I seek refuge in God from the accursed Satan
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
Recommendation for the people concerning the deserting soldiers
I was asked to make an exception tonight and say a few words, but in future I will be at your service on Sundays. «1» We proclaimed that the government of Iran is unofficial, it contradicts the law, it is contrary to both the Shari`ah and the constitutional law, consequently the people should shun everything concerned with the government and should avoid doing anything which assists the government. We told the soldiers, we ordered them in fact, to desert the army, «2» for service to this regime means service to oppression. Many of them did indeed run away, but some of them have found themselves in difficulties. Many of these soldiers are poor and have no place to stay, for if they go to their own homes, they face attack and capture by the government. For this reason, they cannot go to their own homes. Thus the people, wherever they are, are duty bound to give these soldiers shelter, to see to their expenses and find simple accommodation for them, somewhere where they won't be found. The people are duty bound to do this for them. We agree to allow religious funds to be used to help them. This is a very important matter, one which necessitates action by the people. These poor men have fled from their barracks and now have nowhere to stay; this action must be taken for them.
Need for popular support for oil industry workers' strike
Another matter concerns the oil company workers. They too have stopped work, many of them have resigned, and they are now in need of assistance. Housing is just one of the problems they are facing. The government, the usurping government, has either taken their houses from them or has threatened to do so simply because they have not extracted the oil to give to the overlords. The government has threatened to take their homes off them if they do not return to work. Consequently, they too are in need of help, both with accommodation and with acquiring their daily needs. Once again it is the people and the well-to-do of the country who must see to these things for them. They must give them shelter, offer them their hospitality and see to their expenses. In this case too, we agree to allow religious funds to be used to help them.
The people are not permitted to do anything which would help the government, for this government is usurping and tyrannical. Paying taxes constitutes helping the government; therefore the people are not permitted to pay the state taxes. To the extent that they are able, they should refrain from paying taxes. The people should refrain from doing anything that assists this government.
Denying propaganda against religious minorities
There has been much propaganda circulated about the different sects, and I have given my response to this in my speeches. Yet still their propaganda remains the same, and in the newspapers, whether in some of them over here, in other places or those in Iran, in the government-run newspapers, they still propagate such ideas as: were an Islamic government to come to power, it would do I don't know what, it would massacre the religious minorities, the Jews, Christians and the Zoroastrians! Such talk is utterly incorrect. If, God willing, an Islamic government does come to power, then those groups of Jews who left Iran because of some fanciful notions they had, who were deceived into going to Israel and were taken there by Jews and Israelis from America or other countries and who it is said are facing severe difficulties there, will be invited to return. «3» If, God willing, a just government is established, we will invite those Jews whose mother country is Iran to return to their homeland, and the conduct of the Islamic government toward them will be of the best kind.
Islam did not come to cause man distress. Islam comprises a set of laws which respect all classes of people. There are exceptions of course, no one should show trouble-makers and reprobates any tolerance. But as far as the Jews, who are people of the book, are concerned, and indeed all those who are believers in a revealed religion: the Christians and the Zoroastrians, they can all live in an Islamic country and enjoy comfort and respect there. And when it is said that such and such will happen if an Islamic government is established, this is all propaganda that is put about in order to preserve the Shah's rule and disrupt this movement. This propaganda is wrong.
Islamic government is not against modernity
There has also been much said to the effect that were an Islamic government to be established, then all these institutions that have a whiff of modernity about them would be swept aside. Even at the beginning of this affair, the Shah on one occasion said:" These clergymen say they will never fly on an airplane nor ride in a car for they prefer to ride around on donkeys! They want to ride around on donkeys as they did in the old days!"«4» And now today more or less the same thing is being said with such comments as: the clergy want to take the country back to the age of whatever. «5» No, this is a mistaken notion. The clergy want to turn the country into a free, independent and civilized country, but they do not want the kind of civilization that the Shah talks about, nor the kind of freedom that one finds mentioned in his book or about which he speaks, for that involves crowds of people being killed for speaking out even though the name the Shah puts on it is freedom!
All the manifestations of modernity and civilization are permitted in Islam, apart from those that corrupt man's morals and his virtues. Islam has rejected those things which go against the good of a nation, and those which conform to the good of a nation it has recognized. These manifestations of civilization which in other places, in advanced countries, are put to proper use, are used to corrupt when they arrive in our country or countries like ours. Take the cinema for example, no one has prohibited the showing of edifying, instructive films in cinemas, but the cinema which serves to morally corrupt our youth, the cinema as we know it in this day and age, in this era of the Shah, which corrupts our youth after only a few visits, is of no use And indeed this is what they (the imperialists and the regime) want. All of their cultural and arts programs, all of their programs in fact, are imperialistic, and through these they want to train our youth so that they become only of use to them, not to their own country. Or they want to corrupt them, to turn them into a group of corrupt people. If at some time these young people in these centers of corruption that they have created and have placed at the disposal of the youth.
Conspiracy aiming to waste youth potential
There are so many centers of corruption in Tehran now, more than there are libraries, more than the centers for learning and education, and their aim is, through various means, to make these young people good-for-nothing and profligate, to make them incapable of doing anything in the face of these foreign exploiters, in other words, to make them indifferent toward them. These young people who have been turned into opium and heroin addicts, into alcoholics and gamblers, who frequent the centers of corruption and vice, live only for their pleasure and are indifferent to whatever befalls the world. And they (the imperialists, the Shah and his regime) want this young generation, who could be of great value to the country and the advancement of the country, to regress; in other words, to become useless, a useless asset to this country. This is just one of the things that they are doing.
Shah's colonial education
Take for example these centers for learning and education that they have set up, they are all imperialistic, from the universities down. They do not train our children properly; first of all they have a set level above which they do not let the students progress, secondly, they create numerous obstacles in order to keep them in a state of backwardness; for if these universities were the proper independent ones that we want, they would produce great men, men who would stand up to those who wish to raid our country and take all of our resources. This, however, is not what they (the imperialists and the Shah's regime) want, thus the universities train our youth in a way that suits them, and if they can, they Westernize them, that is they present the West in such a light, they place them under the influence of the West to such a degree that they lose themselves completely and become totally bound to the Western countries. To put it another way, they become agents for the West. Just suppose that this is the method of teaching- as indeed this has been the case until now- then after a while even if the universities did produce great men who wanted to do something for the country, these men would end up doing it for the benefit of the West, not for their own people, because these universities have become so immersed in the foreigners' way of education and training and have created such an overestimated impression of foreigners in the minds of our youth, that they forget all the illustrious deeds carried out by their own people and whatever else concerns their own people. They forget all of these things; pay no attention to themselves and concentrate only on the West and the things related to the West.
Islam, against foreign influence
Islam does not want one person in this Islamic country to be bound to foreigners, to be under the authority of foreigners. If an Islamic government is set up, it will not wish to see the symbols of civilization destroyed. Islamic government does not oppose universities, it does not oppose science. The Qur'an is replete with commentaries on science and so many of our hadiths speak highly of science and scientists. This being the case, how can we oppose such things?
No, we do not oppose these things; we oppose this scientific method that you have adopted, this method of education and instruction through which you seek to educate us. These are what we oppose. We oppose those manifestations of civilization which corrupt our children, which keep them in a state of backwardness; we do not oppose the principle of civilization nor wish to take the people back to the age of whatever. It is them who do not want to allow the people to progress. Their plan is to execute such methods so that our children do not progress. Proof of this lies in the fact that after seventy years of having schools and more than thirty years of having universities, when someone falls ill he is taken to Europe or America for treatment! If we had even one independent university, then after thirty years our universities should be producing good doctors and we should be able to treat our own sick people. This is proof enough that we do not have proper, independent universities.
During his (the Shah's) rule we have lost everything. If they want to tarmac a road, they go and bring a foreign company in to do it. If they want to build a dam, they bring in a foreign company to do it. If our educational system were independent we would have no need to do this, but now we have to simply because they cannot even tarmac a road or build a dam themselves. They have no proper program for an irrigation system, no proper electricity system, no proper water system, they have nothing. If the Shah were to go now, he would leave us a country which would need thirty years of effort before it could be returned to what it used to be, until its agrarian economy is rectified.
He has destroyed our agriculture, he has destroyed everything we had, and we will have to start again from square one. They have created corruption in all of our offices and we will have to rectify this, but not in the sense that the employees will have to go, no, the employees are not the problem. It is the Shah and his regime who do not let them work properly, who prevent our offices from working properly. The people who work there are of this country, apart from a group of opportunists who are connected to the government or to foreign powers, the rest are people of our nation and they should be treated with the utmost kindness and in the pleasantest of manners. They will all retain their posts (in the event of an Islamic government coming to power) and will be treated better than they are at the present time when they have lost everything.
The aim of this malicious propaganda which appears in the newspapers over here and in other countries, or that which is put about in Iran by various means, is to keep the Shah. For the view of all the foreigners is that he must stay to continue to take all the country's resources. They realize that they could never find anyone who would serve them better than he does, and thus, for this reason, they want him to be kept in power. The Iranians should strive to uproot this system and replace it with a sound, correct one and administer their own country themselves. Please God, may He assist you, may you be successful [The audience says "Amen"].