Your Holiness Pope Benedict XVI
As-Safir, 15-09-2012
In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate
In the name of God, the All-Knowing
Your Holiness Pope Benedict XVI,
How delightful it is to have you walking on the land of my country, of my ancestors, with "Peace" as your hoisted label.
For I do belong to a nation, a religion, and a people who, in welcome and farewell, says "peace be upon you and the mercy of God and his blessings." I am also a Muslim and a fancier of the values of love in Christianity and an admirer of your writings on Christian liturgy. I have even suggested to my Christians friends to hold a special conference titled "the political liturgy between Imam Khamenei and Pope Benedict XVI." But the idea, albeit warmly welcomed, remained only a thought just like too many projects that we applaud in this country. Anyway...
What matters is that you are coming and that we will see you; excuse us, we will rather endeavor to hopefully meet you.
You may ask me why, and I shall tell you, as frankly and honestly as could be. The reason is not that I seek your blessings, because I do believe that one needs no mediation with God, for God is all knowing... I would love, you Holiness the Supreme Pontiff, to relay to you some reproach and to entrust you with some of my pain, grief, and tears, some tears of my Arab people, its anguish, and the long tread of the nation.
Do you know why I would love to do so?
Because you are on top of a liturgy that was based on the essence of pain and the identification of human anguish with God's compassion. And because, I tell you the truth, I see the clemency of the Holy Virgin Mary in the faces of my cherished and beloved Christian friends, and I see some of my Muslim fellows stamped with the mercy of My Lady Fatima Zahra.
As to my pain and anguish, I mean by them the world despotism which still squirts out rancor and sin among us. I also mean disintegration and rift which divided our Arab world into tribal statelets that only know how to fight a neighboring clan, into sects and parties that are rather tribes of vendetta and grudge, that only know how to take revenge from the very members of the body of one and sole nation. Alas, they shrugged off fighting who violated their land in Palestine, and some parts of Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and Egypt.
Your Holiness, do you believe that some of these clans reject the resistance of occupiers, chide those resisting as adventurous, and label whoever speaks of victory after liberating the land as sectarian and affiliated with foreign [sides]?
Yes. This is the reality. You have indeed the right to lambast or not to believe that there are people who dare slay the martyrdom of the Christ a thousand times every day...because the martyrs of my country are witnesses to the martyrdom of the Christ, who sought to spark love and peace right amid strife and hatred, to sow the land with his blood only flourishing fraternity, safety, and mercy. He mostly wanted the human being to be "the venerable."
They sought dignity, imagine Your Holiness, so they were accused of what is most precious to them, their religion, their blood, and their love for people, and believe it, they accused them of their pursuit of peace.
Your Holiness, I entrust you with the dream of my mother and father, may their souls be resting in peace, for they have always recited a prayer that they have come up with, and that the poor locals in Beirut repeated, saying, "God let love prevail among people," and "may God give you better days." It is a simple exhortation. But the dream has vanished. Neither people have loved each other, nor have the days gotten any better...we still carry the dream but we know not what will happen.
Your Holiness, imagine that a man from my country made a proposal stemming from this Lebanese dream, as per which the sons of the too many sects and confessions would agree not to curse each other, not to accuse each other of blasphemy, not to speak ill of each other. That man was accused of ruining who they really are.
Your Holiness, if only you preach the [spiritual] references to promise God to end this irreligious, inhuman, and immoral decadence, to put terms to the savage instinctive policy.
Lastly, I entrust you with an Islamic plea par excellence, to whisper in the hearts of my Christian brothers that there is no hope, no future for the region and for Muslims had it not been for their presence; they are the key witness to this region's civilization, culture, and spirit.
Your Holiness, tell them that we do not need an Islamic-Christian dialogue, for we know each other. What the West needs to know from both religions is needless in this East. Our East needs real coexistence...Our new East needs norms that carry within the love values of the Christ and the mercy of Prophet Mohammad...Our East needs the human, a nation, a future, dignity and independence, it needs air, water, knowledge, and the Christ, instead of words and a liturgy that we attribute everyday to Mohammad and the Christ, and that we mutate when instantaneous interests and vile policies entail to do so.
As to my reproach, I will not reveal it all. In my country, to blame is to love.
What I am saying now is that behind our ordeals, poverty, and pain, there is the US and there is "Israel." So why don't you carry your scepter, not your sword, and wave to them to stop, or else...and you know better what to say to them so that they stop, for we are tired...our people only wants dignity, which we shall never relinquish, even if we all fall as martyrs...
Peace be upon you, for you are the facet of the peace exhortation and the peace's most eloquent Christian tongue.
Be the Easter of a birth that gathers the sons of love so that we jointly defend ourselves...yes, ourselves, we the people...we are tired of all those who defend, or think they defend God...God says, "O ye men! It is ye that have need of Allah: but Allah is the One Free of all wants, worthy of all praise."
God does not mean that we defend Him, but that we defend ourselves, we, the sons of God and human...
Peace be upon you and the mercy of God and his blessings.
The Sapiential Knowledge Institute (Maahad al-Maaref al-Hikmiyya)
*Translated and edited by moqawama.org
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