Supreme Leader s Annual Hajj Messages 1998

n the Name of he Almighty Praise be to God, the Lord of the worlds, and salutation and peace be upon the harbinger of good tidings, the warner, the light of illumination, our lord Abil Qassem Mustafa Mohammad, and his immaculate progeny and his virtuous, chosen companions. The Hajj season has arrived, bearing the good tidings of the greatest annual gathering of Muslims. It would, therefore, be most fitting if those hundreds of thousands of eager heart, enjoying the happy blessing of this divine meeting, should be elated with continuing excitement preparing themselves for this grand occasion. It would be most appropriate that millions of other longing hearts, not included in the list of the present year's happy ones, should visualise the blessed moments of those fortunate pilgrims and through praying for them and for themselves, purify and perfume their hearts and souls, and certainly all Muslims with craving hearts could, during the season of Hajj enhance their days and nights with the rites and signs of this blessed period. The pilgrimage to Mecca is the greatest event of every year, and it would be proper if within these specified days, all thoughts, feelings and attentions be sincerely given to it alone, so that each individual could contemplate it. According to his own mental, spiritual and political capacity and certainly those who have succeeded in gaining the grace shall be most favoured to make the most of all the spiritual benefits that the Hajj offers; they are best placed to reap the best spiritual individual and social fruits from it and bless their souls hearts and thoughts through it. God willing, so shall it be. Although the blessings of Hajj practically cover all aspects of human life not only one's innermost feelings and thoughts but also politics, social affairs, the combined power of Muslims, co-operation among Muslim nations which are all given a fresh life and vitality, yet one may safely declare that gaining a new insight knowledge or recognition is the golden key to all these spiritual treasures. The first gift of Hajj to any person wishing to have his eyes opened to the truth of things and to benefit from the God-given phenomena, is the unique insight and cognition available to all Muslims at Hadj only, never found at any other time or place. No other act of a religious nature may provide the Islamic Ummah with the congregation of insights and enlightenment available at the pilgrimage. This particular insight consists of a group of cognitions, of which the following are some: Recognising oneself as an individual recognising oneself as a part of the great Islamic Ummah recognising representative models of that unique Ummah, recognising the greatness of God and his abundant grace, and recognition of the enemies. Recognising oneself as an individual. This means contemplating one's own being and discovering one's weakness and strengths at a place where all material manifestations such as status, race, possessions, titles, clothes and ornaments are completely removed and at a time when man divorced from all those privileges, along with thousands of others, is performing Tawaf, Sa'y, Salat, Efazeh and wuquf. When the rich and the poor, the rulers and the ruled and the educated and the illiterate and the black and the white, all attired in the same garment at the same location, are facing God with hands raised in supplication and feeling themselves to be present at the centre of God's greatness brilliance power and grace. Yea then and only then, may a thinking human discover his weakness and his heedfulness before God and find at the same time that all His elevation, strength and glory lies in his link with the Almighty alone, then only he could do away with all false, illusionary and arrogant conception about his own dismal individuality, then he could throw away his egotism self pride and love for oneself which are the sources of every ugly deed and evil behaviour. It is, on the other hand, also at Hajj when one may taste the sweetness of separation of one's self from all inner idols and join the source of all greatness. This fundamental enlightenment is the essence of every worship and service to God, it is the innermost content of the supplications of all men of God; and it is that insight which purifies and brightens every human soul, prepares it for acquiring the other insight and enable it to tread upon all paths of perfection. The routine of temporal life, worldly engagement extreme occupations with material strife, unending disputes in one's every-day life, makes the human heart heedless of this basic insight. It leaves him alone in the spider's web of illusions and false conceptions darkens his heart and soul; Hajj is the final and decisive cure of all these maladies. Recognising oneself as part of the Islamic Ummah: is the vision that looks at the whole world, and at all the nations and territories which have sent pilgrims to the house of God, it is seeing all the pilgrims in the mirror of this human gathering, and it is the vision of this great human gathering and it is the vision of the great Islamic Ummah, consisting of dozens of nations, hundreds of millions of people throughout the earth, possessing some of the most important material and spiritual Potentials for living and social welfare, and the whole of mankind and the industrial Civilisation, despite of its great material volume, is in need of and benefits from the great resources of this Ummah and its markets and its cultural and scientific heritage. Recognising oneself as part of this great Ummah shall join the pilgrim with his own brothers and sisters and kinsfolk in a real emotional bond, disowning the false concepts of separateness which have ruled for decades, encouraged by yesterday's colonialism and today's global arrogant under pretexts of race, language, religions, sects and nationalism. The perpetuators of a world of class societies, that is the politicians who mean to keep the world divided into strong and weak poles, and people into oppressors and the oppressed, who are always sharing out the poles of powers between themselves to the detriment of the oppressed nations, have, for the last two centuries, feared the unity of the Islamic Ummah, and done their best not to let it be realised. These are the sort of elements, who, at the present decade, turned a blind eye to the massacres of Muslims in the Balkans, who continuously discriminate against their Muslim minorities, revealing their true nature of wishing to "christianise" all Europe but always speaking contemptuously of unity of the world of Islam and preventing its realisation by adverse publicity and actual measures. Strengthening this feeling that an individual is a member of the vast body of the Ummah together with proper guidance should go a long way to neutralise the plots for creating discord. This feeling of Ummah membership, while reserving the national sectarian identities of the components of the Ummah, will help all members to enjoy the abundant goodness and the power and strength inherent in the oneness and unity of the Islamic Ummah; all the sites of Hajj such as tawaf, sa'yi, congregational prayers and similar, collective actions and movements are valuable lessons for the pilgrims in this respect, and penetrate the depths of his soul. Recognising representative models of one Ummah. This requires taking practical steps towards the realisation of the great dream of Islamic unity and, finally at least, witnessing the actual rise of the united Islamic power in the arena of global politics. Watching the pilgrims, masses of them, from many different countries, speaking various languages, and of varying races and colours, shall certainly widen his vision and take him beyond personal, tribal and national frontiers, the Islamic, moral obligation of behaving in brotherly manners, shall bring him closer to the hearts and tongues and feelings of the others, shall help the news from every country to spread throughout the Islamic world, shall neutralise the propaganda plots of the enemy, who is today more than ever before engaged in falsifying truths, fabricating lies and spreading rumours , and shall, finally, remove all distances in location, language, and conception between them: the secret of the success of one nation gives hope to other batons, the analyses of one country's experience makes other nations wiser, and removes the feelings of Isolation and loneliness from the heart of others, and the examination of the suffering of one nation, helps others find ways of combating and curing them. The pilgrim's staying at the same places during the Hajj season especially the staying at Arafat Mash'ar and Mabeet at Mina, are all preparation grounds for this effective and decisive recognition. Recognition of God's greatest and His Abundant Grace. By this is meant musing over and contemplating the foundation of this house, which is both the house of God and the house of people;Indeed the first Houses ever, built for all men was that at Becca, Blessed in location and a beacon for every nation (Qur'an 3:96) It is a place where all needful humans resort to, wherein the majesty of the divine faith is manifestes, it is a mixture of glory and greatness, purity and simplicity. It is a place that permanent echoes of the very first calls to the unity of the word was realised; it still preserves traces of the first combatants of the early days of Islam who put up a defenceless struggle, and emigrated from it in the most oppressed manner, but later, did, powerfully and triumphantly, returned to it and pruned it from all its signs and traces of Arab ignorance; it is perfumed by the breath of its worshippers, prostrates and sincere admirers, it was the rising part of the sun of Islam in the beginnings, and it will be the location from which another sun, the promised Mahdi shall rise in the end, final refuge for the fugitive hearts and the source of hope for desperate souls. The traditions of Hajj and its ordered rites, symbolise both God's greatness and gracefulness. And it is by such recognition that hearts are moved at the sight of the holy Ka'ba at Masjid al-haram, and all gone astray return to the straight path and humans undergo a great change. The recognition of enemies. This knowledge is the end result of all those other recognitions. It completes and perfects them; and without it the heart and mind of a Muslim is like an unwalled magazine, disposed to every highway robber, plunderer or traitor. In the rites of Hajj the very Ramy-al-Hajarat is a telling symbol of knowing and fighting the enemies, the holy prophet of Islam (peace be upon him) did himself proclaimed "bara'a" (declaration of disassociation from the enemies of Islam) at Hajj and had the verses of bara'a read by the Commander of the Faithful (peace be upon him) in the course of Hajj. Should the day arrive when the world of Islam and the Islamic Ummah, does not confront ruthless enemies, if such an era should be plausible, then the wisdom of "bara'a" would become baseless. Yet at present, when we are facing all sorts of enemies by evil-wishers, being heedless of enemies and neglecting "bara'a" would be a big error that causes irreparable losses. If those recognitions are acquired, then the enemies of the world of Islam shall also be recognised. Any phenomenon, person, government or system that may strive to alienate from the Islamic identity, or causes discord and separation among them, or makes them heedless of or indifferent to the struggle for regaining their glory and dignity, is in fact engaged in an act of enmity, and, if not the enemy itself, it is still the fingertip of the enemies. Satan, as interpreted from the holy Qur'an, is also a manifestation of all evil and corrupt forces facing the ranks of the prophets of God: "And this have we assigned a foe, for every prophet: Satans, of men and Jinns " (6:112) The fact that the names and designations of Satan have been repeatedly mentioned everywhere in the Qur’an and throughout the period of revelation, goes to prove that Muslim communities should never, for a moment, become heedless of the designations and signs of the enemy. Therefore, the most intensive endeavours of Satan, through the political weapons of global arrogant, are focused on making Muslims despair of their future and letting them forget the treasures of their own knowledge and culture. And for this reason, any factor that may give hope to world Muslims to think of establishing future for themselves on the basis of Islam, is violently hated and opposed by the global arrogant The great Satan's enmity towards Islamic Iran springs from the fact that the very establishment of this Islamic republic, and the running of a big country, with a sizeable population and infinite spiritual and material resources, is a herald of Islamic dignity and glory to all Muslims and keeps the flames of hopefulness alight in their hearts. In the 19 years since the establishment of the Islamic republic the whole world has witnessed the beacons of hope in the behaviour of Muslim nations, and, with the passage of time, the efforts of global arrogant have faced more defeats against the long, extensive ways of this Islamic event and thus Muslims have increasingly become more hopeful. The reawakening of the Palestinian people, their freedom struggle inspired by Islamic slogans against Zionist usurpers, the awakening usurpers, the awakening of the Muslim nations in Europe, and the establishment of the Muslim Bosnia-Herzegovina (despite a systematic genocide and wanton blood letting of Muslims, which was carried out by the instigation or cheerful violence of Europeans), the coming to power of believers in the Islamic government in Turkey and Algeria through the usual channels of Western democracy (though both cases were made abortive by the military supported by the illegitimate powers and helped by the enmity of the global arrogance towards any Islamic power), the establishment of a government based on Islamic principals in the Sudan (which despite detrimental foreign interventions is, praise by God, still marching towards full Islamic sovereignty), the revival of Islamic mottoes in many Muslim countries, forgotten for many long years, and numerous other examples are tokens of the deep and increasing influence of the birth of an the Islamic republic in Iran throughout the Islamic world and Islamic Ummah. And, of course, the enmity of the global arrogance towards Iran has also daily increased and has become more intense and hateful. Today, after repeated defeats of its military, economics, political and propaganda campaign and conspiracies, the global arrogance has opened a new front: it is a new publicity campaign, it is based on an accusation against the Iranian people and government and it aims at extinguishing all flames of hope in the hearts of the Muslim nations. The message of this campaign is to insinuate that the Iranian people regret their great revolution, the sovereignty of Islam and the Qur'an and all their revolutionary slogans, and those in charge of the government are turning away from Islam and the revolution. For evidence of this and as an example, it is claimed that the Iranian government intend on establishing friendly relations with the United States administration. The oft-repeated denials of the Iranian officials and the frequent emphasis on their love for and adherence to Islam, the revolution and the late Imam's (may his soul be blessed) policies, however, never the publicity machine of the global arrogance and its political leaders, especially those of the imperial-minded regime of the USA, from repeating their baseless allegations by different tongues and in various forms and methods; the allegations which constantly blown up in their news bulletins, international reports and analyses particularly those meant for the world of Islam. At Hajj, the recognition of the enemy means the recognition of such policies and their motives, bara'a at Hajj means revealing the enemies conspiracies and declaring bara'a from them. With their great revolution under the leadership of Imam Khomeini, may God bless his soul, and continuing his wise policies, the Iranian people and government raised the honourable banner of Islam and Iran, and revived its dignity, national independence and historical importance. By the blessing of its revolution, the Iranian nation has put an end to the previous trends of Corruption scientific decay, moral degradation, political despotism and American dependence; it has regained its vitality and started reconstruction, it did rid itself from the domination of the servile, incompetent dishonest corrupted, despotic and oppressive elements that ruled, and replaced them with a people's government and caring, competent faithful and honest managers and officials; it gained control of its God-given national wealth and resources which were plundered by foreign elements; it gave a fresh life to its own creativity and the power of construction which had deteriorated under dependent traitorous kings. It has now taken some long steps in all political and scientific areas and is making up for some two centuries of lagging behind; and for its future the Iranian nation is banking on its high morals, iron determination, enlightened ideas and the experience gained during the last nineteen years. Iran and Iranians owe their life to Islam and the Islamic revolution and their great Imam. The Iranian people and government shall always remember this truth and will never deviate from the lucid and straight path of the revolution. Since about half a century ago, when the US administration began to play a role in the Iranian political scene, they have only been unjust and committed crimes against the Iranian people: they propped up the corrupt anti-people Pahlavi regime, they helped set up weak and subservient government they imposed their will on our nation and plundered our national resources. They wasted our national wealth through detrimental oil deals and arms sales, they controlled the Iranian armed forces, they established the Shah's security apparatus and instructed its torturers, they brought about many disputes between Iran and other Muslim countries including the Arabs, they encouraged Corruption and prostitution throughout our country, and helped the Shah to suppress Islamic movements everywhere, and they co-operated with that regime and guided it in all its actions and policies. And when revolution came about despite the combined efforts of the united fronts of darkness, unbelief and lawlessness, the US government did their best from the very first days after the establishment of the Islamic Republic, scheming and plotting against the revolutionary Iranian people, and obstructing the smooth running of affairs and even invading it. In the course of the eight year war against Iran, they actively helped the Iraqi invader, they blocked Iran economically, assisted the traitors and fugitives of the previous regime, prepared a publicity campaign against the revolution throughout the world, tried to sow differences between Iran and its regional neighbours. The Terrorist activities, attempted to overthrow the new regime by the CIA mercenaries, prevented Iran from entering into economic deals with other countries and carried out a host of other damaging, pernicious acts in every possible field. But despite all these adverse activities, the world knows, and the US officials bitterly know, better than others that the American administration have failed in most areas, and they themselves, rather than Iran, have become internationally isolated, and Iran has, by the grace of God and thanks to the dignity and the power acquired from Islam and the revolution managed to pull through, and then let the enemy taste the bitter fruit of frustration. Taking all these facts and truths in account how is it at all probable for the Iranian people and government to extend a hand of friendship to an enemy who is still, with a heart full of spite and vengeance and angered at its repeated failures, striving hard to strike a blow at Iran and the Iranian people? How could we be deceived by an adversary who, even today while smiling spitefully holds a poisoned dagger in his hand? Certainly the Islamic republic has prove d that it is not after creating tensions in his relations with other countries, and does advocate the sorts of relations in his foreign policies that are based on the "three principles of dignity, wisdom and expediency, it has shown that its main guidelines and criteria for such material and moral relations are the interests of the country, respects for the dignity and good of this great nation and maintenance of peace and security in the world's political climate. Our relations with our neighbours and other countries of the world including the European countries are clear, expressive, evidence of the policies. Our unfailing efforts at brotherly dialogues with every Muslim country, some of which are producing sweet results at present are there for all people of the world to see. Yet along with all these doings, we have set it as a principal for us to reorganise the true nature of the enemies, to be on our guard vigilantly and unshakingly; and for this reason we have not been deceived by the worship of the tempters, and God willing shall never fall pray to their satanic persuasions. In this light we shall never officially recognise the Zionist enemy, that has set-up an usurped regime of occupation of the Islamic land of Palestine, and shall never conceal our firm conviction that it is necessary that this regime of occupation should be removed, and government consisting of the people of Palestine before the united States of America, that is a great Satan, and the arrogant leader of the global trouble and tensions, we shall always consider it our enemy, as long as it adheres to its present places, and never, stretch out a friendly hand to it. Dear brothers and sisters, coming here from all over the world of Islam and at you Iranian pilgrims! Do your best, with the help of the Almighty God to acquire the kind of knowledge and recognition already explained, which will be your greatest achievement at Hajj, to return to your own lands, enlightened by new recognition in those vital fields, and turn them into new capital for your future and movements. Do, in this Hajj season, retell to each other the afflictions imposed on the Muslims of Kosovo, which are a continuation of the bloody episodes of the Balkans and another horrific experience as that inflicted upon Bosnia-Herzegovina. Pray for the victory and the salvation of those oppressed people, and take practical measures to help them. Pray for oppressed Muslims in the other parts of the world find ways and solutions for them and beseech God's infinite might and grace of the improvement of their affairs. Let us hope that all the pilgrims shall return to their homes, their pilgrimage having been approved, and their hearts full of spiritual, mortal and the political gains. Was Salamu Ala Baqiatu Allahi Fi Ardhihi Wa 'Ajjalalahu Farajahu Was Salamu Alikum Wa Rahmatullahl Wa Barakatuhu Ali al-Hussaini al-Khameni
3rd Dhu al-hijjah al-haram 1418
12 Farwardeen 1377

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