Global Congress of Imam Reza (pbuh)

Islamic Approach to Human Dignity and Resistance for Establishing Justice

Sunday 14 May 2023 - 15:34 (one year(s) ago)

Islamic Approach to Human Dignity and Resistance for Establishing Justice

Pre-Meeting of the Fifth Global Congress of Imam Reza (pbuh)

(January 14, 2023)

In this pre-meeting, Sheikh Zayd Al-Salami from Australia talked about intellectual and social challenges that Shia Muslims are facing in western societies today. He believed that societies are borderless today due to the growth of technology and all people have quick access to everything thanks to the internet. There are advantages and disadvantages in the small village of today's world. The main question is how Shia Muslims can solve the moral and spiritual challenges of today's society. The path they follow should be the path of reason and rationality, because Shia ideology is a reason-based faith. Western world tries to portray itself in having moral high ground and superiority in intellectualism and having the keys to rationality and then claims that they are more understanding, more intellectual and more democratic. On the other hand, tries to show eastern societies especially Muslims as being uncritical, being violent and backward. But with a simple search on google we realize that reason has always been in conflict with western societies and especially with Christianity. America as the flag-bearer of democracy has bombed the Indo-Asia many times. Only on Vietnam more than five million tons of bombs were dropped over. Is that rational? Is that humane? The fact is that many of these new sciences and these isms are aimed at giving alternative theories to Islamic ideologies and some Muslims think they are insightful but don't realize how harmful they could be to the Islamic ideologies and a person's religious belief and how liberalism , feminism and pluralism are conflicting to Islam. Muslims are facing family and identity crises. Multiculturalism and co-existence are good and important when we draw a line between these things and the verse of Quran that only Islam is the acceptable religion for Allah. Or another slogan: humanity before religion is in fact a tool for secularization of the society and statistics say even Christianity is in decline and in Australia less people consider themselves as practicing Christians. The wonderful example of Shia rationality is Covid-19. Shia Muslims had the utmost devotion for mourning for Imam Hossein in Ashura yet they put their emotions aside and dealt with the social distancing and lockdown. Shia world with the teachings of Ahlulbayt (AS) and the teachings of the Holy Quran have a stronger sense of ideology and worldview.

Then Skeikh Mohammad Dehnavi, at first, talked about the history of racism and said the first racist was Satan who claimed to be better than Adam and refused to prostrate. In the age of Prophet Moses, Egyptians also felt they were superior to others and used to mock the Palestinians. And in the time of Prophet Mohammad, the people of Mecca were not only proud of their children and wealth but also boasted of their numerous graves. The main reason that Prophet Mohammad was sent to the Arab world and the Holy Quran is in Arabic language is that the Arabs would not follow him if he was from other races. Nowadays, racism is still a serious social issue. Recently, a European official stated that Europe is like a beautiful garden and the rest of the world seems like a jungle.
Then he talked about the Islamic solution for the racial discrimination and stated that according to Islamic teachings and the Holy Quran, superiority is just about piety and virtue not skin color or ethnicity because God has created humans in different colors and races. At the end he mentioned the legacy of Imam Reza and explained the fact that from the very beginning of his Immamat, Imam Reza tried to culturalized equality among people, and clarified for the people that superiority is just based on piety and contribution to the Islamic society .

Mohammad Siddiq, the Australian Islamic activist, talked about the notion of monotheism and its effect on the national and international solidarity and stated that the belief in one single exclusive God has deep roots in various and separate parts of the world like the one in the Maya ancient civilization, in the middle east among the Christians , Jews and Muslims and in China the belief in Shangdi and among the people pf South Sudan. Monotheism popped up in different cultures with no apparent correlations because it is a part of human nature. Towhid is a lived experience that gives hope to the hopeless, that dignifies the undignified. It empowers people and increases one's faith through the belief in one single God. It is the belief that God is born of nothing, there is nothing equal to him, there is nothing like the one and only God, so we as the created beings all stemmed from one divine source. The black and white, the male and female, the oppressor and the oppressed are all created from the same source. Thus, equalization of people is only possible in monotheism. In Prophet Moses' story with Pharaoh the Pharaoh had magic, power and propaganda but they had nothing faith in Allah which enabled them to see themselves equal to their oppressor and even gave them the ability to excel the oppressors through virtue. This is an empowering and liberating ideology.