In the Name of God, the Beneficent, the Merciful, monotheists say that beyond what we see and observe there lies a Truth for superior and greater than what we observe; if that Truth were not there, none of the existing phenomena would come about. The materialists say: No, we do not believe in anything except what we could observe; we have searched in our laboratories and under our microscopes and we did not find that metaphysical being claimed by you, monotheists. Here we will not engage in the debates and controversies between monotheists and materialists and the pros and cons they offer in their disputes. There are many articles and books in this respect you may refer to. Here we are concerned with explaining these two world-views; we are not concerned with ancient materialists such as Democritus who lived many centuries ago.
In this discussion we deal with the materialists of our own time; we believe that these people are disappointed with religious and they are spiritually frustrated. I try to explain this. Many of them believe that today the administration of the world, leading the people, establishing justice and removed of discriminations are not feasible except in a material and materialistic frame and they reject monotheism on this basis. If you study the thoughts and writings of those who during the last fifty or sixty year, were absorbed by different, ‘isms’ with materialistic outlooks, you will find out the same thing we just expressed, that is they do not have a grudge against God! And they do not reject God because they have some rational or philosophical arguments to prove God’s non-existence. No, you can’t find even one person among the materialists in the world, from early days until the present, who claimed he could prove that God did not exist. Those who talked about this subject have always said: it has not been proven to me, I don’t comprehend it, it is beyond my knowledge or have doubts about it! In fact the holy Quran says exactly the same about them: “Except for this our present life, there is nothing, they claim; we live and die, and nought would destroy us but Time. Indeed they have no knowledge of this, unwittingly they only guess.”
As you see, it is not the question of having or lacking a rational, materialistic doctrine that makes the materialists deny monotheism; the fact is that they suppose their materialistic world-view has a better potential to administer world affairs and solve world problems. Their supposition is that their school of thought would be effective in removing oppression and despotism and establish justice and equality which, in their belief, religions are unable to realize. And why do they say that religion cannot perform these duties? The answer is that they do not know much about the truth and reality of religion; their knowledge about divine religions is superficial and based on certain superstitions and what is believed by laymen and ignorant reports, so they say ‘This is what religion is about, religions make no differentiation between oppressors and the oppressed, they are like some sort of relieving drugs, narcotics and opium for the people’.
Obviously, when you’re faced with this kind of reasoning, the best response is this: We agree with you, if you’re referring to a religion that cooperates with the oppressors, that does nothing for the oppressed and is of no use for the people’s present or future conditions, then you do have our consent to reject such a religion and never believe it for a second, for that religion is not a divine religion but a false one. The religion sent down by God is not like what they imagine; a divine religion has certain signs and characteristics that make it a divine religion. I shall be telling you more in this respect in our future discussions on prophets and prophethood.
Anyway, the Quran says: “We have already sent Our messengers with clearest Signs, and We have sent the Book, and the Balance down with them that mankind may stand forth in justice…”. This means that God has sent His prophets to go to the people and convince them with clear, solid arguments and that He has strengthened them with all the necessary, intellectual and practical notions to judge people with their differences and disputes. God says ‘our prophets’, that is, not only Moses or Jesus or our holy Prophet, but all prophets were assigned the same duties and the same mission. And what is this mission? The purpose is that humankind could lead lives on the basis of equality and justice; this is the divine religion. Thus if you observe that a certain religion moves in the opposite direction of religious philosophy, you must know that it is not a divine religion or, at best, it has been corrupted and gone astray by the passage of time; such cults, creeds or religions are not revealed by God Almighty.
So we may address the materialists of our day: O You who claim to have found out that religions are unable and incompetent to administer human societies, which religion have you studied, did you study anything about Islam? Do you know anything about the ways and the behaviour of the Alavite, Islamic rulers? Was there anything wrong in their administration of people’s affairs? Have you read anything about that kind of Islam that removes discriminations amongst people, that negates class differences at the time when such unequal divisions were rampant in the world, that takes away the unjust wealth and property in the hands of a few and distributes them among the people? The Islam that provides equal opportunities for all strata of the people, that replaces the rule of evil oppressors and leaves it into the hands of those who respect and execute divine laws; the Islam that changes the status of slaves, the oppressed, the ones who commit the worst crimes for money or other vile incentives and turns them into respected, moral individuals. Which religion are the materialists taking about?
We must further know that the kind of training and education taught by our holy Prophet was not individualistic; he didn’t take one person along to talk to him in private and recite some magic spells in his ears in order that he would convert to Islam. Nor did he sit in a corner and only preached people about God and divine matters. No, he did set up a social order, he established an Islamic community as strong as steel in a special form and framework. In the age of ignorance dominating the Arabian Peninsula, he led people and brought them into a virtuous, human and rightful society. So if some materialists claim that Islam opposes progress, justice, safety and security and proper provisions for human needs, they are absolutely unfair and wrong.
Certain learned men who had grown up in the false atmosphere of Christianity in the past and had observed the fabricated intercessions of Jesus Christ by priests who received money and gold for such false intercessions and the selling of land and estates in Paradise and other similar irreligious practices, could justifiably say that this kind of religion was of no use. But these days when the sun of Islam is shining again and there are so many sources, researches and historical accounts about the beliefs and practices of true Islam, none could claim that Islam was unable to lead humanity towards clean, pure and divine goals and to administer the world.
As I said if those who reject religions, are talking about false religions, ungodly religions, religions with pleasing appearances but with evil, innate natures, religions that foster divisions, pessimisms and fratricides, religions that advise the poor: you must be content with your conditions, and tell the rich, if you donate certain amounts of money to churches or to some religious institute, your ill-gained wealth is okay and you could go on enjoying it. If you’re talking about such ‘religions’, then we all agree with you that these religions are godless and false.
We have already read in the Quran: “O You believers, certainly there are many rabbins and priests who dispossess men of their wealth in falsehood, and debar them from the Way of God, those who amass silver and gold and spend not in God’s cause…”. The Quran says that they not only usurp people’s money and property but they also help others to deviate from the Path of God, that is, they are obstacles in the path of spiritual elevation. They were not content with taking other people’s property, no, they, according to the Quran, acted as hindrance on the path of God.
Well, what we said so far was, briefly speaking, a general look at belief in monotheism as an outlook, in order to answer such questions as: Is there a God or not? Is there anything beyond this material world? Is there a supreme metaphysical power? I told you that monotheists and materialists answer these questions in their own different ways, and I added that we should not be concerned about these disputes and challenges for our present discussions; there are many books in this respect which you could read if you were interested.
However, there are some important points about the Islamic school of thought that is necessary for all to know and I mean to talk about them today, because today is Friday and maybe some of you will not be able to attend tomorrow’s session. Well, the crux of the matter is that monotheism should not be considered as a short, simple answer to a scientific, intellectual question but as a phenomenon the knowledge or lack of knowledge of which is vital and decisive. Now I explain this.
Imagine you are travelling in a car with a friend of yours; the lands on the two sides of the road seem to be arid, barren. You say to your friend that these lands are salty and unfertile; nothing could be cultivated in them. But your friend says: on the contrary, these lands are good for planting and cultivating such-and-such products. You continue such a dispute while driving away in your car at the speed of 100 kilometers per hour. Now what’s the practical use of this conversation? Neither of you means to stop the car, test the soil and find out whether the lands are fertile or not! And if either of you verbally proves his point of view, there would be no results. You are not going to stop or go back to prove your point; you are continuing your journey with those lands out of sight. These opposing views have no effect on your friendship, in your life and in your future.
Yet another time you’re travelling in a car with a friend and you’re speeding up to reach your destination sooner. Suddenly your friend says: this road will take us to the north of the country while we meant to travel south! He says: no, I don’t think so, and you say: but I’m sure we are going north. In this difference of opinions, if your friend proves that the road will take you to the northern parts of the country, you must stop the car, turn back and even drive faster because you’ve wasted some time on the wrong road. Anyway, the driver must stop, look at his road-map carefully or ask the people about the right road to the south. The result of this kind of question and answer or conversation is decisive and vital, and the question about the monotheistic and materialistic outlooks is of this nature, so the debate on monotheism or the unity of God is of immense importance.
The way some ordinary people or some irresponsible persons talk about God without any commitments is very different from the way a responsible person discusses monotheism. The former raises the question of monotheism like this: ‘is there a God or not?’ Well, if there is, what shall we do, and if there is no God, what are we to do? What effects shall it have in our lives? What changes will it bring about in our social order? If there was a supreme God, what would be the fate of the capitalist system or that of the super-powers? What about a president elected in one of these countries, how does he act if he did believe in God or didn’t believe in God? Would it make any difference in his behavior in either case? A belief in God, when this belief has no effect in the conditions of trusts, cartels, different sorts of capitalism and its ensuing discriminations, is of no use. If the leader of a certain country says he believes in God but his belief has no practical realization, then he has just answered an intellectual question and nothing beyond it. A belief in God for an ordinary person, for a leader, for a society or nation is meaningful only when it is followed by practice, by what it results in, by what it brings about for the people and by the kind of life and social system it offers.
We usually think that monotheism is something to be made clear in our minds but in our life it has no effects and no follow-ups, and even if it does have some effects, it affects our personal lives only, not our social life, that is, you will own the same wealth, the same factory or company, the same cars, the same relations of employers and workers and the ownership of lands whether you are a monotheist or a materialist!
Let us have a look at the world and imagine two capitalists, two big businessmen, two factory owners or two of those so-called sultans of industries in some famous, capitalist countries and assume that one is a believer in God and the other is an infidel; now are there any differences in their outlooks towards their capital and wealth and their employers and workers? Perhaps one of them attends church services on Sundays or donates some money to a certain church or a lousy priest to beseech the pardon of God for him and bring Paradise a few kilometers closer to him! But would all this phony behaviour leave any effect on his actual relation with his employees or his greed for wealth or his view-point about the people in general? If the answer is no, then this sort of empty belief in God is no different from polytheism or godlessness.
The kind of monotheism Islam invites to is not like the useless question and answer in the first example of those two persons I cited. The answer to it is far higher than a simple answer to a simple question. What is Islamic monotheism then? Islamic monotheism is a revelation and inspiration on social relations, on forming governments, on people’s obligations, on society’s goal, on the process to reach these goals and on the responsibilities people have before God, with one another, in their societies and vis-à-vis all other phenomena in the world; this is Islamic monotheism. Islamic monotheism is not limited to just declaring that ‘there is one God only’, not two or three. No true belief in God means that God encompasses your own existence, your community and the world around you and that none other than God has the right to rule over them.
When we declare the oneness of God, we do announce that whatever you have at your disposal, your wealth and the wealth of all other people are God’s and we are all debtors to Him. Well then, who could be a monotheist under such circumstances? If a friend of yours appoints you as a trustee and leaves some amount of money in trust with you, then you will surely wait for his order or his hand-writing to give some money to a certain person, transfer some money or do otherwise. But do you ever consider yourself the owner of that money if you’re a virtuous trustee? Certainly not. A Narration from the holy Prophet says: ‘All property and wealth is God’s and He has made them as trusts with the people’. This is a requisite of monotheism.
If you believe in monotheism, you would not agree with class differences or distinctions and discrimination among the people; they would be meaningless in your sight. A society containing upper and lower classes is obviously not monotheistic. Monotheism enjoins: ‘You are all descendants of Adam, and Adam was created out of the earth’ (Narration of the holy Prophet). The only thing that makes a man distinguished is his nearness to God and his god-fearing virtues; nothing else, whoever is more watchful of God’s injunctions, he has a higher status.
The societies wherein you come across numerous shapes and forms of discrimination, injustice and inequality, are not based on the belief in God the One. In such societies you may ask: why is so-and-so enjoying all kinds of amenities while others are deprived of them? The answer you hear is: well, he is a member of the aristocracy, he is a lord! There is no monotheism (Towheed) in societies where people are not equal, because, as I explained in detail yesterday, all people are creatures and servants of God; they all are equal in the Sight of God. In a monotheistic society, none would be excluded from servitude of God under such pretexts as His son, His spouse and the like; in such a society you could not worship anything or anyone beside God Almighty. In fact, servitude to God means freedom from all forms of human servitude.
Here it may be interesting to tell you something in our own history. When the Muslim army entered Persia of that day, an Arab envoy was sent to the court of the powerful Sassanid Empire. An ordinary Arab with worn-out, cheap clothes entered the King’s pompous castle bearing a letter to be handed to the King himself. Do you think that he feared the soldiers, the generals and the courtiers present? No, not at all, though any ordinary person with no firm faith would have been shaking with fear at such awe-inspiring atmosphere. He stepped forward towards the King but he did not move to take the letter from him; instead some courtiers approached him to take it from him. He said: no, I should give it only to him. So he went forward, laid one leg on the King’s throne and gave him the letter. It is reported that he was asked: Why have you come to our country, and he uttered a few sentence in reply that I think they must be written in gold on large posters and displayed throughout the world for humanity to see what Islam stands for and what true Islamic concept are. He said: “…in order to help people turn away from worshipping men and help them to serve God Almighty…”
Now what is people’s servitude and slavery? Let me cite another historic example. One of the kings of the ancient Achaemenid dynasty orders all families to send their young sons to join the army in his military campaign against certain enemies. An old man approached the generals or the King and said: three of my sons have joined your army, please have mercy and allow my fourth son to stay at home, because I and my wife are too old to take care of ourselves; he was let out without promising him anything. The following day the soldiers marched out and they reached the exit gates of the town, the three brothers noticed that their fourth brother had been quartered and his body parts were hanging at the sides of the gates! A warning to parents of families not to make exception for their youth to obey the orders of the King! Well, this is real slavery of the people. This means that people have no right to express their opinions or their requests. No, they must approve of tyranny and oppression as natural conditions. This is the ugliest and bitterest kind of slavery; this is a most deceitful kind of slavery. Why so? Because it is worse than other open kinds of slavery. Let’s make a comparison with those colonialist, greedy Europeans who took innocent Africans into slavery; they did capture these poor, innocent Africans, shaved their heads and sold them in other countries that needed their labour; these inhuman slave-traders did their terrible business openly! But the kind of mental and psychological postures I explained earlier was worse.
Let us go back to our narration of Arab-Muslim envoy. He said: we have come to free people from worshipping you, from worshipping your generals, your governors, and from all your appointees. And then when they are free men, what should they do? Are they to be left in limbo?! No, ‘we would lead them to worshipping God the One’. They will be servants of God which means being free, being the master of your own life and treading on the path to spiritual perfection. In a true Islamic society, people are servants of God, not servants of the powerful. Even at the time when the Islamic society had gone a little astray, after the demise of the holy Prophet, the then Khalif addressed people in a mosque and said: ‘if I go astray, you must put me right’, and a Beduin Arab gets up, pulls out his sword and says: ‘with this I’ll put you right’! This was an outcome of the Quranic and Prophetic education people had received. An ordinary Muslim spoke to the Khalif in such a brave tone. Was he kicked out of the mosque? Was he arrested as a trouble-maker and thrown into prison? Was he put to death? No, nothing happened to him; he had spoken harshly but logically. This was the sort of freedom Islam had brought about; Islamic freedom meant following divine, humane laws and principles. If the highest authority followed Islamic aspirations, he would be listened to; otherwise people had the right to change him.
Let us now cite the complete utterance of the Arab envoy when he addressed Yazdgerd, the Persian emperor: ‘we have come to take people away from worshipping men and into worshipping God the One, from the narrowness of their world into the vastness of this world and the next world’. What is this narrow world? It designates a world where people have no proper outlook or insight, when they look around, they don’t see anything but worldly attractions and passing pleasures, nothing but egotism and self-worship, and what really attract them are cheap, momentary, mean profits or joys; this shows the behaviour of the ruling classes under Yazdgerd.
Of course people in general were not content with this kind of despotic state but they were afraid of Yazdgerd’s officials and henchmen; they feared that they would lose their meagre, humiliated lives if they uttered a word of dissatisfaction and, as the Muslim envoy, said ‘their world was small and gloomy’ and the horizon of their outlooks, was very limited. On the contrary, a true Muslim has a vast horizon in front of him both in this world and the next. For him everything is a means of reaching a higher goal and his world-outlook is infinite, because God Almighty is infinite. For Muslims everything in the world, worldly life, money and wealth, comfort, loves and affections serve as means to gain God’s consent. All such worldly deeds are of value only when they are fulfilled in the Path of God (Fi-sabili-Allah). If their love, their reputation, their property, their position, their lives and children are not there in the path of God and in the way of performing their Islamic obligations, they would be of no value. In Muslims’ outlook, there is no end to this world because this world and the next world are closely bound together. But in the sight of those who happen to be servants and slaves of other imperfect humans, the world is small, short-lived and very limited. For Muslims, on the contrary, death is like a window through which you could see grand gardens, great panoramas and numerous worlds and universes; so worldly death is not awful and has no importance for a true believer.
The notes I have given you contain a brief sketch of what I have been talking about. Certainly there are many more dimensions to the question of monotheism which, God willing, I will try to talk about later in a more orderly manner; so far I have been explaining some generalities on this subject and, in fact, I have discussed one dimension of monotheism only.
Now let us go back to the verses we quoted from the Quran at the beginning of this meeting. Verse 165 (the Cow) tells us that among people there are those who set up idols along with God Almighty, that is, they worship idols, humans or things instead of God and give the sort of love and adoration worthy of God to these weakling idols. After this, in the middle of the verse, we are told that the believers love and worship God much more strongly and on a much higher level. God is adored and worshipped by believers in ways that are absolutely different from how some men adore false gods, superficial entities, gods of passions and lusts and human gods who rule over them.
Then, all of a sudden, the verse shows us a scene on the Day of Resurrection and tells us that on that Day when all members of the human race, believers, non-believers, infidels, oppressors and sinners, are gathered, all means of divine mercy and divine retribution are also witnessed by all. Of course we could not comprehend the nature of these means and instruments of God; in this world we cannot understand or imagine anything about in that coming world. Generally speaking, we may guess that all necessary means, methods and agencies for either retribution or mercy and compassion are present. And then all the despots, oppressors and evil-doers suddenly notice that they are absolutely powerless and that all power is in the hand of God absolutely.
This scene is rather strange to some people, as in this world each person has a certain power, everyone is able to do something; the upper classes have much more power than the down- trodden but even the lower classes had some kind of power for themselves. Also those people who serve the tyrants feel that they are powerful because they are close to those more powerful oppressors like a fox that has tied up its tail to the tail of a camel!
Now on the Last Day, the Day of Resurrection, in that greatest gathering, whoever looks around or thinks of himself, finds out that he is helpless, and everything and all is in the Hand of God. Yes, as the Quran says: “The Day whereon they all rise up, when naught about them will be hidden from God; and who shall reign supreme (whose is the Kingdom) on that Day? The Almighty, God the One.” And now that powerful oppressor or the ones who helped him in his cruelties, look around and see that there is no sign of those false powers, the castles they lived in and their arrogance and imperial-mindedness; this is most astonishing to them. These are strange scenes; remember the two groups, one group served and worshipped the other group! The latter were the most obedient servants of the former, and now they’re facing each other and challenging each other!
The Quran clearly gives a warning to the despots and oppressors in the world: if they could visualize the Day of Resurrection, the Day when all power is God’s and God is most harsh in retribution, what would they do? No doubt, if they could fathom such scenes, they would stop their oppression and cruelties; if they had the wisdom and insight to think of that Day, they would have changed their behaviour. The verse 165 (the Cow) expresses the same warning: “And then the leaders will declare themselves clear from their followers, and all their ties will break asunder once they witness the Scourge with their own eyes”. The next verse shows the state of mind the followers are in: “And those who had been following them will say ‘if only we could get another chance, we would surely disown them just as they denounced us this Day. And thus God will display their deeds to them as intense regrets, and they will never find a way out of the Fire”. As you see, the followers and servants of the evil rulers and other devilish oppressors do wish that they could return to the world again to make up for their past deeds; they are absolutely regretful but there is no way out.
The point I mean to emphasize on is that these people, these followers will receive retribution because they adored and served others instead of God the One, their practice was in fact, anti-monotheism, against the Unity of God Almighty.
I now ask our Quran reciters, either Mr. Rezayee or Mr. Fatemi, to recite the Ayas we have talked about, especially the Ayat-al-Kursi which we have been advised to read over and over again; the Ayas about monotheism should really be ingrained in our minds and souls.
