Speech [The role of radio and television in the society]

In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

I would like for all the strata of the nation, especially the strata that are in the service of the government, all various offices and, above all, the radio and television, to believe that the Republic is Islamic. There is a time when a person votes for the Islamic Republic- that is what you all voted for- and there is a time when a person is not knowledgeable about the contents of the Islamic Republic. This person should be informed that the Islamic Republic means the public votes or the majority votes for the system and that the contents of the Islamic system as well as the Islamic decrees are the agenda of Islam. There is a time when they know this but again they cannot believe that everything should be Islamic.

I would like that everyone has come to believe that this movement from its beginning to the end- that took nearly fifteen or sixteen years- so much trouble was endured; so much blood shed; so many young people lost; so many houses ruined; and so many households perished; and especially in the last two years that you all witnessed what happened. We should have come to believe that all this was for Islam. I cannot imagine and neither could any sensible person imagine that someone would say that we gave bloods in order for the price of melon to go down! Or, we lost our young people in order for the price of houses to go down. No wise people will want to lose their youth in order to find an inexpensive house. People want everything for their youth, for their household. That logic is an invalid logic, which some people may have tried to sell; biased people may have put words in others' mouths so that they would say," We gave blood in order for, say, our agriculture to become such and such." Who would let himself be killed in order for his agriculture to become such and such? Why do not they mention the very logic that these people subscribed to during all this time and in particular in the recent time? You all noticed that all the classes of people, including ladies, took to the streets; the youth took to the streets; on the roofs, in the streets and in the alleys and everywhere else they cried out," We want Islam and we want the Islamic Republic." It is for the sake of Islam that one can give their lives. Our saints, too, sacrificed their lives for Islam; they did not do it for the sake of economy, for economy is not worth sacrificing lives for. Everyone wants economy for his own sake and it is not right that one would kill himself for the economy to get better. This is not wise. Nor is it wise that they let their youth get killed so that they themselves can buy the bread at a lower price! This is not a wise thing to do. What is wise and was acted upon and we all noticed and you all noticed are to sacrifice everything in the path of Islam. This is what the Prophet of Islam (s) and other saints of Islam did, for there is no loser in this offering of sacrifices.

They who talk frequently about economy and consider economy as the infrastructure of everything- because they do not have a proper understanding of what human being are- they imagine that a human is also an animal that all he cares about is food and eating! However, there is a difference between the food and eating of this" animal" and that of other animals; the former eats chelowkabab, whereas the latter eats straw. Yet they both are animals. They, who consider economy as the infrastructure of everything, regard human beings as animals. Even animals sacrifice everything for its economy; it is considered the infrastructure of everything to them. Even a donkey considers economy as the infrastructure of everything. They haven't recognized what human being is all about. We must believe that our country wanted to sacrifice everything it possessed for the sake of Islam. They also come to me now and tell me repeatedly- in groups, individually- saying," You pray for us to become martyred." Now, is it wise to think that he is asking," Let me become martyred so I can gorge myself?" Does he really want to become martyred for his belly? Is it wise that someone would request martyrdom for the sake of his belly? No wise meaning can be drawn from this statement. He demands martyrdom because he has perceived that there is no death in martyrdom; it is an eternal life. Thus, it is for this eternal life that he is demanding martyrdom. The infrastructure is" monotheism". The infrastructure is the righteous divine opinions and not the belly. They who consider the economy as the infrastructure, perverted the human being from the limit of humanity to an animal, like other animals.

I want for all of us to have come to believe that the Republic is Islamic and that everything of ours should become Islamic. From the previous status, fifty years or fifty odd years of which I witnessed and you did several years of it- of course, none of you could remember fifty years. But you remember several years of it during this tyrannical regime and you noticed that it was all dependence on the West and on America. And you saw all its bitterness, too. Your tastes are still bitter from those things. You remember the imprisonment; now, if you did not go to jail yourselves, but your friends did; your fellow-citizens did- the imprisonments, the tortures, some of these are hard to repeat, but they fried some people in the frying pan; they would set the person on an iron frying pan and then plugged in the electricity and fried them! These bitter experiences exist in our tastes and those of yours.

We should now believe that the taghouti system must be abolished. Only the removal of that head and those of upper echelon but for the rest to stay put would not fulfill our intended objective. Everywhere, in all the government ministries, in all the offices, in the bazaar, in everywhere, it should be such that when someone sets foot in there he will notice that he has entered in an Islamic country where everything is Islamic. There is neither the use of short weights nor overcharging or extortion. There are neither lies nor fraud. There exists no red tape and no perverted magazines with pictures and propaganda of the sort, which ruined the lives of our young people. And there are no ugly things that you could have then on the radio and television.

The objective of those who had arranged these things were that everywhere you set foot one thing was obvious in that place and bright people would perceive that one thing. That thing was not to let our youth grow, but to train our youth in such a way not to care as to what is happening in their country. If the people were used to those magazines- the kind that you were seeing or had seen, with all those indecent pictures and subjects- and those movie theaters with all their contents, etc., and the then televisions, the then radios, the then schools, the then seaside-goers, and the then brothels. One thing was common in all these things and that was to make our youth indifferent toward their own problems. A young person who gets used to go to a movie theater everyday or every night, and watch that sort of acts, will not think about who plunders our oil, where does our oil end up, where does our wealth go; these things do not occur to them at all. Theirs is comparable to a heroin addict; a heroin addict does not give it a thought at all as to what is going on with him. The only thing he thinks about is" what time;" the time for his heroin, or the time for his opium. And he who is used to go to those brothels, all his attention and devotion are those very brothels. Now, what is going on in this country and what is happening to it is none of his concern. He is not after it at all.

All these problems that they «2» brought about during the past fifty years- in particular during the time of the latter who was worse than the former- all these problems were being dictated in order to make our youth indifferent." What do I care what happens to them?" They who go to the seaside and play together there do not give it a thought as to what the problems of the day are, what do the governments do, and what that treacherous man did to us. Such things would not even occur to their minds. There are all these programs of letting the youth and these boys and girls loose so they can do whatever they wish. And these intellectuals, writers, and liberalists- not all but most of them- either are not aware of what will these have in store for this country, or they know it but are mercenaries and that's all they are after. They scream: O! The freedom is gone. O freedom! Well, what has happened now with the going of (your) freedom? The bars are limited or are closed. The brothels are banned- now whether all of them are being closed up, I do not know for sure- but they would not allow these boys and girls to take to the sea naked and do things together. This is what they see as freedom! And they know that this is the kind of freedom that has been dictated by the West for us but not for them. If that were what was going on, they would not have succeeded in their material advancement. They are dictating this kind of freedom for the colonized countries. These freedoms are what are called imported freedoms. And those unfair and yet supporters of" human rights," according to them, and these unfair writers as they call them- I do not mean all but some of them- and these unfair liberalists propagate this kind of freedom for us and they emphasize on the kind of freedom that takes our country to its destruction.

Any country stays a country because of its youth and human resources. What destroys the human resources will destroy the country. If a country lacks human resources, that country cannot be governed. And the freedom that these gentlemen want is the kind of freedom that will destroy the human resources; it will take that country to where it will not be able to express any objection to whatever they do to it. But not being able to express its objection does not matter for those whose only ambition is to wait for the summer so they can go to the seaside; all their ambition is to wait for the night to come so they can go to their movie theatre, and when would the special acts on the radio-television start broadcasting so they can sit down and watch them. They are unable, in the same way that an opium-addict is not able to leave his brazier and attend to, say, Jihad for Reconstruction; or, while at his brazier, he cannot think of what is happening to the country; what happened to our culture; what happened to our economy; he just cannot think (along those lines). And they want it to be just like that. Those who want to plunder us want to do it without any interference." Why should we invent things? Why should we buy for ourselves headaches," they would say." Let's open up the road to pleasure-seeking on their inexperienced young ones; let them engage in whatever merry-making they desire while we plunder their resources!" That's right; let our young ones scream and engage in pleasure seeking while they (the plunderers) take away everything we have. This was our situation in the past fifty years. They were adding fuel to the fire and aggravated everything that had a common border with the above-mentioned activities that were ruining our youth and creating a sense of indifference in them. And now we would like for us to believe- either you who work for the radio and television or us seminarians who are in another place- to believe that a corrupted regime whose effort was focused on corrupting our youth and ruining them and making them indifferent about their own fundamental issues. Let us believe that that[ regime ]has gone so that an Islamic-humane system would come that is serious in all affairs.

Islam is not joking around. It's all serious business. It contains no humor; it contains no absurdities; it contains no pleasures. It's all serious business. It is serious matters. In both material and spiritual matters, Islam has both aspects. It's all seriousness. Debauchery and nonsense and all other such things that Islam has prohibited are the same things that those plunderers are adding fuel to. Anything you see that they propagate, [you should know] that those are the things that Islam has prohibited. And those things that Islam has prohibited are the very things that destroy our youth. Islam wants combatants; it wants warriors to confront the infidels; to confront those who make forays into our country. Islam wants to train mujahids. «3» It does not want to raise a pleasure-seeker who, while he is busy with his pleasure seeking, they take all his possessions away to disgrace him. And he keeps his pleasure seeking and dancing around. Islam is serious; it is a serious religion. There is no humor in it; there is no absurdity in it; there is no pleasure in it; there is no game in it.

The games that Islam has permitted are shooting, horse riding, horse racing, and shooting race. Those are also considered warfare, which Islam has permitted. It has even permitted betting on them. However, it is a serious matter; it is training.

They like us to maintain the same old situation: nominally, for us to be called" Islamic Republic," but adhere to the ways and realities of taghout with all those problems associated with them. We should try, in the same way that we voted for the Islamic Republic- and there exists an Islamic Republic in Iran now- to make its contents Islamic. That means that the Radio and Television which you are a part of, be Islamic. There are no absurdities and pleasures and other things of that nature. All these should be reformed. Of course, our youth have been, from the time they opened their eyes and for years in corruption and in the centers, which have been filled with corruption all over and were raised as such, for the plans were for them to be raised up just like that. Now, if we want our youth to return to a sound and normal life, it will take a long time, but I hope they will make a comeback. Thanks to God, the changes that are and have been coming about are encouraging and our youth have changed overnight, in spite of the swift and fast changes.

Now I am talking about television; a thing that is more crucial than all other mass media. The television is more crucial than all other media and means of propagation, for it is both audio and visual.

In other media, even radio, it is audio alone. In- let's say- newspapers and other press, eyesight is used. In radio-television, it is audio-visual. It is not like newspaper to say, for example, that its circulation is ten-, twenty-, hundred-thousands or one million, for it distributes countrywide. Nowadays, even when you go to a village, you can see a villager- who may not even be able to provide for his household, has bought himself a radio or a television set. This is true everywhere. In other words, the things that are broadcasted on television are picked up countrywide and wherever beyond the borders that the radio-television signals are transmitted. The things that are said on the radio and on the radio-television are not aimed at just one group; they are for the whole population; they do not belong to just one country; they go everywhere and they belong to all the strata.

This system should be an educational system; it should be a system where all those things that ruined and could ruin our youth are omitted and are replaced by programs that are educational; ethical issues, cultural issues, and other issues that are useful for our youth and will educate them. This system should be considered sensitive and since it is an apparatus that is present everywhere and amidst all classes of the society, and is an all-terrain apparatus. You can see one here right now. If radio-television would broadcast these very words the next day, they will be heard everywhere. It is an all-terrain matter. If it is educational, it is educational for the entire nation. And if, God forbid, it contains perversions, it will pervert the entire nation. We now want our radio-television that were at the service of taghout before, to be in the service of God; to be in the service of Islam; and Islam wants all the issues to be taken seriously; the country's problems to be taken seriously; the spiritual issues to be taken seriously. There is seriousness in everything. Even these pastime affairs are somehow dealt with seriously in Islam. Even when a man wants to raise a family, there is seriousness in it; there is a good amount of care involved in getting married; there are certain guidelines to be observed as to what kind of man a woman should choose and what kind of woman should a man choose. There are directives as to what kind of man should a woman choose and what kind of woman should a man choose. And then about the time of the marriage, it should coincide with a blessed time. Then there is the quality of the marriage and the quality of everything to follow a special program. And then what programs there will be initiated for the mother's childbirth time. And then when she wants to nurse the baby, what kind of programs is devised for nursing purposes. And then the nurturing of the baby in the laps of his mother; how is the baby going to be nurtured? And then comes the training of the child under the protection of the father and how it is going to be done. And then how is the child's going to school handled. That is so because the plan of all the monotheistic schools, on the top of which is Islam, is a plan of human upbringing. The aim is to raise human beings. In fact, the Qur'an came in order to produce a perfect human being. The Qur'an is the human-maker. It is true with a farmer: If a farmer wants to turn in a good farm product, he should work on the soil and prepare it in a way that is appropriate to produce. He should observe the conditions of the soil. When should he water; what kind of water should be used; what kind of fertilizer should be applied; when should the soil be furrowed. All this is because he wants to bring the land to fruition. He wants a wheat product. All this that I mentioned and many other things that I do not recall now, or which I want to avoid prolonging my speech, are for the purpose that Islam raises us like that plant that should be raised in that way and later when it comes to an animal to be raised in such a way until it has taken it to the position of a human being.

Economy is not the infrastructure, for economy is not the human's climax. Man does not toil merely to fill his belly or sacrifice his youth in order to fill his belly. These are mere talks. Mankind will exist from here to ad infinitum. Human is no longer mortal. Human will exist endlessly. And Islam's plan is to make man such that he will be sound both in this and the next worlds. The straight path: neither Eastward nor Westward, just a straight path one extreme of which is in this world and the other extreme in the ad infinitum.

We want to our best ability, however meager our strength is, to the extent that we are able to change this country from its taghouti state to a monotheist-Islamic one. And this has to be accomplished with the help of all. No single man could do this. Even a whole population could not. Any one who is busy with a task should perform that job perfectly, to make that task divine and bring it out of its taghouti state. May Almighty God make everyone successful, God willing.