Memoirs of Marzieh Hadidchi (Dabbagh) (Part 63)
2018-10-31
Memoirs of Marzieh Hadidchi (Dabbagh) (Part 63)
Edited by: Mohsen Kazemi
Tehran, Sooreh Mehr Publications Company
2002 (Persian Version)
Translated by: Zahra Hosseinian
Attachment 3
The message of Imam to Mikhail Gorbachev (Chairman of the Presidium of USSR)
"In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful”
Your Excellency Mr. Gorbachev, Chairman of the Presidium of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
With due wishes for the happiness and prosperity of Your Excellency and the people of the Soviet Union. Since you assumed office, there has been the impression that Your Excellency, in analyzing world political events, particularly those pertaining to the Soviet Union, have found yourself in a new era of reassessment, change and confrontation; and your boldness and initiative in dealing with the realities of the world is quite likely to bring about changes that would result in upsetting the equations of power dominating the world. I have therefore found it necessary to bring certain matters to your attention. Even if your new approach and decisions are merely used as a means to overcome the party crisis, and to solve some of the problems of your people, your courage in reappraising a school of thought that has for decades enchained the revolutionary youth of the world behind its iron curtain is indeed worthy of praise. If, however, you are considering taking a further step forward, the first thing that will ensure your success is that you reevaluate your predecessors’ policy of obliterating God and religion from society, a policy that has no doubt incurred the heaviest blow to the Soviet people. Rest assured that this is the only way whereby world problems can be dealt with realistically. Of course, it is possible that as a result of wrong economic policies of the former communist leaders, "window dressing" of the Western world appears; but the truth lies elsewhere. If you hope, at this juncture, to cut the economic Gordian knots of socialism and communism by appealing to the center of Western capitalism, you will, far from remedying any illness of your society, make a mistake which those to come will have to erase. For, if Marxism has come to a deadlock in its social and economic policies, the western world has also bogged down, in this as well as in other respects though in a different form.
Mr. Gorbachev, it is must to turn to the truth. The main problem of your country is not ownership, economy and freedom. Your problem is the lack of true belief in God. The same problem which has drew or will draw the West into vulgarity and deadlock. Your main problem is a long and futile struggle with God and the origin of existence and creation.
Mr. Gorbachev! It is clear to everybody that from now on communism will only have to be found in the museums of the world political history, for Marxism cannot meet any of the real needs of mankind. Marxism is a materialistic ideology and materialism cannot bring humanity out of the crisis caused by a lack of belief in spirituality the prime affliction of the human society in the East and the west alike.
Mr. Gorbachev, perhaps you have not turned your back on Marxism in some respects, and hereafter, in interviews, you express your full belief in it, but you know it is not proven. The leader of China stroke the first blow to communism, and you hit out the second and obviously the last. Today we do not have anything called communism in the world. But I seriously want you not being captured by the West Prison and the Great Satan in breaking the walls of Marxist imaginations. I hope you find the real honor to wipe off the last decayed layers of seventy years dishonesty of communism world from the face of your history and country. Today, other governments, flowing in the same direction with you and whose hearts throb for their homeland and people, will no longer use their country's ground and underground resources to prove the success of communism, the sound of breaking its bones has been heard by their youth.
Mr. Gorbachev, when the loud call of ‘Allahu Akbar’ (God is most great) and ‘I profess that Muhammad is His Prophet’ was heard through minarets of mosques in some of your republics after seventy years, tears of joy were rolled down from the cheeks of all supporters of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). Therefore, I found it necessary once again to point out to think about two material and divine worldviews. Materialists consider "sense" as the criterion of cognition in their worldview and assume any imperceptible thing outside the science realm; and they think the existence equal to material and do not accept what is not material as entity. They inevitably consider the invisible world, such as the existence of the Almighty God, divine revelation, prophethood, and resurrection (Day of Judgment) a legend. While the criterion of cognition in the divine worldview is both ‘sensation’ and ‘intellect’, and what is reasonable is inside the realm of science, although not perceptible. Therefore, the universe consists of both what is corporeal and what is incorporeal, and what is not made out of matter can exist. And as the entity refers to ‘incorporeality’, sensory knowledge is also based on rational cognition.
The Holy Quran criticizes the material thinking and said to those who think there is no God, otherwise He is seen (‘we will never believe you until we see Allah outright’), ‘Vision perceives Him not, but He perceives [all] vision; and He is the Subtle, the Acquainted.’
Far from the Holy Qur'an and its arguments about divine revelation and prophethood and resurrection, which is the beginning of argument in your opinion, I did not essentially wish to take you into twisty path of philosophers, especially Islamic philosophers. I only content myself with one or two simple examples, which can be taken advantage of by the politicians. Obviously, whatever the matter and body are, it is completely ignorant of itself. Each side of a stone statue or a statue of man is veiled for the other side. While we see that human beings and animals are aware of everything around them, they know where they are; what is going on in their environment; what uproar arises in the world. Therefore, there is something else in animals and humans which is beyond the matter and separate from the material world and does not die with the death of matter and remains. Human being in his primordial nature wants any perfection in absolute. And you know well that man wants to be the absolute power in the world and has not had his heart in any deficient power. If he has the whole world and to be told that there is another world, he innately keen to have that one too. If human being is an omniscient and to be told that there is another science, he is innately interested to learn them too. Therefore, there must be absolute power and absolute science in which the human being has his heart. It is Allah Almighty that we all aware of it, though we do not know. Human wants to reach the ‘absolute truth’, unification with God. Basically, the desire for eternal life in every human being nature is a sign of the existence of an immortal world. If you are interested in research in these fields, you can ask your scholars refer to the writings of the late Farabi and Avicenna in the peripatetic school, in addition to the books of Western philosophers in this field; in order to be cleared that the causality, on which any cognition is based, is reasonable not perceptible; and also they can refer to the books of the late Suhrawardi in Illuminationism, and to explain for Your Excellency that the body and any other material being needs pure light, which is devoid of sense; and the intuitive perception of human nature of its truth is devoid of sensory phenomena. And ask the great scholars to refer to the transcendental theosophy of Mulla Sadra - May Allah be pleased with him and will keep him with the prophets and the righteous - to make it clear that: the truth of science is incorporeal, and any thought is devoid of matter and not to be considered as material.
I do not bother you any longer and will not mention the books of the mystics, especially Mohiyeddin Ibn Arabi. If you would like to be informed of the debates of these great mystics, then send a number of your extreme intelligence scholars, who are expert and interested in such subjects, to Qom; so that, after a few years, with trust in God, they become aware of the depth of knowledge hierarchies, which could not be acquired without this journey.
Mr. Gorbachev, now after mentioning these issues, I ask you to study and research seriously about Islam. And this is not due to the need of Islam and Muslims to you, but it is due to the high and universal values of Islam which can be a means of comfort and salvation for all nations and solve the fundamental problems of humanity. A serious attitude toward Islam may save you forever from the issue of Afghanistan and the like in the world. We consider the Muslims of the world as Muslims of our country and we always associate ourselves with their destiny. With relative freedom of religious ceremonies in several republics of USSR, you showed that no longer you think the religion is the opium of the people.
Honestly, is the religion, which has made Iran like a firm mountain against the superpowers, the opium of the people? Is the religion, which calls for administering the justice in the world and demands human freedom from material and spiritual constraints, the opium of society? Yes, the religion which is being used to provide the material and spiritual assets of the Islamic and non-Islamic countries to the superpowers and powers and shout among the people that religion is separate from politics, is the opium of the people. But this is no longer a real religion, but is a religion which our people call ‘American religion’.
In conclusion, I explicitly declare that the Islamic Republic of Iran, as the largest and most powerful base of the Islamic world, can easily fill the religious vacuum of your system. And in any case, our country believes in the good neighborly relations and interrelationships as before, and respects it. ‘And Peace be upon him who follows the right path.’
1989-01-01
Rouhollah Al-Musawi al-Khamini
[Sahifeh Imam, volume 21, pp. 220-226]
To be continued…
Number of Visits: 3542
http://oral-history.ir/?page=post&id=8148