Regarding Green Qods day and people’s passionate presence: “Violence is not the solution”
In the name of God, the Compassionate and the Merciful,
Without a doubt, the Quds day demonstrations remain a highlight of the events of the past few months. Promising results are expected out of what occurred during this event, which cannot be attributed to one faction or one view. Rather, [these] achievements belong to all of those who have roots in this land, even if some are not able to feel this blessing and this gift due to their own incorrect judgments.
This gift is the gift of the Imam’s [Khomeini’s] foresight. He repeatedly told us to establish the right foundations such that when we are gone, they will not be able to destroy them, even if they so desire. Maybe we have not been able to truly act on this advice, but that is the path he always took. He based the pillars of the Islamic Republic on the trust of the people and created opportunities for them to come out [in public] so that no one would be able to destroy them.
Quds day is one such day. With such traditions, people cannot be deterred and forced out of the scene. Without addressing and providing justice inside, [the authorities] cannot invite people to such rallies to protest tyranny in faraway lands. To leave behind no doubts, He [the Imam] declared that this day is not only specific to Palestine, but the day of the oppressed and the day of Islam. We now realize the efforts of that caring father who made sure that people always remain present on the scenes in the millions.
Thirty years ago, our Imam asked Muslims across the world to set aside their differences and come together to rise against a common agony that pains them all. This message is so close to our circumstances today. Islam did not say that we must think alike to be united. The unity to which we are invited is the same as accepting differences, and Quds is a day when Muslims should come together while tolerating the vast differences that exist among them. That is why if this event is attached to one particular political faction, it will lose its glory year after year. It will not achieve its promised vision, and it can no longer be the day of Islam and the day of the oppressed.
The vision of this day is to bring together different colors in one scene. This year, our Quds day did not achieve this [ideal], but it strived for it. In fact, this year on Quds day I was among people who greeted me with tight fists (Mousavi was among the state-supporters in the rally) and who wished my death. On the chaotic road we were marching together, I took a good look at them and realized that I love their faces and I realized that our victory is nothing that will bring about defeat for anyone. We must all achieve prosperity, even though some will realize this prosperity later than others.
In fact, those who felt defeated by this year’s Quds, gained the most. They saw in the clearest sense that three months of unprecedented violence did not have the smallest effect on the presence of the people, and in fact, made it stronger. If not for the opportunity on Quds day, it would have been months from now when they would have been met with their own blunders in the celebrations of Bahman (the demonstrations held in celebration of the revolution in February) and they would have come face to face with the high cost of their own mistakes at a time when it would have been much too late.
Violence is not the solution. Meet all with empathy (as opposed to enmity.) Violence is like a horse that throws the rider to the ground. People have every right to feel angry about hostile security measures and unrelenting provocative propaganda, even if justifiably their righteousness does not change the consequences of their anger. The amount of fruit we harvest from our endurance depends on the amount of patience thoughtfulness that we are willing to maintain. If we move towards unreasonable extremes, it is possible to, in one day, lose the fruit of a week’s or a month’s hard work. Our people deserve better treatment from the authorities because they are alert and thoughtful. And a thoughtful person is he who can not only distinguish between good and bad, but also between good and better, or between bad and worse.
There are still better conclusions that we can arrive at, than those we arrived at on Quds day. At the same time, worse conditions are possible than the ones we are currently suffering from and are subjected to. On the road ahead of us, and in our historical context, there is no clear image of the consequences of acting against the current structure of government. As mentioned in the letters sent to the Marjas, Afghanistan and Iraq act as two big lessons on each side of our land. We should never ignore them. Of course, these lessons do not stop us from demanding our rights, because we have the patience and wisdom to change our destinies for the better without having to pay so high a price.
What can achieve the goal [of peaceful reform] is a commitment to the golden messages that we have chosen. A message that interferes with the friendship and brotherhood of our people will not help us restructure our national unity or our identity. We see the compassionate Islam as a cure for our pain. We see that what the authorities introduce as the banner of religion is a dress worn inside-out.
We demand the unconditional enactment of the constitution and the return of the Islamic Republic to its original ethical foundations. We demand the Islamic Republic, not a word more, and not a word less. To us, anarchists and people who act against the structure are those who avoid the Islamic laws, either with or without an excuse. They are also those who pull the plug on the constitution for their own personal gain.
Today’s political environment is not what Iranians wished for 30 years ago. Now, people are asking themselves: What has stopped us from achieving our ideals and has instead got us here? This is a fundamental question that we should ask of our struggle today and in future. What should we do so as not to face the same question thirty years from now?
We can only be certain [of the right answer] when we base our sociopolitical achievements on our everyday life. In the past century our people have had more than a few of such achievements. However, their achievements have been a result of a [direct] struggle. As long as the environment of struggle and endeavor lasted, these achievements were sustainable. But as soon as people were exhausted or thought they had to return to their homes the fruit of their struggle was lost. To fight [for a cause] is holy, but it is not long-lasting. What lasts is life.
This is a lesson we have learned from those of us who fought in eight years holy defense [against Saddam.] During those years two groups of people would leave for the war fronts. The first group fought during the war and then thought to themselves the time has come to live a life, to pile money and accumulate wealth or to build high-rise buildings one after another. The second group left [to war] for the more exuberant spirituality. They did not go just to make a sacrifice; they went to take part in that spiritual atmosphere.
Digesting these words may not be easy for people who have not experienced that atmosphere, but it is real. Not that they did not make sacrifices, in fact they were our most renowned heroes. But in the light of gems they gained they did not believe they were making any sacrifices. They lived the years of the war and then [after the war] started their own struggle, a peaceful struggle to protect that living experience or at least the memory of it. Without them, we could not have lasted [the war] empty-handed for eight years.
During the election campaign I was proud when a group of them honored me and formed the Isargaran[those who sacrifice for others] committee as one of the most active committees of my campaign. They said we have gathered together hoping to revive the spirituality of our days with Imam [Khomeini] and thus we believe our responsibilities are more burdensome. I doubt there is anyone in our nation who would not be proud of them. They are exactly on the common green intersection that connects us all to one another.
In following them, we should also live The Green Path of Hope, it is only in that case that the miracle they created will also awaits us. The importance of this year’s Quds day was that it revealed that the new life people have chosen is not something temporary and ephemeral. If we had all remained home [during the rally] but this message was [somehow] communicated with this clarity, we would have achieved nothing less.
Living the green path means that every day, while we are busy with our chores at home, at the workplace, in every street or alley, we repeat this message with an authoritative voice (in the same way that we continue to be Muslim, to be Iranian, to be of this age).
Soon after we spoke about strengthening social networks or living the green path, people asked: ‘How?’ The answer is: ‘Merely by being’. We don’t talk about creating a social network that doesn’t exist and strengthening it; we say that the people’s power is embedded in those social networks which exist naturally, based on innate guidance. We should recognize their importance.
This year, Quds day showed that this network is like a toddler who is growing incredibly quickly. This toddler is going to start talking in no time; it will be mature soon, and will compel everybody to admire and respect it. Our task is to nurse this blessed phenomenon by repeatedly expressing the thoughts which come to existence around it and to repeatedly reiterate their importance.
Likewise, when we are talking about living the green path, we don’t mean something complicated, innovative, or new. Rather, it is pointing to something that is currently being experienced. It is also pointing to the fact that our people’s movement nowadays, unlike in the past, is the beginning of a certain type of life. There is great pleasure in being smart and lively; in homophony and communication; in closing an eye to others’ faults, which makes life bountiful.
In addition, there is a power in the awareness of our nation that saves our nation from bearing many miseries. Our people are not afraid to pay the cost to revive their rights because ‘a place in heaven is earned with a price, not based on a desire.’ At the same time, if we want the results of our social movement to last, we better use a mixture of bravery and wisdom.
Now because of the wrong and adventurous foreign policy of a government that people have to bear, the country is on the verge of crises that will hurt the poor the most. If we had a confrontational approach, maybe in our simple minds we would have thought that this is a point for our green movement, but when we want to live through our green path, this [approach] cannot be our approach.
This is our country and these are our lives. It is we who should be concerned about and sensitive to these problems. Based on official reports of this very same government reports, economists announced that tens of billions of dollars of this country’s foreign income has disappeared. Meanwhile, [Judicial] institutions that ought to respond to these absent figures – which can even equip several armies – are ignorant and trapped in political games.
Which of these [institutions] can we expect to attend to the grief they have inflicted on the people? If we do not react to the things that disrupt life in our beloved country, nobody will. Our economists are alone in their objections because they fear the same fate as those who protested the shameful conduct that took place during confinements in detention centers. There was a time when missing twenty thousand dollars in the treasury was enough for a government [of this country] to fall. Now, warning cries for the loss of such a high figure are not even grounds for the slightest reaction.
Recently, a group of Iranian professors abroad provided their analysis and interpretation of the Green Path of Hope. They confirmed that the goals of this movement will indeed protect the interests of the nation. As a result, they have suggested that while sending our gratitude to other nations for their support in the last few months, we should ask them not to impose any sanctions against Iran. I liked their idea and I support it. Sanctions would not actually act against the government – rather, they would only inflict grave distress against a people who have experienced enough disaster in their own melancholic statesmen. We are opposed to any types of sanctions against our nation. This is what living the Green Path means.
However, this is just an example. No one has informed those who have offered this suggestion about the necessity of living the Green Path. Whether the rest of us are aware of this necessity or not, we are all naturally guided towards it. As a result, it is not necessary to indoctrinate each other with these values. It is enough just to be aware of them and to attend them.
Life goes on, and individuals are [living] in the interim. Any crowd or community that bases its very existence on one individual will be disappointed – at least when that individual is lost. [History shows] that whenever people have afforded unnecessary advantages to their ordinary companions, they have inevitably relinquished their intellectual opinions. Moreover, this has allowed the opportunists to become increasingly avaricious.
People who want to be independent and experience a congenial life should prevent the very first steps that lead them to failure. My birthday is not the 7th of Mehr (September 28th), it is the day that I got to know you. Even if I was born the 7th of Mehr, it would not have been appropriate for your movement to deteriorate with personalities. I hope you see that these words stem from my sincere concern and not from false modesty.
Your Brother,
Mir Hossein Mousavi
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=145459157605&ref=mf
Speaker or Agency: Mir-Hossein Mousavi
Title: Mousavi Statement: “Violence is not the solution.”
Language: English and Persian
Western Date: 28 September 2009
Persian Date: 6 Mehr 1388
Physical/Electronic Location: http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=146201207605&ref=nf; http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=145459157605&ref=mf
Citation or official document code:
Translator: Facebook (“Khordad 88”)
Date Translated: 29 September 2009
Tags: mousavi
Date Last Updated: 14 February 2010