Speech [The heavy responsibility of motherhood and teaching]

In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

You women have the honor of motherhood, and in this respect you are ahead of men; you have the responsibility of rearing a child in your bosom. The foremost classroom that a child has is the bosom of the mother. A good mother rears a good offspring and if the mother is a deviant one the child comes out deviant right from inside her bosom. Because the children have such an attachment to the mother that they have to no one else, and are reared in the bosom of the mother totally and the aspirations that they have are manifested in the mother, and they see everything in their mothers; the words of the mother, the behavior of the mother, and the actions of the mother, all have an effect on the children. For this reason, a child reared in the bosom of his mother which is the first classroom, if this bosom is a clean and pure and refined one, then right from the beginning he grows with that correct behavior and with that refined soul and with that good deed. When the child is in the bosom of its mother it watches the good behavior of the mother, her correct deeds, and her agreeable words, so that this child right from that place, imitates the mother's actions and words which is in fact, the highest form of imitation; the child is trained with the inputs of the mother which is the most effective of all inputs.

You have this great responsibility of bringing up your children who are infants and whose souls accept training very quickly; who accept good and bad quickly. Right from the beginning when these children are being reared in your bosom, you are also responsible for their actions and deeds. So that if a child is brought up well, it is likely, that he may ensure the happiness of a whole nation; whereas, God forbid, if even a single bad child is reared in your bosoms, it is possible that it can be a source of immorality in society. You should not assume that it is only a single child, sometimes when a child enters society, he may be placed at the head of the society; it is possible for the child of a poor family to be placed at the head of the society. If a child that you have trained is trained properly and then that child happens to be placed at the head of society, he will bring happiness to a whole nation, and the honor will be yours. In other words, you have insured the happiness of a nation. Nevertheless, if God forbid, the contrary be true and the upbringing of a child in the bosom of its mother be not an Islamic upbringing; is not a humane upbringing and one with flaws, then it is quite likely that later on it will drive a whole society to moral corruption. Do not think that it is only a human being. Sometimes a single human being destroys a whole village; sometimes, a single human being destroys a whole city; sometimes a single human being destroys a whole country.

You should take a lesson from the individuals who exist, and the individuals who have existed throughout history in the world. When an individual comes to be placed at the head of the society, like Muhammad Rida Pahlavi, he corrupts a whole society; not that his corruption is limited to having plundered our resources; not that it is only limited to his having handed Iran over with both hands to others and to having given away to others whatever we had, rather it is higher than this. Such as the fact that he has corrupted the sections of this country in this manner and he has trained them as thieves so that now when we want to find an untainted person, we must search to find him. In other words, we should carry a torch in our hand in order to search for an incorrupt human being. To find a person who is not a thief. To find a person who is trustworthy; who will not betray the country. Now they are rare. why? Because, they were at the head of this country for more than fifty years and wreaked havoc everywhere. Because they themselves were corrupt, those who were close to them were corrupted. The next batch of those who were close to them was also corrupted. In the same manner, the rot started from the top and reached the lower strata- they corrupted every place so that now there is a dearth of honorable leaders in our country. We cannot find an upright individual except a few. They are rare, and this is because in these fifty odd years, the amount of harm they caused to our human resources was so much more than the harm they did to our national and territorial resources. In fact, they stole everything, but this matter was of more importance.

If a human being, a king, a head of state is pious and upright, those around him will all become upright, and their right conduct shall pervade the lower echelons. At times, you will notice that if a just ruler be present among the people for 20 years, a just country will be created. The reason why we cry out for an Islamic republic is that Islam rears upright human beings and the Qur'an is a book, which rears upright human beings. That also is the very reason that the prophets came and they were not concerned with anything else. In the course of their lives, the great prophets and immaculate saints (`a) were concerned with educating the people. The Blessed and Almighty God had sent the prophets to cleanse the people of moral corruption; to reform the people. Should an individual, who is at the head of the society, be reformed, if a mullah who is living in a society; is an upright one then the society will become upright because everyone takes notice of him. If an upright government rules over a particular place, then because the people take notice of it, they too shall become upright.

This education also must begin from the bosom of you the women. This matter of training the children in the correct Islamic way must start from your bosom. When the child is in your lap, or is accompanying you and his eyes and ears are focused on your words and deeds, he should not hear a lie from you so that he turns out to be a liar later on. If he sees that his mother is lying, and then sees his father lying too, he will become a liar. If it sees that the mother is an upright human being, and the father is an upright human being, it will grow up to be upright. When he has grown up into an upright child, you hand him over to the school. There, if the teacher is an upright teacher, these individuals will come out of school as upright individuals and a society will become upright.

God willing, you will become teachers, later on. Now, who ever of you who is not a mother will become mothers, and God willing, will become teachers. In your motherhood, you must purify your children; in your tutorship, also you must refine them, and hand over upright individuals to the society so that the society becomes upright. If, God forbid, it is contrary to this, then their ill training too will be your responsibility; in the same way that, if they do a good deed, their good deed will also accrue to you and you will be rewarded, because you were the source of their good deeds. Nevertheless, if, God forbid you hand over immoral individuals to the society

and they engage in immoral behavior, you too shall be affected by the consequences of their misdeeds.

I pray to the Blessed and Almighty God for the success of all of you women and all the men, and implore the Blessed and Almighty God to grant health and happiness to all of you.