Articles

We were truly all the same (brothers)—because their belief in one God had removed the ‘white’ from their minds, the ‘white’ from their behavior, and the ‘white’ from their attitude. I could see from this, that perhaps if white Americans could accept the Oneness of God, then perhaps, too, they could accept in reality the Oneness of Man—and cease to measure, and hinder, and harm others in terms of their differences in color.

I don’t feel that I am a visitor in Ghana or in any part of Africa. I feel that I am at home. I’ve been away for four hundred years, but not of my own volition, not of my own will. Our people didn’t go to America on the Queen Mary, we didn’t go by Pan American, and we didn’t go to America on the Mayflower. We went in slave ships, we went in chains. We weren’t immigrants to America, we were cargo for purposes of a system that was bent upon making a profit.

Also it mentioned that I attacked the civil rights leaders, which I didn’t do. I didn’t attack anybody but the man who has been brutal to us. And it isn’t the civil rights leaders who have been brutal. They’ve been the victims of brutality. They have been loving you all while you all have been hating them. So I didn’t attack them. I probably questioned their intelligence in letting you beat them without fighting back. But I don’t think that we attacked them.

Our problems are your problems. We have lived for over three hundred years in that American den of racist wolves in constant fear of losing life and limb. Recently, three students from Kenya were mistaken for American Negroes and were brutally beaten by the New York police. Shortly after that two diplomats from Uganda were also beaten by the New York City police, who mistook them for American Negroes.

What follows is the Fatwa (religious verdict/ruling) of one of the Sunni world’s most revered scholars, Shaikh Mahmood Shaltoot with regard to the Shi’a. Shaikh Shaltoot was the head of the renowned al-Azhar Theological school in Egypt, one of the main centers of Sunni scholarship in the world. It should be of interest to know that a few decades ago, a group of Sunni and Shi’a scholars formed a center at al-Azhar by the name of "Dar al-Taqreeb al-Madhahib al-Islamiyyah”which translates into "Center for bringing together the various Islamic schools of thought".

This article is an introduction (pishguftar) that Martyr Murtadha Mutahhari wrote for his book Khadamat-e mutaqabil-e Islam wa Iran (The Mutual Services of Islam and Iran) first published in 1349 H.Sh./1960. The translation of this book is under way and will soon be published by the Sazman-e Tablighat-e Islami, and we hope to publish some parts of it in the future in al-Tawhid.

The integrality and comprehensiveness of the Imam's personality and vision of Islam are such that analytical distinctions among their various dimensions are in a sense artificial, reflecting an effort to understand the Imam rather than his actuality. It is nonetheless legitimate - or at least inevitable - to speak of the Gnostic ( ‘irfani) and political aspects of his life and activity and to accord a certain primacy to the former, in terms of not only chronology but also significance.