Readings into the Imam’s Letter to Western Youth

Dr. Trad Hamedeh

The Imam of Muslims writes his letter to the world, usually, during critical phases of this world's circumstances, related to the status of the Muslim nation and other peoples and nations that should get introduced and organize their relations in exchanging interests and values, as well as facing challenges resulting from the incidents and realities, which [all] came in the introduction of his eminence Imam Sayyed Ali Khamenei's letter to the Western youth:

The Sayyed said regarding the bitter incidents committed by the Takfiri terrorism in France: They pushed me once again to address them, noting previous letters in similar conditions, and to a good tradition launched by Imam Khomeini in his famous letter to the Soviet President Gorbachev, when the most powerful empires of the twentieth century were collapsing, facing the challenges and struggles that marked the end of the previous century, affecting the events and realities of this century, and the difficult years that passed, full of invasions and the global Takfiri terrorist war.

This means that the Sayyed seized the perfect historical moment to address his speech when all people are ready to hear and listen, when the incidents trigger a search for their reasons and motives, and when they provoke serious questions that require decisive answers, in which the explanation would be sufficient to uncover the sight and the insight, and the good word provides its desired results and reaches its high aims.

This comes on the level of the speech's historical duration, as for the nature of the addressed party that has to receive the letter frankly with its clear indications, the Imam selected the youth to address, because the young soul would be ready to listen, able to understand, to seek achieving goals, tend to the aims, face the challenges, and make the future.

Selecting the Western youth means that the world's aged administration is not as wise as old people should be, although it owns all what makes it stick to the greedy interests, it is used to what it got used to, and it led the world to this disgraceful, bitter situation, in which reforming the situation comes at the hands and with the efforts of the youth.

The letter is directed to the Western youth, however, it doesn't free Muslim youth from the responsibility to get ready to participate in facing the challenges and making the future of the contemporary world. The soul of the world needs to be reformed, and when the human soul is still young, it is able to accept the signs and understand its ultimate meanings, with high spirit, seeking reform and salvation.

The bitter incidents provide the ground for dialogue, and the speech is the table that expands and stretches for those who accept looking into the painful causes that form the basis for thinking of solutions. This base is the dialogue that is established by speech, it is an invitation for dialogue and a chance to exchange thoughts.

His eminence expresses his pain for what is going on in the contemporary world, including terrorist acts, and the losses human beings face of pain and sorrow, presenting a vivid image full of human sympathy with the victims of Takfiri terrorism.

His words ignite the human emotions and the motive to think of a way for salvation. The effects of terrorism and the pain they cause to humanity, in the Muslim world, Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and the Western world in France's painful incidents, witnessing those tragedies pushes the world to look into its future and destiny, and benefiting from the current situation, not to make it just agony toward the tragedy without looking into the ways to face their reasons, and not to keep it a memory that stores bitter and useless memories.

The speech is an honest invitation for dialogue and observation, as well as looking for ways for salvation from the current globalized terrorism. It is addressed for the youth who can face it and build a happy future.
But how can we find new thoughts to build the desired future of the world?

In his powerful argumentative style, the Imam confesses that terrorism today became the common concern and pain between us and the world, and that the West suffers from unrest and insecurity due to the latest events. However, this unrest and pain has been residing in the Muslim world, accompanied with permanent terrorism; the American-European invasion wars have carried enmity towards the Muslim world. This was represented in the growth of violence and its spread in the Muslim world, as well as moving the European West. The Sayyed, in his philosophical view of violence, would mean the following:

1- The violence phenomenon is the product of the Western capitalist society that the world had imported with deviated values and products. Our world includes a lot of them. They were able to involve with Western support, and several ways.

2- The Western allies in the Muslim world, such as countries and intellectual and political movements, represent the core from which the phenomenon of violence has been produced, as well as the bloc that fed on Western support for the forms of its growth.

3- The doubled-standard view, and forming alliances with non-democratic tyrant states, was accompanied with enmity toward the frankly democratic states in our nation. This is a very important philosophical remark that is based on directing attention that the West stood by tyranny and violence, and its bloc in the Muslim world, while it claims it is keen to support democracy, which brings Western policy closer to the diplomacy of frank political hypocrisy.

Western policies in the Muslim world are focused on supporting the non-democratic tyrant regimes, by offering full support for the Zionist enemy's entity, the official representative of state terror and occupation in the contemporary world. His eminence uncovers that what is being done by the Zionist enemy occupying Palestine exceeds all hideousness executed by the Takfiri terrorism, in which it appeared as the model and the origin that is imitated by all other forms of killing and violence...

Addressing the European West in this context, he directs their attention to the risks of American foreign policy and what it brought to our nation, as well as to Western Europe near the semi-Arab-Muslim continent, through the policy of supporting tyranny and the Zionist occupation of Palestine.

Takfiri and Zionist Terrorism

Looking into the origin of the current terrorism makes it clear that Zionist terrorism and Takfiri terrorism are the same, on the same level, and they these two sides of terrorism cannot be separated, nor can the image of any one of them be portrayed positively, in order to halt the confrontation with this terrorism.

The Ayatollah's speech, frankly and directly addresses the youth of the West: I hope you would change, in the present and the future, this fake and deceiving contaminated mentality that is known for hiding the lofty goals and beautifying the evil goals.

Then, he uncovers the reasons of violence, saying that what is required is the reformation of the thoughts producing violence in other places. This means that violence is not an Islamic product, but is rather the fabrication of the policies that worked to produce it in the schools, institutions and factories of the Zionist regime and the tyrant regimes, receiving full care and support from the successive American policies, which we are paying the expenses of both in the Muslim world and in Western Europe.

Policy, as a direct act, is not the only producer of violence, yet it is the base of making it. Violence is the product of the culture of violence, it grows with the support of the policies that back the violent regimes, as well as those who adopt its diverse production.

In this context, there is a philosophical analysis of the culture that produces violence, as well as its cultural invasion that stormed both Western and Muslim worlds.

However, its source is the Western capitalist society that uses its developed tools in communication, media, economy and politics as well as all other forms of what is known as the cold war, or the cultural invasion. Its language is very important on the level of the factories of violence that prosper in the West, which are also available in our society as the Sayyed significantly describes it: "The intersection between colonialism and the undesired extremist thought originated from a Bedouin tribe and planted the seeds of extremism in the region."

The Imam uncovers two linked sources of violence:

1- The intellectual and spiritual environment in the Western countries across the years of industrial and economic prosperity, as well as legal and structural inequality and discrimination

2- The intersection of colonialism and provocative thought planted in a Bedouin tribe, a language used by the old ones to uncover truths, where significance goes back to Wahhabism and its alliance with the Saud family, in addition to the Western support, especially supporting the US along decades.

Had the situations of the Western societies' produced its own violence, then the other source of violence has created the malicious "ISIS" phenomenon in Muslim societies.

The Sayyed presents practical and historical evidences of what he mentions, explaining that Islamic history has not witnessed before colonialism a violent phenomenon similar to the terrorist phenomenon of "ISIS" and its branches, adding that the school of authentic Islam considers him who kills one person as if one who has killed all humanity...The Muslim relationships with other peoples was a model of this...The Imam further proves the influence of Western culture in producing violence and the Western youth affiliation with terrorist groups such as "ISIS" and others. Imported violence, imported culture, and colonial greediness that would not only change the balance of the Earth's treasures, but also the moods of its people.

Had not Muslims been the manufacturers of current global violence, then holding them into account puts the world into a new circle of violence that is as ugly as the spread of violence itself. Therefore, he warns from the risks of the Muslim interactions in Europe that would lead them to seclusion and fear, increasing the separating spaces, heightens tension, and opens the way for future crises.

The speech's eloquent conclusion sums up his eminence's demands from the youth in Western countries to deal correctly and honorably with the Muslim world. It represents an invitation to get introduced to each other, and love each other after the dialogue speech, and a call for combatting terrorism. In this case, the lights of a prosperous future would radiate on all lands.

He who knows how educated the speaker is, and how radiant is his language, would know its clear and implied meanings, of those selected words from the Islamic Iranian literature that is full of secrets of beauty and salvation...

Source: al-Ahed News, Translated and Edited by website team