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This is the last
message Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir Sadr before the Ba’athists in Iraq
executed him on April 9, 1980, along with his sister and hundreds of
his supporters. |
‘Praise be to Allah, the Lord of the world, and peace and blessing
be upon Prophet Muhammad, his purified family and guided companions.
O’ my dear Iraqi people:
I talk to you all, Sunnis and Shias, Arabs and Kurds, at this acute
moment of your crisis and Jihadi life, because the crisis doesn’t
belong to one sect or group. And since the crisis is the crisis of
all Iraqi people, the brave reaction and the struggle must become
the reality of all the Iraqi people.
Since I knew my existence (being) and responsibility towards the
Ummah, I have spent this existence for the sake of the brotherhood
of Shias and Sunnis, Arabs and Kurds. I defend the message, which
unifies all of them. And the belief which embraces all of them.
I lived with my thought and being, only for Islam – the way of
freedom and the aim of all. Thus I am with you, my Sunni brother and
son, as much as I am with you, my Shia brother and son. I am with
both of you as much as you are with Islam, and as much as you carry
this great torch to save Iraq from the nightmare of oppression and
injustice.
The tyrants and their allies are trying to make our righteous Sunni
sons believe that the problem is a Sunni-Shia one in order to
separate them from their battle against the common enemy.
I want to say to you, the sons of Ali and Hussain, the sons of Abu
Bakr and Umar that the battle is not between the Shia and the Sunni
rule. The Sunni rule, which was represented by the guided khalafa,
caused Imam Ali to carry the sword defending it in the battles of
the Apostates under the leadership of Abu Bakr. We must all defend
the Islamic flag whatever its sectarian colour.
Half a century ago, the Shia ulema issued their fatwas making it a
Jihad to defend the Sunni rule, which was carrying the Islamic
banner and hundreds of thousands of Shia went out to the battlefield
shedding their blood to protect the Islamic motto. The actual rule
today is not a Sunni rule although the people at the top belong
historically to the Sunni branch of Islam.
Sunni rule doesn’t mean the rule of a person, who has descended from
Sunni parents, but it means the rule of Abu Bakr and Umar, which has
been challenged by the tyrant rulers of Iraq today in all their
practices. They abuse Islam, they abuse Ali and Umar together,
violate Islam every day in every step they take.
O’ my sons and brothers, the sons of Mosul, Bassrah, the sons of
Baghdad, Karbala and Najaf, the sons of Saerra and Kadhimiyah, the
sons of Amarah, Kut and Sulemaniyah, the sons of Iraq everywhere.
I promise you all that I am for all of you, for the sake of all of
you, and that you are my aim in the present and the future. Your
words must unite, and your plans must be unified under motto of
Islam, for the sake of saving Iraq from the nightmare of this
authoritarian rule, building a free, glamorous Iraq, brightened by
the justice of Islam, and covered by the dignity of man. In this
Iraq, citizens with all their nationalities and sects will feel that
they are brothers and will all contribute in the leadership of their
country, building their home and realizing their Islamic ideas and
the dawn of our glamorous history.’
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