Friday Speeches Mosque Zoul-Qida 21, 1423h

Allah says in His Glorious Book: {Nor can goodness and evil be equal. Repel (Evil) with what is better: Then will he between whom and you was hatred become as it were your friend and intimate} (41:34).

The Prophet (p.) also said: "Leniency and kindness are never added to anything without adorning it, and never removed from something without tarnishing it... Allah is kind and lenient. He loves kindness and awards it with what He does not award violence".

Our topic in this meeting is leniency and violence. We have talked a lot about this issue but the brutal practices that are abundant in our community drive us to feel that the believers did not understand the significance of this Islamic virtue.

They do not seem to know that Allah, the most Exalted, hates violence in social relations, especially against the downtrodden and children, or even in political and social differences.

Violence could turn into a beastly state that makes man more brutal than beasts, for beasts would not commit certain acts… We heard on the news a few days ago, that a father was disturbed by his daughter’s crying as he wanted to sleep… He did not think of a way of calming down this five -month child, or even bring her a medication… He leaped like a beast and started to bang her head on the walls of the room, until the girl died. He even, as his wife testified, forbade the mother from taking the child to the hospital and claimed to the police that the father has a right to hit his child.

Although such an incident is rare, abusing children is common in our security in the form of beating them hard if they cry or refuse to do what they are told, being the "efficient" method to silence them.

Teachers in school, even Islamic ones, also beat the children, or resort to forms of violence that are more psychologically devastating than beating.

Although we have issued several fatwas explicitly stating that beating children is unlawful, the problem still lags on even… in Islamic schools. Teachers learn this attitude, in their childhood from their parents who beat them. The household is the first school to teach violence in which the parents beat their children who would in turn practice it when they become parents or teachers.

The whole world now calls for respecting children. The UN has issued laws that regulate how to deal with children most of which were called for by Islam… They even condemn child labor, especially in tough jobs that children could not tolerate.

In our Islamic communities abusing children is a common phenomenon, although we cannot talk about all people. In this respect, traditions have it that being unjust to the weak is the worst kind of wronging". The weak person does not have any means to protect himself and could only look at you in confusion and pain.

Look at your child’s eye, when you hit him and see how much he resents this act… There are even those who would tell you when you ask him to stop hitting his child.

“It is none of you business… He is my son…" It is as if the child is a piece of furniture that he owns. But Allah, the most Exalted, has ordained that the child is not the property of his parents. He is God's trust that the parents are entrusted with.

Therefore, let all parents and teachers who abuse children know that they will be treated as wrong doers in the Hereafter. I say to you: fast and pray as much as you will. It will do you no good if you wrong the weak; for praying forbids evil, and there can be no more evil than this.

Then there is the violence against women whether a wife, a sister or a daughter. The problem is that some of us still carry their traditional idea that he has bought his wife like one buys a sheep. Everyone should ask himself who gave him the authority on his wife. Is it the marriage contract? God says that they have equal rights and duties. The marriage contract means that both of you have certain rights and certain duties but it does not give you any right to be violent with your wife... The opposite is also true: If the woman comes from an influential family, she should not abuse her husband...

Violence is not restricted to hitting; it also includes insult and false accusations, which is a very serious crime that is punished severely.

There is also the violence of kicking the woman out. Who gave the man this right? As long as the woman remains his wife, he has to provide for her, and this also means providing her a place to stay.

Some would tell you: religion is something and dealing is something else. But we say that religion is justice, and he who is not just is not religious… You ought to look at religion from a humanistic and social point of view and do not restrict it to rituals, for it will do you no good to stay in the mosque all day long if you abuse your wife and children.

Then there is also the violence of the crimes committed in the name of revenge in which innocent persons are killed just because they belong to a certain tribe or family. Justice implies that only the murderer is the one to be punished.

None of us is greater than the Commander of the Faithful (Imam Ali) yet he ordered his folk not to kill anyone but the man who assassinated him and not mutilate his body.

The world considers our societies as backward, cruel and reactionary... It is a backwardness that has resulted from another kind of violence the violence of partisan and sectarian fanaticisms, a violence that could materialize in a civil war.

Resorting to violence will not serve the causes of social progress and peace. It will not enable us to face the other challenges too. We have to rid our society from the violence against women, children and the others too, and live in a community where one respects the other and cooperates with him to ensure the welfare of both.

Liquidating Palestine , the cause and the people, is still the main goal of the American- Israeli strategic alliance. Israel continues to destroy the economic, agricultural, administrative and even housing infrastructure of the Palestinian people, having been given an American green light to execute a new Holocaust, claiming to act in self-defense and accusing the Palestinians who are fighting for freedom and independence, of terrorism.

Based upon these facts, we call on the Muslims and Arabs as well as the downtrodden nations to learn the lessons of this kind of behavior as it indicates America ’s gross violation of human rights.

In its turn, the UN Security Council has issued a declaration concerning fighting terrorism and warned against the big and increasing threat of the terrorists’ access to mass detractions weapons.

In principle, we fully agree with the detailed content of the declaration, but why did not it define who the terrorists are? Are those who are fighting occupation terrorists as claimed by some of the council members, headed by America, especially that Israel is the only country that possesses mass destruction weapons, despite all the lies of the American –Israeli media?

Here, we ask the question that we share with all the peoples of the region: Who protects the region from all the Israeli weapons, especially with the strong American support, at a time America is getting ready to enter a world war to protect Israel 's security? The UN has become a tool in the hands of America that declares every now and then that it will wage the war against Iraq even without the consent of the UN.

The United States has repeated that the time is running out and that it can no longer tolerate Iraq 's refusal to disarm.

Nevertheless, neither it nor Britain are ready to provide the international inspectors with the information they claim to have, which proves that they do not have any such information that they could use to legitimize their action.

In this regard, we would like to express our appreciation of the recent stands of the French President, Chiraque, who told the Figaro daily that the military intervention would not be "legitimate if it does not rely on Security Council resolutions… War is not a fate, but rather an expression of failure and that it is the worst solution… That is why we will continue to make our efforts.

The French President went on to say: "The region does not need such a war, because a war of this magnitude will have negative repercussions that might be very dangerous, in addition to its huge financial cost which some said that it will be over 100 billion Dollars… When we remember that we are unable to help the poor and the sick in the world … we have the right to question if this war is logical.

We highly evaluate this human rationalethat intersected with the German stand and we hope that it will extend to the entire EU, Russia China and all the states that respect themselves.

But this does not mean that we do not sympathize with the pains of the Iraqi people whose regime has destroyed their lives, starved millions of children and dislocated millions of citizens. We call for the support of the real opposition of the Iraqi people; so that they could organize a new popular uprising like the one that followed the invasion of Kuwait , and was thwarted by the American support of the dictator.

Moreover, it is ironic that the US Secretary of State considers that they could be entrusted with Iraqi oil after occupying the country…

Is there anybody in the whole world, even among America 's allies who believes such a lie, knowing that America has frozen the funds of other peoples in its own banks?

America could not be trusted with the wealth of the nations especially in the Arab and Muslim world, for the obvious reason that all what it is doing is part of a plan to usurp them. We ask this administration to follow how the hatred of the peoples to the American policies is being unfolded for it is being demonstrated by the unorganized individual targeting of its soldiers and citizens in many parts of the world.

As for Lebanon , which is always an Israeli target on the security level, and which is always under pressure or intimidation, as the Americans threaten it with the war on terrorism… As for Lebanon which is totally immersed in its political rows, and the war of unofficial imprecise figures… would it wake up one day by the drums of war the Americans are beating around it to find out that it has no idea of what is being planned for the country on the political as well as the security level…

The political climate is occupied with the budget, and the taxes, and the waste of development projects due to the economic incompetence. In this atmosphere, we would like to ask: Why does not the law that compels that the MPs to declare their wealth and income before they hold their offices demand that they do so when they leave? And why does not this law include the top officials and civil servants especially those who run major service departments that spend hundreds of millions...

The public money is the peoples trust in the hands of those who decide how to manage it..

Who holds these officials accountable and how? They might say: Do not raise this issue because it will create a sectarian or political problem…

This is what turned these issues into a part of the political game, that are raised when there is a need to score some points against a politician and they are quickly closed once a compromise is reached, usually at the expense of the taxpayer money.

The sectarian regime might be as they say a source of popular balance, but it is an element that destabilizes the economy and the political life and a means to divide the public money among the sectarian leaders…