Friday speeches 9 Ramadan 1425h/22 October 2004AD

One of the characteristics of the month of Ramadan is that it constitutes an opportunity to renew one's self. The believer should sit down with himself before his Lord, to understand himself by himself, and to get to know his position towards his God... This is what we notice in several verses that touch upon the issue in the Holy Quran, and this is what we understand to be one of the objectives of several worshipping rites, including praying, fasting and supplications. The issue here is to watch over himself… and not to be indulged in pleasures, business and public relations to the extent that one is absolutely oblivious of taking the time to look into himself and find out who he is and why he is doing what he is doing, and why, for example, he is supporting some and opposing others… We should stop this trend to move as if we are being thrown by sea waves from one place to another without being free to choose where we want to go.

Thus, this month could well be a month of deep thinking, with man feeling in the beginning that he is totally exposed in all his actions to Allah…

We might feel safe and secure when we think about something whether good or bad. This feeling is an illusion because our religion says that Allah is watching us when we are thinking and knows about our intentions when they drive to do good or evil. Even when the Angels register our actions they are registering what we have done.

Moreover, even our organs will register the actions… each will register the actions that it is related to. And this is what Ali's saying in the supplication of Kumail suggests (that Thou hast ordered the two noble scribes to confirm whom Thou hast appointed to record all my actions and to be witnesses over me along with the limbs of my body, whilst Thou observes over me besides them and was witness to those acts concealed from them ).

This notion -that Allah knows everything man thinks of or plans to do- makes man feel that he is being watched and consequently refrains from doing any evil.

Therefore, since all what man thinks of is known by Allah, the most Exalted, man has in this month to start rebuilding and reshaping himself. He has to start to hold himself accountable before himself. This accountability or self judgment should comprise all fields, starting by the ideological and doctrinal framework he adopts, which serves as a basis to choose if he is going to take a positive or a negative stand towards someone or something. Man has also to reshape his emotions. We might tend to love or hate as a result of the influence of the environment around us. If we go back to ourselves we will find that we do not hate or love someone because we have chosen to but because our parents or relations tend to love or hate him, or perhaps because the party we belong to has told us so. We have to know that our love or hate will have an impact on us, which could be either negative or positive. And those who have made us love or hate will not be affected by these consequences. Thus, we have to study how our emotions are formed.

They might be superficial as in the cause of the youth's "love of the first sight". The love, which could build a family, cannot be based on physical attraction. It has to be associated with all personality aspects… When you want to establish a relationship with someone, you have to understand that you will be dealing with his heart mind, emotions, behavior…etc. You have to have a relatively profound idea of all these before you make up your mind… The same thing goes to the broader level of human relations and political and social affiliations.

In this respect, there is a point that we have to mention: We always think about wining and losing in this world. But we never think about winning or loosing in the Hereafter. We never think of what we can loose or win when we stand before God… We are quite thorough when it comes to our accounts in this world because we are preoccupied in this world, while we have to be concerned with our account in the other world, knowing all the time that there is somebody watching all what we do.

Imam Ali (a.s.), the Imam of all times whose words are true and valid for all times, tells us: You have to know that you are being watched by your own selves, and by truthful recorders (The angels that will record all your actions) even if you are concealed by the darkness of night or behind closed doors. He also considers those who are aware that Allah, the most Exalted, is watching them and who fear to disobey Him to be blessed.

Imam As-Sadiq (a.s.) says: "Every new day that comes will say to man: I am a new day that bears witness on you. So do good in this day, I will testify in your favor in the Hereafter, for you will never see me again. Imam Al-Kazim (a.s.) says: "He does not belong to us whoever does not judge himself everyday… If he does good, he will ask God for more and if he does bad he will ask for Allah's forgiveness".

This month is the month of observation, to watch yourself so as to understand it, and the month of accountability… If you hold yourself accountable, you will able to pass judgment on it.

Then there is the struggle against yourself, to forbid it from committing evil and drive it towards the Good.

Thus, we have to come out, by the end of the month with a new mind with nothing but the right in it, a new heart with nothing in it but love and a new movement that seeks to please Allah alone.

America and Israel seek to intensify the pressures, represented by the brutal and savage massacres to provoke a Palestinian reaction against the Intifada Mujahideen being the cause of all this. But we notice that the Palestinian people who were recently subjected to one of the ongoing eradication operations in the Jabalia Camp that killed 140 peoples, destroyed more than a hundred houses and dislocated thousands, are still holding fast with the Resistance. They even refused the suggestion that Palestine should stop lunching the Kassam missiles so as to lessen the Israeli pressures and asked the Mujahideen to carry on with their resistance.

The Israeli pressures have led them, if anything, to be stronger and more defiant. They know that Israel- and America- wants them to surrender, so as to be able to impose their humiliating terms without giving them the state that the American President falsely claims that he wants to see.

The Palestinians have come to understand as a result of their long experience, that the problem is not that of the butcher Sharon only… It has to do with the majority of the Jews in Palestine who reject any withdrawal from the settlements in Gaza and some of the areas of the West Bank, as well as any concessions regarding Jerusalem or the Palestinian refugees.

It has now become an all-out war between the Palestinians and the Jews, and it will expand to become a war between the Arabs and Muslims on one side and the Jewish community and the Zionist Christians in the US on the other. The influence of these parties in the US is so strong that the competition between the Democratic and Republican candidates has turned into a competition on who supports Israel more, who fights the Arabs and destroys the Palestinians and who puts more pressures on the American allies and friends to turn the UN Security Council into an outpost for defending Israel.

Are we to understand from all this that there is a world war against Islam and Muslims. Is the Anti-Semitic law published by the US President a declaration of war against any country that criticizes the Israeli Palestinian policies, as all freedom is given to being hostile against Arabs, Muslims or any other oppressed nations… This is the image of America in its war against humanity that gives priority to the electoral considerations even if this hurts all the downtrodden on earth.

On the Iraqi front, additional tragedies inflicted by the American occupation unfold everyday: Besieging cities and bombing them by warplanes, explosions that kill more Iraqis than Americans, abductions that do not even exempt those who work in the humanitarian fields, the slaughtering incidents that we hear about every now and then, and the assassinations which might take a confessional or sectarian outlook, thus threatening the internal Islamic unity and the wider national unity.

As we hold the occupation responsible for all these crimes whether those it committed directly or those it is indirectly responsible for, we would like to assert that those who kidnap and kill in this irrational manner are actually serving the occupation.

We also have to point out to that brutal campaign against the Christians and their churches in the absence of any reason or sectarian problems in… These crimes have never been committed throughout the history of Iraq except now when the occupation is in authority. This occupation has given the Mosad, Israel's intelligence agency, a free hand to carry on with its devastation plan that seeks to prevent the emergence of a strong Iraq whose various sects and races live in peace.

Lebanon is living in one of most difficult stages it has ever witnessed, as a result of internal and external pressures, especially the American ones, which want it to be a front to pressurize Syria to provide better conditions for its occupation in Iraq and give additional cards to Israel.

We believe that the political boycott and the acute stands could create an atmosphere of violence which many of external forces might benefit from to create sectarian strive…

We also notice that all parties have forgotten about the crisis the Lebanese are living and become engaged in a futile debate that might be given some national connotations.

We say to all parties: The unrealistic slogans will lead to a row that is unable to produce a national reconciliation.

Moreover, it could produce additional political, economic and security crisis that could make the temple fall on the heads of all.