In the Name of God, the Beneficent, the Merciful, the subject I want to talk about today, inspired by these verses of Sura Al-Qasas and some verses from Sura Al-Saff, is the same as I have jotted down in the papers handed to you, namley ‘The Social Uprising of Prophethood’.
My discussion today is to clarify what this uprising is about. In our previous meeting I gave an account about ‘be’that’, the inception of the prophetic mission and the revolution that takes place in the heart and soul of the Prophet. I did say that this devoted servant of God was chosen by Him with regard to his high spiritual qualities to carry out the back-breaking mission of prophethood and the responsibilities and commitments that accompany it. I also told you that after receiving Revelations, this man was no more the person he was the day before or even an hour before.
Many so-called foreign orientalists and Islam researchers claim that our holy Prophet had, before the announcement of prophethood, studied extensively, acquired all knowledge there was at the time and thought and deliberated for long years about the mission and the revolution he began. These people are either evil-wishers towards Islam or are absolutely in error.
No, he did not come to call to Islam and its ensuing revolution through his own thoughts or insight. No, the true fact is that, as I mentioned, he was another person completely. This is true in the case of all divine prophets. Take the case of Moses: He is traveling with his wife and children and then, at a most sensitive moment in the middle of nowhere, he suddenly receives divine Revelation and changes spiritually into a new Moses with his mind and soul undergoing a revolution embracing absolutely new motivations and objectives. Thus those orientalists are absolutely wrong and the reason for their misjudgments is that they do not believe in any divine mission or any communications from the unseen worlds.
Now, as I mentioned earlier, that immense spiritual revolution engulfs the whole existence of the Prophet, and then he tries to create the same revolutionary change outside of himself, that is, in the community around him. Today, God willing, I talk about what I called ‘the social uprising of prophethood, but tomorrow and possibly the day after, I will draw your attention to another important aspect of the prophetic missions concerning the aims and objectives of divine prophethoods. This later discussion will answer the question of the aims and purposes of this prophetic social uprising or revolution. There are of course certain other facts relating to the present discussion which, if God will, I will explain in the days to come.
Now, on the question of prophetic uprising or revolution, we should know that nowadays terms such as ‘revolution’ are interlinked with violence and bloodshed whereas this word, as recorded in various dictionaries, means ‘a radical, fundamental, deep change’ of the current state of affairs; it is not necessarily accompanied with violence and bloodshed. During such radical changes there may be some clashes, and violence but the original term does not contain such consequences.
I could give a very simple example to illustrate the true meaning of the word. Let’s think of this mosque we are sitting in; if it were to change into a housing-complex where, some apartments each with a few room had to be set up, its basic structure would have to change; it had to be transformed. This radical, structural transformation could come about without bloodshed, but if there were forces resisting this big change, we could witness some violence.
Now, let’s think of a community of humans, say, some fifty thousand, five hundred thousand or five million people; they are living together in a society according to certain routine practices, a general order where all people walked the same paths of life together; in short, people dependent on one another.
Well, now we claim that such a community of many thousands may fall into two categories or two ways of living. One category or formation of the society is that a minority of the wealthy, the powerful and the so-called nobles dominate and rule the community; they choose what the majority should do, they lay down their own laws and regulations and if there should be any criticism of the dominant rulers, the critics or dissidents would be severely punished or put to death. But if some troubles arose or some catastrophes appeared, it was the ordinary people who became the victims; in one word, class differences and class injustices were rampant.
Thus if you notice that in a certain society there are such class differences, you should know that it is an unjust, ungodly community. Some theoreticians today try to make class differences sound very complicated and speak about class-warfare, etc. but a class society is like what I simply described. Therefore, if you see that the strata of the people in a given community are not equal in enjoying their rights, if there are privileged minorities who benefit from all kinds of facilities and opportunities in relation to others and if some ruling cliques force the people to be at their service as slaves, you are surely facing a class society. In such societies the government is in the hands of the small, powerful minority and all laws and regulation are simply passed to serve it only.
Now, we could surmise a second type of society. In this society of many millions, none is superior to others, there are no upper or lower classes, not only that but no individual has the right to suppress others, all sorts of injustice are removed and they all, millions of them, are submissive to an omnipotent, omniscient Being, yes, it is God Almighty. So, as we see, we have two types of society or two social structures: one in which the majority of the people are slaves and prisoners of some powerful minority, and another type or social formation in which people are not chained by the dominant system; they are free men, so to speak. In the first type of society, economy works in favour of the upper, dominant class, the government is theirs, benefits, bonuses and privileges belong to them or to their closest partners and associates. In the second type of society, the classless society, the economy is for the public as a whole, the government is by all and for all, the right and laws are passed for the good of the whole society or nation; in short, good or bad is shared by all and the state of affairs is like a paradise on earth.
I could go on talking about these two systems for hours, but in such a mosque, where people from all walks of life take part, I try to explain things in the simplest statements possible, so that all participants may gain something from our discussions. Briefly, we have two systems of social association: one in which you witness class differences, oppression and suppression, bullying the ordinary people and ruling over them by force. And another, in which you find human values, justice, freedom and lack of exploitation. And I do stress on the word freedom. The reason for this is that today some schools of thought and some states claiming to follow such ideologies claim that they have established such classless societies in which nobody is the servant or slave of other people and all people are benefiting from the welfare that is publicly and equally distributed. So you see that both systems we talked about did exist in the history of mankind.
The first kind of discriminatory societies were those set up by the Caesars, oppressive kings and despots. The second types of societies were those that the great prophets of God were establishing. Here you may ask: Did the prophets bring about such communities? The answer is: Yes, they did. There are references to these communities in the Quran; Prophet Solomon, King Saul and Prophet Moses and his coming to the Holy Land. Where did Moses want to take the Sons of Israel to? He intended to take them to take land to set up such a divine-inspired society, a sublime social order. I shall talk about these second types of societies in detail later. Briefly speaking we have had those two social systems in the history of the world. The bad kind, the one rejected by human wisdom and condemned by all humanitarian thinkers were set up by powerful, political rulers who were also anti-religion elements, and the good, kind system was established by the spiritual, God-inspired prophets and the leaders of the faithful. This second point is self-explanatory: Why do prophets rise up in different communities? Obviously they come to change the evil social system into benevolent, egalitarian ones; this is the spiritual core of our discussion today.
The picture of God’s prophets in the mind of ordinary people is often not very clear. These people imagine that prophets appear in certain communities, like a great learned man endowed with vast knowledge, who find a place to reside so that people would go to them as individuals or in groups to benefit from their profound knowledge! Such simple-minded people suppose that our prophets, say Abraham Khaleel-al-Allah (the true friend of God) or Moses Kaleem-al-Allah (the one who speaks with God) used to go to a certain community, reside in a small or big house and dedicate a few hours of their time for the faithful, or that the infidels would go to meet them and they would enjoin them to do good, forbid them of doing evil; they would also advise them to fear God and argue that God truly exists; they pass their lives in this manner and then pass away!
No, the prophets do not behave so at all. When a prophet is raised by God Almighty and receives Revelations, he is no more the person he was an hour before, as I already explained. He is now the leader of a social uprising, he is now a radically restless personality and his whole mind and soul is aflame to carry out God’s injunctions. He takes a look at the society he lives in and sees that its whole social structure is out of order and that this structure is built on bases against human nature. He comes to the conclusion that this social system must be destroyed to be built again on benevolent, egalitarian and God-inspired bases. To him this society or community saturated with class divisions, injustice, discrimination, chaos and inhuman practices must be changed and turned into a monotheistic society.
Well, which is the monotheistic, classless society? In our previous lectures, on monotheism, I briefly mentioned that belief in monotheism means the negation and rejection of classes because it is under the rule, governance and sovereignty of God; in other word, everything: laws, regulations, traditions and culture are subject to God’s inspirations. Monotheism means that all people are servants of God and they are not servants or slaves of other men; they are freemen in the true sense of the word. When a prophet enters the community, his intention is to change and transform that class-divided community and to establish a monotheistic, classless society free from all sorts of oppression and injustice under the ultimate rule of God.
I could name some non-religious leaders in the world who tried to change their societies through bloodless revolutions, but in this discussion I do not want to step out of our religious framework. Of course during any radical change or revolution, there could be some clashes between groups of people, but the point I stress on was that the prophetic, revolutionary movement did not necessarily involve violence and bloodshed. On the other hand, millions of people died in the course of meaningless wars as the First World War that started after an Austrian arch-duke was assassinated.
Let’s look at the case of Prophet Moses again. He goes to the Pharaoh and warns him: you should not be such a cruel despot, you ought not to oppress the Israelites so harshly and you must not divide the citizens of your country into various, discriminatory classes. Well, the Pharaoh did not listen to him and ridiculed him; otherwise Moses could have managed to set up a classless, monotheistic and just society. But why is it that we do witness violence and bloodshed after God’s prophets attempt to carry out their divine missions? Well, the Quran says: “Many big groups of men of God fought by the side of their prophets…”. Yes many faithful people helped the prophets of God and fought alongside them. The other point that confirms this fact is the legalization of Jihad in Islam. The real cause of such clashes and fighting campaigns is that the privileged, dominant class feels that these prophetic missions are directed at removing their unjust, comfortable lives. If the leader of these privileged groups could, like many figures in history who underwent some spiritual change, understand the truth about these prophetic missions, no fighting, no violence an no bloodshed would have been necessary, but most of them were not ready to give up their privileges, profits and the easy, comfortable lives which they enjoyed at the expense of the exploitation of lower classes.
So we see that prophets try to execute a radical transformation. As an example, our own holy Prophet, in Arabia of the time, objected to a small, aristocratic group who owned all the wealth and property there was while other people, such as slaves, the weaklings and the down-trodden were being harshly exploited and tortured? The holy Prophet declared that all people were equal and the small minority led by influential men such as Abu-Jahl, Abu-Lahab and Waleed-bin-Mughaira. According to a Narration, the holy Prophet said that ‘men were equal as the teeth in a comb’ and that ‘you all are descendant of Adam and Adam is of clay’. How beautifully the egalitarian status of all humans is expressed by the holy Prophet.
That’s why the Prophet rejects the wealthy and the powerful of Mecca who lived in big houses, who were well-fed, all trading belonged to them only and others had to be their servants, slaves, camel-drivers; and the administration of Meccan affairs was also in the hands of these wealthy few. Under such miserable circumstances the Prophet declares that these so-called lords of Mecca were not superior to their servants in creation and in God’s sight.
Thus our holy Prophet made such a new declaration about his own community and in fact the mission of all prophets of God was to transform their unjust, oppressive and unbalanced societies into pleasant, harmonious and just societies; they all struggled to achieve such objectives; there was no prophet who only preached and only talked about some small, unimportant aspects of life.
Among God’s prophet we have those, literally called ‘ the arch-prophets’ who were the pivots or axes of divine revolutions and from among other prophets, some followed those revolutions, some tried to complete them , some tried to correct the deviations that came about later and to create new revolutionary waves on the fundaments set up by former prophets just like what Imam Ali (AS), Imam Husain (AS), the other Imams, the ulama of the Islamic Umma practiced, and, of course, what will be done by our 12th Imam (AS) when be reappears.
At this juncture I would like to raise questions which you may say no one has ever asked. But let’s first cite some of such questions: Why shouldn’t the Age of Ignorance be allowed to run its natural course? Why was the establishment of a just system necessary? Why should prophets go through those tortuous, troublesome and dangerous conditions, or, as the idiom has it ‘go through fire and water’ to change the wrong system into a right system? What right do they have to interfere with the traditional routine of affairs? Hasn’t it been said that ‘the right belongs to the one who wins or dominate others’? Let whoever becomes powerful enjoy his power or wealth and the weakling, hell with them! They should not have been poor and weak and miserable! Should a prophet of God go through fire and water to change their conditions?! You may say that nobody asks such questions but I tell you that in the mind and heart of some people who haven’t comprehended the true nature and mission of prophethood, such doubts and dubiousness do exist. These questions, however, have not ever been answered. I try to explain such implied doubts.
Well, the short answer is that prophets do not go through risks and changes uselessly or purposelessly or in vain, but they do see that what goes on in the community is against the human nature and the universal order of things.
The words ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are frequently used in different verses of the Quran which often symbolize the confrontation between two antagonistic groups or classes. The point I meant to explain here regarding the prophetic mission is this: humans are created with very particular characteristics and attributes; they have particular needs and enjoy special opportunities. Do not forget this point, while I add: the world and the universe in which humans live have also been created with special conditions, with certain qualities that constantly move towards certain direction. This immense cosmos of ours of which some parts seem so far from one another at the first glance: the Sun millions of kilometers away, the stars in the sky and, on the earth, its plants, animals, stones, etc. seem to have no relations with other parts. This is the apparent, short-sighted view of things. But all these parts, in the sight of those believing in God the Creator are an inseparable entity or indivisible unity. All there is in the cosmos are parts of one entity and all those parts and particles are moving in a coordinated process.
In a human body, the eye has a certain function, so does the stomach, so does the brain and so does the nervous system. The sum-total of all these members has a common purpose: the person staying alive, being able to move, the continuation of his efforts and his thinking power. The sum-total of all the components forming the cosmos is also as a unified unit. Other than humans all parts and particles of the universe need to be thought about more deeply. The other day I said: do not expect such sophisticated discussion to be like drinking a glass of water! You should truly muse over these things. Always remember that humans have intellect and they are free to make choices; it is men who could grudgingly oppose the state of affairs and even proceed in the opposite direction of Creation. All other created beings have no such choice. The caravans of the universe are moving in a certain direction and it’s only human beings who could do otherwise. If other elements happen to go astray, it’s because of the will and the intention of some humans. Think of the material ‘uranium’. If it is split, it could be used to remedy dozens of illnesses but, instead of this fruitful exploitation, atom bombs are made to mass-murder millions of human beings. Uranium, per se, never chooses to carry out such mass crimes. Take the chemical case of the LSD which could have been employed to cure many ills, but now it has become the drug to stupefy young men and make them unaware of what goes on around them; the fault does not lie with that poor plant but the way evil humans exploit it; it’s man’s fault again.
I want to ask you to pay particular attention to what I’m going to add to our discussion: all created beings in the universe, the non-humans, lack intelligence as far as we know; all non-human components in the universe do not enjoy the power of decision-making and free will to make choices or options. All other non-human elements are, willy-nilly, moving in the direction already set for them. But man possesses free will and therefore he could grudgingly move against this universal current or not to follow this universal caravan; and it is man who even forces non-human beings or animals to go astray! As I said uranium is found in nature and man has succeeded in splitting the atoms of this element which then could be used to cure various diseases, but man uses this to make atom bombs to mass-murder thousands or millions of people! Another example is the chemical stuff LSD which again could be used to heal certain illnesses but man turns into a tough narcotic drug that makes many young people addicted to it and ruins their lives. Well, whose fault is it, the plant’s or the element’s? No, the fault or sin lies in human intelligent gone wrong.
So you see, in this universal caravan we portrayed, the Sun is moving in its set direction, so do all the stars and galaxies, all created beings, small or big, and the components of this immeasurable cosmos are going their own predestined ways. It’s only this being called human who could choose to be evil and satanic; this active, intelligent being called man, could choose to go in different direction, left and right, straight or away, and even force the poor, dumb animals to follow him! Uranium, LSD, Morphine and many other elements have been put to lethal ends; this is the particularly great quality of human beings!
Now, exactly because man has this great potential and free will, the necessity of some laws to direct him becomes obvious; laws to show him the true direction of this universal movement and tell him that if you choose to transgress, then you have stepped out of the truthfully orchestrated harmony of the universe. What is the title of this law so necessary for humanity? We may call it ‘the law of the Truth’. Why is it truthful? Because it conforms to the nature and truth of the universe and does conform with the nature of man, as a part of this immense, universal order; it does him good because it does conform with his own nature.
Now we come to the question of ‘wrong and false’. What is false or wrong? False is the law, the way of life and the direction that is against the nature of man and the whole universal order. False is that which the satanic powers and oppressors bring about to deviate from truthful paths for their own benefits. The prophets of God always offer the right, truthful path to humanity and fight for the removal of falsehood.
The society ruled by Pharaoh is divided into various classes of people; he favours the upper class and grants them all sorts of privileges while all other classes are oppressed and exploited. This social order with its unjust laws and regulations is a typical case of falsehood. The prophets come to the scene to overthrow such false administrations; they do their best to replace such false systems with rightful ones. Thus the answer to our previous question ‘why does the holy Prophet of Islam go through fire and water and risks his life on this path’ is quite clear: he intends to replace falsehood with truth. That is why the prophets are always restlessly and untiringly striving on the path of God and they never, for a moment, forget their objective of replacing ‘false’ with ‘truth’.
Let’s now sum up what was said in our discussion today. The prophets strive to change the dominant system of ‘Ignorance’; probably the best description for those societies- with their class division, oppression, exploitation, inhuman practices and other negative qualities- is ‘systems of ignorance’, which stand against human nature. The prophets want to replace these systems by a divine, social order based on monotheism; they want the society to be a godly society managed by divine laws, and their struggle against despotic and oppressive rules is based on the slogan of monotheism. I shall, if God will, speak about the nature and characteristics of those classes who opposed the prophetic missions. Well, the verses I selected for today’s recitation- with my explanations- are taken from the Sura Al-Qasas because they explicitly express the conditions prevailing in the Egyptian community under Pharaoh and the aims and objectives of Prophet Moses who intended to change them radically; these verses also give us the good news that the oppressed of the earth will ultimately be victorious.
Now please look at the papers I distributed among you which also contain my short explanations about the verses; and those who have copies of the Quran with them, please look at the verses we shall read. Well, the Sura begins: “In the Name of God, the Beneficent, the Merciful, and then the first verse is T.S.M. (Taa, Seen, Meem); Quranic commentators have interpreted these in different ways, they are, however, not very important in our discussion. The next verses are more important: “These are the verses of the Book, in clarity supreme; We will relate to you with truth, parts of the history related to Moses and Pharaoh, with the view of doing good to men of faith.” The style of the Quran is to inform us about some dimension of an historical event with a special, instructive purpose, and here the part selected is the one that clarifies the victory of truth against falsehood.
The Quran goes on to say that we narrate their story, not as legends of the past, but as truth for the faithful, for it’s really beneficial for those who have believed in you. And when they came to know about the history of Moses, they were in a position to choose their own path and their own faith.
The Quran then informs us about the factual reason for the struggle of Prophet Moses against Pharaoh, his arrogance and his evil deeds: “Now Pharaoh turned into a grand and haughty tyrant in the land, he made his folk into many a caste: one group of them he viciously oppressed, putting their sons to death but sparing daughters; he was indeed one of the most corrupting, evil-doers.” He divided the nation into upper and lower classes and chose himself as the most important in the upper, privileged class and as a god for all people. He committed another heinous crime by oppressing and weakening the lower classes, deprived them of any opportunity to growth, progress and happiness and left such opportunities only at the disposal of courtiers and his nearest and dearest! Even today in the so-called ‘third world’ countries most opportunities for education and other social advantages are at the disposal of small minorities, and some of those from lower classes who happen to be educated, are at the service of the exploiting ruling groups. Anyway, one of Pharaoh’s satanic deeds was that he had the youth among the lower classes murdered and so he stopped an increase in the population of the weaker classes. He knew that it would be the young generation who could rise against his oppressive rule. There are certain reports that he received some prophecies warning that one day a young man by the name of Moses would put an end to his rule. Even if such reports do not seem to be authentic, we may guess that he, as a shrewd, intelligent despot, knew that it was the young generation who could oppose him.
The Quran then tells us that Pharaoh did not kill their women; he probably had a dual purpose: either to lead these women to corruption and prostitution or, as the Israelite daughters did not use to marry non-Jews, to make them marry others and this way to integrate them in the Egyptian society. In this respect, I think, when I was explaining some verses in the Sura Al-Baqara, I mentioned that the Israelites lived among the Egyptian nation but resisted against the dominant ideology of Pharaoh, kept their customs and traditions, and held on to their noble, godly ideas.
Then we read in the Quran that he was truly a corrupt, evil-doer; he brought about corruption in the society, corrupted the nature of humanity and corrupted the world of his time. He also stopped man’s progress to spiritual elevation.
Next the Quranic verse talks about the good news of God’s promise to the oppressed: “And We intended to be Gracious to the people who were oppressed and weakened in the land, and make them leaders of the faith and grant them the honour to be the Heirs.” This means that God’s tradition and His creational will have a certain direction, that is, honouring the oppressed and making the Heirs to benefit from God’s bounties on the earth. This does not only apply to the Sons of Israel but includes all oppressed people throughout human history, past, present and future.
And the next verse in the same Sura says: “And grant them power in the land and let Pharaoh, Haamaan and their great host be witnesses of what their dreaded most to suffer at their land.” God Almighty says that We shall honour the oppressed and ultimately let them rule the earth in justice and truth and let them defeat people such as Pharaoh, Haamaan and others like them. Pharaoh, of course, is the topmost figure of the ruling clique and Haamaan seems to belong to the upper class that enjoys all sorts of amenities and privileges but he and all his class are servants of Pharaoh and I think that the word mala’ in the Quran refer to this class; I’ll talk about this wealthy, powerful class who enjoy all sorts of comforts at a later occasion.
Finally, as mentioned in the Quran, Pharaoh and all his warriors are destroyed by the same people whom they always dreaded. We should also know that the oppressed and the exploited always form the majority in all communities and these are the people to whom the good news of victory is given.
The next verse in the same Sura concerns the birth of Moses and his miraculous life which shows the omnipotence of God. Today I did not touch upon the subject of how the oppressed shall defeat the oppressors because the main concern of our discussion was to show that God’s prophets come to do away with the ignorant, despotic, ungodly system and replace them by a just, monotheistic order.
