Preface

All praise to God, the Lord of the Worlds, and His Mercyand Peace upon Mohammad, the Last of the Prophets,his descendants and companions and successors and theirsuccessors till the Day of Judgement.

How powerful is propaganda in the present age, how effective it can be and what capacity it has to present utter falsehood as truth, has been amply demonstrated by the clever and relentless propaganda the Iranian Government has been carrying on through its embassies and agents in respect of the personality of Ruhullah Khomeini, and the so-called ‘Islamic’ character of the Iranian Revolution brought about successfully by him, and the call it gives for unity between the Shaias and Sunnis, and for the solidarity of Islam. For this purpose, conferences are regularly held to which such delegates from allover the world are invited as are expected to be ideologically converted to their way of thinking, and, in turn, can be used for the promotion of the aforesaid cause. Apart from this, such a flood of publications, in so many languages and in the shape of books, pamphlets, folders, journals and newspapers is being let loose that, at least, the present writer has not, during the seventy years of his cognitive life, witnessed a propaganda of this dimension and intensity carried out with such skill and ingenuity by any government, organisation or political party. Just as the governments of our day spend enormously, in the event of war, on acquisition of arms and other military equipment, in the same reckless fashion the Iranian Government is spending on this propaganda. I have learnt from reliable sources that such literature has reached even the rural areas of our own country.

If one is not aware of the Shi’ite faith and its history and the internal affairs of Iran and the abject plight of citizens belonging to the Sunni sect, and, also , has no proper idea of the personality and character of Ruhullah Khomeini and the intellectual and religious basis of the Revolution brought about by him, he is likely to be misled into treating such literature and propaganda as a dynamic effort to exalt the glory of Islam and to establish an Islamic government in the true sense. One great thing about Khomeini is that he has made no effort to conceal his objective. In his boo, Wilayat-ul-Faqih Awil Hukumat-ul-Islamia, he has not only indicated but fully expounded the religious beliefs and intellectual postulates that have served as the foundation and basis of his revolution. This book, however, can be properly understood only by a person who knows what is Shiaism and has studied the Shi’ite religion.

What to say of the common people and of those who have studied in the modern colleges and universities, and the intellectuals and journalists, even people like us, who have had the benefit of religious education in Arabic schools and colleges and are looked upon as Alims (theologists), are not, generally, aware of the fundamental tenets and beliefs of the Shi’ite faith, with the exception, of course, of those who have red the books written by the Shia authors due to some particular reason I, for one, in the course of my academic career, and later as a teacher, did not know about Shiaism more than what a common man knew. In fact, I knew next to nothing about it. A time, however, came when I happened to study books of some Sunni scholars on the subject who had studied the Shi’ite religion. I may mention, in particular, the book of Maulana Qazi Ehtishamuddin of Moradabad, which was the first I had read on the subject. I had, also, read some books of Maulana Abdul Shakoor of Lucknow on this subject. I, then, began to feel that I had acquired enough knowledge about the Shia religion and knew fully about it. However, when I learnt of the relentless propaganda being done for the Iranian Revolution and the way it was perverting the minds of the people, I considered it a religious duty to write about it, and, for that purpose, I thought it necessary to acquire an adequate knowledge of the Shi’ite religion through a study of its basic and standard books and the writings of Khomeini himself. I am over eighty years of age and ailments and handicaps peculiar to it had started setting in for some time. I am, also, a victim of high blood pressure and a serious and sustained literary effort is not easy for me. In site of all this, I read thousands of pages of such books during a period of one year. It, then, dawned upon me that I did not know even one-fourth of the doctrines and beliefs of the Shi’ite religion and that without a full knowledge of Shia religion one could not know and appreciate the real nature and character of Khomeini’s Iranian Revolution, for its primary base and sub-structure was the fundamental faith of Shias in Imamate and belief in the Major Absence (Ghaibat-e-Kubra) of the Last Imam, the Awaited Mehid.

It may not be out of place for me to stress here that the primary cause of the ignorance of Sunni Ulema about Shia religion is the strict injunction of this faith to its followers to conceal and not to reveal their faith and belies – something which, in my opinion, is peculiar to the Shia religion, alone, in the world. I do not refer here to the singular and extra-ordinary doctrine of shiasim commonly known as Taqaiyya (fraud, subterfuge, deception). It is entirely different form it, and in the Shi’ite treatises it is called Kitman (concealment). It will discuss it, in detail, at the proper place along with the explanations contained in some fundamental Shi’ite books and teachings of Innocent Imams. We may, however, take up, in passing, an observation made by Imam Jafar Sadiq. It is stated in the most reliable book of Shias i.e., Usul-e-Kafi that the Imam said:

“ You are followers of a religion that whoever will conceal it God will confer honour upon him, and He will disgrace and dishonour him who will divulge it.”

A natural consequence of this teaching was that before religious books in Arabic and Persian began to be printed and they were written only by hand, our Ulema, generally, remained unacquainted with Shia religion for those books remained only in the hands of a few leading Shia Ulema who did not allow any one else to have even a glimpse of them. What our jurists and doctors of law have written about Nikah (marriage) and Riddat (apostasy) in their books on Islamic jurisprudence and fatawah (case law) clearly indicates that what they wrote was in total ignorance of the Shi’ite religious treatises and their knowledge was based merely on what had come to be commonly known or had found mention in books of history. A perusal of Fatawa-I-Alamgiri written three hundred years back during the reign of Alamgir Aurangzeb by a body of great jurist and doctors of case law will go to confirm our view-point. Even Allama Ibne Abidin Shami, the renowned author of Durrul Mukhtar, which is regarded to be one of the most authentic books on Hanafi jurisprudence, does not appear to have read those Shi’ite religious books when he wrote about the Shias though it was written only a hundred an fifty years ago.

What is still more strange is that Imam Rabbani Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi Mujaddid Alf Sani, who lived nearly four hundred years ago, has written a good deal about Shias and their religion in scores of his letters. There is, also, a book written by him in Persian which has been repeatedly published under the title of Radde Rawafiz, along with his letters, but it appears that he, too, had not seen the basic books of Shi’ite faith. A century later, i.e., in the 12th century A.H., Hazrat Shah Waliullah Dehlvi, who was residing at Medina in those days had translated the pamphlet Radde-Rawafiz in Arabic at the suggestion of his teacher, Shaikh Abu Tahir Kurdi, and added his own notes to it at various places. In addition, he had written two voluminous books under the titles of Izalat-ul-Khafa and Qurrat-ul-Ainain in support of the creed of Ahl-e-Sunnat. A perusal of all these books, also, makes it evident that the author had not the benefit of going through the most important and fundamental books on Shi’ite religion like AL-Jam’e-ul-Kafi. It was, in our view, simply due to the fact that before the advent of the printing press these books remained exclusively with a few Shia Ulema and following the doctrine of Kitman they had not shown the books to anyone outside their circle. Some-how a few Ulema of Ahle Sunnat managed to obtain these books through extra-ordinary efforts. Among them was Shah Abdul Aziz, son of Shah Waliullah, and author of Tuhfa-e-Isna Ashariyya. Later, when publication of religious books started and these Shi’ite books, too, got published, our Ulema, generally, ignored them excepting a few who studied them for a particular need and tried to acquaint others, too, with them through their own writings. In any event, it is a fact that little advantage was taken of these books by our theologians and men of letters. Hence, we find that very few Ulema of our time possess a thorough knowledge of Shi’ite religion. When this is the case with the Ulema, what can be said about the common people and the intellectuals (as they are called in the modern journalistic parlance).

An outcome of this widespread ignorance was that when the recent revolution occurred in Iran under the leadership of Ruhullah Khomeini and he gave it the name of Islamic Revolution, he gave a call to all the Muslims everywhere to join him in order to bring about a similar revolution in the Islamic, or rather, the whole world and used all the ways and means of publicity and propaganda indicated earlier. It was greeted so enthusiastically by a particular section of educated Muslims all over the world that it appeared that they believed that as a result of that revolution a truly Islamic Government on the pattern of the days of the sacred Prophet and the rightly guided caliphs and come to be established in Iran, the head of which was Khomeini, in spite of the fact that it was fully known that Khomeini was not only a Shia but a Shi’ite religious leader of the class known s Ayatullah (Sign of God).

Again, since these people are counted among Ahle Sunnat and their spokesmen and leaders are reckoned by the modern educated young men as religious guides and bearers of religious knowledge, they have begun to treat Ayatullah Ruhullah Khomeini as the Imam of the day of the World of Islam. A monthly magazine recently published by this circle from Patna denotes the extent of intellectual folly and depravation which has been reached.

All this notwithstanding, I still believe that it is due to ignorance about the Shi’ite religion, and the personality of Khomeini, particularly, his religious place and position, and about the reality and significance of the Iranian revolution coupled with the natural urge for establishment of the Islamic government. Hence, I felt that it was my religious duty as well as moral obligation to my co-religionists to try, to the best of my capacity, to acquaint them with the real position with regard to Khomeini, and the revolution engineered by him and with the Shi’ite faith with special reference to the doctrine of Imamate for it forms the religious and intellectual foundation of the Iranian Revolution. Firstly, I will deal with the revolution brought about by Imam Khomeini, then with his personality and spiritual position, and, lastly, with the Shi’ite faith which will, obviously, be in a little greater detail.

Mohammad Manzoor Nomani