Despotic Diatribe

We should pay attention to freedom, democracy and justice-seeking – that the Revolution propagated and introduced Islam through the views, mottoes and viewpoints on them. Today also at different levels in the world there is a campaign against all concepts of the Islamic teachings founded in Islam. It is a campaign against the religious trust in terms of life affairs and against the theoretical and practical reconciliation between religion and democracy. There used to be a major campaign against the unity of the ummah which was experienced by colonialism in the past.

As regards the people, the most important thing done by the late Imam was to distance the definition of democracy from what the directors of Western democracy and their agents wanted to show in academic circles. They attempted to make people disbelieve in any sort of reconciliation between democracy and religion. The Imam cancelled this abrogated meaning and introduced religious democracy – which is actually the Islamic Republic – to the world. But this was not adequate to him. He did it at a theoretical and a practical level too.

Today the system of the Islamic Republic – which is a religious system whose regulations, principles and values are rooted in religion – is a full-fledged democratic system unparalleled by any other Muslim state. Of course, this truth is very bitter to the enemy. They do not like the idea of having religion and democracy on the same flag. They are attempting to separate the two.

Thus the truth about the Islamic Republic is very painful to them. They have exploited various propaganda means and agents to invite the Iranian nation to democracy in order to divert the world public opinion from this bright truth. This great satire of our time and region. They had acknowledged the despotic systems, the Pahlavi regime and the regimes which know nothing of democracy.

While, at the same time, they invite to democracy the Islamic Republic whose members of parliament and all the pillars of the society are directly or indirectly selected through the votes of people! While this is the case in our country, the U.S. president took over through undemocratic means. This is a fact everyone knows about. They have no problem with totalitarian regimes since such regimes submit easily.

They come to a compromise with systems that have taken over through coup d’etat because they surrender to them so easily. But they criticize the Islamic system due to its belief in independence and its own values and not because it is not ready to submit to their domination. So they accuse it of despotism and dictatorship which appropriately befit their own systems.

Today our best criteria especially for our officials are those based on religious democracy for improving our morality and manners.

Do not make mistake, this sort of democracy has nothing to do with the Western version. It is quite different.

It consists of two things: It is not like importing democracy from the west and then attaching it to religion. Democracy itself belongs to religion. As I mentioned earlier, democracy has two aspects: One aspect is that the structure of the system is constructed by the people; in other words, people select their system; they choose the government; they choose the members of parliament; they choose the important officials directly or indirectly. This is what claimed but not actualized in the West.

Some really get upset because we do not take the Western claim of democracy seriously. They take it as prejudice. But actually this is neither our mere words nor a prejudiced one. It is well-informed and based on the comments and examples of the outstanding literature of the West.

This is what they say. They do not admit it when they are dealing with public opinion. In public, they say that the only thing which exists is public opinion. But this is not the whole story. They admit this at some levels. There are many examples to this meaning. Is this democracy?! We do not say such a thing.

We say that one aspect of religious democracy is the opinion of the people. Of course, people should know, understand and decide so that they will fulfill their religious obligation. Without knowledge they will have no obligations.

submitted by ThE sUpReMe LeAdEr