forward like the first-rank matters of religion, yet they are never ready to give thought to this one question: Tawhid’s proposal for the form of society, for the social order — what is it? Does it have a proposal or not? Our message is that these tasks must be placed in the first rank.

Here is one lesson we take from the work of the prophets and from where their call began: we too must make our own starting point the very starting point of the prophets. Even if we cannot accomplish the prophets' resurrection, we can at least say what that resurrection was, what the prophets aimed at, what road they walked; we can explain it — this much we can indeed do. When there is a discussion about the Prophet of the End of Time, preference goes to matters of the fourth and fifth rank in the life of that great one — for example, the question of the Messenger of God’s casting no shadow. There is a narration in the Khisal of Saduq that the Messenger of God (may God’s blessings be upon him and his family), when he walked, used to see behind him. But Saduq himself says in the footnote what is meant: that the Messenger of God was so alert, so intelligent and watchful, like a person who continually sees everything around him. Some people walk down the street dazed and stupefied; someone behind them makes faces and mimics them, and you could walk behind such a man for an hour and he would never notice. With others, you cannot pull such things off behind their backs. He is intelligent, he is attentive, he is watchful of everything around him; the slightest gesture, the slightest movement, near him or behind him, draws his eye. So Saduq says: the Prophet was an intelligent, discerning ^[512] man.

This is Saduq’s statement, mind you — the statement of Muhammad ibn 'Ali ibn Babawayh al-Qummi, a traditionist [muhaddith] of eleven hundred years ago, one of the greatest scholars of the Shi’a, a man whose books have stood at the height of fame from a thousand years ago until now. This very 'Uyun Akhbar al-Rida, Ikmal al-Din, Man La Yahduruhu [al-Faqih], and Khisal, Amali — dozens of books by this great one are now printed and extant, among the highest source-texts of the Shi’a. This is the man whose opinion it is. Now, I am not concerned with whether the opinion is correct or not. But they are ready to put it forward and debate it — the opinion itself, the criticism of it, this traditionist’s view of it, that one’s. Yet as to what the noble Prophet had come for at all — what his proposal was for the shape of society, what he said about government, what his view was on how human beings should be raised: did he consider individual upbringing enough, or did he hold social upbringing to be necessary? — these things are never raised at all. That is exactly the point.

Today is not a day on which the world of Islam can bear delay in these matters. Today we do not have that abundance of time; we do not have that opportunity; today our patient is in his death-throes — his hour is late. Today we must put forward, ahead of all else, whatever is most necessary; and whatever is a hair’s breadth less necessary must fall a hair’s breadth behind. Every breath and every hour of today weighs heavily on us, and counts for much.

Yes — leave those detailed, extensive theological discussions about the particulars of the second- and third- and fourth-rank teachings of Islam for the day when we have no other work to do, when we have at least solved these first tasks. And one last word: if you do not accept this advice from us, at least do not take offense that we gave it. That is yet another matter — for the best of people is the one who does not take offense at receiving advice.

So the starting point of the prophets' call is Tawhid. As for the witness we cited from the Quran for this meaning, one is Surat al-Nahl, and its verse is this:

“And We did indeed raise up in every nation a messenger” — We raised up in every nation a prophet.

And what was the message of this prophet and messenger? His proclamation was this: “Worship God and shun the Taghut”. This is the first word of the prophets.

The moment they arrive, before they have even shaken off the dust of the road, their message is this: "Worship God and shun the Taghut."

The Taghut is the rival of God. The Taghut is whatever stands horn to horn against God and the command of God — whoever it is. Sometimes this Taghut is your own self;

Sometimes the Taghut is that very babbling ^[514] heart of yours. Sometimes it is the caprice that drives you day and night. Sometimes a person’s love of mastery is his Taghut; his arrogance is his Taghut. And sometimes the Taghut is a power outside the human being’s existence — a power that expands in widening circles and rises up. In every case, when the prophets came, they said God, not Taghut. The first sentence they uttered was this: worship and serve God, and turn away from the Taghut.

“Then among them were some whom God guided” — some of them God guided; “and among them were some upon whom error became deserved” — and some were those upon whom error and misguidance were laid.

“So journey through the earth and behold how was the end of those who cried lies.” See what became of those upon whom error was laid, who called the Prophet a liar and did not accept his guidance. Behold the fallen civilizations; behold the ruined countries and cities; behold Babylon and Assyria and Chaldea,^[515] destroyed, of which nothing remained but a name in the column of history. Behold the power of the Pharaohs of Egypt — how Egyptian society was rolled up like a scroll. This is what the Quran speaks of: behold the nations and countries that did not lend an ear to the word of the prophet, and see what their end became — they are doomed to extinction. The talk is not even of a miracle. In the earliest age, of course, miracles used to come, because the doomed had to disappear quickly: it could not be allowed that, with the passage of ages ^[516] and days, the people of 'Ad, for instance, should be brought to perdition only slowly. So there God would send down chastisement upon them — the blowing of a wind, an earthquake, a flood, something — and remove them from existence.

But, generally speaking, until the end of the world this holds: any nation that does not move along the course of religion will be destroyed. Not that its people will all die — no; the destruction of a nation means the destruction of its national organization. They are absorbed, they are digested, they become part of other nations, and their nationhood vanishes entirely. Today, find where the nationhood of Chaldea is, where the nationhood of Assyria is, where the nationhood of Babylon is. These great civilizations of history, the first human civilizations — where are they? Where are they? Is there any trace of them at all?

“Behold how was the end of those who cried lies.”

That was in Surat al-Nahl; now Surat al-A’raf.

Surat al-Nahl speaks generally: "And We did indeed raise up in every nation a messenger" — in every nation We sent a prophet. But Surat al-A’raf names the prophets one by one. It begins with Noah:

“Indeed We sent Noah to his people” — “He said: O my people, worship God.”

See — his very first word is this: O my people, "Worship God". "You have no deity other than Him" — He is the true object of worship. "Truly I fear for you the punishment of a tremendous day". Then his people answered that they would not accept, and there followed the affair of the Flood; but those parts were not our subject here, until the turn again reaches 'Ad.

“And to 'Ad [We sent] their brother Hud”^[517] — We sent to the people of 'Ad their brother Hud.

Now the people of 'Ad are among those most ancient peoples — perhaps prehistoric — for it has never been correctly established who they were or in what era; they come after the Flood of Noah, belonging to the very, very ancient.

“And you skillfully hew out houses from the mountains.”^[518][519]

This is about the people of 'Ad, apparently — that they carved houses into the mountains; one need not deem it far-fetched that this belongs to the late Stone Age, which some materialist scholars have described and depicted. At any rate, they belong to the very ancient. They had a prophet named Hud, who likewise said to them this same thing:

“He said: O my people, worship God; you have no deity other than Him” — O people, worship God, for you have no god besides Him.

Notice, too, how this statement makes utterly false the theory of those who claim that Tawhid and religion in general arose from the natural condition of human beings, out of their ignorance and foolishness — that religion only gradually arrived at Tawhid. They say the peoples were polytheists at first — some of these sociologists who speak by rote. It is a very bad thing to speak by rote ^[520] — like someone who sets out to describe the Mosque of Imam Hasan al-Mujtaba, to describe this building, without ever having come near it. He begins: yes, I see the Mosque of Imam Hasan thus — these marble stones cover all its wainscot,^[521] that extends from the ledge down to the floor.] the chandeliers hang in such a manner, the walls are decorated with such beauty. But he has not seen it. He has heard that the Mosque of Imam Hasan draws a large crowd and, on conjecture, imagined it must be like this — whereas the moment he stepped inside, you would see: no indeed, it has neither roof nor wall!

In matters of sociology, if someone speaks without study, by rote, the result is exactly this: a cause for ridicule. They speak about the interpretation of history without having studied an important part of it. They speak about the phenomena of religion and creed without paying attention to the religions of history. This is a religion that existed perhaps tens of thousands of years ago. Or, if we take that famous date found among the narrations as reliable — that seven or eight thousand years have passed since the descent of Adam — then suppose this was perhaps six or seven thousand years ago. And these people solemnly recount the chronicle: first there was polytheism, and then Tawhid appeared. But no: we see that from antiquity, Tawhid was already there.

“Will you not then guard yourselves [against evil]?”

— O my people, will you not show piety? He wanted to make Tawhid acceptable to them, to help them understand it. Here I have cited the conversation of his people with the prophet Hud. I read it from the Quran and give a brief translation:

“The chiefs of his people who disbelieved said:”^[522] “Indeed we see you in foolishness” “and indeed we reckon you among the liars”

This is among the accusations that, throughout history, have been directed against those who call to the truth. One of my discussions on prophethood takes up precisely this — perhaps the last chapter — what kind of slanders were cast at the prophets, and what they amounted to; it is a side discussion. They say: you are a foolish man; they accuse him of ignorance.

“He said: O my people, there is no foolishness in me”^[523]; “rather, I am a messenger from the Lord of the worlds”

In the face of their accusation and their improper speech, he repeated his true statement.

“I convey to you the messages of my Lord”^[524], “and I am to you a faithful, trustworthy counselor”

I desire your good, I desire your growth, I desire your progress — for I call you to God and Tawhid.

“Do you marvel that a reminder from your Lord has come to you by means of a man from among yourselves, that he may warn you?”^[525]

Do you marvel that a reminder from your Lord came to you, by means of a man from your very selves, to warn you? That is, do you find it astonishing that an ordinary person, in this same garb of yours, should attain the station of prophethood and messengership?

Then he directs them to a historical matter: “And remember when He made you successors after the people of Noah” — that sinful people — “and increased you abundantly in stature” — in your very creation He gave you greater strength — “so remember the bounties of God, that perhaps you may prosper”.

“They said: Have you come to us”^[526] — see how the enemy too grasps at once what the exclusive worship of God means. “They said: Have you come to us that we should worship God alone?” “And forsake what our fathers used to worship?” — and set aside the idols our fathers worshipped, inanimate and animate both? “Then bring upon us that with which you threaten us” “if you are among the truthful”.

“He said: There has [already] befallen you defilement and wrath from your Lord.”^[527]

There has befallen you defilement and wrath: a defilement within your own beings, and a wrath from your Lord that has overtaken you. You are wretched.

“Do you dispute with me concerning names that you have named, you and your fathers?” Do you argue with me over hollow, marrowless names that you and your fathers coined and fabricated — names you fastened onto a being you yourselves made and to which you granted power? For its sake you dispute with me?

“for which God has sent down no authority [sultan]” — concerning which God has sent down no sultan, that is, no power — or no proof.

We have written down both meanings: hujja means a proof and argument; and sultan carries both the sense of power and the sense of hujja, that is, proof and argument. Here both can hold. On the first, we say that God Most High has sent you no proof or argument for the correctness and soundness of these gods and lords of yours. On the second, we say instead that God has given them no power at all — and these abject, helpless beings, to which God gave no power whatsoever, you place at God’s side.

“Then wait; indeed I am with you among those who wait.” He said these things; then the chastisement of the Lord came down.

We said that prophethood is a social resurrection, and that one of the principles of this resurrection is the negation of social classes: in the environment the Prophet of God builds and shapes, there is no class of the weak, the enslaved, the destitute, and the deprived on one side, and a class of the powerful, the bullies, and the privileged on the other.

As we know from our own Islam — and indeed all the heavenly religions are essentially of the same character — Islam has never posited, never even imagined, a situation in which one person, because he is weak, because he is powerless, would be unable to obtain his own rightful due. Such a supposition has no place among the suppositions of an Islamic government and of a monotheistic, divine order. This is why He says: «لن تقدس امة لا یؤخذ فیها للضعیف حقه غیر متعتع» ("No community will be sanctified in which the weak one cannot take his right without stammering")^[528] — meaning this: suppose in some society a person is weak — not at the head of some power, not holding one of the political or social posts — and that ordinary person cannot take his right without a stammer of the tongue. Then know that such a society is not a saved, successful, victorious society. And even if the weak one took his right but took it with a stammer of the tongue — went and stood there, and his tongue stuck a little, and his face flushed a little — this too is of no use. Does a child of his own house, going toward the kitchen, toward the food and the storehouse and the source of food, to take the food that is his by right, feel any shame, any sense of humiliation, any sense of being a burden? Certainly not.

In a society shaped the way Islam teaches and instructs us, and the way it wishes us actually to act, the situation is like this: all are children of one environment and members of one body, without any difference or distinction whatsoever. This means that the Islamic ruler — even one like the Commander of the Faithful (may God’s blessings be upon him) — has, in the Islamic society, exactly as much right and exactly the same rights as any one of the individuals of the common people, and only that much right.

In the Islamic society, the very highest authorities cannot use force, bullying, or even harsh speech against an ordinary human being. Consider how far this went. Even in a period when the course of the Islamic society had changed and, according to our belief, had drifted away from the axis of divine and authentic vicegerency — that is, away from the axis of the imamate of the Commander of the Faithful (may God’s blessings and peace be upon him) — even then, this held. A governor, a powerful man, ruled some region far from the Islamic capital; his son — not he himself — struck a single lash against an Arab. At that, a high-spirited Arab gets up and crosses that whole distance, comes to Medina to seek justice and to file his complaint. The caliph writes to the governor that both the governor and his son must come; he does not say "Send your son alone" so that the governor might excuse himself in reply and say "I am unwell at the moment" — no, the governor himself must come too. The governor and his son both come. When the caliph asks them why he harmed this Arab and struck him with a whip, the son of the governor says: "O Commander of the Faithful, O caliph! Tell him to bring a witness." He turned and said: "His witness is precisely this — that with such hardship he rose up from Egypt and came all the way to Medina. In the desert, where would he bring a witness from? Should he find four upright witnesses to attest that you struck him in the desert?! If you struck him in the lonely desert, what is he to do? Had you not struck him, this motive would not have arisen in him to rise up all that distance from Egypt and come on foot to Medina to complain to me. Lay him down." They stretched the governor’s son out in the mosque and began to flog him. When the son rose up, [the caliph] said, "Lay the father down too." The clamor and outcry of 'Amr ibn al-'As went up — the governor was 'Amr ibn al-'As — "Me, why? You say my son struck him; why are you striking me?" He said: "For the reason that your son struck him relying on you, struck him relying on your power. Had you not been his father, had you not held power, had you not been his protector and supporter, he would have struck his own head against a stone^[529] before striking this Arab in the desert. Lay him down." For whose time was this? This was the time when Islam had already separated from the God-willed course, when our Commander of the Faithful was not in office. Those who were in office — we do not grant them the right of vicegerency — and yet, even so, it was like this.

This is the Islamic society. I have said these things with a purpose: I want you to draw the conclusion from today’s discussion yourselves, not to take it from me. Before I even say what comes next in this discussion, you should already be arriving at the very same conclusion.

This is the society that Islam wants — and every monotheistic religion in the world wants the same — a society with no force, no bullying, no piling up of wealth alongside the deprivation of the destitute. This very school, this very religion, says: «ما رأیت ثروة مجموعة الا و فی جانبها حق مضیع» ("I never saw a heaped-up fortune except that beside it I saw a right that had been wasted").^[530] If wealth were distributed per capita, this much would never reach Mr. Rockefeller.^[531] The reason so much has reached him is that he has piled his own share on top of the share of ten million other people, twenty million other people, until it grew to this. A ten-millionth of it is his; a hundred-thousandth is his. «ما رأیت ثروة مجموعة الا و فی جانبها حق مضیع».

The Islamic society, the ideal society by the logic of the monotheistic religions, is exactly this kind of society: no force, no bully, no one wielding power over another. Should anyone try to use force, they will not let him. Should anyone try to spread class difference in a society built on the Islamic order, they will not let him do it. Why? Because this order was one the Prophet had built. You have seen these skilled tailors — when they fashion a garment, it may be torn and tattered, riddled with holes throughout, and yet its seams have not come undone, its cut has not been lost. The Islamic society they punctured with holes again and again, yet the cut of the society held. Its tailor is the Prophet; its architect and craftsman is the capable hand of the Messenger of God. The God-willed, God-made, Prophet-made order is an order of this kind: no force, no bullying, no exploitation, no despotism, no absolute rule of one person or one group over others. In such a society — which God wants, and of which He says people must be gathered together in this form — there is no ignorance, no superstition-worship. In this community the people are all bound to think. They must each find their own path; and once they have found it, they must tread it.

In that society all are duty-bound to defend the rights of the weak, the deprived, and the oppressed. No one there has the right to say, "My own interests are enough for me, my own troubles are enough for me; I have no time to attend to anyone else’s affairs" — because all are together, all parts and members and limbs of one body. Can they speak this way? In that society there is no laziness, no division and discord, no blind submission that moves sightlessly after Zayd and 'Amr and Bakr. This is the society the Prophet wishes to build, with his powerful hand and with the teaching and inspiration of God’s revelation. Its great characteristics, its main outlines, are these: knowledge and awareness; justice and equity; a single class; the negation of social classes; the negation of exploitation; the negation of the accumulation of wealth; the negation of despotism and absolute rule; the negation of taking the side of falsehood; and the obligation to take the side of right and truth. These are the features of this society.

Here is the main point of my words, and it connects to today’s discussion.

Suppose a prophet comes into an ignorant society and states his message: he declares his aim, says what kind of society he wants to build, says how he wants to arrange the social order. If a prophet speaks these words, who will struggle against him in this ignorant community?

I have said what kind of society the Prophet wants to build. So it is very clear who will oppose him and struggle against him. The first to struggle against the Prophet are those who live off class difference. They are alive because they can milk a group of people, because they can wrongfully use the energies of a group of innocent human beings. If they were placed in the same rank, the same class, as those human beings, then off whom would they live? Whom would they milk after that? These become opponents.

Another group who will oppose this prophet’s call, and the establishment of such a society, are the wealth-hoarders. They are eager to pull money out of this one’s pocket, that one’s pocket, out of the knotted handkerchief of some deprived old woman, from the bottom of the cash-box of some grocer, from the meager till of some street vendor, and to pour it into their own enormous, infinite purses. By founding usurious institutions, by establishing a system of usury and taking interest^[532] on money, they are eager to turn every business, every trade, all economic activity, in the end to their own profit. Is it not so? Sir, what is your occupation? You are a tradesman in this bazaar; whatever business you do — if you tell me, so many percent of it is for you, so many percent for such-and-such bank and so-and-so and so-and-so. See how much credit you have used, see how much interest you are paying, and then see for whom you are running.

When the system was a usurious system, when everyone in a society pays interest while a group take interest and devour it, then all the businesses turn to the profit of the usurious institutions. And in such a society — where wealth and wealth-hoarding are the noble, legitimate occupation of a group of human beings who consume and lord it over others — suppose a prophet comes, a reformer comes, and says, "Sir, wealth-hoarding is forbidden!" Then it is obvious this one will oppose that prophet; it is quite natural. So this too is one group.

One group, then, are the wealth-hoarders who will struggle against this prophet. Another group are the despotic rulers who will struggle against this prophetic call and divine mission — because the moment «لا اله الا الله» enters a society in its true form, its meaning is that Pharaoh has risen up out of that society and departed; either he has gone, or he has become one of the ordinary individuals of the people. This, after all, is the meaning of «لا اله الا الله». If «لا اله الا الله» becomes, in its true form, the source of the building of a society, then in that society, formed on the basis of «لا اله الا الله», it is God who stands at the apex of the pyramid, not Pharaoh. God is placed there — not Pharaoh and Haman, not Nimrod, not Shaddad,^[533] not Mu’awiyah. So it is very clear that Pharaoh and Nimrod and the other despotic powers of history will struggle vehemently against the prophets' call to establish such a society. This too is one class of the opponents who struggle against the prophethoods.

Yet another class are the rabbis and the monks — those who work on people’s minds. Throughout history the rabbis and monks try to keep the people in ignorance, and they do it to protect the social standing they draw from the teaching they hand the people. Because if that teaching were sound — a teaching that builds lives, awakens, enlightens — then this class too could no longer keep its lordship, its spiritual leadership, its privileges of wealth and prestige. Jesus son of Mary — his struggle was with the rabbis and monks long before it ever reached the Roman emperor, for in his own time it never reached [the emperor]. Who was it that did not want the Messianic call to take root in the corrupt Jewish society of that day? The rabbis of the Jews, the scholars of the Jews — and they knew Jesus well.

In the era of Islam’s rise, who was it that did not want the prophetic movement, the Muhammadan movement and the Islamic mission, to take root? Those for whom, once the Prophet came, once those sound teachings came — once that pure, delicious, thirst-quenching wellspring of Islam came and filled the minds to overflowing, opened the eyes, and lifted away every ambiguity — there would be no more room for lordship and a comfortable life. It is plain: where Islam is, the fabrications of Ka’b al-Ahbar^[534] and 'Abd Allah ibn Salam^[535] lose all color and luster. When the sun of truth shines upon the precinct of human minds and thoughts, their superstitions and their darknesses dissolve and vanish of themselves. So the moment a prophet comes — the moment that prophetic society founded on awareness, on knowledge and clear-sightedness and free thought and enlightenment, that divine, monotheistic society, first begins to play its tune — the rabbis and the monks are among the first to sense the danger. The people’s awareness works against them, and against the powers allied with them. Both they and their allies suffer harm — and those allied powers need not even be religious powers; they may be political powers, and they too suffer harm, and so they too sense the danger.

I read this in that letter of the Fourth Imam (may God’s blessings be upon him) to Muhammad ibn Shihab al-Zuhri. In it the Imam (peace be upon him) draws for al-Zuhri a picture so vivid that only today do we newly understand the very thing he explained that day — today, when we, in the twentieth century, turn back to history and watch religious and political forces coalesce to crush nations, destroy talents, and trample the rights of the masses. «و اعلم ان ادنیٰ ما کتمت و اخف ما احتملت ان آنست وحشة الظالم و سهلت له طریق الغی بدنوک منه حین دنوت و اجابتک له حین دعیت» ("And know that the least thing you have concealed and the lightest burden you have borne is that you befriended the desolation of the oppressor [grew familiar with him and kept him company] and smoothed for him the path of error by your drawing near to him when you drew near, and by your answering him when you were called").^[536] This letter is in Tuhaf al-'Uqul, and its full exposition would take long — Muhammad ibn Muslim and Muhammad ibn Shihab are one and the same person, named after his father Muslim and after his father’s grandfather Shihab.^[537]

In short, then, one of the groups whom the coming of the prophet alarms and terrifies is this very group: the masters of religion — not the real religion, but the false, superstitious one. These too were among those who fought the prophets' missions and their liberating calls with everything they had. We see it in the call of Islam itself; we see it also in the affair of Abraham, the Friend of the Merciful — for when all the attendants of the idol-temples saw that the idols had been broken, they cried, "Who has done this to them?" and raised an uproar; and it was those very people who incited Nimrod to cast Abraham into the fire. The ordinary people knew nothing of the idol-temple; the idol-temple has a priest, it has attendants. It was those very people who, when Moses son of 'Imran appeared in the Pharaonic society, reassured Pharaoh and emboldened him, saying, "We, by our own magic, by our own soothsaying,^[538] will nullify his magic." It was those very people who, in the call of Jesus (peace be upon him), formed the greatest opposition, the front against Jesus, and blocked his call. Look — this ordinary Gospel, these very Gospels that are in hand — look, even with all the distortions, these things are there; these historical portions can still tell us the historical realities of that time. And again, it was these very people who, in the call of Islam — in the many stories you have heard — kept coming to pose questions, to test, to set people upon the Prophet; to stage the mubahalah (the mutual imprecation) with the Christians of Najran and the like; to reassure the people and bind them to the rotten, ancient stuff they possessed.

When a new idea is raised in a society, the course of human thought is bound to move toward greater comprehension and awareness. That is the nature of the matter — the nature of the human being: old and young must set out after this new current of thought, and they do set out. Human beings want the new word more; whatever is more acceptable to their minds, they accept more. Moreover, "the lamp of falsehood has no radiance."^[539] Superstitions are falsehood; religious distortions and substitutions are falsehood. If some clear statement, some rational mind, exposed the emptiness of these superstitions — their nonsensical and baseless nature — the people would readily accept it.

But it is this very class of rabbis and monks who, throughout history, did not let the people believe in the prophets, despite the clarity of the prophets' speech. Consider how the prophets came: with manifest authority, with a clear proof, everywhere carrying light with them, everywhere enlightening human beings. They never spoke obscurely,^[540] they never delivered pseudo-philosophical jargon to the people, they did not philosophize for the people; they spoke clean and straight and frankly with the people. Given all this, the people ought to have accepted very quickly, ought very quickly to have grasped the soundness and firmness^[541] of the speech of the prophets of God. So what caused so much obstinacy and bigotry, that the call of the prophets was not accepted quickly and easily? Why? It was these very soothsayers and rabbis and monks, that very class which the Qur’an names "the rabbis and the monks" — these were the obstacle. They summoned the people to greater and greater adherence to the wrong intellectual traditions and the inherited superstitious notions. These too were alarmed at the coming of the prophet, because they knew that if the prophet came, if the prophet was commissioned, if that society came into being — a society of awareness, of light, of intellectual growth, in which all the people are either learned or learners — there would no longer be any arena for the illiterate and the self-satisfied and the falsely revered, for the people who wish human beings to remain in unawareness and superstition; there would no longer be any place for these in that society. This is why these too struggled, with all possible vehemence, against the prophets, against the divine calls, against the historical missions.

That makes four classes. Up to this point in my talk, I have not cited anything from the Qur’an; I have only explained this much: what kind of world the prophets come to build. I described that world for you — what kind of world it is, what kind of society it is. Then I asked: who fears such a society? The answer is obvious. In a society where the accumulation of wealth is forbidden, the wealth-hoarders are afraid. Where class difference is a sin, forbidden, abolished, the upper classes are afraid. Someone who has grown accustomed to living among the upper classes, seeing an order about to come into power that will bring him down and level him with the dust-dwelling people — or level the dust-dwelling people up to him, it makes no difference, for him it is the same — he can remain a lord only if there are slaves. Otherwise, if all are also lords, then he again is no lord: the lordship of the lords lies in their being the only lords while the others are slaves. If the slaves became lords, the lords would grow many, and cheap — their costliness lies in their fewness. This society that comes into being either brings him down and sets him at the level of the slaves, or raises the slaves up and places them at his level; either way, lords become many, so he falls from being falsely revered. So he too opposes.

That absolute despotic power, too, will not be on happy terms with the call of the prophets and the rule of the prophet — and the reason is plain: he knows that when the prophet comes, the first one struck is he. This is the one whose heart longs to be — in the words of the late Mirza-yi Na’ini (may God’s mercy and exaltation be upon him) in the introduction to Tanbih al-Ummah^[542] — «فعّال ما یشاء و حاکم ما یرید» ("the doer of whatever he wills and the ruler by whatever he wishes");^[543] the one who wishes to be, in the Qur’an’s words, «لا یسأل عما یفعل» ("He is not questioned about what He does")^[544] — who does whatever he does, says whatever he says, goes wherever he goes, and no one may ask "why." This too is one class; and the class of rabbis and monks we have already explained.

These four classes, which we have marked out for you by mental analysis, happen to be named in the Qur’an as well. The people in the class of the chiefs and ringleaders of the powers and orders — those who hold these posts — the Qur’an calls the mala'. «قال الملأ الذین کفروا من قومه» ("The chiefs of his people who disbelieved said")^[545] — the mala', those people who fill the eyes; yamla’una al-'ayn, the people of pomp and majesty, those who, when they walk, with their glitter and their "clear the way, get back" outriders,^[546] make every human being submissive and small before them. The mala', those eye-fillers — one class of the prophets' opponents is these. Like whom? In the ignorant, Pharaonic order, like Haman. «و قال فرعون یا هامان ابن لی صرحا» ("And Pharaoh said: O Haman, build me a lofty tower");^[547] the fixer and lackey of Mr. Pharaoh — and at the price of this servitude to Pharaoh, he is lord of all the rest, of all but Pharaoh. As it was said: "A fly that you set flying is a falcon."^[548] Haman is that very fly that Pharaoh has set flying, and it does the work of a falcon. He is weak, he is wretched, he is a lone man — dealing with^[549] him is within the power of any single man; but, relying on Pharaoh, he is all-in-all. So when he walks in the street, if you look, you see that the light around him casts such a curtain^[550] that a human being simply cannot bear to look at him. "Clear the way, get back, go, come — who is it? Haman is coming."

Or take the ignorant order of Mu’awiyah: there it is al-Mughirah ibn Shu’bah,^[551] it is Ziyad ibn Abihi^[552] — these are that same mala'. They keep the ground around Mu’awiyah’s throne so firm that wherever he looks, he sees a friend, a companion-counselor, a well-wisher. In the Qur’an this class is called the mala', and the aristocratic class is called the mutrafin, those afflicted with taraf — aristocratic indulgence, the great fortunes that breed misery, crime, and the trampling of rights; taraf. The verse we have written out here for you and will recite says exactly this: in every community, when We sent a prophet, its mutrafin, its aristocrats, were the first to oppose him — the first to strike up the tune of opposition. This too is yet another class.

That class of intellectual ringleaders the Qur’an names with this very name, "rabbis and monks": «ان کثیرا من الاحبار و الرهبان» ("Indeed, many of the rabbis and the monks…"),^[553] whose verse we will now explain for you. As for that class of despotic powers — and here I am only conjecturing, offering this part as a probability — I think the Qur’an refers to them by the word taghut. Now taghut is a general word; as I said before, taghut means the rebellious power that stands in opposition to God. Your own carnal soul may be the taghut — for there is this hadith too: «اعدی عدوک نفسک التی بین جنبیک» ("Your most hostile enemy is your own soul that lies between your two sides")^[554] — your own soul, your own self, your own caprices and lusts, your own child, your own wife, your own beloved friend may be your taghut; and the great powers, too, may be the taghut. So taghut carries a general meaning. But because we see that in the Qur’an the taghut is everywhere set against Allah, and is shown holding very important roles and stations, we understand that the taghut is the highest stations of an ignorant order.

In one place He says: «الذین آمنوا یقاتلون فی سبیل الله و الذین کفروا یقاتلون فی سبیل الطاغوت» ("Those who believe fight in the way of God, and those who disbelieve fight in the way of the taghut")^[555] — the believer fights in the way of God, the unbeliever in the way of the taghut; the taghut is in opposition to God. In another place He says: «الله ولی الذین آمنوا یخرجهم من الظلمات الی النور و الذین کفروا اولیاؤهم الطاغوت یخرجونهم من النور الی الظلمات» ("God is the Guardian of those who believe; He brings them out of the darknesses into the light. And those who disbelieve, their guardians are the taghut; they bring them out of the light into the darknesses").^[556] The word taghut appears about seven times across the Qur’an, and the style of these expressions suggests what it means: those same upper despotic powers at the apex.

In short, these four classes are the opponents of the prophets — not only in the time of Moses, not only in the time of the Prophet, not only in the time of Abraham, but in every age of history. Wherever a word of truth appeared, wherever a claim and a call arose for following the prophets of God and the heavenly books, these four classes lined up against it — either simultaneously, or one after another. This is the general rule, and it is the instructive point of these noble verses.

First, in the first verse, in the first portion, He says: «و کذلک جعلنا» ("And thus We appointed"),^[557] «کذلک» — meaning "thus." Thus, meaning what? Meaning "like you." Just as in your own case, O Prophet — likewise «جعلنا لکل نبی» ("We appointed for every prophet") «عدوا» — an enemy, an adversary — «شیاطین الانس و الجن» ("devils from among mankind and the jinn"). These enemies are the devils of mankind and the jinn. I have already explained the meaning of "devil," and this confirms it: "devil" means the evil-creating powers outside the human being. One kind is that very Iblis who refused to prostrate to Adam (peace be upon him), the father of mankind. That devil is the most ill-famed of the devils of the world — the ill-fame of the other devils is laid to his account too, poor wretch. Every corruption, every wrong that any devil, whether of mankind or of the jinn, works in the world, people write to the account of that Iblis and reckon it from him. Yet some of these devils are the masters of that devil.

«عدوا شیاطین الانس و الجن یوحی بعضهم الی بعض» — these devils who are the enemies of the prophet inspire and teach one another. Sometimes the class of rabbis and monks teaches the class of the mala'; sometimes the class of the mala' teaches the rabbis and monks; sometimes the mutrafin instruct both classes; and most often all three classes take their inspiration from the taghut. «یوحی بعضهم الی بعض» — some of these enemies give inspiration and instruction to others. «زخرف القول» — with beautiful, adorned, fair-seeming words, with fair-seeming speech. I will expound on this fair-seeming speech in a later chapter on prophethood. So fair-seeming — Pharaoh says: «ذرونی اقتل موسی» ("Let me kill this Moses").^[558] Why kill him? «انی اخاف ان یبدل دینکم» ("Indeed, I fear that he may change your religion") — he says, "I fear that Moses will ruin your religion." This is the word of Pharaoh: he fears Moses will come and ruin the people’s religion. Such fair-seeming words — «زخرف القول», fair-seeming speech — «غرورا», meant to create delusion and ignorance; they delude the people and one another.

«و لو شاء ربک ما فعلوه» ("And had your Lord willed, they would not have done it") — had God willed and decreed, these people would not have done this deed, would not have found the means. Had God willed to turn all these opposing classes to ashes in a single instant and scatter them to the wind, He could. But the divine custom (sunnah) is not so; God’s law is not so. The divine law is this: that they should carry out their enmities so that the believer may be distinguished from the non-believer. The road should be a little uneven, so that the people whose thighs, whose shanks, are strong — who can run, who can go — may be recognized. On an asphalted road, where everyone can walk these few steps, [there is no test]. «و لو شاء ربک ما فعلوه» — had your Lord willed and decreed, these people would not have been able to carry out these enmities; but God Most High never decrees a decree contrary to the custom He Himself has placed in the world.

«فذرهم و ما یفترون» ("So leave them and what they fabricate") — leave them with whatever they fabricate. And what does "leave them" mean? It means: do not grieve and be distressed at their words, do not weaken, do not lose your path.

«و لتصغی الیه افئدة الذین لا یؤمنون بالآخرة»^[559] — the result of these words is this: this fair-seeming, deceiving, delusory speech draws the hearts that do not believe in the Hereafter under the influence of its false propaganda. That propaganda is made against the call of the prophets, against the word of truth and the true tune of monotheism — and this false, deceiving, fair-seeming propaganda deceives certain hearts and draws them to itself. But the hearts of whom? «و لتصغی الیه افئدة الذین لا یؤمنون بالآخرة» — the hearts of those who have no faith in the Hereafter. So the one who believes in the Hereafter does not so quickly become the dupe of false propaganda. «و لتصغی الیه افئدة الذین لا یؤمنون بالآخرة» — so that the hearts of those who do not bring faith in the Hereafter may incline toward it; «و لیرضوه» ("and that they may be pleased with it") — so that these hearts may be pleased with these words; «و لیقترفوا ما هم مقترفون» ("and that they may commit what they are committing") — so that they may commit what they are committing. See how, in this verse, He has alluded in summary that all the prophets have enemies — enemies of jinn and mankind, open and hidden — and these enemies inspire one another, teach one another. In these verses there is only this much. After these verses come verses from Surat al-Mu’min.

«و لقد ارسلنا موسی بآیاتنا»^[560] ("And indeed We sent Moses with Our signs") — truly We sent Moses together with Our signs; «و سلطان مبین» ("and with a manifest authority") — with a manifest proof, a manifest power. What was that manifest power, that manifest argument? His strong logic, his word of truth, the staff in his hand, his white hand — signs by which every person, ordinary and extraordinary, was bound to accept his word. This is what We sent Moses with. And toward whom did We send him? Against whom did We send him to war? Who stood on the other side of Moses in that society? Read the verses with a little reflection and see how clearly it comes out: social matters of this weight, laid down in the firm verses, in their plain outward sense, with this clarity. To war against whom? Toward whom? «الی فرعون» ("To Pharaoh") — toward Pharaoh. Who else? «و هامان» ("and Haman") — toward Haman, the minister of Pharaoh, one of the heads of his kingdom, one of the eye-filling aristocrats, the same mala'. Who else? «و قارون» ("and Qarun") — who is Qarun? Qarun is a wealthy man, a moneyed man. He is not the chief; he was not the sovereign of the society; he was not Pharaoh — indeed he even came in a later period. Yet even so He says that We sent Moses toward him too, sent him to war against him too. For Moses, Pharaoh and Qarun are one and the same: just as he fights Pharaoh, just as he fights Haman, he fights Qarun too.

And Qarun’s crime is only this: that he has treasured up wealth, gathered the people’s possessions for himself. Set a tablecloth with food enough for fifty persons, and fifty eat of it, grow full, and much is even left over. But this gentleman has sat cross-legged, or spread out his legs, and pulled the food of forty-nine persons in front of himself. Of course one man does not eat the food of forty-nine — but he does not let the others eat it either. The food of forty-nine, and one person eats it; one person has imprisoned the food of forty-nine others — would that he had eaten poison instead! — he has imprisoned it. That is Qarun’s trade: he has imprisoned the public wealth. That is why Moses comes to war against him too.

The strange thing is that these three have nothing in common. Pharaoh is at the head of the government, one class; Haman stands beside him, a second; Qarun has no connection with them at all — he is wealthy, a treasure-hoarder, a third. Three classes, and yet their answer is one answer. All three take one stance in the face of Moses (peace be upon him), and say one word. What do they say? «فقالوا ساحر کذاب» ("So they said: a sorcerer, a liar") — they said, "He is a lying, falsehood-fabricating sorcerer." «فلما جاءهم بالحق من عندنا» ("And when he brought them the truth from Us") — when Moses stated and brought the truth, from Us, to these opponents, what did they say? Did they sit silent? Did they wait for Moses to come and cut the root and stem of their existence, the rotten tree of their life? Never. Just as Moses, with the order he proposed, was clawing at their life, they too clawed at the head and face of Moses. What did they say? «قالوا اقتلوا ابناء الذین آمنوا معه» ("They said: Kill the sons of those who have believed with him") — kill the young sons of those who believed and gave their faith to Moses. Those who believed in the thought of this newly arrived prophet, this new and luminous and life-building thought — kill their sons. Kill them so that they may not be there, so that they may not threaten us tomorrow; kill them so that no spark may strike from their being; kill their young men.

«و استحیوا نساءهم» ("and keep their women alive"). Now why keep the women alive? There is a reason. So that their lineage may be mixed; so that they may be drawn into shamelessness; so that they may be made to gorge upon the instincts; so that they may become cowed. This has several aspects.

But then He says: «و ما کید الکافرین الا فی ضلال» ("And the plot of the disbelievers is only in error"). They drew up these schemes, but the plots of the disbelievers go astray; they reach no result. It is like an arrow you shoot toward some enemy, some person, some target — and a wind comes and knocks the arrow off its course. They shoot the arrow, but the winds of God’s custom come and carry it away from its aim. Let them lay their schemes against Moses. Here too you noticed: this verse names three classes together — the class of Pharaoh, the class of Haman, the class of Qarun.

In another verse the mutrafin are named again, especially the class of Qarun. He says: «و ما ارسلنا فی قریة من نذیر»^[561] ("And We did not send a warner into any town") — We sent no warner, no forewarner, meaning no prophet, into any town, «الا قال مترفوها» ("but that its affluent ones said") — but that the mutrafin of it, the aristocrats and the wealthy and the treasure-hoarders of that town, said: «انا بما ارسلتم به کافرون» ("Indeed, in that with which you have been sent, we are disbelievers") — "We disbelieve in what you have brought, we do not accept it." And what was their reason for refusing? «و قالوا نحن اکثر اموالا و اولادا» ("And they said: We are greater in wealth and children") — "We have more money than you, we have more children than you," they said to the prophet. On what grounds? See how low the level of their thinking is. «و ما نحن بمعذبین» ("And we will not be punished") — "We will not be among those who are tormented."

And the last verse, from Surat al-Tawbah, concerns the class of the rabbis and the monks. «یا ایها الذین آمنوا»^[562] ("O you who have believed") — O you who have believed; «ان کثیرا من الاحبار و الرهبان» ("Indeed, many of the rabbis and the monks") — truly many of the scholars and ascetics; «لیأکلون اموال الناس بالباطل» ("surely consume the wealth of the people wrongfully") — without doubt they devour the people’s wealth without entitlement; «و یصدون عن سبیل الله» ("and bar [them] from the way of God") — they devour their money, and they also turn them away from the path of God. And again He speaks of the class of the mutrafin, the money-gatherers, the treasure-hoarders: «و الذین» ("And those who…") «یکنزون الذهب و الفضة» ("hoard up gold and silver") — those who treasure up gold and silver; «و لا ینفقونها فی سبیل الله» ("and do not spend it in the way of God") — they do not spend it in the way of God; «فبشرهم بعذاب الیم» ("then give them tidings of a painful punishment") — give them the tidings of a grievous, painful torment.

We, therefore, in these few verses and in dozens of others across the Qur’an, see the mark of these four classes and recognize their enmities.

The next verses are from Surat al-Saffat: “Our word has already gone forth to Our servants, the messengers: that they will surely be the ones helped, and that Our hosts will surely be the victors. So turn away from them for a while, and watch them — for soon they too shall see. Do they then seek to hasten Our punishment? When it descends upon their courtyard, evil will be the morning of those who were warned. So turn away from them for a while, and watch — for soon they too shall see. Glory be to your Lord, the Lord of Might, above what they ascribe.”^[563]

The prophets were commissioned and stepped into their societies carrying that very lofty, progressive aim we explained on the previous days. It is the most progressive of all aims — even by the cultural standards of the age of light and human awareness, the twentieth century. It is the aim of bringing humankind into one class, of leveling human beings, of casting out ignorance and poverty and oppression and exploitation and class division. With this most precious, progressive, and lofty aim they set out.

The lives of God’s prophets yielded one harvest: an unbroken chain of activity and striving and struggle. From the very beginning of the mission, never again to sleep in comfort, never again to slumber on the bed of ease,^[564] never again to taste pleasure and rest, but to struggle unceasingly — this is the summary of the story of the divine prophets. And their lives ended no more gently, as the religious sources teach us. Some had their heads severed from their bodies by the tyrants and despots of the age and carried off as a trophy; some were placed within a tree and sawn from head to foot, cut in two; some passed from this world in exile and distress. Not one of them amassed any wealth, however little. Not one, at the end of his life, left behind a palace, an apparatus, and vast riches, as the rulers and worldly leaders of this world do. This is the summary of the lives of the prophets of God; these things we have come to know.

A question now arises. As it stands in our minds, and as we read in the history of the prophetic missions, the prophets all passed their lives in struggle and striving, and many of them drank the draught of martyrdom. So was their work, then, a fruitless and useless work? Did the prophets meet defeat in history? Is it as the simple-minded of the world still imagine it to be — an idea the anti-prophetic powers are not displeased to have lodged in the minds of the common people — that the prophets gained no fruitful result from their striving, and that across the whole of history, oppression and tyranny and inhumanity and rebellion and unbelief have held sway? Is it so?

We believe that it is not so. Consider these dear deputies of God — whose chain began with Adam and Noah and Abraham, and in whose chain the choicest of creation came one after another. These men not only were not defeated, not only did not fail, not only did not see what they said and what they wanted in the world, in history, in society meet with defeat. Rather, among all of humanity, among all those who have ever run after some aim and goal and striven for it, no one has had the chance of success that the prophets had. This is our belief. We believe that the outcome of prophethood and the end of the prophets' work, throughout all history, in the time that is past, has ended according to what was desired — and so it will be in the future too. And we shall prove this.

There are two matters here, and this is a topic that must be grasped and known.

The first concerns the chain known by the name of prophethood and messengership — that is, the caravan of the prophets from Adam to the Seal [of the Prophets]. What did they do? What did the totality of them accomplish? Did they push things forward, or did they go bankrupt? That is one matter. The second concerns each of the great divine prophets, in his own time: did he succeed, or did he meet defeat? These are two questions, and I would like to finish both of them today, God willing. By your own measure, if you reflect, you will find that you would like to understand this matter. This is something worth knowing — by the very criterion I have always placed in your hands.

It is beneficial in the sense that it does more than increase our information. Many words increase a person’s information but bring him no benefit. There is no harm at all in all of you, this whole gathering, now being aware of how the tiny particles of the rocks in the volcanic mountains of the moon are composed. To know it — is that bad? But is it beneficial? No. Much of the information we run after, or that we are made to run after, is of this sort. We sit and listen and speak and study and research and put pen to paper, and bring our life to its end — and when we look, we see a heap of empty information, useless information, that did not bring us a single step closer to Paradise and to the good pleasure of God, nor a single step closer to the sound, authentic Islamic society in this world. It did nothing at all. Yes, it had only this benefit: that we could pride ourselves, could believe that we are very learned, very knowledgeable, and could close upon ourselves the window of receptivity and learn nothing more from anyone. This was its only benefit.

This matter I am presenting is beneficial in the truest sense: it brings not just awareness but awareness joined to commitment. It is that kind of faith I was explaining and speaking of to you here on the third, fourth, and fifth of the month. Now the first question. This chain whose members are called the prophets — from first to last, what flower did they pin upon the head of humanity? The prophets came and took a being who could not even, at the level of an animal, tell the road from the pit — a being in whom even instinct was not so capable, not so path-opening. And they raised this being up to the level of one from whom even the angels of heaven must come and learn something. They brought humankind from the lowest depth^[565] of savagery and ignorance up to the level of a civilized human being — so that if he wishes to live by their teachings, the loftiest, the most beautiful, the most eloquent manifestations of creation will appear in his life.

The prophets treated human beings like a schoolchild — I am trying to bring the matter down to a very low level — who knows nothing, not even the alphabet. For one year they labored over him, and he reached the second grade; but the teacher of the first grade, in the very midst of this work,^[566] when the child had reached the second grade, had laid down his own life over it. They labored for another period, and he reached the third grade; but the teacher who had brought him from the second to the third lost his life on this path. They labored for another period, and he reached the fourth grade; and again that compassionate teacher, that kind father, that aware guide — over all the time he spent raising the pupil to a higher grade, a higher rank — lost his life, departed this world, spent his days in hardship. Grade by grade, step by step, stage by stage, they kept bringing this little child up, and up, and up. Now, when you look, you see that his culture, his knowledge, his insight, his sensitivity stand far higher than in that time two periods before the present, and he is at the peak of progress and comprehension and thought.

You look, and the teachers are not there. Where are the teachers? One gave up his life in the midst of the first grade, while he was bringing this slow-witted pupil up. Another, while these very pupils were learning something from him, met his end at the end of the year: over some disagreement, over some matter, they gathered together, rose up against him, and killed him. The teacher of the third grade in another way, the teacher of the fourth grade in another way. The teachers are not there; each teacher carried out his mission and, to outward appearance, died in failure and perished. But did he really fail? Think well; see whether that teacher really failed. What, after all, was the teacher’s aim? Did not this compassionate teacher want exactly this? He wanted this pupil to rise from the black dust to the summit of culture and knowledge and understanding — and has this not now come to pass?

So the teachers did not die as failures. Yes, they died; yes, they never attained the affluent, comfortable life of this world; yes, they never saw with their own eyes this sapling come to fruit — but did they fail? No, they did not fail. Their aim was precisely this: that this human being should traverse the first and second grade; that this ignorant, unaware student should climb the road with difficulty, with hardship, with toil, until he reached the summit of the peak — and now he has reached it.

The prophets were just like this: Adam, Noah, Lot, Hud, Salih, Shu’ayb, Abraham, Ishmael, Moses, Jesus, and thousands of other prophets throughout history. Their work was to bring this human being up, to teach him knowledge and understanding, to prepare him for ordering the life to come, to give him the necessary substance. And this work was accomplished — even though, along the way, a number of these prophets were killed in a horrible, pitiable manner, departing from this world without seeing this end. And still humanity is moving forward.

Today the world is more prepared to hear the true word of Islam than it was a thousand years ago. Humanity is more ready to accept the divine government today than it was twelve or thirteen hundred years ago — and a thousand years from now it will be readier still than today. On the day that our Imam of the Age — may God hasten his noble relief — went into occultation from sight, humankind was not yet ready to accept a revolutionary reforming Imam with sword in hand. This is why an Imam who must spread the carpet [of justice] among the people does not spread it out. And had that noble one wanted to rise up, make a revolution, and overturn society, the unfavorable conditions of that time would certainly have kept him from building the society he desired.

The experience of the noble Imams of the Prophet’s household had reached its limit. This society had become so corrupted — the oppressive, tyrannical hands of the despotic Umayyads and Abbasids had so worked this field for the worse, poisoning and corrupting it — that no sound plant could any longer be grown in it. And so the Imam, peace be upon him, was hidden from sight. The day he comes — how will it be? On that day he appears — and we do not know whether it is ten years away or ten thousand, nothing is known at all — humanity will have reached readiness. It will be ready to hear and to accept the true word of Islam, ready to carry the elevated and lofty Islamic society upon its own shoulders, ready for the Qur’an to be put into practice. But in the time of the Imam of the Age it was not ready — and who has done this work? The teachings of the prophets have done it, and the Imams are the followers of the prophets.

In the discussion of the Imamate, when I expound its philosophy, I will explain what the philosophy of the Imam’s existence is. So the prophets were not unsuccessful in history. We see that every day humanity has moved forward and added to its own age, coming one step closer to the peak of perfection and elevation. What more do we want than this? What do the prophets want? The Lord of the worlds wants to bring this unripe, raw substance, by a natural movement, toward its natural and innate destination — that is, perfection and elevation. This the Lord of the worlds has willed, and humanity will certainly reach that point of ultimate perfection. This is the determinism of history: it means just this, and in that sense whoever coined the phrase spoke correctly.

These are precise discussions. The course of humankind is toward elevation and perfection, and toward the promised paradise of this world — that is, humanity will one day see a day in which there will be no oppression, no evil, no ugliness, and everything will be according to its desire. Such is the creation of the human being, and the creation of the world: this being, in its own course, will at last arrive at such a destination — it must arrive. In that era humanity will have ready all that is necessary for its perfection. Then it will enter the channel of progress and elevation, and with the utmost speed it will move toward God — that is, toward absolute perfection. And the further we have come from the beginning of human history up to this time of ours, the closer we have drawn toward that destination. This is the determinism of history. Such is the creation of the human being, and the creation of the world: God has so created that human beings move toward progress and elevation, willy-nilly. As for the "willy-nilly," you must derive its meaning in the course of these discussions — for later, when we tie it to the subsequent discussion, what it means will become clear. The will of human beings is intensely involved: it is the wanting of human beings that brings them to progress, and this wanting will be there.

This is one of the Islamic principles, and in the Islamic worldview it ranks among the certainties: that the end of humankind is in accordance with goodness. Why? Because God Most High created the earth and the heavens in accordance with truth, and He created the human being too with a truth-seeking innate nature. Since the human being possesses will, he must move along the path that accords with his innate nature in order to reach that destination. And who can present this path to him and tell him that if you do such-and-such, you have acted in accordance with your innate nature? The prophets come for this. They come to show humankind the path of innate nature — that is, to hasten and ease his course toward a good end. So human beings are moving forward; humanity draws day by day closer to felicity and to the destination of goodness, and this is because of the movement that the prophets gave it. The prophets set it in motion. If some delay has occurred in the middle of history, in this or that stage, it is because of a relative distancing from the teachings of the prophets — but in the end this was its course. This is one matter in general.

Here is the conclusion we drew from the first question. The great divine prophets, though each of them met with deprivation and failure in his own life, nonetheless drove humanity as a whole toward progress and elevation — and the prophets were the agents of it. It was the prophets who pushed a person toward that intended destination, toward the human end kneaded into him; they set him moving and helped him travel this road. That is the first question.

Now the second question — the one that interests many people more, the one I will make clear for you. When a prophet sets a movement going in the world, raises up a revolution and an uprising, can we say this revolution ends well? Can we hope its outcome is good, or not? What is the general rule here?

Some say this: however hard we look, wherever a true word left a tongue, wherever the melody of truth reached an ear from some quarter, in the end it never came to fruit — it was choked off. Out of this they have built an "experience." The experience of human history, they say, has always shown us that the prophets failed. Grant even that they succeeded overall — fine — but in the end they could not bring the revolution they raised to fruit. Not in a single place could they bring truth to power and destroy falsehood. So what should we do? Should we too refuse to lift a hand, refuse to draw it from our sleeve, refuse to follow the path of the prophets? If the great divine prophets themselves could accomplish nothing in their own time, and in the end falsehood has always gained the upper hand over truth — even if only seasonally, by stages — then let the truth-seekers and the truth-speakers of the world sheathe their swords, go lie down to sleep, and know it is of no use — unless some hand of power reaches out of a sleeve, an unseen hand comes forth and does something.

This is the logic of many people, the very logic I mentioned: the tyrants of history take great pleasure in it. This is the logic the bullies of the age have always wanted the people to hold as their belief — that no striving, no activity, no struggle in the path of truth will ever reach a result. This is what the tyrants of the world have always wanted.

The political bluffs of the world’s heads of state, which you read so much of in the newspapers that carry world news, serve exactly this purpose. Take the man who has only a few hours or a few days left before the throne of his rule collapses and he steps down from the peak of the presidency to become an ordinary man. Even then, days before, that same man is bluffing: "We will crush our enemies, we will wipe out our opponents, we will keep ruling." You saw this yourselves, quite recently, on a vast global scale — saw it with your own eyes, read it, learned of it. A power of that magnitude suddenly falls and turns into an ordinary man; yet a little before the transfer he says, "They cannot, they cannot, they cannot touch us, our position will not be lost" — and then we see that it was lost. These bluffs serve exactly this purpose. They always want to make the people believe that nothing can come from your hands, because our power is a power you cannot even imagine. Every means and resource is at our disposal, and you have none.

Do you imagine that these things arose in the world only today? No — they have existed at every point in history. There is one episode so telling that whenever I recall it, I marvel at the cunning of al-Mansur the Abbasid. Al-Mansur the Abbasid was, as you know, the greatest and most powerful of the Abbasid caliphs, and the second of their line. In his time, opposition began to stir from the margins of the religious community. Among those who put al-Mansur under severe pressure were Muhammad ibn 'Abdullah and Ibrahim ibn 'Abdullah, the two sons of 'Abdullah al-Mahd.^[567] These two men fought al-Mansur fiercely, and he was left helpless. Everything was at his disposal; these two self-sacrificing brothers had nothing but faith and a handful of believers. Yet in the face of their relentless striving, al-Mansur had lost his footing. So rumors about the power and might of his apparatus were spread among the people, with the sole aim of keeping the true believers and the genuine Shi’a from joining the two brothers. One ran like this: al-Mansur put it about that he owned a mirror, and that when he looked into it he could tell exactly where Ibrahim ibn 'Abdullah was — and woe to the man in whose house, or with whom in flight, al-Mansur’s mirror should reveal him. This is the very story of the mirror that the tyrant kings of history had fashioned a thousand, two thousand years before al-Mansur — Jamshid and this one and that one — in the form of the world-revealing cup. Its purpose, no doubt, was the same: that the enemy should believe he could never act outside the sight of these powers. They had stooped even to this.

So the tyrants of the world ask of the God of the two worlds — a God in whom they do not believe — that the people should imagine the prophetic missions, the great divine prophets, and the envoys of truth to have always been doomed to defeat. They ask that the people suppose no truth-worshipping melody will ever meet a favorable answer from the nature of this world — that the people despair of any movement ever growing and bearing fruit against falsehood without being crushed. But is the reality of the matter really like this? A number of minds, uninformed and under the sway of these powers, have imagined it so; the people have supposed that the prophets, their followers, and the Imams have always been defeated, and that every movement in the world will be defeated. Are we, then, obliged to accept it? Should we set aside the Qur’an? Should we refuse to hear correctly the word of the Qur’an, which recounts to us the very opposite of this logic, and hear instead the word of false fancies? No — we will not. We turn to the Qur’an; we take a lesson from it as to what the outcome of the prophetic missions is, and what effect the revolutionary movement of the prophets and their followers can have. Let us learn this from the Qur’an; then we return to the text^[568] of history, and see that history too bears witness to this matter.

In these very verses, the Qur’an strikes a parable and tells us: No! In the world there is a truth and there is a falsehood; the truth remains, the falsehood is annihilated. Water flows and streams down from the mountains, through the rivers; froth appears on its surface; the froth dies, the waters remain. Falsehood is that very froth that will die; the water is that very truth that will remain.

So far, as the Qur’an teaches us and as historical reality confirms, every prophetic mission that has ever appeared in this world, from first to last, did two things at once. In the chain of history’s prophetic missions, each performed its deed and moved humankind one step forward — and each also carried within itself the possibility of success. The matter is not as al-Mansur the Abbasid kept pouring into the people’s ears when he said, "It is not possible, people; it is not possible for you to carry anything forward against my power." That is not how it stands. Nor is it as the powers of history, over time, made the people understand and instilled in them — that against the worldly powers who stand upon falsehood, truth will have no room even to draw breath. No; the opposite is true. The prophets have everywhere had the possibility of success, and the followers of the prophets everywhere have this same possibility, and they will surely succeed — but on two conditions (here is where I said that the human will is involved in building the future of history). If these two conditions are met, then every movement grounded in religion, in Qur’anic and Islamic thought, that has been carried out or will be carried out throughout history, will succeed forever and be victorious. There is no need for a miracle either. A miracle need not take place for the adherents of religion to succeed and be victorious — no; without any hand reaching forth from the unseen, if these two conditions are met, Islam and the Qur’an will have the essential possibility of success. What are those two conditions?

The first condition is faith — a belief grounded in awareness, a conviction that accepts commitment, an assent joined to striving and movement. The second condition is patience [sabr]. What does patience mean? It means resistance: not fleeing the field, not abandoning the work at the sensitive and dangerous moment.

Wherever you see, throughout the history of the prophetic missions, a prophet defeated by the tyrant of his time, it is because his followers, those around him, did not have enough faith or enough patience. And every time you see that truth has advanced, it is because they possessed brimming faith and the patience it required. Is there any witness from the Qur’an to this? Yes; there are several. The verses I recite today are the intellectual foundation, and many other verses state the same matter. Here are two of them.

Take this verse: “Do not be faint, and do not grieve; for you are the higher, if you are believers.”^[173]

This is a verse of the Qur’an — not a narration someone might cast doubt on, saying perhaps its chain of transmission is weak; nor is it an ambiguous [mutashabih] verse^[569] that some might question, saying we do not understand its meaning. No — it is clear and plain. "Do not be faint" means: O Muslims, do not become weak. "And do not grieve": do not be sorrowful. "For you are the higher": you are the higher, your hand is the upper one, you will be the victorious, you will overcome the enemy, your thought will at last be seated upon the throne^[570] of the world’s governance. And its condition? "If you are believers" — if you have faith, if faith exists, this is so.

You say: "Sir, I have seen Imam al-Sadiq — the blessings of God be upon him — struggle so hard against the tyrant of his time and yet fail to seize the government." Yes; but that was because those around him — many of his friends, many who claimed to be his Shi’ism — were like you and me: impatient, weak in faith. Did you want Imam al-Sadiq to reach power against the Lord’s established custom in history? This very thing is itself the proof that no miracle and no unseen hand is meant to appear in the field of conquests and victories. Had a miracle been meant to occur, it would have occurred, so that Imam al-Sadiq might reach power. Instead, Imam al-Sadiq was in the end killed at the hand of the tyrant of his own time; and so was Musa ibn Ja’far. This was because his friends and followers did not have, to the necessary degree, the patience that was needed; faith and conviction and commitment had not been stored up in their souls to the degree they should have been. If today, too, it is like that, the result is defeat — the defeat of Islam, the defeat of the Qur’an, the condemnation of the Muslims. But suppose today we became like the time of the Prophet! The Muslim of the Prophet’s time had a faith that was certain and beyond doubt. His patience was the very patience before which the angels of heaven were small — a patience that, on a day in the month of Ramadan, in the heat of the Hijaz, with a fasting mouth, fights the enemy and digs a trench. That is the patience of that Muslim.

“Seek help through patience and prayer.”^[571] With the weapon of patience, conquer your enemies; with patience, carry your aims forward. This is the miracle that belongs to patience. The hand that must come out of the sleeve and do something — it is the hand of human patience; patience.

We even misconstrue patience. We have imagined that it means sitting back to watch how things turn out. It does not. Sit without activity, without striving, without throbbing effort, and the end is abasement — irreligion and worldly ruin.

“the loss of this world and the hereafter — that is the manifest loss.”^[572] But if you go forward with patience, the end is both religion and this world.

This is the end the Qur’an tells us of. These verses are from Surat al-A’raf; go and look, reflect on them. What I am saying — my heart wishes that you would act on it as a religious mode of thought. Truly pay attention: if you see that it accords with the Islamic standards, accept it as a mode of thought. This is the Qur’an, in Surat al-A’raf, from verse 120 onward — indeed even before these — the verse I have in mind is verses 126 and 127. The matter is raised through the affair of Pharaoh and Moses: Moses comes and states the divine call, and Pharaoh does not accept it — not only does he not accept it, but he even threatens Moses. After all these words, the sorcerers of Pharaoh come; their sorcery accomplishes nothing against the Mosaic miracle, and in the end they themselves come to faith. Pharaoh threatens them, saying, "I will kill you. Why did you believe in Moses?" All this passes, and after the affair of Pharaoh’s magicians and their defeat by Moses, then it is like this:

“And the chiefs of Pharaoh’s people said: …”^[573] The chiefs — the leaders and notables of Pharaoh’s people — said to Pharaoh: "Will you leave Moses and his people to spread corruption in the land…?" Are you letting Moses and his people, the believers in him, his party, his throng, go free to make corruption in the land, to cause disorder? …and abandon you and your gods? Are you letting them set aside you and your gods? Is it like this?

"He said…" — Pharaoh, in the face of this speech and this casting of doubt, said: No; I will destroy Moses. He prepared a harsh assault against Moses, devised a new scheme for crushing the party of the Moseans in Egypt. What was it?

“He said: We will slay their sons and let their women live.” Pharaoh said: I will not leave Moses be; I will not permit what he wants to do. Rather I will kill their young men and keep their women alive. This is a new plan. Pharaoh had struggled against Moses in every way and thought Moses would be destroyed — but no, even his sorcerers and magicians are coming to faith in him, and the sorcery will not stand up against the miracle. So he falls to thinking of carrying out a severe measure. The plan becomes a plan of severity: we must resort to severity. What shall we do? All the young men who have inclined toward Moses — these we will kill. All their women we will keep alive. "and let their women live" — keeping the women alive, no doubt for debauchery, or to ruin their lineage, or for something of this sort.

The matter had turned hard now; the party of Moses found themselves facing the severe-measures plan of the Pharaonic apparatus. This is the place where the bones of the elephant tremble; this is the place where firm and sturdy hearts are shaken — is it a joke? Someone like Pharaoh saying, "I will make them suffer terribly; I have a plan for them, to leave them not a single young man." "We will slay their sons" — I will kill their young men. This is the place where the Moseans must be charged up; in this very sensitive and dangerous moment they must not feel defeat.

A sentence came to my mind from one of the great men of our own history, from about a hundred years ago, fifty or sixty years ago. They used to quote a sentence from him in these constitutional struggles and the like; his name is much on people’s tongues. They say he used to tell his companions, his friends: "Fight, struggle. At the very moment when you see that the work is hard, struggle still. Until you see that you will certainly be defeated, keep on; reach the point where you see that now you will certainly be defeated; and when you reach the point where you see that you will surely be defeated, struggle still — then you will be victorious." And this is a correct saying. A nation, a community, an individual who wants to strive for his own welfare and salvation is hopeful, at one moment, that this striving will bear fruit; when the severity increases, his hope too diminishes. If he lets go of the striving, then assuredly his striving will no longer reach a result. But if he carries on his striving in that very place — continues it so far, goes forward so far, until he sees that it is certainly futile — if at the very moment he sees that this striving of his is futile, he strives still, that striving is successful.

Moses is using this scheme to mobilize the Children of Israel. When the Children of Israel see that they will certainly be defeated — because Pharaoh is resolved to kill all their young men — against the new Pharaonic scheme, Moses too presents his own new scheme. What does he say? When they find themselves facing this situation, Pharaoh speaks thus; Moses, in turn, answers this Pharaonic proclamation:

“Moses said to his people: …”^[574] Moses says: "Seek help from God and be patient." Ask aid of God and be patient. Continue, resist, do not leave your striving half-finished — hope breathes within this. Why? "Indeed, the earth belongs to God" — the earth is God’s; "He gives it as inheritance to whom He wills among His servants" — He gives it and grants it to whomever of His servants He wills. That is, we are the servants of God; Moses tells the Children of Israel: you are the servants of God; the servants of Pharaoh — their work will reach no result. The earth is for the servants of God. "And the [good] end belongs to the God-fearing" — the outcome of the work, the end of the affair, belongs to the people of piety.

This is the Qur’an, and historical reality shows us the very same thing. Take Abraham, whom they once cast into the fire — one day we see that in Mecca and at the House of God he forms a monotheistic society, and for centuries after him that society endures. Take Moses, who one day is locked in such conflict with Pharaoh, with the Children of Israel under such pressure — another day we see him given the command to enter the holy land: _"O my people, enter the holy land…"_^[575] — go there, and there form the divine, monotheistic society. Take Jesus son of Mary, whose striving and activity during his short sojourn upon the earth reached no outward fruit. Yet after he ascends and departs from among the people, within one or two centuries the greatest powers of that day fall under the sway of the Messiah’s thought. The vast Roman Empire itself falls under the sway of Christian thought, and the emperor becomes a Christian, a believer in the religion of the Messiah.

Our own Prophet was under just as much pressure in Mecca — for thirteen years they arranged for him the most severe tortures and conditions. Then he comes to Medina, forms a government there, brings a society into being, establishes an order, drives human beings toward perfection, and crushes his foundational enemies, casts them to the ground. Under the shadow of what? Under the shadow of faith and patience. Wherever there was faith and there was patience,

“Yes, if you are patient and God-fearing…”^[576] — where faith, deeds, and patience existed together, where piety stood alongside faith, victory came. This is one of the customs of the world, the custom of the Lord in history. Yesterday it was like this, today it is like this, tomorrow too it will be like this. Every religious power that has managed to rise, or to endure, has done so under the shadow of faith and patience.

Today too, those who love the Qur’an, Islam, Tawhid, prophethood, the sacred Islamic principles — those who wish these could take the reins and govern people’s lives in the world, those who wish to see God sovereign in the world — let them strengthen within themselves two things: faith and patience. If faith and patience grow strong within us,

“Indeed, the earth belongs to God; He gives it as inheritance to whom He wills among His servants, and the [good] end belongs to the God-fearing” — but without faith and without patience it cannot be.

This is the answer to our two questions. The first question was: did the divine prophets, in the aggregate, succeed or fail? In the aggregate they succeeded, all the prophets — because they wanted to bring humankind up, and they brought it up. I have raised this matter before, across many lessons, in Qur’anic exegesis, in the discussions after the prayer, and each time I gave an example; if I gave you all of them here it would take too long. I gave you one: the schoolchild.

The prophets in the aggregate succeeded and were triumphant; they did not fail. But now take each single prophet — each single one of the divine, monotheistic, revolutionary movements: did it succeed or not? Here there is a general rule. Whichever one possessed sufficient faith and patience succeeded; whichever one lacked it did not.

"Say: God is the Creator of all things." Since He created it, He can say what its outcome will be. And because He wants next to speak about the outcome of truth and falsehood, He says first: We created this world, We know the customs and laws of history, so hear them from Us. "Say: God is the Creator of all things" — He is the Creator of everything. "And He is the One" — the sole and unique; "the All-Subduing" — the powerful and mighty.

"He sent down water from the sky" — He is striking a parable for you. This verse is so beautiful in its Arabic phrasing that, unfortunately, those unfamiliar with Arabic cannot properly grasp the beauty. He does not announce beforehand, "I am striking a parable." So you who are listening do not realize this is a likeness, or what it applies to; you do not catch it. Only at the end do you understand what is meant — He is striking a parable. "He sent down water from the sky" — from the sky He sent down water, a rain.

"and the riverbeds flowed each according to its measure" — rivers and streams of various sizes flowed; from the rainwater, small rivers and large rivers flowed. "and the flood carried a swelling froth" — this flood coursing in the rivers carried upon its shoulders a swollen, prominent froth. When you stand beside a river the flood-water is bringing along, what you see is not the water; it is froth. The water is beneath the froth. This froth, prominent and surging upon the flood-water that flows in the river, is showing itself off. You see froth; beneath the froth is water.

Let us go to another place — the other example is this: "And from that which they heat in the fire" — the things they heat in the fire, like mineral substances and iron, which they place in the fire; "seeking [to make] ornament or utensil" — to make some adornment, they place gold in the fire so as to make jewelry; they place iron in the fire so as to make objects; they place copper in the fire so as to make things. These things they place in the fire to make from them an ornament and adornment^[577] and finery and wares — in these too there is "a froth like it" — a froth, like the froth of the river-water. There too, when they melt this iron, they see froth upon it; it too has a froth. When they melt gold, it too has a particular froth. There the froth was upon the water — but what was the essence? What was the life-giving substance, the water or the froth? The water. And what met the eye outwardly? What was making a display? What showed itself more? The froth.

Here, in the melting of iron, is the thing desired the iron or the froth? In the melting of gold, the gold or the froth? The gold, of course; the iron, of course. And what is the froth? A parasitic thing, a superfluous thing. Yet which comes more to the eye? That froth — not the gold and not the iron. Once these are set up, He says at once: "Thus does God strike [the parable of] the true and the false" — this is how God shows you truth and falsehood; the parable of truth and falsehood God strikes for you in this way. "As for the froth" — that is, the thing you saw to be visible, that very froth, that is the false. The thing hidden beneath the froth — the water, the gold, the iron — that is the truth.

Now that you have learned this much of the parable, hear from God how it ends. "As for the froth, it goes away as scum" — the froth goes to waste, to nothing; it is annihilated. Froth on a river is not permanent; it is there one instant, gone the next. When you open the water onto your field, what remains for you is the water, not the froth; the froth perishes. "As for the froth, it goes away as scum" — that froth goes to annihilation and emptiness. "and as for that which benefits people" — the water, the iron, the gold, all that benefits people, tarries "and remains in the earth"; it is not annihilated. "Thus does God set forth the parables" — this is how God strikes the parable for you. He means: the truth remains. The call of the prophets is truth, the movement of the prophets is truth, and it endures. The falsehoods that puff out their chests against the prophets, show themselves off, rebel, run riot — they are froth, bubbles upon the water, doomed to perish. This is the parable that God strikes.

The verse then applies this same parable to the field of the Muslims' social struggles. "For those who respond to their Lord is the most beautiful" — for those who answer their Lord, the most beautiful of outcomes and rewards; the good end is theirs. The end of the work belongs to those who respond to the movement of the prophets. "But those who do not respond to Him" — but those who refuse and step onto the path of falsehood, they — "even if they had all that is in the earth" — if the whole surface of the earth were theirs, "and the like of it with it" — and as much again besides, "they would offer it as ransom" — they stand ready to give it as ransom to rescue themselves from the predicament. Did you not see this in history? Did you not see the conflicts of truth and falsehood — how the leaders and chiefs of falsehood were rolled up like a scroll, and then, if they could, stood ready to give the whole world, and themselves, their lives, their position, just to hold on? "For them is the evil of the reckoning" — for them the worst of reckonings; "and their refuge is Hell" — their abode is Hell; "and what an evil resting place!" These are the verses of Surat al-Ra’d.

The verses of Surat al-Saffat, which we have also rendered in these writings, say this very same thing. "And Our word has already gone forth to Our servants, the messengers"_^[578] — Our command for Our deputed servants, the prophets, has already passed and been concluded; beforehand We took the necessary decision concerning them. What is that decision? _"that they will surely be the ones helped" — they are helped, and helped by Us alone. "And that Our hosts will surely be the victors" — it is Our soldiers who become victorious.

I told you its condition is that very faith and patience. On the battlefields of the Prophet, the Messenger of God called the people to patience. On the battlefields of the Commander of the Faithful, the Commander of the Faithful called the people to patience. They always said: be patient. And what does patience on the field of battle mean? What does patience in the state of struggle mean? It means not growing weak in the struggle, not breaking off the striving, not leaving it half-done — this is the meaning of patience. If the Muslims of the world, on the path of cultural and economic and political advance, take up these two factors today too — the factor of faith and the factor of patience — then the Islamic community will gain the upper hand, culturally and politically and economically, over the unbelievers and the enemies of religion.

Let the Muslims not imagine that a stamp of nullity — of ill-repute, of backwardness, of poverty, of abasement — has been struck upon their foreheads; no. Let them not imagine that the enemies of religion and of Islam, scattered through every part of the world, these very hostile global powers, must forever ride the backs of the Muslims and lord it over them and exploit them; no, never is it so. If the Muslims of the world, if the Islamic countries, if the Muslim masses and nations — in short, if the great Islamic ummah, six or seven hundred million strong today — acquire faith, and store up patience as well, they will be victorious over the whole world. This is the Qur’an’s counsel to all Muslims in all times. This is the harvest of our discussion today. I wanted you to know that the outcome of the prophetic missions is good. I wanted you to know, from the Qur’an, that those missions and their uprisings will in the end be victorious, and that we today are the followers of the prophets. Why should the Islamic nations feel weak? Why? Why should you feel inferior? Why imagine that the enemies of religion can always triumph over the Islamic nations and countries? Why? No; it is not so; it is exactly the opposite — provided that we have faith and patience. So from today’s session let us at least take this benefit into practice: let us know the meaning of patience, and let us strive to perfect the faith within ourselves.

O Lord! By Muhammad and the family of Muhammad, make us among the followers of the prophets.

O Lord! By Muhammad and the family of Muhammad, bring into being within us a strong and rich substance of faith and patience.

O Lord! Make us partake of the fruits of faith and patience.

O Lord! By Muhammad and the family of Muhammad, make the Muslim nations and the Muslims of the whole world victorious over their enemies.

O Lord! By Muhammad and the family of Muhammad, those who, in any spot of the world, in any form, strive to weaken the Muslims, to humiliate the Muslims, to hold the Muslims back — destroy them.

O Lord! By Muhammad and the family of Muhammad, in any spot of the world, each of those who strive for the benefit of the Muslims and of Islam and of the lofty Islamic ideas — grant them success and aid.

O Lord! Cut the hand of the enemies of religion from the Islamic countries and from the Islamic nations.

O Lord! By Muhammad and the family of Muhammad, cut from the head of humanity the hand of the stubborn, obstinate enemies of religion and of the Muslims and of all humankind — namely the Jews.

O Lord! By Muhammad and the family of Muhammad, make us the true followers of Muhammad and the family of Muhammad.

O Lord! Make every day of our life more aware, more learned, more earnest, more believing, and more patient than the day before.

O Lord! By Muhammad and the family of Muhammad, take under Your protection all the oppressed and wronged of the world.

Annihilate and crush and humble all the oppressors and tyrants of the world;

Guide our hearts toward Yourself;

Make our souls flourishing and alive with Your remembrance;

Make our intention in this speaking and listening and sitting and rising sincere for Yourself alone;

Keep polytheism and hypocrisy and ostentation far from us.

O Lord! By Muhammad and the family of Muhammad, grant deliverance, very soon, to the innocent prisoners in every spot of the world that they may be.

O Lord! By Muhammad and the family of Muhammad, fulfill all the sound and reasonable desires of the community of Muslims.

And remove all the personal afflictions from among the Muslims.

(One thing I wanted to mention is this very subject of the mosque: that we have not wished to make use of the ordinary kinds of help that are sometimes used in mosques.)

Yesterday we said that God’s promise to the prophets and messengers — His promise concerning their mission among the people — is a promise full of hope and glad tidings. God the Exalted has promised His prophets, and those who bear the trust of the prophetic mission, and everyone who calls toward religion, truth, and reality, that they will triumph over their enemies in this world, and in the next world receive their reward. And everything that can be said about the victory of the prophets, peace be upon them, I summarized into two points.

The first point is this. When we examine the chain of the prophets across history, from first to last, we see that, taken as a whole, these teachers of mankind succeeded and triumphed. True, some of them met with failures, and with the people’s ingratitude, in the course of their call, or even up to its very end. But reckon the matter as a whole, and we see that the dear prophets, from the first of them to the last, accomplished the very work they had set out to accomplish.

I compared the prophets to teachers who wish to educate a student from beginning to end, one after another. Six teachers, ten teachers, fifteen teachers — from the lower grades up to the higher — they want to keep passing this child along, hand to hand, so that he may rise from the depths of ignorance to the summit of knowledge. Now, what is our judgment about the success or failure of that first-grade teacher? He lays before the child only a small stretch of the road and helps him cross it; he does not live to see this student reach the peak of his perfection, and passes away before that. Do we say he failed, because he could not carry this child all the way to the final stage, because he could not see him reach the final rank? No. He did his own work. He handed the trust to the next person only after he had fulfilled his own share of the responsibility.

Another example we have always given here runs like this. A very heavy, exhausting load must be carried from one end of the mosque to the other. No single person can lift it onto his shoulders and carry it there alone, with no one else’s help. Nor can all the people together lift this load at once and carry it to the end. One way remains. One of the several strong men gathered here, ready to lift the load, picks it up and carries it forward one meter; then a second takes the load from the one-meter mark and carries it to the two-meter mark; the third does the same, and the fourth, and the twenty-seventh, the twenty-eighth, the thirtieth — and so this load reaches the far end of the hall, across a distance of some thirty-three or thirty-four meters. That distance was crossed; that load was carried. But each of these men who lifted it could advance it only one meter — and for that single meter of advance, it may even be that he gave up his very life. So heavy is this load that to push it forward even a single meter, a person is compelled to sacrifice his own life on this path — and indeed he did sacrifice it. Yet the sum total here amounts to this: one precious life given as a ransom for one stage of the road crossed, for one stage of the load brought nearer to its destination.

The prophets are those robust, powerful men, each of whom carried this load forward by one meter. Noah, peace be upon him, came and pushed this load — the load of guiding mankind and bringing the human race to the summit of culture and virtue — forward by one meter. Even though in that single meter he endured torments, even though he preached for nine hundred and fifty years and had only just advanced a little, even though in the end he gave his life over this work — did he, in the end, fulfill his duty or not? Did he bring this load one meter nearer to its destination, or not? You see that he did. After Noah, the next prophet takes this load from him and likewise advances it one meter. A third comes, and he too advances it one meter. Then the Seal of the Prophets, may God’s blessings be upon him and his household, arrives and is commissioned to his mission. He takes this load — which had reached a certain appointed limit — and sets it upon a road where it rolls along on its rails and moves forward: humanity has reached maturity. So the prophets, from the first to the last, succeeded.

And at the conclusion of the work stands the last divine emissary, of whom we also wrote in these papers ^[580]. The appearance of the Awaited One (the Wali of the Age), may God’s blessings be upon him, is itself a glad tiding to all the godly and to all the "national-minded" of the world. This last appointee of God — whom we hold to be our own Imam of the Age, and whom all the "national-minded"^[581] of the world await — will come and bring this load all the way to its final point. And whose work is the Imam of the Age continuing? He is continuing the work of Noah, the work of Abraham, the work of Moses, the work of Jesus, the work of our own Prophet, and the work of the pure Imams from the household of the Prophet. Had this load not reached its end, Noah would have failed. But because it will reach its end — because he too had a share in bringing it there — Noah is not a failure; Abraham is not a failure; Zachariah, whose body was sawn in two, is not a failure; that prophet whom they threw into the well ^[582] is not a failure. It is true that he fell into the well; it is true that in this world he did not see what he longed to see; it is true that Yahya (John), peace be upon him, had his head severed for the tyrant of his age and was sent as a gift. All of this is true — but none of these men were defeated. Why? Because they bore these calamities and afflictions at the price of pushing the load of the trust forward and bringing it nearer to its destination.

There is another point I touched on yesterday. Looking at the final outcome of the work, we saw that defeat never awaits the prophets: in the end they all triumphed and succeeded, in the sense I have explained. But some of the prophets, beyond that final triumph of bringing the load one meter nearer to its destination, attained certain successes in this world as well. Those successes lay in their being able to bring into existence a society built upon monotheistic thought and upon the school they proposed. The clearest instance is our own Prophet, who — upon the foundation of Islamic thought, the Qur’anic mode of thought, and the inspiration of God — brought into being a society, a polity (madinah), a community, an order. And many of the past prophets were of the same type, as I also mentioned yesterday. The conversion of the Roman Empire came after the departure of Jesus; the virtuous society of the Children of Israel took shape after the passing of Moses. Abraham established the divine society during his own lifetime — of this the Qur’an speaks. Solomon spread divine rule throughout the entire world. This Israelite prophet, Solomon, son of David, gathered the whole world into a single monotheistic, divine society, around one another and around a single axis. So some of the prophets did attain successes and triumphs even during their own lifetimes, and these triumphs came down to what? To the establishment of a divine, monotheistic order and society.

Some of the prophets had no such opportunity. Like whom? Like Zachariah and Yahya, whom I gave as examples — they failed in their lifetimes and were killed in the end; and like certain others among the prophets before them. What is this? How is it to be analyzed and explained? Why do some of the prophets succeed and others fail? Why can they not all establish the divine, monotheistic society? Why do only some attain this possibility and this success? The answer lies in a single short sentence. Everywhere the divine men, leaders, and great ones won their successes, those successes hung upon faith and patience. And everywhere the great divine leaders and callers to truth were defeated, it was because they did not have a sufficient measure of faith or of patience — without exception. It has been just so everywhere. Wherever the companions of the prophet and the believers in him held to patience in the struggle against the enemies of the prophet’s call, they pushed forward.

What victory and progress require is already present in the call of the prophets, because the prophets speak in accordance with truth, they act in accordance with truth, and truth is victorious. Truth accords with the nature and disposition of the world, and so it succeeds and prevails. The prophets too speak in accordance with the disposition of the world; therefore the substance of success in the movement of the prophets, in the revolution of the prophets, is fully present. If you see that some prophet in history was defeated, do not take this as proof that the word of truth must be defeated — no, the word of truth must be victorious, the order of truth must prevail, the hand of truth must strike falsehood upon the head and shatter it to pieces. So why does a prophet sometimes meet defeat? Because the followers of the prophet do not have sufficient faith or sufficient patience; they do not exert patience. Otherwise, as the verse of the Qur’an — that very verse we recited yesterday — says: “And Our word has already gone forth to Our servants, the messengers: that it is they who will be helped, and that it is Our host that will surely be the victors.”^[583]

Our host, Our army, Our people are the ones who prevail — this word of God admits no exception. If you ever saw those who spoke the word of truth go down in defeat, know that they were not the host of God: the conditions for being the host of God were not present in them. And those others who engineered that victory, who engineered that defeat and prepared its ground — they too were not the host of God. On the day the Islamic society is the host of God, it pushes forward; on the day it falls behind, it is not the host of God, it is not the army of God, it is not the troops of God.

It all comes down to two things: the cause of defeats on the one hand, the cause of victories on the other. Wherever the followers of the prophet built complete faith and complete certainty within themselves and stood firm upon the word of truth, they succeeded and pushed forward, and defeat had no place in their affair. Yesterday I related something on the authority of one of the great figures of our own near-contemporary history,^[584] who used to tell his friends: "When you are able, struggle. When you see that you are being defeated, struggle still — until you reach that moment when you become certain that, yes, you will surely be defeated — even then, struggle on. When, at the very moment that you are certain you will be defeated, you still continue your effort, your striving, and your struggle, then victory and triumph will be granted to you." A verse of the Qur’an says almost this same thing — indeed, says it outright. It says: “…until, when the messengers despaired and thought that they had been denied, Our help came to them…”^[585]

It reached a point where the opposing front’s blows against the prophets grew so severe that the prophets themselves lost hope. It reached a point where the prophets and the people with them had their hearts shaken — not in their faith, for their faith did not vanish and they did not lose their belief in God, but in their certainty of victory. Because they had believed they would win, that certainty faltered, and they imagined they had misunderstood. They had been certain that God had told them, "You will surely be victorious." Yet they began to think that perhaps they had misunderstood, that God had made them no such promise. Wa zannu annahum qad kudhibu — "and they thought that they had been denied" — ja’ahum nasruna — "Our help came to them." In that very moment — when, from the intensity of the pressure and the severity of the enemy’s blows, the front of truth and religion felt that it was now surely being destroyed, that it was perishing, that the enemy was gaining the upper hand and the roads were closing in — in that very moment, because it still persevered and still strove, the help and succor of God arrived. That is what this verse of the Qur’an tells us.

We imagine that throughout history some of the movements calling toward truth were defeated. Zayd ibn 'Ali^[586] was struck in the forehead by an arrow in the mosque of Kufa and fell. Muhammad ibn 'Abdullah, the one called "the Pure Soul" (al-Nafs al-Zakiyyah),^[587] was defeated in his struggle against Mansur. Husayn ibn 'Ali al-Hasani, the martyr of Fakhkh,^[588] was killed near Medina together with all his companions. Ibrahim ibn 'Abdullah^[589] was slain in Kufa or Basra. From all of this, we imagine, we are meant to draw one general lesson: that wherever a movement of truth rose up against falsehood, it is condemned to defeat. A group of ignorant people, who know nothing of the logic of the Qur’an, hold exactly this notion. As I said, this notion settles, like sweet water, into the hearts of the powerful and the tyrants of history. They pray to the Lord of both worlds that the people should go on thinking this way. And of course they promote this way of thinking themselves. But it runs contrary to reality.

If Zayd ibn 'Ali is martyred there, in that defeated state, this is no proof that truth is condemned to extinction and defeat. Rather, it is proof that truth, even though it is truth, still needs work and striving. Let us not suppose that, because our word is truth, it is therefore unnecessary to strive on its behalf. Let us not think that, because our cause is the Qur’an, God Himself will therefore push the Qur’an forward — no! The word of truth is indeed truth, and the world is destined and certain^[590] to accept it in the future — but it requires effort, it requires activity. A group must exercise patience for its sake; a group must eat the blood of their own hearts to enthrone it. This is the lesson the episode of Zayd ibn 'Ali gives us; it does not teach us that truth is condemned to extinction. So why do they err? Zayd ibn 'Ali’s word was true, and Imam al-Sadiq, peace be upon him, had endorsed his struggle against the apparatus of Hisham ibn 'Abd al-Malik. They had permitted him that wondrous struggle, and history speaks to this meaning. This noble man set out, and he arranged matters well too. Only, a group of people — ignorant and unaware, or fault-seeking, or under the influence of the evil propaganda of a vigilant enemy — forsook^[591] him at the necessary moment and left him alone. This is the lesson we learn from that episode: even if a word is true, even with the rightfulness of Zayd ibn 'Ali’s word, his followers and supporters are defeated if they leave him alone and exert no effort on his path and at his side — and if they do struggle, they push forward. All the affairs of the world are just so.

How many people in the world do you know of — how many ideas, how many schools of thought — whose followers and friends, through their effort and struggle, enthroned that school of thought? How is it that false words, untrue words, words contrary to the way of the world and the nature of man, are enthroned through effort and struggle, yet the word of truth is not enthroned through struggle? What kind of talk is this? Yet some people do indeed say this very absurd, false thing.

The Commander of the Faithful (Amir al-Mu’minin), may God’s blessings be upon him, makes this matter entirely clear in one short sermon of the Nahj al-Balaghah. I did not intend today to go into great detail, and I will not; I would rather explain these verses. But for now I will recount this sermon for you as well. The Commander of the Faithful describes the advances of the soldiers of Islam in the time of the Prophet. He says:

He says: when we stood beside the Prophet and in the Prophet’s ranks, this is how we acted. When we went onto the battlefield, we slew our own fathers, our own sons, our own brothers, our own uncles who stood in the front ranks of unbelief and polytheism. If our uncle, our father, our son, our brother came under the banner of unbelief to make war on the Prophet, we — who had gone forth with the Prophet — did not say, "This is my brother, let me spare him; this is my son, let me spare him." Without hesitation we mowed them all down in the way of God. And afterward, when we had killed them and were returning, our hearts were not shaken within us so as to cry out, "Alas, woe! Look what we have done! For the sake of this new religion, this new thought, we have killed our own beloved child!" — no. Our faith did not lessen as a result of this sharp and decisive deed; it increased. Ma yaziduna dhalika illa imanan wa tasliman — "that only increased us in faith and submission" — this struggle of ours only added to our faith and our submission. Wa mudiyyan 'ala al-haqqi wa sabran 'ala madadi al-alam — this struggle of ours drove us to press on more decisively upon the truth in difficult matters, and to bear more patiently the pains and torments of the struggle.

Then the Commander of the Faithful goes on to describe the battlefields there in brief. He said: Wa jiddan fi jihadi al-'aduwwi. Wa laqad kana al-rajulu minna wa al-akharu min 'aduwwina yatasawalani tasawula al-fahlayni yatakhalasani anfusahuma: ayyuhuma yasqi sahibahu ka’sa al-manun — which I do not wish to expound — namely, how our soldier in battle would leap upon the enemy, how he would lock with him, how our soldiers and the champions of Islam would race one another toward death. These I will leave aside. Then, at the very end of this same short sermon, he says:

We struggled to such an extent that God saw that we were speaking truthfully, saw that we were truly Muslims, saw that we were truly believers — that we proved our deep faith by our deeds. And when we acted in this way, then the crushing of our enemies and victory for us descended upon us from God. He utters a few further sentences, and then he says:

The Commander of the Faithful says this during his caliphate, when he was confronting a handful of lazy, comfort-seeking men. When he said, "Come, let us go to the war against Mu’awiyah," they made excuses; when it was time to go to the war against Talhah and Zubayr, they fabricated a thousand kinds of religious justification for staying behind. In short, they were comfort-seeking, life-seeking, ease-seeking people, far from divine knowledge — such were the men he was dealing with. Weak, base, slack, abject, surrendered to humiliation, accustomed to comfort: with such men the Commander of the Faithful was contending. He says to them, Wa la-'amri — "by my own life I swear" — law kunna na’ti ma ataytum — "had we, in that day with the Prophet, done the very thing you are doing today," O Muslims, ma qama li-l-dini 'amudun wa la-khdarra li-l-imani 'udun — not one pillar among the pillars of the religion would have stood erect, not one branch among the branches of faith would have grown green.

What do you understand from this sermon? The word of the Commander of the Faithful is nothing other than the word of the Prophet, for the path that 'Ali trod is the very path his brother the Prophet trod. So why, in that earlier day, did the Prophet of God advance so far, while in the time of the Commander of the Faithful affairs came to such a standstill? The Commander of the Faithful states the secret. Because in that day, he says, we were patient on the battlefields; in that day we were patient under the burning of pain; in that day we were ready to rise from our beds onto the battlefield; in that day we were ready to give up our material interests and our livelihoods for the sake of God — but today you are not ready. In that day we advanced; today we fall behind. A very simple, clear matter — two times two is four. This is the social analysis of the Commander of the Faithful.

Here, then, is the summary of the matter. Across the chain of prophethoods, their work is accompanied by victory, and at its conclusion the eternal and final triumph belongs to them. But there is more: even in this very world the prophets are certain to attain victory and to achieve their own aims and the aims of their school. There is one condition — that their followers and companions bring real faith, render aid, and stay patient on the fields of struggle and jihad. Faith and patience: that is the upshot of the discourse.

Now let us return to the verses of the Qur’an. Today I have chosen verses from several places in the Noble Qur’an, and I found that it holds even more verses of glad tiding than these. One is in Surat al-Mu’min (Ghafir), where He says: “Indeed, We will surely help Our messengers and those who believe, in the life of this world and on the Day when the witnesses arise.”

I would regret not explaining these verses, so let me read them now. Inna la-nansuru rusulana wa alladhina amanu — "Indeed, We will surely help Our messengers and those who believe."^[593] The lam in la-nansuru is for certainty and emphasis, and inna too carries this same sense of verification and emphasis. That is to say: We, definitively and without any doubt, help — rusulana, "Our messengers." Only the messengers? No — wa alladhina amanu, "and those who believe," the believers as well. The believer who moves along the path of the prophet: this promise is for him too. The pure-natured people who set out following the call of the prophets: this promise is for them too — wa alladhina amanu. And where do We help them? Fi al-hayati al-dunya — "in the life of this world": right here, in this very worldly life, We help them; We do not leave it for later. Wa yawma yaqumu al-ashhad — "and on the Day when the witnesses arise." That the witnesses arise is, in some commentaries, interpreted as the Day of Resurrection.

There is a tradition concerning this noble verse in which the Imam, peace be upon him, told Jamil ibn Darraj — according to that tradition — that God’s help to the prophets means their being helped in the world of the Return (raj’ah).^[594] That is to say: the Wali of the Age, may God’s blessings be upon him, comes. That all-encompassing divine government takes hold in this world. The banner of the Qur’an and Islam is planted across the entire world; all the people turn toward religion, God, and monotheism; the single divine government comes into being. After that, God the Exalted brings back to life the prophets, the messengers, the executors of the prophets (awsiya'), the martyrs, and the righteous among the believers — in accordance with verses of the Qur’an interpreted to this meaning, and traditions that are explicit on it. I will not now go into the discussion of the Return. In this narration the Imam says that this verse is connected to the Return, and that the help is for the Return. But I myself imagine that the Imam, peace be upon him, does not wish to interpret this phrase — fi al-hayati al-dunya — as referring to the Return. He does not wish to say that when God states We help them in the life of this world, He means "in the Return within the life of this world." I think it is yawma yaqumu al-ashhad that is being interpreted as the Return, and not as the Resurrection — for what helping is there in the Resurrection? In the era of the Return, God the Exalted helps the prophets. This I offer only as a probability, and I draw the inference from this narration only as a probability. At any rate,^[595] even if we set aside this benefit altogether, the phrase fi al-hayati al-dunya itself — on its apparent meaning, and by the indication of the verses that come afterward as well — shows that God the Exalted gives an explicit promise to the prophets and to the believers: in this very worldly life, We will help you.

The verse goes on: “The Day when their excuse will not benefit the wrongdoers; and theirs is the curse, and theirs is the evil abode.” Yawma yaqumu al-ashhad — who is it that arises? When do the witnesses arise? At that time when the apology of the wrongdoers will be of no benefit to them. There is another verse in the Qur’an: “…the Day when a sign of your Lord comes, no soul will benefit from its faith if it did not believe before…”^[596]

This too is interpreted as the era of the coming of the Wali of the Age — it may well be the same era. Wa lahumu al-la’nah — the curse is upon the wrongdoers. Wa lahum su’u al-dar — theirs is a most ill-omened, evil abode.

Then, to bring a witness to the fact that We help the prophets, He cites the episode of Moses. Before this verse, from the early part of Surat al-Mu’min, the discourse is mostly about Moses and his struggles against Pharaoh. So here too — where He gives the promise of help to all the prophets — He offers one instance, one example: “And We had certainly given Moses guidance, and We bequeathed to the Children of Israel the Book — a guidance and a remembrance for those endowed with understanding.”

Wa laqad atayna Musa al-huda — "We gave Moses guidance and right-guidedness." Wa awrathna Bani Isra’ila al-kitab — "and We bequeathed the Book to the Children of Israel as an inheritance." The Children of Israel remained possessors of the Book, possessors of the whole collection of divine knowledge and ordinances. This shows that they succeeded. Had the unbelievers and tyrants of the age prevailed over them, they would never have allowed them to live by their own heavenly Book; they would have destroyed the Book from among them. Hudan wa dhikra li-uli al-albab — this Book is guidance, right-guidance, and awareness for those endowed with intellect and reason.

Fa-sbir — then, this matter concluded, He addresses the Seal of the Prophets: Fa-sbir — "so be patient, persevere, resist the impulses that bring about decline." Inna wa’da’llahi haqq — without doubt, God’s promise is true. This is the promise God has given, that you will be victorious — the promise in Surat al-Saffat: Wa laqad sabaqat kalimatuna li-'ibadina al-mursalin, innahum lahumu al-mansurun — and the other promises throughout the Qur’an. They are true, they are correct. You will surely be victorious, O Prophet, in accordance with the divine promise — but the condition for it is patience. Fa-sbir — you must be patient, you must resist and persevere, you must not turn back from the sacred contest you have undertaken. “So be patient — indeed, the promise of God is true — and seek forgiveness for your sin, and glorify your Lord with praise in the evening and the morning.”

Fa-sbir inna wa’da’llahi haqq, wa-staghfir li-dhanbik — "and seek forgiveness for your sin." The Prophet’s sin, the sin in the Prophet’s category, is not of the type of our sins. The Prophet is infallible — this is certain. By the explicit text of the Qur’anic verses and by the judgment of reason, the Prophet does not sin. This "sin" is the kind of lapse that, for a human being of that station, counts as a lapse — even though, if you and I were to do the very same thing, it would be no lapse at all. Those are the sins He speaks of, those are the lapses. Wa-staghfir li-dhanbik — ask pardon, seek forgiveness, and make amends for your small lapses of the past. Wa sabbih bi-hamdi rabbika bi-l-'ashiyyi wa-l-ibkar — "and glorify, and praise your Lord, in every evening and every morning." This verse teaches us very clearly that the outcome of the prophets' work is the help of God.

Now, the verses of Surat al-Anbiya' work in the same way. Surat al-Anbiya' is in the seventeenth juz', after Surat Ta Ha, and its verses are excellent; I recommend to those friends who have intimacy with the Qur’an that they read it carefully. From the beginning of the sura, God the Exalted says again and again that the prophets will be victorious, the enemies of the prophets will be crushed, and — in this world too, before the next — they will be punished. Then, after repeating these matters somewhat, He turns to history. He recounts the story of Moses, the victory of Moses and the defeat of the power opposing him; the story of Abraham, the victory of Abraham and the defeat of the powers opposing him; the stories of Noah, of Solomon, and others. Every episode in the sura takes this form: the prophet advances, succeeds, is victorious; and the anti-prophet — the counter-revolution against the prophet, the reaction that opposes prophethood and its new word — is overcome, is subdued, is defeated. And this is the way (sunnah) of history.

He says: “And We did not send before you any but men to whom We revealed…”^[597] — these are the verses at the beginning of the sura — before you, We sent prophets and gave them revelation. Wa ma ja’alnahum jasadan la ya’kuluna al-ta’am (21:8) — "We did not make them bodies that did not eat food": We did not make them into angels who have no body and need no food. Wa ma kanu khalidin — nor were they immortal. They too died in the end. But — thumma sadaqnahumu al-wa’d (21:9) — "then We fulfilled for them the promise": We made Our promise of victory come true for them. Fa-anjaynahum wa man nasha' — "We saved them and whomever We willed": We saved the prophets, and whomever else We willed We saved along with them. Wa ahlakna al-musrifin — "and We destroyed the transgressors": We destroyed the transgressors. Laqad anzalna ilaykum kitaban fihi dhikrukum, a-fa-la ta’qilun (21:10) — "We have sent down to you a Book in which is your remembrance": now to you too, O believers, We have sent down a Book, a Qur’an, in which is your remembrance and your reminder. A-fa-la ta’qilun — "do you not, then, use reason? Do you not reflect?"

Then He arrives at verse eleven, and He says: “And how many a town that was wrongdoing have We shattered…”

Wa kam qasamna min qaryatin — this is truly a hymn to the victory of the prophets, a stirring anthem of how greatly the Lord of the world made them succeed through His unseen aids. And these are not the kind of unseen aid the common people wish for and love, where a hand reaches out from the unseen to strike the enemy in the chest. No — they are unseen aids concealed within the very womb of this world, working through the world’s own disposition and the nature of man and the cosmos. Through these aids, how greatly did the Lord of the world make the prophets succeed. Wa kam qasamna min qaryatin — how many, and how often, did We shatter the settlement and society that kanat zalimah, that was wrongdoing. The wrongdoing society, the wrongdoing order, the wrongdoing civilization — the society in whose very construction injustice was employed, in which class divisions arose and exploitation was established, the exploitation of man by man: this is "the wrongdoing town," this is "the wrongdoing society," the one founded on tyranny — how many of these did We shatter! Wa kam qasamna — that is, "how many did We shatter, We crushed." Wa qasamna means "We shattered, We pulverized." Min qaryatin kanat zalimatan wa ansh’ana ba’daha qawman akharin — "and after them We raised up another people": after them We brought into being another people, another group, another class, and set them to the work.

He goes on: “Then, when they perceived Our might, at once they fled from it. [It was said:] Do not flee, but return to the luxury you were given and to your dwellings, that you might be questioned. They said: Woe to us, indeed we were wrongdoers! And that did not cease to be their cry until We made them stubble, extinguished.” Fa-lamma ahassu ba’sana — this describes the wrongdoers' misery at the moment they behold the punishment of God. The very moment those wrongdoers sensed Our wrath — whether a heavenly punishment descended, say, or whether they saw the believers charge upon them alongside their prophet, about to bring down the sword of God’s wrath upon their heads — the moment they sensed Our wrath, idha hum minha yarkudun — suddenly, from those settlements, from that civilization, from that society, they took to flight. La tarkudu — "do not flee"; wa-rji’u ila ma utriftum fihi — "and return to the luxury you were given": return to those palaces where you lived in ease, back to the city where you lorded over others and boasted — where are you fleeing to? Wa-rji’u ila ma utriftum fihi wa masakinikum — "and to your dwellings." La’allakum tus’alun — "that you might be questioned": perhaps they wish to interrogate you — where are you going? Qalu ya waylana inna kunna zalimin — they said, "Woe to us! Woe to us, for we were oppressors and wrongdoers." Fa-ma zalat tilka da’wahum — this remained their cry; hatta ja’alnahum hasidan khamidin — "and they kept on speaking in this way until We made them all prey to death and annihilation."

These next verses state the intellectual foundation of this historical reality. Why did things become this way? Why must the wrongdoers be destroyed and the oppressed take their place? Why must the prophet’s call surely advance and his opponents be crushed? The cause is this: “And We did not create the heaven and the earth and what is between them in play. Had We wished to take a diversion, We would have taken it from within Ourselves — if We were to do so.”

Wa ma khalaqna al-sama’a wa-l-arda wa ma baynahuma la’ibin — We did not create the heaven and the earth and what is between them in vain. Law aradna an nattakhidha lahwan la-attakhadhnahu min ladunna in kunna fa’ilin — had We wished to do a frivolous thing, We would certainly have done it; We would have done it of Our own self — if We were the doers of such a thing — but We never do. The Lord of the world does nothing vain, nothing false, nothing futile. What does this mean? It means that this heaven and earth, and all that lies between them, We created according to a purpose — for the attainment of an aim and a goal. Truth (haqq) is the line of progression of this heaven and earth, and of whatever is in them, toward that goal. The path that brings the heaven and the earth and their creatures to that destination, that aim and goal for which they were created — that line of progression is truth. And any means that brings human beings to that destination is itself truth. None of this is stated outright in the verse; rather, this is its import — reflect upon the verse, and it is quite clear. This is the foundation of the Qur’an: much of what is already understood and clear, that the human intellect arrives at on its own, it does not bother to make explicit.

Then He continues: “Rather, We hurl the truth against falsehood, and it crushes it, and at once it vanishes. And woe to you for what you describe.”

Bal naqdhifu bi-l-haqqi 'ala al-batili — rather, We strike falsehood with the means of truth. This path of truth, this correct way, this innate and natural way of man and the world, will in the end triumph over falsehood; We make the truth prevail over it. Fa-yadmaghuhu — so this truth utterly effaces and annihilates falsehood. Fa-idha huwa zahiq — then you see falsehood as it perishes, heading toward annihilation. Wa lakumu al-waylu mimma tasifun — then for you, O wrongdoers, O oppressors, O followers of falsehood and deniers of truth, is woe; for you is wretchedness and ruin. Wa lakumu al-waylu mimma tasifun — woe to you for what you have described and asserted.

Then He continues in a most interesting and beautiful Qur’anic style — and to grasp these subtleties correctly, a person must become intimate with the Qur’an. Those who miss these fine points and refinements of the Qur’an usually have no intimacy with it. Once a person grows intimate with the Qur’an, its tone of speech becomes familiar to his ear, and he understands how it is speaking. He discusses this matter: the coming of truth and the going of falsehood, the victory of truth and the defeat of falsehood. Then, regarding the creation of the heaven and the earth, He once again takes hold of the point that the Lord of the world owns the heaven and the earth and rules over every region of the world of existence. Therefore, in the life of human beings too He must hold sway; in the system of human life He must give the law, administer, and govern. And so those who laid claim to government, power, and dominion in opposition to the prophets were upon falsehood and are condemned to annihilation.

O Lord! By Muhammad and the household of Muhammad, make us true followers of Muhammad and the household of Muhammad.

O Lord! By Muhammad and the household of Muhammad, do not separate us from them in this world, in life, and in the Hereafter.

By Muhammad and the household of Muhammad, draw their kindness and their love toward us.

O Lord! Make us followers and adherents of the Qur’an, and those who act upon the Qur’an.

This issue must be raised within the discussions of Prophethood. If we fail to grasp it, much of what has been said on the subject of Prophethood will have almost no practical effect for us. This final discussion is what guarantees that the previous ones enter our lives and are put into practice.

What is this final discussion? It is this. We who say "Ashhadu anna Muhammadan rasul Allah" — "I bear witness that Muhammad is the Messenger of God" — announce in the call to prayer, in the ritual prayer, in the pronouncing of the two testimonies (the shahadatayn), everywhere, that we belong to the Prophet’s Ummah, that we accept and are convinced of his prophethood and have faith in it. What commitment does this testimony place on our shoulders? Does this belief, this testimony, this profession, create any commitment for us at all?

There is one kind of testimony where you say, "I bear witness and accept that — suppose — the narcissus flower is more fragrant than the Muhammadan rose." That is one matter. Some people do not even know this; some believe the opposite. You, sir, rightly or wrongly, have become convinced that this flower’s scent is more pleasing to the nose than that one. Now that you have given this testimony — thumma madha, as we seminary students say, "and then what?" Nothing. You see that if a person testifies this flower is better than that one, or the reverse, it has no effect on our life and creates no commitment in it.

Let me give another example. In the Christian world, one person stands at the head of the religious hierarchy, called the Pope. As you know, this Pope is in reality merely a kind of statue that people must respect. He puts forth no new theory in Christian belief, and issues no new ruling among Christian laws that differs from the previous ones. His being or not being is just like the presence or absence of a beautiful statue in your reception room: if it is there, the decor is complete; if it is not, then to luxury-loving eyes the room is deficient. On Christian thought, the existence of the Pope and his absence have no greater effect than this. In this very year in which we are living, if an informed Christian were aware that the present Pope has died and so-and-so has taken his place, or refused to believe it, it would make no difference whatsoever to his life. If a Christian were to say, "I bear witness that the existing Pope of my time is Mr. So-and-so," this testimony brings him no commitment. That is to say, the state of this Christian is the same as the state of that broken-down old man sitting in a corner of some village — who has no news that the former Pope has died and someone has come in his place. Just as the old man’s life underwent no change after the death of the former Pope, so too no change of any kind comes about in the life of this gentleman who knows the Pope died and another has taken his seat. "I bear witness that today the Pope is so-and-so" — this testimony creates no commitment.

Now: when I say in the tashahhud of my prayer, "Ashhadu anna Muhammadan rasul Allah," when it is proclaimed from the minaret of my city and province as a general slogan, as a portrayer of the overall countenance of this society, "Ashhadu anna Muhammadan rasul Allah" — does this testimony to prophethood, this faith in prophethood and the proclaiming of it, place a commitment upon my shoulders as the one professing it, and upon the shoulders of that society for which this profession is uttered as its slogan? Or does it not? This is the question.

The answer is yes, it does. What commitment does it place upon the shoulders of the follower of the Prophet, the one who accepts his call? Let me put it in a single phrase. A person who believes in the prophethood of the Prophet takes upon his shoulders the commitment to follow the Prophet’s path and to carry the Prophet’s burden home. These words are uttered very easily, but their responsibility is very heavy; and fundamentally, to be of the Prophet’s Ummah and to be a witness to his prophethood is precisely this.

A group of people imagine that once they have said "We accept that so-and-so is a prophet" — that the moment they proclaim with the tongue the acceptance of his prophethood that is in their heart — their work is done, and they have carried themselves across the border of Hell into the border of Heaven. Listen carefully, and see whether this belief I am describing exists in your mind too. I have no concern with who holds it and who does not. Some imagine that human beings were burning in the fire of God’s wrath, and then the matter of the prophethood of the Seal of the Prophets was raised; a number of these people, there in the precinct of torment and God’s wrath, said "Ashhadu anna Muhammadan rasul Allah" — "I bear witness that Muhammad is the Prophet of God" — and by uttering this phrase they came out of the region of God’s torment, they were pulled out, and they fell into the region of mercy. From there, if they prayed, they come a little closer, within the region of mercy, to the wellspring of mercy; if they fasted, they come a little closer; if they paid khums and zakat, closer still; if they also enjoined good and forbade evil, closer again; if they performed other deeds too, then they reach the wellspring of mercy; and even if they did not perform them, in the end they are still within the region of mercy. Did you grasp it? Some imagine it this way.

The result of this way of thinking is this. Suppose today a person were to write in his identity document "Muslim, follower of the Prophet of Islam" — back when they used to write it in identity documents, though now they do not — or, put to him in a question and answer, he is asked, "Sir, what is your creed and religion?" and he says "Islam." Merely because he has specified Islam and not specified Christianity, not materialism, not Judaism, not some other religion — merely because, among the various things presented to him under the name of religion, he has put his finger on Islam — they say: "Very well; since you have specified Islam, go to Heaven. Now, if you also prayed, all the better; if you also fasted, all the better; if you also did other deeds, all the better; and even if you did not do them, your place is in God’s Heaven — except that before you reach the Resurrection, they will squeeze you hard." This is a saying and a thought that is current in people’s minds.

This saying is not correct. Faith in the Prophet is necessary, but that faith brings commitments along with it; and a person’s faith is sound only to the extent that those commitments are fulfilled. Suppose a person held a faith on his tongue, or even in his heart, but did not commit himself to any of the commitments that this faith specifies for him, did not accept any of the responsibilities that acceptance of the Prophet’s prophethood places on his shoulders. Then this person, though outwardly a believer, is not a true believer. What will God do with him at the Resurrection? I do not know, nor do I have any concern to know. But by the measures of this world, as a basis on which we can pass a verdict on the faith or lack of faith of a person, we do not regard this man as a person of faith.

Of course, let me add one thing. Uttering this phrase and declaring belief outwardly does preserve a person’s life and property, as the saying goes — though there is some loose usage in that expression — that is, it brings him inside the Islamic sphere. But our discussion is not about whether a person’s life and property are protected. We want to see whether he is a believer or not. On the basis of the Quranic criteria, whose verses I will now explain for you, we say: that person who is not bound to the commitments of faith is not a believer. A believer is one who is bound to the commitments and responsibilities that faith in prophethood brings.

What is this commitment? It is that I should see what the Prophet wanted to do in this world. The Prophet wanted to lift a tremendous burden, the Prophet wanted to uproot a tremendous boulder, the Prophet wanted to erect a tremendous edifice. And I too, in my own time, should look and see: has that burden which the Prophet wanted to lift been completely lifted? Has that stone which the Prophet wanted to uproot^[598] from the ground and completely tear out been completely torn out? Has that edifice which the Prophet wanted to demolish and to build been built? If I saw that the answer is negative — that burden is still on the ground, that stone has not been torn out, that edifice has not been built — then let me strive to do the work he wanted to do. Let me strive to lift this burden myself. If my bones were weak, if my strength did not suffice, then to the extent that I can, let me strain at it, and let me also find ten other people so that we lift this burden together; let me find yet another group so that we build this edifice together. If I could not finish the building, can I not at least bring ten bricks and stack them there? Can I not dig out even a portion of its foundation and footing? Can I not at least prepare the preliminaries of the work? If I say I cannot, it is a lie.

He must be bound to this commitment; otherwise it is a lie for him to say, "I bear witness that he is the Prophet of God." That is a superficial testimony. "I bear witness that he is a prophet, but I cannot bear witness that I believe in his prophethood" — like the hypocrites:

“When the hypocrites come to you, they say, 'We bear witness that you are indeed the Messenger of God.' And God knows that you are indeed His Messenger, and God bears witness that the hypocrites are surely liars.”^[599]

They would come and say, "O Messenger of God, we bear witness that you are the Prophet of God." God says: yes, We Ourselves know that you are Our prophet; this matter is certain to Us — the statement is, in itself, true. But We bear witness that they were liars in this testimony of theirs; in their hearts they do not accept it, while with their tongues they say it.

The commitment of the messengership is the building of a world in the form that Islam has stated. The Messenger, when he comes, comes in order to build a world to the dimensions that Islam proposes. The Prophet is commissioned for this — to set right the form and the order of human life in the manner that God states. Suppose that you, in your own time, saw that humanity is not living by the God-ordained form, that mankind is deprived of a divine society, that various schools are pulling humanity this way and that, and that Islam has remained confined to a corner of people’s minds and hearts and no more. Then your duty and your commitment, on the basis of the testimony you give to the messengership of the Prophet, is to strive to bring the world into the form ordained by Islam. This is the responsibility and the commitment of prophethood.

Just as has been written in these papers, which you have studied or are studying: Islam brings a new thought, and on the basis of this new thought a new front-formation, a new lining-up, comes into being. And through the study of the verses of the Quran we have repeatedly reached this conclusion — that religion, in essence, means the creation of a new front-formation and lining-up.

When human beings live in an ignorant (jahili) society, they are all obedient and tamed, all facing one direction, one way. The Prophet, when he comes into this society, divides them into two groups: one group he rescues from this misguidance, this straying, this bewilderment; he changes their path, and so they become two groups. In the sense I have described, the prophets are an agent of division; in this sense, they are an agent of duality. Hold on to the sense in which I said this, so that if you recount it somewhere you do not say, "So-and-so says the Prophet is an agent of division." In this sense he is an agent of division, and in no other — everyone is going, like the cars of a single train, toward the downward slope of ruin; the Prophet comes and takes hold of these cars from behind. Some of the cars detach themselves from the Prophet’s hand and go on toward the downward slope of ruin; a number welcome this holding-back of his; and division falls among the cars.

This caravan is heading toward the bandits, toward the place of death, toward the earthquake-zone; the Prophet comes and says, "Do not go." Some listen to his word and do not go; some do not listen and go. So they become two fronts — division. In this sense, the prophets, when they come, create division and duality within societies — except that it is a duality within a society that had been uniformly misguided. They come and say, "Turn back toward God," and division falls among those uniform masses; some turn back, some do not.

So a new front, a new lining-up, a new mutual positioning comes into being in society with the coming of the Prophet. The Prophet stands on one side, in one rank; the obstinate adversaries of the Prophet stand on the other side, in another rank. Pay close attention to these two ranks that I am sketching. At first the Prophet was all alone, and everyone stood in that opposing rank. He exerted effort, he strove, one by one, two by two, until at last he was able to form a rank facing that misguided and hellbound one — to bring into being a rank facing the rank of error. They stand as two ranks facing each other: one is the rank of the Prophet; the other is the rank of the Prophet’s enemies.

What did the Prophet want to do? He wanted to take the people to Heaven — the Heaven of this world and the Heaven after death, both. Because he wants to take the people to Heaven, the people must come with him; if they do not come with him, they do not reach Heaven. Is this correct? The Prophet wants to take human beings to the destination of felicity; if they do not come with him, if they do not become his companions and fellow travelers, they do not reach that destination. Remember this well. Now, between these two ranks stands a person. He looks at the Prophet and sees that he speaks true words; however much he listens, he finds that the Prophet’s word is a good word. On the other hand, he sees that if he enters the Prophet’s rank, he will be forced to contend against that opposing rank. He has no heart to go into the opposing rank, because he sees that they are heading toward Hell; he has no heart to come into the Prophet’s rank, because he sees that the Prophet’s rank means trouble. So what does he do? He comes between the two ranks, chooses a safe, secure, peaceful spot, pitches a tent there, and sits down. What sort of person is this? You tell me.

This man who has sat down in the middle, slumbering on a comfortable bed between the two ranks — will he reach Heaven or not? Plainly he will not. The Prophet is bound for Heaven, and only those who set out together with him will go, while this one never set out with the Prophet at all. Whoever is between the two ranks is not with the Prophet; whoever has not joined the Prophet is against the Prophet; whoever is not with Ali is against Ali; whoever is not with the truth is against the truth. The Quran tells us this too, but the eloquent, clear tongue of the Imam (peace be upon him) — much closer to comprehension — states it for us. He says, "Al-sakitu akhu al-radi"_^[600] — learn this hadith; the reference for it is Bihar al-Anwar, the volume of admonitions (mawa’iz) — "Al-sakitu akhu al-radi, wa man lam yakun ma’ana kana 'alayna." The one who is silent in the face of a false situation is the brother of the one who is content with that situation. They do not even go on to say what the content one becomes; that much is obvious — man radiya bi-'amali qawmin fa-huwa minhum: whoever is content with the deed of a community, content with the life of a people, is one of them; they too will take him and tie him to the same manger to which they tie those people. This one who is silent — discontented in his heart, yet never proclaiming his discontent — he too is the brother of the one who is content. Then it continues: "wa man lam yakun ma’ana kana 'alayna" — whoever is not with us is against us. Between these two ranks, Islam has supposed no place at all.