Translated transcript of Part 5 of Hashemi's Friday Prayer speech July 17 2009

Original YouTube

(first 52 seconds of this clip he is talking about China and ending his sentence by wishing that the rational government of China and other governments do not oppress the Muslims around the world)

Now I am going to return to our own issue. As I said in the second and third parts of the sermon we want to discuss matters that relate to ourselves. Well ... thank god, in the election process that we started and ended, we began very nicely. There was a good competition. It was organized well. It was a competition between four individuals whose qualifications were approved by The Guardian Council. They competed and competed well and people were hopeful that they could participate in election with full freedom, and really, the turnout was unprecedented. And in a situation that everything was heading in the direction of gaining our country an epics pride, whose credit should be given to the people, because it was they who came forward and broke the voting records. We have to be grateful to people that in a time that no country has such a level of participation, they freely came forward and took part in the election. This is very valuable. I wish the same condition had prevailed till today and that today we had the highest achievements irrespective of the result. But it didn't turn out that way. SO the principle issue here is "what do we need?"

What I want to express in essence is "what does the revolution need?" These things that you are hearing, you are hearing from someone who has been accompanying every second of this movement since the inception of this revolution by our late Imam [khomeini]. We are talking about 60 years now. We knew what Imam wanted.

We know what was the principle of his fights. When in those days people came with proposals of using arms or forming coalition parties,Imam said that "what I need is the people; do all you can to acquaint the hearts of the people with our struggles." To us, students, he said that as religious students your role is to go to mosques and podiums and explain to people what we want. If people are with us will have every thing. {Imam] didn't disagree with party activities, but what he followed was the prophet's path; which was to bring people to the scene based on their own will and their own beliefs. This was Imam's art which led to success. It took 20 years until people became aware, of course we paid a price, we gave martyrs, prisoners, Imam was exiled and many of these things. But our gain was much higher. People became so aware that those who are older remember how they flooded the streets in the last two years [of Shah's regime]. And these very streets full of Imam supporters broke the back of the arrogant regime of Pahlavi who in those days was supported by the East and the West and had coffers full of cash because of the high prices of oil; and could do anything he wished. But these people came and intimidated them [Pahlavi's] such that hey abandoned all and left and we became victorious.

And after revolution, we worked with Imam on a daily basis and his principle was that Islamic governance without people's participation is not possible. If people are not satisfied, that government is not doable. And I heard an anecdote in those years. I didn't know it's source and didn't ask but looked for it later myself. It is an interesting anecdote [ravayat is anecdotes about Prophet's actions and paroles] which was the principle of Imam's reasoning --of course Imam's sources were plenty, they were both Koranic and Figh'hi but this was a very poignant one expressing the role Imam considered for the people. I have jotted this anecdote down. It's from the book Kashf El Na'ajjam, from Seyyed Bin Tavous, who is one of our most invaluable teachers of or 7th century (~ 12 century AD). Please listen to this, this is one of the most clear principles of Imam's thinking:

'this is a story told by Imam Ali in the last years of Prophet Mohammad's life when he was worried about the future; this is what prophet Mohammad has told Imam Ali: [it's Arabic, I only translate what Hashemi translates:] Ali, you are the leader of this Ummah (people), if you see these people are happy and come and accept you and give you majority of support--of course majority is always proportional and it is never absolute--if they did, then accept this position, become their leader and sort out their affairs. But if you see they disagree, and did not once to you in majority, leave them alone and let them do what they want. Let them do it themselves, and god will find you a way to reach your goals. This is a credible ravayat, and it is cited by one of the most credible of our teachers. This is not the only Ravayat; we have many, we have books, many books, this is just one anecdote. This has been the principle of prophet's government and we based the Islamic government on that. We put the basis on people's accompaniment and they have come along really well.

And it was based on this thinking that when Imam chose Mohandes Bazargan as the head of the temporary government post revolution, we had not over taken the government of Shah. Bakhtiyar was still here, he was the head of the government. But Imam was in rush to pass on the government to people and in the memo that he gave to Mohandes Bazargan, the first objective is set on shortening the period of temporary government and forming the parliament and the assembly of Revolution (Shoraye Enghelab) to write the new constitution so that after that people can live on the new Islamic constitution. And when we were preparing the new constitution before passing it on to the Assembly of Experts, Imam reviewed it and emphasized parts that were related to people and conceded the work [power] to people. Later on, when we saw countries like Algeria, they were surprised and were telling us that it took them 20 years to write their constitution. They thought we were not thinking this through. We responded that we have come to power on people's power and we know that this people will support their revolution and their religion so we are not worried. And we were right. You know that from the perspective of the constitution, everything in our country depends on people's vote. Everything from Leadership ... [See next part]