Speech [Profession of clerics and academicians; creation of discord between the seminary and university; role of culture in the declination and amelioration of the society]

In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

I do thank you gentlemen for having taken the trouble to come here so we may have a face-to-face discussion together and talk about the issues we think are of importance. I would like to express my appreciations again that you gentlemen have expressed your willingness to lend a hand and present your services in humanitarian affairs. However, the principle of higher education establishments boils down to the fact that the clergy and the academicians are similarly minded in following the same path. There is no denying the fact that the responsibility of you two groups is greater than that of the rest, since your jobs are more honorable in view of the fact that both the clergy and the academicians are charged with the responsibility of enlightenment, if they perform their duties within the constraints set for the purpose. The fact is that, your job as teachers is one and the same as that of the prophets sent by the Almighty God. It is no secret that the reason for the appointment of prophets was intended to enlighten people and the holy Qur'an is an enlightening book. That is why I stress that your job is honorable but burdened with much responsibility. The reasons are that two universities, that is, the seminary for the clergy and your higher education establishments actually decide the fate and the future of the country.

If you suppose, or we think that science makes up the foundation of human happiness, no matter what that science is, we are committing some extremely crass mistake. It is an open secret that science on many occasions has been the source of some horrible atrocities. Hakim Sana'i «2» says," A burglar with a torch in hand would steal more selectively". So, if a cleric is knowledgeable but lacks faith and his way is not that of the prophets, he would be the source for numerous corrupt practices, and corruption would be ever more promoted. Clergies of this type have promoted most of the baseless and superstitious beliefs. The kind of clergies, who think science by itself is everything, never take the path that the prophets followed. Similarly, if academicians insist on only instilling sciences into the minds of Iranian children and fill their heads with scientific ways, this will not help the promotion of our people's happiness, in fact it would be detrimental to the people's welfare for that matter. A depraved academician is different from a depraved businessman, or a depraved farmer or laborer for that matter. The latter, if corrupted, will not be promoting evil practices on a mass scale. On the other hand, a morally bad university teacher spreads his evil ways among large groups who will then take charge of running a country. Corruption as such would lead to disaster for a whole nation. In the same breath, the immorality of a cleric does not stay limited to his person and translates into the immorality of the people of a whole country. It is because of such great responsibilities that you two groups must serve and save the country, and if your approaches are not correctly formulated, the fate of the country would suffer the inevitable damages.

I hope you do not suppose that those who do not cherish any faith can serve the country too, and there is no difference between them and those imbued with faith. «3» that is to say, the person who has no faith, will have his food, just like a full feedbag for a donkey, which it does not make any difference to the animal whether the hay that has been supplied for its sustenance has been put in its feedbag by the holy prophet or what Abu Jahl (the prophet of Islam's worst enemy) has given him. The animal just wants to have something to eat and someone to take care of its needs, whether this person is `Ali ibn Abi Talib or Ibn Muljam, «4» it makes no difference to the animal. If Ibn Muljam gives it better care, the animal is friendlier to him.

This holy verse from the Qur'an should serve as a general instruction for identification of morally good and immoral, and the way we should tell between them. The immoral ones are the types who do not care how this park or car has come into their possession, whether it has been obtained in legitimate manners or through stealing and treason. All his concern is to get his hands on the car, and he does not have any concern if it came into his possession in the first place, which is just like the animal I mentioned before. You can inculcate morality and piety in the young people so that they would always keep in mind how they have come into material things, and who has given them a job and what sort of a job they have been assigned with.

Evil hands have unfortunately separated you and the clergy. You are both charged with the same task, which is training the people of the society. A divisive wedge was driven between you, which separated you two from each other. We would never come face to face before. That is to say, you used to keep us at a distance and we too, used to run away from you. You would not take notice of what we said, and we had the same attitude toward you. You used to say something else to us, and we, too, differed from you. When I say you, I mean you individuals in the academic centers, and when I refer to us I am not referring just to myself. Anyway, that was the state of affairs. People of dubious characters would go to the universities and would tell academicians and students and even the non-academicians enticing things and then would tell them these clerics are reactionary people, and they want to push us back to the Stone Age! Muhammad-Rida Khan, in one of his statements before June 3,1963 «5» (the day when there was a massive civil unrest in Tehran and some other major cities in Iran, against the Shah and was brutally put down by the latter) said these clerics do not even travel by planes! This was the very same day when one of the Religious Reference Authorities «6» had traveled to Mashhad by plane- Muhammad-Rida Khan said that they are even against planes; they are against anything modern. They want to return to those days when they rode donkeys. They want to light candles in darkness as they are against electricity. Anything that smells of civilization, clerics are opposed to. These were the sort of things they used to tell you about the clergy, or worse, they would tell you all the clerics worked for the court and the interests of the monarch, in fact, clerics were created by the monarchs in the first place, and kings gave them their existence through the help of foreign powers. On the other hand, they would come to the clergy and would tell them these people in the universities are divorced from religion and are nothing more than a bunch of western-clothed ascot wearing irreligious people. These were their ways of creating a big division between the academicians and the clergy. Unfortunately, there were some who believed these lies and therefore, both kept drifting away from each other ever more because of mutual suspicions. Now, who were these two groups? They were the ones who were supposed to enlighten the people of the society. Thus, they drove a huge wedge between them.

If the said two groups were on the right path, the whole nation would be on the right path. It is not like, let us say only the businessmen, if enlightened, it would be to the benefit of only the businessmen. The point is that if the said two groups were enlightened, the whole nation would follow their example. The two groups about which has been said," A corrupted scientist corrupts the whole world." The scholar we are talking about does not encompass me alone. It is you, all of us. You, too, are among the scholars. If, God forbid, you were corrupt, you would spread corruptive practices all over the world. On the other hand, if you are morally good, the whole world shall benefit from your goodness. Both the good and the evil in societies are in the hands of those in charge of teaching those societies. You are the teachers, while the clerics are different kinds of teachers, but both of you enlighten the whole society.

If the purpose was scientific knowledge alone, and lets says, you wanted to train a medical doctor but it didn't matter whether he was moral and ethical or not, well, this man would become a business minded doctor in future, the kind that would let his patients wait because he wants to raise his fees. He may be a very good doctor indeed and even a great specialist, but just because he lacks morality and he is an irreligious individual who does not believe in God, he makes his patients wait. He writes a prescription and while he is in collusion with the pharmacist to charge the patient as much as he can. He corrupts the poor pharmacist too. The prescription he has written may not worth much, because he wants the patient to refer to him again, so on and so forth. All right, this was an example of a medical doctor from a scientific point of view; you may want to train an engineer and a great one for all he is worth. But, if this engineer is asked to present a design, his approach to the design in question, is replete with every aspect of clever tricks to make more money for himself but worthless as a whole. If we even take a clergy, and let us suppose he is good and knowledgeable, as he understands the Holy Book and the tradition of the Prophet well enough. However, if he does not know the first thing about morality, his religious knowledge will cause people to follow the wrong ways. He teaches the ways of the prophet and the Holy Book in extremely distorted ways to corrupt people. There were many such examples among you and among us (the clerics), who were only interested in position and money and would do anything to corrupt our young people. These individuals are harmful and not beneficial to their societies. They trained students, but harmful students; not like a businessperson who if not beneficial is not harmful either.

There is no noticeable difference between our people and yours. Both of us are to educate the people of our society. We need learned people. Our country requires its citizens to be enlightened. There must be pious and faithful persons in this country. The kind of pious people who have been enlightened by you and us would never give in to the foreign oppression, nor could they be bought into submission. The sorts that are prone to be intimidated or bought are those very ones who lack faith. A faithful and pious person would hardly be liable to selling himself. He can neither be intimidated nor bought, because intimidations are contradictory to what a Muslim is duty bound to do, and he would refuse to be intimidated. You and we should unite to give rise to a monotheistic society, which translates into persuading all people to believe in the Almighty God and make sure that our people are aware of the fact that there would be a day of reckoning. Everybody should be faithful and pious in every way. If we unite and try to bring up pious and religiously faithful young people, the country shall never come to harm and would enjoy everlasting longevity. However, if we should fail to take on this great responsibility, we would fail the young people of this country. There may be some temporary changes, but in the end, there would be a grim future for everybody when again the country falls into the hands of those lacking faith and those who have no consideration for the interests of the country. This is mainly because they think of their own interests and nothing else. So things would go from bad to worse in that case.

All these scandals and troubles for the people of this country came about by the hands of those people who lacked faith and religious belief. If there were any faith and piety, no man worth his salt would conclude the kind of agreements with foreigners, which have now burdened our government. Every angle of these agreements has some sort of disadvantage for us. Our political leaders are puzzled as to how to solve these problems. If those who signed these agreements had an iota of faith, the country would not have been saddled with so much trouble now. They sold the country to have palaces in foreign countries and fill the coffers of the foreign banks. These problems all came about because there was no faith and piety. The source of all blessings and all progress, both in material and in spiritual ways, is faith alone. You and we should chip in our efforts to create faith for those future generations who will be responsible for the fate of this country. You would let pious people graduate from your universities, and we would send pious clerics out of the schools. Neither scholars nor scientists for their own sakes are any good in the absence of faith. As a matter of fact, piety by itself would not be very effective, as there are many pious people around, but when a scholar is pious and he is also faithful, then he will be the source of many blessings and contributions in safeguarding the country. It is in this light that we are burdened with such a great responsibility; both you and we are given such a great responsibility. If we find the right path and act according to what we have been assigned with, we have given strength to faith along with science so that there would be no sign of previous practices. We would then have a great and fundamental development in our programs. We should do our best to change those plans, which had been contrived to keep us behind. Of course, we would embark on such programs. But, what you have to do now is to change those schemes contrived to keep us depraved, and we should not give in to such schemes. We must change them and that is a big challenge.

The greatest development that must be brought about must take place in the culture. That is because culture is the single most important item that may send a nation to its doom, or yet may give rise to its ever greatness and power. Cultural programs are in need of development. Our culture must go through a great change. This is apart from government offices as culture has some other connotations. In this regard, we know there are many obstacles ahead of us. All the same, I appreciate the fact that you are prepared to do anything in the service of the destitute. This latter, of course, is very valuable. It is valuable both in the eyes of the Almighty God and the people. However, your real and fundamental responsibility is in the cultural area, people's poverty is worldly in nature and such deprivation is a mundane impoverishment, and your assistance to rectify this shortcoming is of great spiritual and moral value. However, those spiritual responsibilities that you have boil down to somehow rectifying the cultural poverty of our people and are of foremost priority; rectifying it in such a way to make it be of great benefit to your nation. This, however, may not be achieved unless there is faith. There may be a few, who lack faith but their performances are great. This is an exception to the rule. What we need has to be comprehensive in nature for the good of the whole nation. Therefore, these exceptions should not serve as examples and the decisive test must apply to the whole society. We cannot just inundate the nation with science so that the example I gave before as regards the doctor without faith would be the norm. Nevertheless, we can enlighten the very same person in university to make him use his science for the benefit of his society.

At any rate, I pray to Almighty God and wish you all the best of health and happiness. I shall keep praying for all of you and remain at your service. I hope we come to understand what ails and troubles this country has and try to work out the best solutions to address these problems. Anybody can make his own contribution in his own capacity, God willing. My greetings to all of you.

[At this point one in the audience, by the name of Mahdi Muhaqqiq, presents His Excellency the Imam with some of his own books and says that the Islamic justice should prevail everything and compares Imam's approaches to those of the holy Prophet himself, and then His Excellency states:]

I wish you all the best; I have repeatedly mentioned these things to those people in the courts. I always keep giving them advice on how they should perform. I hope they act according to the Islamic tenets. I wish success for all of you.