In the Name of God, the Beneficent the Merciful, the very first thing I must mention in our discussion today is that the issue of migration is directly related to the question of wilayat. I have already explained that wilayat is there to guarantee the firm relations and unshakable solidarity among all believers and the prevention of any dependence on the opposing groups or fronts, and later the setting up of a strong, central administration to strengthen brotherly ties among all Muslim groups and Islamic communities. I also clarified the question of the walee, that is, the leader, imam or the supreme administrator necessary for the continuous progress of the umma towards divine goals. I also mentioned the Quranic verse about Imam Ali (AS) giving alms to a poor man ‘while bowing down in his prayers.’
So we see that if we do not reduce the important principle of wilayat to some petty, secondary issue, we’ll soon find out that migration is most related to belief in wilayat, because if a believer is devoted to live in the shade of wilayat, he’ll sometimes have to migrate from a wilayatless society to a wilayatful community. If one wants to really be a servant of God, not a follower of taaghoot and he feels that he lives in a wilayatless community that leaves his existence, his life, his energies and his happiness under a satanic wilayat, he should save his own soul by travelling to a place where he could live under the happy, resourceful shadow of wilayat. The exit from that oppressive wilayat and entering the just, divine wilayat is called migration (Hijra). As you have noticed, I have already talked about 3 dimensions of wilayat; Hijra is the 4th dimension.
Why should one escape the satanic wilayat of taaghoot? I raise this question and, while I try to answer the question, I want you to think about it and find an answer, whether positive or negative, according to your knowledge of Islam and the Quran; and if your answer is the opposite of mine, we will discuss the matter further. Now this is the question: Couldn’t we be under the wilayat of taaghoot and still remain a Muslim? Can’t we imagine a Muslim who happens to live under the wilayat of Satan and yet be a servant of Al-Rahmaan? Is it probable that when an anti-divine oppressor dominates the whole horizons of humanity’s life, when the people’s way of thinking, their emotions and feelings are decided by the same ungodly ruler and, in one word, when all people are in the grips of a satanic, powerful authority, I repeat, is it probable that a Muslim remains a servant of God? Is this possible or not? I want you to try to analyze this question and I don’t want you to quickly come up with an answer. It must be deeply thought about.
Now, I say a few words to help you think about this rather difficult question. The question is: could a person be under the wilayat of satanic powers and still remain a Muslim? In fact this question consists of two parts closely connected. Let’s analyze these two parts and see what they really mean. The first part is about the wilayat of Satan or satanic powers; what does being under satanic wilayat mean? Well, if we look at the issue of wilayat through the mirror of the Quranic verses we quoted in this respect, then we’ll know what this evil wilayat really means. What we understand from those verses, is that the wilayat of Satan, in its general sense, means that Satan or satanic authorities dominate all aspects of men’s life, their talents, energies, initiatives, mental and intellectual powers, that is, whatever man thinks about is in the path of satans and whatever he does is exactly what satans wish. A simile for such a circumstance would be the condition of a person who has slipped and fallen down into the rapid current of a mountainous river and tries hard to save himself. Certainly he doesn’t like to hit a rock, and surely he doesn’t like the current to take him to the sea or into a swamp; he doesn’t want to be drowned and he tries hard to get hold of something to save himself, but the current is awfully fast and strong and carries him along.
The wilayat of satanic forces is similar to this simile and therefore the Quran warns: “And We made imams (leaders) who invite people unto the Fire…”. There are leaders, authorities and ungodly powers who lead their followers and those under their rule into the fire of Hell. Elsewhere the Quran tells us: “Have you not ever thought of those who did repay God’s Grace with unappreciation, and drove their people with them into the House of Ruination, known as Gehenna? They will surely reach it, but it’s a wretched station!” Don’t you ever learn lessons from those who were unthankful of God’s bounties? What were the bounties of God? They could be everything: the blessing of authority, worldly power, the administration of the affairs of communities, God- granted talents or all the energies and instinctive, human gifts; these are all divine bounties that could go to serve the good of the human society.
If not under the power of such satanic wilayats, the people could be among the best servants of God and sources of good for their communities but those satanic regimes led them astray: “…and drove their people with them into the House of Ruination.” Well, we could say ‘hell with those dammed satanic leaders’! The more sorrowful was the fact that they led the masses into perdition and into Hell which is a horrible residence. It is reported that Imam Musa-bin-Ja’far read out this Quranic verse for the Khalif Haroun-al-Rasheed to warn him that he was leading himself and the people under his rule to final perdition and Haroun retorted ‘do you mean that we are kaafirs (disbelievers)’, that is, we don’t believe in God, the Prophet and the religion of Islam?! What the Imam meant was that those who frankly and openly announce that ‘there is no God, prophets and prophethoods are myths and Quranic verses are lies’ are one kind among the disbelievers, in fact, the best of disbelievers! Because they openly and candidly pronounce what they do not believe in and so you do know them and you could easily choose your approach to them.
Yet the worse kind of disbelievers are those who pretend to be Muslims and true believers but they are unthankful to what God has granted them, who employ God’s bounties and God’s blessing in wrongful ways and ultimately lead all people under their rule to wilayat of taaghoot and ultimately to Hell. Those who live under the wilayat of taaghoot are almost helpless. I don’t say that they completely and absolutely lack the will to choose. As I said in the example of the one fallen in the current of a fast-following mountainous rivers, they do everything to save themselves but the flood-like current carries them on to death. They wish to save themselves from this current that takes them to Hell but they can’t do anything about it, for everything and everyone about them are being carried in the same direction. You all may have happened to be among a crowd of thousands of people; you want to go left but the crowd presses you to go to the right and you are not allowed to go the way you intend to. A person likes to live a clean life, he wants to live as a Muslim and die as a Muslim but the tough social current does not give him a chance, no matter how weakly you try to go otherwise; the more painful fact is that sometimes you don’t even feel you’re being carried away despite your heart’s desire! Just like the fish caught in a big net in the sea hundreds of meters away from the shore where the fishermen are standing and pulling the net; the fish are still being pulled towards them in the water but they don’t know where they will soon end up!
This invisible net of satanic systems works the same; they pull you to where they want and you are unconsciously drawn to destinations unknown to you. They are taking you to Hell but sometimes you think you are being led to Paradise! This is the wilayat of taaghoot or the wilayat of Satan. All I said so far concerned the first part of the question: could one live in a satanic system of wilayat and still remain a Muslim? Now we know what it means to live under the rule of such ungodly systems. We could, of course, delve into history and find out more about the evil conditions and circumstances of living under taaghoot domination.
You may take an historical glimpse at the Islamic community under the two dynasties of Bani-Umayya and Bani-Abbas. Under both ruling systems, there was great advancement in the fields of knowledge and science: we know of numerous, great physicians, numerous great astronomers, numerous, great translators and numerous, great historians, artists and scientist in various fields. Some foreign authors such as the French Gustave Lebon are amazed at the incredible scientific progress and civilizational achievements under these two dynasties in the second, third and fourth centuries after the advent of Islam. Now we may ask: did all these great achievements end up in furthering and perfecting the Islamic society and humanity? Some ten centuries have passed since those golden days of progress and prosperity. We may not have any prejudiced outlook about those centuries. In talking to the non-Islamic world, we could boast about them and say: yes, it was the world of Islam that established so many universities and many highly-advanced schools of medicine, philosophy and natural sciences.
Yet, among ourselves as Muslims, couldn’t we ask some fair questions: did all those great achievements end up in the further prosperity and progress of the Islamic communities? After some 10 centuries, what do we have to show? What happened to all those rich scientific and cultural achievements? Why does the Islamic umma’s civilization not shine today as in those early centuries? The briefest answers to these questions are that the satanic rulers wanted everything for themselves, not for the good and interest of the Islamic society. I try to explain this because some people may find my brief answer dubious and unsatisfactory. The Khalifs of the time, such as Haroun, Ma’moun or Mansour helped bring about a ‘translation revolution’ but their purpose was to elevate their own names, not to raise the knowledge and cognition of all Muslims; their other activities in the fields of mathematics, astronomy, literature, theological jurisprudence and natural sciences were aimed at their own fame and grandeur, but their rules were most oppressive which brought about great class differences, made the poor poorer, degraded the social and individual morals and debased the people’s ethical values.
If you want to understand the issue better, let us take a look at the filthy civilization of our temporary world. The leaders of this present world boast about their incredible new inventions, their discoveries of this or that drug or surgery to cure certain, lethal diseases and other scientific achievements. But from a moral and humanitarian outlook, they are still living, say, in the Stone Age. One percent of the people own some 90 percent of the wealth and capital in these so-called advanced countries and millions of people live under the poverty line. This picture is exactly the same as that during those golden centuries of Islamic rule under satanic tyrants. These rulers and the aristocratic minority enjoyed all sorts of opportunities and amenities while the majority of people faced hunger and even starvation; other awful class differences were also witnessed but the faithless rulers did not care about the conditions of the masses and they cared less about the moral and spiritual progress and moral elevation of the people or about issues such as divine virtues and Islamic laws were forgotten.
Yet under these satanic regimes, there were honourable, virtuous people whom we could take pride in: Mualla-bin Khanees, a follower of Imam Saadiq (AS) and his deputy for collecting alms and charities was arrested, tortured and later put do death; Muhammad-bin-Abi-Omair-Azadi, a companion of three Shi’ite Imams, was arrested and ordered to reveal all the names of the followers of the Imams; he rejected the order. He was lashed a hundred times but did not speak a word; and in his later years of life he was arrested many times and tortured. Yahya-bin-Zaid-bin-Ali-ibn-al-Husain, as a very young man, he was present at his father’s uprising against Husham, the Khalif of the time. After his father’s martyrdom he went to Khorasan, many people joined his struggle against the oppressive Khalif and so he succeeded in seizing Herat. But in the ensuing battle with the Khalif’s Khorasan army he was killed, and then his head was cut off and laid on a high post for all to see! We may also cite the example of Ibn-Umm-Tuwail who rose against the Khalif, but was arrested and executed; his hands and legs were cut off and his tongue was cut out of his mouth.
Thus, as we see, so many great people rose against the satanic regimes whose period of rule orientalists such as Mr. Gustave Lebon consider as the golden period of Islamic rule. Briefly speaking, in the wilayat of taaghoot or Satan, you may witness progress in many fields and people’s energies and talents could be employed to advance in many areas but the general state of the people is just like what we witness in the so-called advanced countries in the West today where human values, virtuous criteria and divine injunctions are not worth a penny!
So we may return to the question we raised at the beginning of today’s discussion: could one live as a Muslim under the wilayat of taaghoot? What is the proper, Muslim way of life? Well, living as Muslims means that all human talents, all human powers and all human opportunities are completely under the wilayat of God Almighty and that all their moments of life, their soul and minds, their property and wealth, their thoughts and activities or even their sleep and rest are spent in the service of God. Could you give us an example in this respect, you may ask? Yes, we have had examples of such groups, communities and societies of the past as the groups who migrated from the domain of satanic forces and walked towards the path of God. And we do have the example the Muslim community at the time of the holy Prophet; at that time the people in Medina formed an Islamic society of servants of God. Any step taken was on the path of God. Even the Jews and Christian who lived under the wilayat of the holy Prophet behaved in Islamic ways, that is, in their personal beliefs and behaviour, they were absolutely free but in the society they lived as Muslims; we could claim that their ways of living were far better than Muslims who lived in the Age of ignorance! In the wilayat of the holy Prophet everything belonged to God, money was to be used in the path of God, swords were being draw in the path of God, tongues and thoughts were at the service of God and feelings and emotions were God-inspired ones.
We could also claim that under the wilayat of Ali (AS), the Commander of the Faithful, the social circumstances were more or less Islamic despite all odds and enmities and deviations that the Muslim Community had faced during the previous decades. In fact Ali (AS) inherited a community that had largely gone astray in the 25-year, period after the demise of the holy Prophet; we could even say that if the holy Prophet were to reappear, he would be faced with the same problems and difficulties Ali (AS) faced. Please not that what we have said so far concerns the societies in general.
But among groups of people and small minorities the conditions differed; as an example, the groups of the people who followed our Imams in those centuries were exceptions to the general outlook we talked about. Unfortunately today is the last day of the holy month of Ramadan and it is not possible for me to discuss the very important question of imamat. If we had the opportunity I would have told you about the quality and characteristic of Shi’ite communities during the lives of our imams and about the relationship of the imams with their followers, about the relation of Shi’ites with their surrounding taaghooti environment; how they lived under satanic regimes but traveled on an opposing path to the prevailing taaghoot rulers. Those who helped Imam Husain (AS) in Karbala, were good examples of those who never obeyed the ruling cliques. So you see, when you study history, that there did exist certain communities who, though under a satanic regime, were practicing true Islam.
But as far as the mass of ordinary people and the general public are concerned, one cannot remain a true Muslim in satanic, oppressive circumstances where all his energies, talents and opportunities could be employed at the service of God. No, as I explained before, it is almost impossible for the mass of ordinary people to remain true Muslims under taaghoot, and no matter how hard they try, at least parts of their faith in Islam would be at the service of the dominating, social forces and so they cannot be a perfect servant of God. There is a Narration in the noble book ‘the Principles of Kaafi’ under the title of ‘the conditions of men who want to obey God under an ungodly ruler’. I give you a brief translation of this Narration: ‘the people who live under the wilayat of God, despite their sins and shortcomings in their personal or private lives, will ultimately be salvaged; on the other hand, those who live under the wilayat of taaghoot or Satan, despite their good personal and private deeds, will suffer retribution’. I have often tried to explain this Hadeeth by citing a simile: imagine you intend to go to Mashhad from Tehran. If the bus you are travelling in does take the right roads, you will surely reach your destination. But if your driver takes the wrong roads or is, for some reason, intent on travelling to Tabriz, obviously you will not reach your destination of Mashhad, in this case whether your fellow-travellers treat one another properly and politely or they swear at one another and constantly quarrel, you will not reach Mashhad in both cases; they may have suffered on the way but they do reach their destination. On the other hand, if the driver is taking you to Tabriz and your fellow-travellers are very kind and polite people and help one another, but they keep quiet and do not object to the driver who is going the wrong way, you’ll never reach your destination.
In the first case, the driver was a trustworthy man who knew the roads well and he did take you safely to your destination, though some people behaved badly on the way. But in the second case, the driver was not trustworthy person or he was drunk or he had a personal business in Tabriz and didn’t care about his passengers, and the passengers did not or dared not object to him, they would not reach their intended destination, despite the fact that the passengers were people of good deeds. In a society run by taaghoot or satanic rulers the people, whose leader is like the bad driver mentioned, will not reach their destination of remaining a true Muslim and gain salvation.
Well, what are they, who are under such condition supposed to do? Here again a Quranic verse answers the question: “when angels seize the souls of those who are sunken in sins against their own selves, they ask ‘how was your circumstance?’ They answer: ‘we were oppressed upon the earth …”. The angels, while seizing the souls of those people who were unjust in their own lives, ask them: How was your behavior in your lives, where did you live and why did you fall into such a wretched state? One feels that the angels, like doctors who visit their patients, are sympathetic with them! They answer ‘we were among the oppressed of the world’, that is, we had no will of ourselves, we had no authority and we were being governed against our wishes. As I said previously the mustazafeen or the spiritually and materially oppressed are those masses of people who are helplessly ruled over by satanic authorities and all their social actions, directions and deeds are decided by others.
Thus we see that the oppressed are those who are unaware of what goes on in the society and they don’t know where they are being led to, they can’t decide whether they go this way or that way, and they are being pulled this way and that way as harnessed animals, in fact like an oil-press horse on the upper millstone going around, with covered eyes, not knowing that it is not going anywhere! If this horse were an intelligent being, it would, in the evening, think ‘I must have reached the vicinity of Paris by now!! But when, in late evening, its eyes are uncovered, it sees that it is exactly where he was in early morning! It knows nothing about anything! This is the state that the oppressed are reined in. the opposite state of affairs are seen in the societies ruled by walees of God as in the governance of our holy Prophet when moral values and human dignity were respected; but even in such a society, God tells His messenger: “… take counsel with them (the people) in the affairs…”. In such societies people enjoy human, moral values, and all people are dearly respected and God’s advice is to consult with them about the affairs of the community. But under unjust, ungodly and oppressive, taaghooti systems people are kept in ignorance and therefore the mustazafeen form the great majority of the people.
Well, the sinners defend themselves and tell the angels that they were the oppressed. But the angels ask them: “…Was Allah’s earth not vast enough for you to migrate therein…”. Here we do witness that the logic of the angels is similar to wise human logic. The angels in fact blame them for not making any wise, courageous move to get out of the hellish prison they lived in by immigrating to some other place on the vast earth of God. I think our great poet, Saadi saying:
‘Do not be bound by anyone or any place
As God’s earth is immense’,
was in agreement with the angels. Anyway, the angels blame them for not going to a spot on earth where they could be free to worship God, to employ their talents and energies properly and not to be suppressed by satanic rulers. The sinners do not respond to this second question by the angels; in fact, they seem not to have a logical answer. And the Quran further says that their final residence will be Hell, an awful place to live in!
There is of course one exception to this general statement: not all people are in a position to travel far and wide; old men and women, children, the sick, the very poor and the like are included in this exception. That’s why the Quranic verse goes on: “…exempted are the helpless men and women and children who do not possess the means, nor do they know any routes or lines; these are the ones whom God may pardon, for God is Benignant, Oft-Forgiving.” Such oppressed people cannot find a way towards the Light of Islam and they are truly unable to do anything under the prevailing conditions. The verse of the Quran expressly announces that they may be hopeful of God’s forgiveness because God’s Most Forgiving.
And then in the same Quranic verses we read about God’s consolation concerning those who migrated, lest they think that migration may land them into misery and loss. The verse says: “And anyone who flies in Allah’s way will find many a place of refuge on earth, and abundance of bounties…”. The pagans of Mecca would torture anyone who had spent one Dirham in the path of God but when Muslims migrated in the path of God to Medina, they found out what a fantastic place it was under the guidance of the holy Prophet; they found out how they were spiritually elevated and how they could enjoy God’s bounties. Now what if when travelling from Mecca, the town of disbelievers, to Medina, the town of the faithful, they happen to pass away on the way? Well, again the Quranic verse tells us that their rewards will be with God Almighty because they were travelling on the path of God: “…even he who does forsake his dwelling for the sake of God and His messenger and thence death overtakes him shall receive his meed in full from God, for God is Forgiving and Merciful.” Well, our discussion of migration in the path of God is not complete but we have no more time, so I only add that, as we said, migration is leaving the wilayat of taaghoot to places where wilayat of God, such as the wilayat of the holy Prophet, the Imam (AS) or a true walee of God prevail. Now the very last question is: what shall we do when there is no such place in the whole world? Should we remain under satanic wilayats? The brief answer is that the holy Prophet himself was among the migrants but before the migration of the Prophet and his companions there was no such place, so the Prophet and his companions did create such a place by their migration. As we now notice, sometimes it is necessary to migrate and lay the foundation of a divine, Islamic community so that other believers could also join it. And this was a brief account on the importance of Hijra or migration.
