In the Name of God, the Beneficent, the Merciful, so far I explained that prophethood was a social uprising and I clarified that one of the fundamental principles of this uprising was the rejection of social classes, that is, the rejection of society being divided into two main groups: the oppressed, the deprived, the poor and the slaves on one hand, and the rich, the powerful and the oppressors on the other. Such divisions should not exist in a society projected and directed by divine prophets.
As we know about Islam and other divine religions, no one should be deprived from his legitimate right because he or she happens to be poor or weak; such a situation is not included in an Islamic system or any other system based on monotheistic beliefs. There is a narration from our holy Prophet which says: ‘a society in which the poor or the weak shiver and stammer when asking for their rights, is not a society sanctioned by God’; this means that the poor and the weak should not be shy, blushing or frightened when asking for their rights in an Islamic society. Let me make the matter clearer by giving you a simple example: inside a family or household, would a child who is hungry blush or stammer when asking the mother for food? Islam teaches us that we are all like children and brothers and sisters in a bigger unit called the Islamic community; in Islam any member of the society enjoys the same rights as the Islamic ruler such as Imam Ali (AS) when he was at the head of the Islamic community.
The most important authorities in an Islamic society cannot behave as bullies towards the common people. You may have heard the story about one of the Khalifs ruling the Islamic state after the holy Prophet. We do believe that there were certain deviations from the true path of Islam after the demise of our Prophet, but still the society was Islamic and the Khalifs, more or less, acted on the bases of Islamic injunctions. Anyway, it is reported that the son of Amr-bin-Aas, the governor of Egypt, gets angry at an Arab nomad and whips him badly, a hundred lashes or so. This Arab victim, who believed in the justice of Islam, travels the very long distance from Egypt to the city of Medina in Arabia to complain to the Khalif of the time. The Khalif sends a message to the governor and orders him and his son to come to Medina. When in the presence of the Khalif, the governor’s son denied the allegation and said that, according to Islamic laws, he must present four witnesses to prove his case. The Khalif said: How could he find four witnesses when you beat him and there was nobody around, but the fact that he has travelled for weeks and months to come here seeking justice is witness enough for me, if you had not unfairly whipped him, he’d never have the incentive and the hurt feeling to make this long, tiring journey. Reportedly the son confessed to his wrong-doing and the Khalif had him whipped severely. The interesting thing is that he ordered the father, Amr-bin-Aas the governor, to be whipped too. Amr cried out: I didn’t do anything; it was my son who did it. The Khalif said: your son did it because his father was a powerful governor, if it weren’t for your authority, he wouldn’t dare whip an innocent nomad.
Well, I narrated this historic event to tell you what justice means in an Islamic society. This is in fact what I intend to raise in today’s discussion, and you may have already guessed what I want to elaborate on. Islam and other divine religions put great emphasis on justice in the society; they are after the establishment of a society in which there is no bullying, no oppression and no exploitation; a society wherein there are deprived masses with a minority always after amassing wealth is not sanctioned by Islam. We have a narration by Imam Ali (AS) which says: ‘whenever I saw an accumulation of wealth, there were great poverty and deprivation on its side’. Yes, if you see a multi-millionaire such as john Rockefeller in the USA, you should know that there are tens of millions of Americans who live under poverty lines who have been brutally exploited by such billionaires; there is a direct relation between the former’s wealth and the latter’s poverty.
Briefly the ideal, Islamic society, according to the logic of monotheistic religions, is a society in which you find no oppressors, no despots, no privileged groups, no exploitation and no illegitimate amassing of wealth. It’s obvious that when a divine prophet declares such goals, the rich and the powerful and the privileged, will immediately begin to oppose him. Let’s also say that in a true Islamic society there should be no illiteracy, no ignorance, and no superstitions and all people are free to think and find their own ways for spiritual and material progress. In a true Islamic society you would see no laziness, carelessness, human divisions, or blind obedience.
The principal features of the human society that our holy Prophet tried to establish on the basis of Revelations are: abundance of science and consciousness, domination of fairness and justice, rejection of social classes, removal of exploitation, annihilation of all forms of oppression; but all believers defend truth, truthfulness and human rights. Now we could clearly see that when a divine prophet declares such goals and objectives, surely there will be hostile groups to fight him; this is the main issue I want to discuss today and answer the question: who are these hostile groups and what are their specific features?
The group consists of those who enjoy power through class differences and class distinctions; they obviously hate a classless society based on monotheism. They exploit people and enjoy their slavery or their cheap labour. The second group opposing the prophets is the rich and those after amassing wealth by all means especially through usury. They gain unlawful profits through various institutions such as banks, credit institutes and personal lendings at unlawful usury rates. Whether you have a shop, or a small farm or a small business, you could all find out how much you have to give to them through simple calculations. It is a matter of course that when a prophet or even a reformer comes along and declares usury unlawful, they would immediately join the ranks of the Prophet’s enemies.
The third group consists of despotic rulers, sultans, kings and the like who, hearing the divine call ‘there are no gods, there is only one God (namely Allah)’, feel threatened, because this means that there should not be any dictators, despots, Pharaohs, Nimrods or Muawias.
The fourth group of prophets’ enemies – probably the most hostile of all groups – consists of the so-called religions leaders of the existing establishment such as monks, rabbis and their servants who enjoy wealth and status through their religious hierarchies. These so-called religious leaders are preoccupied with people’ intellects and influence their minds and souls and always try to keep them as ignorant as possible and therefore always oppose a true monotheistic religion that helps elevate the people’s awareness and knowledge. Jesus Christ was in fact struggling against these religious elements; they were the elements who wanted him killed, not the Emperor’s vassal in ancient Judea; they didn’t want the message of Jesus spread in their backward, superstitious realm. Such persons were among the severest enemies of Islam in its initial stage. Figures such as Ka’ab-al-Ahbaar and Abdullah Salam, the Jewish, learned men who had presumably converted to Islam! The Islamic teachings of our holy Prophet all based on Revelations opened eyes, removed ignorance and superstitions and increased ordinary people’s knowledge and awareness; these teachings would put an end to their religious lordships and their privileges. So these established, religious groups were among the first elements who felt that their privileges and profits were being threatened. They, together with their allied political partners, truly felt threatened.
There is a letter by Imam Sajjaad addressed to Muhammad-Ibn-Shahaab Zohri; the picture that the Imam portrays of Zohri’s character could still be a great lesson for us in the 20th century; it exactly describes what we witness today concerning the cooperation of oppressors and some religious scholars in suppressing the rights of the masses and their talents. Today we clearly witness what the Imam understood many centuries ago. I talked about the content of this letter in detail some time ago. You could read this letter in the book Tuhaf-al-Uqoul which has been translated into Persian. Here I only read a couple of sentences from this admonishing letter addressed to Muhammad-bin Shahaab Zohri. The Imam (AS) writes: ‘The least point you hid from the people and the lightest burden you carry on your shoulders is the fact that you befriended the oppressor and did go astray the moment you approached him and accepted his invitation’; this shows the obvious case of religious scholars helping the corrupt, oppressive rulers which the Imam warns about.
So we see that one of the groups fearing the appearance of divine prophets consists of these leaders of superstitious and false religions. These groups have always stood up against divine prophets throughout the history of mankind. There are many examples of such animosities against God’s prophets: The case of Prophet Abraham is one; the so-called religious leaders of the temple of idols found out that someone had cut down their idols and they made their king, Nimrod, to throw Abraham into piles of fire. In the case of Moses, the religious magicians comforted the Pharaoh and assured him that they would overcome Moses through their strong sorcery and magic. The same sort of religious leaders were the toughest enemies of Jesus Christ and did everything in their power not to allow the message of Jesus to spread far and wide. If you read the New Testament, you’ll find, despite many distortions in them, the same reports about Jewish rabbis and Jewish leaders opposing Jesus as far as they could. In Islam too, there are many reports about the pagans, the Jews and Arab polytheists constantly troubled the holy Prophet; one instance of this kind was the so-called imprecation with the Christians of Najraan in which the holy Prophet and his nearest kith and kin and the Christian leader were supposed to pray to invoke evil on the party that did not speak the truth.
At this juncture, we must note that in all societies, when a new ideology emerges, many people, young or old, try to find out about it and many agree with it and follow it; this is very natural, it is the nature of man and they approve of the new way of thinking if it seems more rational to them than the existing superstitions and foolish traditional beliefs, and so all thinking people are attracted to it.
But it was this class of traditional, religious leaders, rabbis and monks and the like who did not allow the people to follow divine prophets, despite the fact that the messages by God’s prophets were quite clear and easy to understand: they never philosophized and they never used pompous, complicated phraseology. Their divine messages were straight-forward, simple, truthful and eloquent. Therefore all people should have easily received their divine messages as absolute, godly truths. Yet what was the reason for all those prejudices, animosities and relentless oppositions? The answer is in the existence of the class of perverted, religious leaders; they encouraged people to defend their traditional, superstitions creeds. This group or class always felt more frightened and threatened vis-à-vis the divine prophets; they knew well that if the kind of society the prophets suggested was established – a society of awareness, a society of progress, a society in which intellects were strengthened and a society in which people were teachers, students and seekers of knowledge and spiritually- then there would no room for such false, religious leaders, the arrogant and the powerful dignitaries and those who decidedly kept people in ignorance; that’s why they always opposed and fought the prophets of God Almighty. So far I have cited four groups who opposed the divine prophets: the upper classes, the oppressors or despotic rulers, the wealthy who had amassed great wealth at the expense of the masses and the perverted, privileged, religious leaders.
I described the groups that opposed the prophet through an intellectual analysis but I have not yet quoted any Quranic verses in this respect; in fact the Quran has special terms for each of the groups mentioned. The term for the powerful group consisting of chiefs, estate owners, and men in high positions is mala’ as in the Quranic verse 66 of Sura A’raaf: “The pagan chiefs among his people said…”. Mala’ are the ones in high positions who catch people’s eyes by their pomposity, stately display and ostentatious parade of false dignity and importance. The members of this class are the enemies of divine prophets. An example of such people is Haamaan at the court of Pharaoh: “And Pharaoh said ‘O Haamaan! Build me a lofty tower and raise for me the means to reach the heavens1’…”. As you see, he is the chief servant, the head-butler and the chief sycophant of Pharaoh and, through his high status, he is the overlord of all other officials and other important dignitaries. In fact Haamaan is a weak, unfortunate, contemptuous and lonely person but because of his absolute servitude to Pharaoh, he is the overlord of all others. And as Sa’di, the famed, Persian poet, says:
O king, the smallest bird that you let fly,
At once becomes an eagle in the sky!
In the perverted, corrupt administration of Muawia, the mala’ included people such as Mughaira-Bin-Shu’ba and Ziad-Bin-Abih who were followers of the Islamic Khalif, but joined the court of Muawia after the martyrdom of Imam Ali (AS). Such people kept Muawia in power as his closest friends, advisers and henchmen and enjoyed great, material benefits through their high positions.
The term in the Quran for the second group is Mutrafeen which stands for the wealthy, aristocratic class. The verse I have written down in the paper given to you- which was recited at the beginning of this meeting-says the same thing, that is, the Mutrafeen group was the very first group who stood up and opposed God’s prophets in each community.
The other opposing elements are: “…certainly there are many rabbis and priests who dispossess men of their wealth, in falsehood, and debar them from the Way of God…”, about whom I have already told you in detail.
The Quran terms the last groups as taaghoot which is a general term for all oppressors, unjust leaders and other faithless rulers. As I said yesterday taaghoot also stands for any rebellious power in relation to God’s laws and injunctions. Certainly such powers could also be one’s own rebellious carnal desires as we’ve read in some Narrations, but as the Quran has always spoken of taaghoot as those in higher positions of power in any society, we put more stress on this aspect of the term; let us now read some of these Quranic verses: “Those who believe, fight in the Way of God, but disbelievers fight for taaghoot (an evil, faithless power); thus fight against the friends of Satan…”. As we see taaghoot confronts God. In another verse we read: “God is the Patron of the faithful, He leads them out of Darkness into Light, but the infidels’ patrons are taaghoots, who’ll drive them out of Light into Darkness plight…”. I think that the Quran employs the term taaghoot some eight times and all their interpretations signify that they are the oppressive, despotic rulers dominating many communities.
Anyway, these were the 4 main groups who always opposed the divine prophets, not only at the time of our holy Prophet, but since ancient times when Abraham or Moses declared their prophethood throughout history. Whenever there was a call for distinguishing right from wrong and just from unjust according to divine Scriptures, these groups, one after another or in unison, opposed and fought the prophets of God; this has been the general principle.
Now, as we haven’t got much time left, let’s read some of the Quranic verses concerning our topic of discussion today: “Likewise We have assigned to every prophet, some enemy: satans amongst men and jinn…”. This word ‘likewise’ means that you, Our prophet, as you see those satanic enemies fighting against you, be sure that there were also such enemies against every other prophet. I have already described what Satan and satans mean and this Aya also confirms what I told you that satans are all those evil-doing elements outside of our bodies and souls. One of these was Iblees or the Satan who, through arrogance, did not bow down to Adam. This Satan happens to be the most notorious one among all other kinds of satans of men or jinn because all other evil acts that other satans commit is put down to his account! The general public, at these occasions of facing evil usually curse this one Satan whereas some of those satans could be the master of Iblees in their evil temptings of mankind!
The verse goes on to say: “…satans and jinn inspiring one another with most varnished but vain discourses aimed at man’s deception…”. It says that the enemies of God’s prophets help each other; sometimes it is the oppressors who help the perverted, religious leaders and sometimes the latter teach and advise the former and sometimes the wealthy class teach and guide the other groups how to combat the divine prophets. In short, all the main four groups we mentioned help one another against the teachings and messages of God’s prophets. And how are their discourses? They are ornamented, beautiful on the surface and mischievously sound nice to hear!
Pharaoh say: “Let me put Moses to the sword!” Why should Moses be slain? He goes on: “…because I fear that he may change and ruin your religion…!” How beautifully, sympathetically and self-justifying his discourse is; in his utter arrogance he pretends to care for the people and their religion. Then we read in the same verse: “…yet if your Lord had so wished, they would not do this, therefore leave them in the loneliness of their own fabrication…”. This means that if it was the will of God, he could destroy all those warring parties who opposed the divine prophets but it is not God’s tradition or God’s law to act like this; God has given humanity free will, choice and option, so some groups carry out their enmities against divine prophets and this way the faithful and the unfaithful are recognized. As God never does anything contrary to His declared intentions, He advises the holy prophet: ‘leave them in their fabrications’, that is, never be saddened by their accusations, insults and deceitful oppositions, don’t ever feel weak but be steadfast and firm in propagating God’s message.
Next we read in the following Quranic verse: “And let the hearts of those, who have no faith in the next world, incline to what they say, let them delight in them, and let them earn from them what ill they may.” Here we notice that the nice-sounding but shallow, superficial words of the anti-prophetic elements will only influence the hearts and minds of those people who do not believe in the next world, but those who have some faith in the coming world, will not be easily deceived by the superficial piety of their traditional, religious leaders. To sum up, what these verses tell us is that all divine prophets have enemies, open or hidden, who help one another in the fight against God’s prophets.
To conclude our discussion I read some verses from the Sura Al-Mo’min, Ayas 23 to 25: “We did, of old, send Moses with Our Signs, and clear authorization, to Pharaoh Haamaan and Korah…”. What were those Signs? They were his clear logic and reasoning, his divine stick, his incredible hand and other miraculous acts. To whom did God send him? If we read these verses with full attention and deliberate on them, we’ll find the answer. The deepest social and political issues are so clearly explained in the Quran, if we do ponder on them. Who are the enemies of Moses in that society? To Pharaoh whose highest position in that community is quite clear, who else? To Haamaan, the head of the privileged mala’, as Pharaoh’s grand-vizier and at the top of the dominant aristocracy. Who else? To Korah (Qaaroon); he has no official position, so why is he mentioned after these two? He is a most wealthy man who has amassed incredible riches. Yes, God sends Moses to fight these three because the three are just like one in opposing the prophet of God. What’s Korah’s crime? Well, he has exploited the common people, he has imprisoned the community’s riches which could be put to use for the public and doesn’t give a damn to the destiny of the weak, the poor and the deprived, so you must also fight him.
As you see, these three important persons belong to three different, social classes but, strange to say, their response to Moses and his divine call is unanimous! What is their unified response? Let’s read on the verses: “…they all cried ‘a sorcerer who is also a liar’! And when he conveyed the Truth to them from Us, they ordered ‘slay the sons of those who do believe as he, but let their women live’…”! Thus they all feel threatened and decide to kill his young followers who could fight against them along with Moses. But, they allow their women and daughters to live on. There are a few interpretations about this: some believe they wanted them for prostitution and some say that they wanted to wed them to create a mixed race; in both cases they meant to turn them into humiliated slave-women either as exploited labourers or sex-labourers.
But then the verse says: “…yet the stratagem of those who disbelieve has always failed (gone astray).” They planned and plotted against Moses but the disbelievers’ schemes never bore fruit for they forgot the power of God Almighty. It’s like you throwing an arrow to hit a target but a sudden gust deviates its straight travel. Such is the traditions of God for taking the arrows aside. In these verses, as you noticed, three categories of divine prophets were mentioned which I talked about earlier.
Finally in some other Suras the term mutrafeen, that is, the class of Korahs, the wealthy, the aristocrats, the land-owners and the like, is mentioned again. Let’s read these few verses: “And never have We sent a Warner to any town whose rich and mighty men did not declare ‘in fact we’ll never believe your apostolic mission!” They always say ‘we are the more abundant in wealth and sons; for us there is no torment’!” Again you notice who the vanguards of opposing and fighting the prophets of God are; they say to them: we’ll never believe you, we are more powerful than you in every respect and thus we will never be tortured in the next world! You see how low and shallow is the intellect level of such disbelievers!
And the very last verse we read in this session is the verse 34 of Sura Al-Tauba (Repentance) concerning the religious leaders, rabbis, priests and the like. It says: “O you believers, there are certainly many rabbis 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, shall be given a torment full of woes, do give them the good news!”. They not only exploit the people unlawfully but they are real obstacles for ordinary people to know their true God; so give them the good news of their horrendous conditions in the next world. Briefly speaking, we now know the four, main enemies of the prophets of God.
