Section 2

I am not used to praying at the end of a lecture because I know with all humility that I am not worthy to pray. But I would like, with your permission, to give some prayers about how things should be and are not, no matter what anyone may say.

It has been mentioned in our prayer books and Alexis Carrel also mentioned that a prayer should be like a child speaks with his father. The more spontaneous it is, the better it will be accepted.

Dear friends. We are living in most difficult times. All of my hope and faith are devoted to you young people. Those who are mature have reached a position, are edu­cated and have social respect. Those who have wealth and an honourable position, their responsibilities are no more than to protect what they have gathered. But for­tunately, you who are still deprived may do something for our salvation which will otherwise be forgotten and destroyed.

Oh, God, You who rendered generosity to the sons of Adam, You who placed Your trust upon the shoulders of the children of Adam, You who selected all of Your prophets to teach the Book and establish justice, You who say that greatness belongs to You, Your prophets and those who are faithful, we are Your people.

We have faith in You and the message of Your prophets. We ask for freedom, awareness, justice and greatness. Grant us these as we are greatly in need of them, more so that at any other time we are sacrificed by slavery, ignorance and weakness.

Oh, God of those who are deprived. You who have blessed the deprived upon the earth, those masses who are condemned to being weak and deprived in life and those who are enslaved throughout history and are sacri­ficed to oppression and the plunder of time, we are the wretched of hell on earth. Cause us to rise up to lead mankind and become the inheritors of the earth. The time has arrived. The deprived of the earth await Your promise. You who have glory within your family of man, at present, only have the deprived masses worship­ping You.

Oh, God, You made all of Your angels prostrate themselves before Adam. Do You not see that all of the children of Adam are being made to prostrate them­selves before the devils of the earth? Release the children of Adam from the bonds of slavery of the idols of this century, whom we ourselves have created. Help us to find salvation in our servitude and obedience to You.

Oh, God, destroy those who rule the world, who deny Your signs, kill Your prophets and destroy those who have arisen in revolt among the masses. Invite the people to justice and equity.

Oh, God, give responsibility to our religious scholars, wisdom to our masses, light and awareness to our faithful, faith to our intellectuals, understanding to our righteous people, enthusiasm to our miserable, comprehension to our women, honour to our men, awareness to our aged, genuineness to our youth, ideas to our professors, ideas as well to our students. Awaken those who are asleep.

Give determination to those who have awoken, truth to our propagators, religion to our religious ones, commitment to our writers, pain to our artists, under­standing to our poets, a goal to our scholars, hope to the hopeless.

Give strength to our deprived, a shock to our con­servatives, cause those who are seated to arise. Give move­ment to those who are stilled, life to our dead, sight to the blind, cries to the silenced, the Quran to our Muslims, Ali to our Shiites, unity to our sects. Cure those who are jealous. Give justice to the conceited, manners to those who abuse, patience to our mujahids, self-consciousness to our people, and give our entire nation the aspiration to persevere. Teach us unselfishness, the merit of salvation and self-respect.

O God of the Ka'ba! Do not allow these people of the world who pray morning and night, oriented towards Your house, who circumambulate around the home of Your Abraham, to be the sacrifices of ignorance and blasphemy and to be put in bondage by the oppressions of the oppressors of the times like Nimroud.

And you, oh Muhammad, the Prophet of awareness, freedom and power! A fire has been started in your home and it is spreading. A destructive flood is coming from the West upon your land. Your family has for many centuries remained asleep in the black bed of abjectness. Awaken them! As God has said, "Arise and remind them."

And you, oh Ali. You who are entitled Lion of God, man of God and of the people, Lord of love and of the word. We have lost our worthiness to know you. They have removed 'knowing you' from our minds but our love for you continues to exist. It has caught on fire in the depths of our conscience and the membranes of our heart. How can you leave your lovers in abasement? You who could not bear the slightest oppression towards a Jewish woman who was living under an Islamic govern­ment, now look at the Muslims who are living under Jewish oppression. See what is happening to them. Oh, Ali, the possessor of the arm which holds the sword, one strike of which is worth more than all the prayers of this world and the next. Strike another blow!

And you two - brother and sister - Husayn ('a) and Zainab - you two gave meaning to 'being human', gave hope to faith, gave spirit to living with your glorious deaths. Yes, you two. Since that painful day of Ashura where even the imagination trembles out of fear and the heart breaks from the pain, the eyes of this nation have never stopped crying. The masses of our people have been crying out of your love and for your pain, for centuries. Is it not true that love speaks the language of tears? A nation, throughout the whole of its history, moans from the pain you suffered. In spite of whip lashes, floggings, massacres and torture because of their love for you, they have never, not even for a moment, discontinued the repetition of your names upon their lips. They have never forgotten to remember you. The fire of their love for you has never diminished. With each blow of the jailer's whips, the sign of their love for you has been imprinted upon their backs and their sides.

And, you, oh, Zainab! Daughter of Ali, you who have Ali's tongue, speak with your community. Oh, woman whose courage has taught courage to your people. Mention your name in the hearts and souls of the women of our nation who desperately need you to put the fire of love and pain in their souls. They need you now more than ever before. On the one hand, ignorance has placed them in slavery and abasement. On the other hand; the West pulls them towards a hidden enslavement and a modern type of abjectness, and makes them become strangers to you and to themselves. Help them to revolt against their old and new foolish ways, from the slavery of corrupted traditions and invitations which are foul, from being tools of the old strict traditions and new amusements.

Give them the strength to utter the same cry that you gave which resounded through a town, the town of cruelty and terror, which caused the pillars of a palace to tremble, the Green Palace of treachery so that they might rebel inside themselves and by doing so, tear off the threads woven by the deceitful spider until they learn to stand against this destructive storm which has started to blow. Break the mechanisms which are making a new kind of fool out of her to further humiliate her by using her to fill their leisure time and for the greedy mouths of the capitalists who introduce her to the market. They do this to give pleasure to the dirty desires of the bourgeoisie, to create excitement in the halls which are no more than motionless, sad places of entertainment of the 'new aristocracy' and for the amusement of empty, aimless and the sad life of 'the comfortable community'. Save her by your leadership from the old slavery (of the haram) and new, disgraceful markets (of the bazaars).

Oh you who are Ali's tongue.

Oh you who bear Hossein's mission upon your shoulders.

Oh you who came from Karbala and declare the message of the martyrs to the ears of history in the middle of the everlasting tumult of iron bars and the execu­tioners.

Oh, Zainab, speak with us. Do not tell us what happened to you.

Do not tell us what you saw in that red desert.

Do not tell us the extent of the crimes which were committed.

Do not tell us how God on that day demonstrated the dearest and most glorious values and greatness which He had created along the Furat River and on the burnt sands of the Taf desert and presented this to His angels fog` them to come to know why they should prostrate themselves to Adam.

Do not tell us what happened to you there.

Do not tell us what friends and enemies did.

Oh Messenger of Husayn ('a)'s Revolution, we all know. We have heard it all. You have passed on the messages of the martyrs. You, yourself are the martyr who made words from her blood, as your brother who spoke with each drop of his blood.

But, sister, tell us what we should do? For a moment, look at how we are all suffering

Listen for a moment while we share our troubles with you, our dearest sister.

It is you who must cry for us.

You - the faithful messenger of your brother.

You - who leaving Karbala, passed over to all genera­tions and carried the message of the martyrs.

You who come from the red garden of martyrdom wearing the perfume of a newly blossomed flower of that place within your dress.

Oh daughter of Ali. Oh, sister! Oh leader of the caravan of the captured. Take us also with that caravan. But, oh, Husayn ('a), What can I say to you? What can I say to you on such a dark night in the middle of an ocean, afraid of the waves and the terrible whirlpool.

You are the lamp which shows the way, the ship of salvation. The blood of yours which was spilt is ever rising where there is deceit. It flows in the stream of time and passes over all generations. It is the blood which saturates any fruitful land, causes the worthy seeds to open underneath the earth and brings a dry plant into being.

You the great teacher of the martyrdom, make thunder from that light our dark and hopeless bed cham­ber. Drops of that rushing blood flows in our dry and semi-dead streams. Render a bit of the fire of that firing desert to our cold and frozen winter!

You have selected red-death in order to release your lovers from the black-death. Still with every drop of your blood, you give life to a nation, make the heart of history beat, give heat to the depressed crops of each age, give the excitement of life as well as hope and love.

Our faith, our nation, our history of tomorrow, the people of our age all need you and your blood.