The
Following is the Message of H. E. Imam Khamenei to the Hajj pilgrims from
the whole world
2005/01/18
In the Name of Allah, the All-beneficent, the
All-merciful
O our people! Respond to Allah’s summoner and have
faith in Him. He will forgive you some of your sins and save you from a
painful punishment.’ (The Qur’an,46 :31)
Hastening in response to the Divine call with the cries
of “Labbayk,” once again the devout have arrived by the House of the
Beloved. The Hajj season has returned and, for the seekers of grace and
spirituality, the road is open towards the summits of love and communion.
Right in front of you is the House of God, the cynosure
of the hearts, and the plains of Arafaat and Mash‘ar are all set for the
surging mainspring of remembrance of God and gnosis of the Divine. Mina
and the Safa are poised to deliver their lessons of endeavor and effort
for attainment of nearness to God and casting out of the Devil at Jamaraat.
The time is opportune for self-edification from the
boon of the refreshing waterfalls of the Unity of God and the solidarity
of the Ummah. Let the responding call of “Labbayk,” which you make while
assuming ihram and entering the state of pilgrim sanctity, become firmly
implanted in your heart. Let your Hajj journey, made in response to the
Divine invitation to visit the holy precincts of the Beloved, be enriched
to its utmost degree with thought and contemplation over the meaning and
purpose of Hajj.
When performed with intelligence and understanding, the
duty of Hajj is a source of grace for the individual pilgrim as well as
for the great Islamic Ummah. It sets the pilgrim on the path of piety and
spirituality and brings the Ummah closer to the goals of solidarity, honor
and power.
The first step for the pilgrim is self-development. The
rites of ihram, tawaf and salat, the sojourns at Arafaat, Mash‘ar and
Mina, the rituals of the sacrifice, the symbolic stoning and head-shaving—
all are expressions of the human being’s humbleness before God and cues
for remembering Him, entreating Him, and seeking nearness to Him.
These rites should not be gone through in a casual
manner. While performing them the pilgrim faring through the land of Hajj
should constantly consider himself to be in the presence of God, the
Exalted. In the midst of the pressing crowd, he should find himself alone
in the company of the Beloved, while he communes with Him in prayer and
supplication, opening his heart to Him and casting out from it the Devil
and desire.
The pilgrim should cleanse his heart of the defilements
of greed, envy, cowardice and lust, and thank God for His gifts of
guidance and blessings. He must learn to train his heart for the struggle
in His way, and dispose it to feel kindness for the faithful and dislike
for the enemies and opponents of the truth. He should make a firm resolve
to reform his own person as well as the world about him, and make a pledge
with his God to work for the good of the world and the Hereafter.
The Hajj is nevertheless a collective maneuver. The
Divine invitation to Hajj is meant to bring the faithful together, so that
they may see themselves by the side of one another and experience this
paradigm of oneness of the Muslim polity.
The Hajj is meant as a collective movement directed
towards nearness to God as well as a collective repudiation of the devils
of all kinds, human and demonic. It is a drill for the advancement of the
solidarity of the Islamic Ummah and its relatedness. Never before to the
extent of today has the Islamic Ummah stood in greater need of mutual
brotherhood and outright repudiation of the polytheists and the arrogant
imperialists.
At the present, the Islamic world is faced with an
all-out siege, both on the economic and the technological fronts, as well
as with a propaganda offensive and, most recently, with military
occupation. The occupation of Palestine and the holy city of Quds have
culminated in the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Zionist octopus along with the U.S. imperialism,
vicious and despicable, now harbor plans for the entire region of the
Middle East, as well as North Africa and the whole Islamic world. They
have made the general awakening, which has breathed a new life into the
Islamic Ummah, the target of their vengeance and spite.
The U.S. and Western imperialists have finally
concluded that Muslim countries and nations, especially those of the
Middle East, form the core of this awakening and resistance to their plans
for global domination. They foresee that if they fail to control or
suppress this Islamic awakening in the next few years with political and
economic measures, through propaganda, and as the last resort through
military aggression, all their plans for an absolute global hegemony and
control of the most vital oil and gas resources, which make the sole
powerhouse of their industrial machinery and cause of their material edge
over the rest of humanity will come to nothing. If that happens, the big
Western and Zionist capitalists, who are the real backstage actors of all
imperialist governments will fall from the height of their power and their
imposed domination over the nations.
Imperialist arrogance has deployed all its capabilities
to this end. It has launched this fateful war, using political pressure on
one front, threats of economic sanctions on another, employing propaganda
tactics at one place and deploying bombs, missiles, tanks and troops in
some other places, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, exactly as it did earlier
in Palestine and Quds.
The most important tool of these predatory savages is
the deceptive mask of hypocrisy they wear. They equip and dispatch their
assassination squads to murder innocent persons and talk of waging war on
terrorism. They openly support the bloodthirsty terrorist regime that has
usurped Palestine, and label the defenders of Palestine who strive with
their backs to the wall as terrorists.
They manufacture, supply and use nuclear, chemical and
biological weapons of mass destruction. They have perpetrated such horrors
as those at Hiroshima and Halabja and on the Iranian warfront during the
imposed war, while they profess to be against the proliferation of weapons
of mass destruction.
They are themselves behind the dirty drug-trade mafia,
but claim to be fighting the narcotics trade.
They make a display of support for science and
globalization of science, and yet obstruct the development of science and
technology in the Islamic world, considering the emergence of nuclear
technology for peaceful purposes in Islamic countries as a mortal sin.
They talk of freedom and the rights of minorities while
depriving Muslim girls of the right to education for the sin of wearing
the Islamic scarf.
They speak glibly about the freedom of expression and
belief, while counting every expression of opinion about Zionism as a
crime. They ban the publication of many outstanding Islamic works and
forbid even the publication of the documents retrieved from the U.S.
spy-den in Tehran in the United States.
They rant about human rights, while they set up scores
of torture centers, such as the ones at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, or
maintain a conniving silence over such extraordinary enormities.
They talk about respect for all religions, while
extending their support to such renegades as Salman Rushdie, who has been
sentenced to capital punishment, and the BBC broadcasts sacrilegious
statements against Islamic sanctities.
However, as a consequence of the insolent and foolishly
reckless conduct of the U.S. and British rulers, this mask of deception
and hypocrisy has been fractured. With their own hands they have stuffed
the hearts of Muslim nations and youth with hatred for the arrogant
imperialists. Should free elections be held today in any Muslim country,
the people will definitely vote against the wishes of the U.S. and Britain.
Now we have the elections in Iraq in front of us. The
meditated goal of these elections for the Iraqi people and their genuine
leaders is the very opposite of the objective sought by the occupiers.
The Iraqi nation and leaders want to hold elections for
establishing a popular government derived from the will of the people and
for the sake of a free, independent and undivided Iraq. From their
viewpoint, the elections are the means to ending military occupation and
the political control of the U.S. and Britain. To them, the elections
should put an end to the vicious presence of the Zionists, who have
alighted on the banks of the Euphrates in the shadow of American arms and
seem to have found some kind of a partial fulfillment of their garbled
dream of a land extending “from the Nile to the Euphrates.” To them, the
elections should provide for a transition from sectarian and ethnic
conflict—itself incited by the malice of the common enemies—to brotherhood
and national unity.
But the elections have a different objective within the
fantasies of the occupiers. In the guise of popular elections, they want
to impose on the people their own mercenaries, most of whom, on account of
past connections with the Baath Party, are abject and docile puppets in
the hands of the occupiers. With the assistance of these mercenaries, the
occupiers seek to relieve themselves of the expenditures of military
presence and to finance them at the cost of the Iraqi people and from
their oil revenues.
In this postmodern colonialism, the foreign puppets are
not appointed directly by the colonial power. Rather, the helm of the
government is taken over by the puppets through the process of elections
wherein the will of the people is superseded and set aside through fraud
or with well-known stratagems. The façade will be that of a democracy,
while in reality it will be the absolute dominance of aliens over the fate
of a hapless people.
Now there are two great dangers which loom over the
Iraqi elections. The first is that of outright fraud and manipulation of
the popular vote—something which is a specialty of the Americans. If the
Iraqi elite and the country’s educated and politically active youth,
working day-and-night, are able to prevent such a fraud and succeed in
bringing a popular government into power, there appears the prospect of a
second danger: the danger of a military coup and imposition of another
dictatorship over the destiny of the Iraqi nation.
This latter danger can also be forestalled with
vigilance, timely alertness and courage of the proud and faithful people
of Iraq and their genuine and venerable leaders. At this critical historic
juncture whose outcome will affect their destiny for decades to come, they
should make the utmost use of their faith, courage and solidarity, to hold
sound countrywide elections fired with a spirit of enthusiasm and secure
the election results with all the power they can command.
The Shiah-Sunni differences, or those between Arabs,
Kurds and Turkemans, or those arising from any other kind of divisive
grouping, are fostered only by the enemies. So also insecurity, which
always makes an excuse for the emergence of dictatorship, is planned and
promoted by the enemy’s intelligence services. Those who target Iraqi
citizens and academic and political figures with their criminal assaults
are not to be counted among warriors fighting oppressive occupiers for the
sake of Islamic honor and independence.
Brothers and sisters who have assembled for Hajj!
Muslim nations and governments!
Today, more than ever before, the Islamic world stands
in need of solidarity, unity of purpose and the discipleship of the Quran.
On the one hand, the potential of the Islamic world for
development and restitution of its honor and power are more evident than
ever before. Throughout the Islamic world today the elite and the youth
aspire for the restitution of the grandeur and glory of the Islamic Ummah.
The hypocritical slogans of the imperialists have lost their charm and
their foul intentions have gradually become exposed for the Islamic Ummah.
On the other hand, the world-eaters, who entertain
hopes of global dominance are alarmed by the awakening of the Islamic
Ummah and its unity. They regard them as the obstacle in the way of their
destructive plots that they are striving to overcome.
Today is the time to foster brotherhood practically in
all the spheres and as a deterrent against all the threats. Today is the
time to work for bringing about conditions conducive to the establishment
of the government of Imam Mahdi, may Allah soon bring about his noble
appearance. Today is the time to respond to the Divine summons in all the
walks of life. Today is the time to accustom our hearts to the chant of
such Qur’anic verses as “Indeed the faithful are brethren,” and “Do not
say to someone who offers you peace, ‘You are not a believer,’” and the
verse “hard against the faithless and merciful amongst themselves.”
Let us realize our God-assigned duties whether it is
with regard to the bombardment of Najaf, Falluja and Mosul, or the Tsunami
in the Indian Ocean which has left tens of thousands of bereaved families,
whether it is with respect to the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan or
the chronicles of Palestine written everyday in blood.
We call on all Muslims to unite. This unity is neither
directed against the Christians nor against followers of any other
religion or creed. It is in fact a call for resistance to aggressors,
occupiers and war-mongers. It is a call for carrying out the norms of
ethics and spirituality, for the revival of rationality and Islamic
justice, for scientific and economic progress and for the restitution of
Islamic honor.
We remind the people of the world that Christians and
Jews enjoyed complete peace and security in the city of Quds under Muslim
rule during the era of the caliphate. But now that Quds and other
territories are under the yoke of the Zionists and the Zionist crusaders,
shedding the blood of Muslims is not considered an offence.
I call upon the dear Hajj pilgrims to remember God with
humility and penitence, to read the Qur’an with thought and reflection, to
attend regularly the congregational prayers, and to treat with kindness
pilgrims from other countries, and I advise them to refrain from whiling
away their time.
I pray to God to accept your worship and to grant you
success and welfare. I invite everyone to pray for the personage of the
Baqiyyatullah, may our souls be ransomed for him, and for the
establishment of the just world government by him—he whom God has reserved
for this task.
Was-Salamu ‘alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh
Sayyid Ali Khamene’i
7th Dhul Hijjah,1425
18th January2005
