Nahjul Balagah and its Lessons for the Mankind

part 3

This atmosphere of hypocrisy is also a peculiarity of our own time, although from the point of view of social conditions, enmities, manner of opposition, hostile parties and so forth, our time is more comparable to the time of the Prophet. Today, the so-called followers of 'progressive Islam' in our society are those groups who oppose each other quite openly. Also, those who claim to be followers of the 'line of the Imam' sometimes draw swords against one another. Those who claim to act for the benefit of the Islamic Republic or to follow the policy of 'neither East nor West' are often so divided among themselves that nothing but a hostile relationship can be attributed to them. In fact, it cannot be said that they have differences of opinion, for they are exactly at the opposite side of one another. Therefore, taking into account that each of these groups finds some followers for itself, we see that our society resembles the society at the time of Ali.

The fourth point about the Nahj-ul-Balagha is that a great number of its sermons are unfortunately incomplete, i.e. either from the beginning or from the end of each sermon some statements have been omitted. Even, in some cases, Seyyid Radi has omitted statements from the middle of a sermon and then continued the rest of it with the phrase "and from that", which is what the journalists and reporters do repeatedly today. Now, we know nothing about the omitted parts and this creates some difficulties in interpreting the content of the Nahj-ul-Balagha. The reason why Seyyid Radi has made these omissions is that the Nahj-ul-Balagha (The Peak of Eloquence), as its name indicates, has been compiled from an artistic point of view, i.e. eloquence of expression. This does not mean, however, that he has been heedless of the subject matter and has merely paid attention to the artistic aspects of Ali's Sayings. Yet', this eloquent man, one of the great Arab poets of his own time, has dealt with the Nahj-ul-Balagha with a poetic outlook.

He has endeavored to pick out All's most beautiful and eloquent words and statements just as one tries to choose the best distich of a sonnet. This is why a type of semantic disconnection is observed among the statements of some Sermons.

It is to be noted, of course, that both the highly eloquent and non-eloquent Sayings of Ali carry very magnificent purports, and it is these purports which make us appreciate the Nahj-ul-Balagha, now, in the fourteenth century (A.11.) more than a great scholar of the fourth century (Seyyid Radi) did. As a matter of fact, the human being has naturally faced so many hardships in the course of centuries that he or she understands Ali's words and message and the call of Islam from his tongue more easily than those who lived centuries ago.

It is important, as well, to know that when Seyyid Radi was compiling Ali's words and sayings, there were few people who valued All and his words as much as you value them today. Thus, Ali's lines of thought were only followed by a minority.

On the other hand, those people who took care of All's Sayings and tried to compile them, attached more (or at least equal) importance to the form and beauty as to the content of his statements and omitted some parts which they considered less beautiful than others. If you were Seyyid Radi you would definitely not treat Ali's words in this way. You would instead, try to benefit more from the contents of Ali's sayings. This is why we believe that today Ali and his words are more appreciated than in the fourth century, and this is why history is moving towards All and his message, something that we should accelerate.

The main subjects of the Nahj-ul-Balagha which we are going to discuss in this book are as follows:

Fundamental Beliefs

A part of Nahj-ul-Balagha is about monotheism, humanity, the Last Day, prophethood, Imamat and other fundamental principles of Islam. Of course, contrary to the manner of the dialecticians in the third and the fourth centuries, these subjects have been discussed in the Nahj-ul-Balagha with a kind of mystical and spiritual approach. Thus, the words of All about monotheism, for instance, are quite different from the words of Nasir al-din Tusi and other Islamic philosophers and theologians.

Social and Political Matters

These matters consist of both general and specific social affairs including the administration of or Islamic country, the relation between governors and subordinates, letters to the rulers of different states (the famous letter to Malik Ashtar, for instance), the, way of facing the enemy, decisiveness free from improper hate and revenge, treating both friends and enemies exactly as they deserve, being not subjected to credulity and naivety and many other social matters of that time and of the whole history.

Source: imamalmahdi.com

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