Friday speeches 25 Shawal 1423h/19 December 2003AD

Allah says in His Glorious Book: :{ And Allah only wishes to remove all abomination from you, ye members of the family, and to make you pure and spotless} (33:33). Today the 25th of Shawal is the day Imam Sadiq(a.s. ) died. And he was as you know the Imam who benefited of the window of opportunity of freedom that opened during the struggle over power between the Umayyads and the Abbasids to enrich the Muslim world with his Knowledge.

The Imam(a.s.) opened up on all people in his effort to spread Islamic knowledge. It has been reported that he promised his father, Imam Al-Baqir, to abide by his instructions of guiding the believers to the extent that he will not wait for their questions and turn them into teachers to the rest of people.

This is the course of action whom the Members of the House taught us to follow: to live with the people and not try to find excuses to be isolated. They believed that they have a duty to teach the people everything they know and answer all the questions regardless of how embarrassing or difficult they night be.

In this respect, Friday, in particular, is the day the Muslims ought to dedicate to learn their religion. Every Muslim should not grow accustomed to consider Islam as certain rituals only. They should learn the Islamic culture that would enable them to live their lives in accordance to Each and every Muslim should also turn into a caller for Islam in every place or society he finds himself.

Imam As-Sadiq was respected by those who believe in his imamate as well as those who don’t. Malik bin Anas the Maliki Imam said about al-Sadiq(a.s.). Whenever I saw him he was either praying or fasting or reading the Quran.

“No eyes have seen or ears have heard… someone who is better than Jaafar bin Muhammad As-Sadiq whether in his knowledge or piety”.

The Imam of the Hanafi Mazhab was a student of his for two years and he used to say: “Weren’t it for those two years. I would have been doomed.”

Abu Hanifa also reports the following story: The Abbasid caliph, Abu Jaafar Al-Mansoor, told him: people have begun to admire and respect Jaafar bin Muhammad”.

Then he asked him to prepare forty difficult questions to try to show that he does not master or command all religious sciences. Abu Hanifa did that and began to ask the Imam in front of Al-Mansour and a group of dignitaries. But to every question the Imam answered: You say so and so, the people in Medina say so and so and we say so and so”. Proving not only that he knows the answers, but that he is acquainted with all the opinions and the views concerning each controversial issues. Abu Hanifa than concluded: “Don’t we know that the one who knows best is the one who knows what they differ about.”

Imam as-Sadiq was a man of dialogue who did not refuse to discuss any issue. On the contrary, he used to ask the people to come to him and raise whatever questions they had even if it offended Islam. He used, for example, to sit in the Holy Mosque of Mecca, to discuss the opinions of those who do not believe in God. He was so open minded, while those talking to him felt very free to say whatever they wanted. One of them Ibn Abi al Ouja even asked him: until when are you going to step on this threshing floor? meaning the way people used to go round the Kaaba. But the way the Imam kept calm and resorted to logic in convincing him made him go to his friends and say: You don’t know who you sent me to.

He is not a human being. If there were ever someone who could be a spirit whenever he wants and turn into a body as he pleases it is this man.

Imam Al-Sadiq school grew so big that he taught more than four thousand students. At any one time you would enter the Kufa Mosque and find many Sheikhs saying:

Jaafar bin Muhammad said….

The Imam too was a caller for Islamic unity, calling the Shiites to open up on other sects. He used to tell his followers that: “It is easy to gain the people’s hearts: just don’t talk bad things about them. Differences in opinion could not be solved by cursing and slander, but by wisdom and dialogue...

If you talk with someone in a kind and respectful manner you would win his heart and thus enter his mind. The role of a Muslim is to call the Islam in the manner that Allah has described his Messenger with{It is part of the Mercy of Allah that you deal gently with them. Were thou severe or harsh-hearted, they would have broken away from about thee }(3:159).

Asked by someone about how to deal with those they deal with (of the other sects) the Imam said: “Pray with their tribes, take part in their funerals , visit their sick and give them what is due to them” If any of you becomes pious, truthful and of good manners and thus he is known to be one of my followers this will make me happy. If he is not, then I will be disgraced. The Imam used to open up on the Sunnis just as he opened upon the Shiites. He also used to open up on non-Muslims just as he opened up on Muslims.

Thus, the Imam represents a model of how to be a Muslim leader or an Imam, that elevates Muslims to the highest levels and ask them to advance and learn. The Muslim should be the one who gives the world, based on the Islamic straight path, more knowledge, love and manners.. He would be a man that is worth of the gift of life and an example in humanitarianism.

This is the Message of Ahl Al-Beit, the Message of Islam, that wants us to raise to the highest levels, and to call for Allah, the Good, justice and the Right… This is the Message of Islam and the Message of our Imams. We ought to learn the heritage of knowledge they left us to be their true followers. When they said keeps our cause and our memory alive, they were not asking us to hit our heads with swords… They were asking us to learn the teachings and the sciences they left us to become true Muslims, and in this the way people will love us.

We cannot hope to reach the level of Muhammad or Imam Ali in their piety, spirituality, knowledge, morals or commitment, but this should be our goal: To do our best to follow them on this road.

The Israelis are still living in the same whirlpool… They are worried about the present and the future, their economy is shrinking, their security has become an obsession, with their army acting in a barbaric and hysterical manner, adopting Nazi methods in their confrontation with the Palestinian civilian population... their killing of woman and children, their house demolition and their bulldozing of olive gardens have turned them into a beast that has no respect for any moral, human or religious value.

The Jews, thus, are bewildered with 59% of the Europeans saying that Israel is a threat to world peace, and about half the Americans considering them as the greatest threat to peace. The idea that the Muslims might grow to be one third of the population in Europe has become a problem to Israeli leaders, for they fear of its effects on the European decisions regarding the Arabs -Israeli conflict.

One Israeli paper said: The Israeli situation is getting worse, while some Israeli specialists noticed that: “The deteriorating trend in Israel springs first and far most form the state of the Israeli society in economy and government. It is getting further away from the industrial societies and nearer to its middle Eastern neighbors.”

As for the Palestinians, they too are living in an economic tragedy, a political confusion, a suffocating closure and a political row that entails the truce, the unified leadership and the role of the authority. In addition, they have to cope with the Arab interference to promote dialogue which also includes certain pressures especially with the Egyptian foreign minister about to visit the Jewish entity and meet Israeli officials, without meeting the Palestinian president, which is a condition Israel makes to agree to meet with him.

As we confront this tragic situation, we notice that the Palestinian people are left on their own. The Arab leaders did not even allocate any additional funds to support the Palestinian steadfastness or even to respect their previous commitments, or to the promises in the Intifada Summit which has long been forgotten. They are even afraid to get in touch with the Palestinian president whom Bush has imposed political quarantine on in implementation of the execution sentence Sharon has issued.

The Palestinian people are our guarantee for steadfastness... for the making of our future.. and for opening up on the world.

In Iraq, there are many internal and external plots to incite strife? Iraq with all that talk about the political and economic shares in the government’s cake, which some people might listen to, especially with certain official Arabs parties having beginning to stir the differences between the Shiites and the Sunnis, so that the occupation would became the only force that could prevent strife or partition.

We already know that the American plan for Iraq seeks, with the collaboration of many an Arab countries, to enable the occupation to stay indefinitely… To implement such a plan the Iraqis should not be allowed to build an independent, unified and free country that would hold honest and free elections.

We would also like to take this occasion to condemn the terrorist acts against Iraqi civilians and police...

There is no legitimacy for such acts against the Iraqi people who has had enough persecution, oppression and dislocation under the tyrant regime for several decades. Such acts are acts of terror and not acts of resistance.

We call upon our brothers in Iraq- religious men intellectuals and politicians, as well as all the Iraqi wounded people, to be vigilant and wary of all these plans to prove to the world that they are civilized enough to build an independent nation that is just towards all the sects of the people and one whose relations with all the world nations is based on mutual respect.

In Lebanon the people as a whole are asking: What are the secrets hidden behind the discussion of the various responsibilities, but which are revealed behind closed doors, by many officials who hold high ranks? Then again, what are the motives that impel the closing of a certain dossier and the opening of another? And why is a certain official held accountable for his bloody past while others are exempted?

The people are demanding that they should be the only power that holds the officials accountable.

They also want to see transparency in the government’s actions and in the officials and politicians’ actions in all fields; economic, political, educational, security… etc