Gürkan Biçen
According to Islam, a human being
is an entity with the ability to be “human,” the manifestation of divine
attributes, and an eternal movement towards perfection. Due to this endless
movement, human acquires the right to take advantage of existence by gaining a
distinguished position in them and dominating others. In this sense, human is
not only the center of the earth, but also the center of the entire realm of
existence. Human, moreover, has undertaken the responsibility of making every
aspect of perfection visible when and where he is. In other words, human is
also the officer of making the manifestation of divine attributes concentrated
in him visible in himself and spreading it around him. Islam also affirms the
power of the individual as well as the society to reflect the divine
attributes. Thus, it indicates the possibility of a society that will fulfill
the divine will on earth, no matter how small or large this society is. The
axis of divine will is “justice.”
In the eyes of Muslim
philosophers, mutakallims and jurists, justice is a virtue that consists of
courage, chastity and wisdom, develops when a person reaches puberty, keeps him
away from excess and understatement, and is based on knowledge. A just person
is also merciful, and he does not want for others what he does not want for
himself. A just society, on the other hand, offers social opportunities in a
way that ensures equality of opportunity among all its members. A just person
and society does not behave towards other societies in a way that ignores their
divine rights. As Imam Ali stated in his letter to Malik bin Ashter, a just
person and society considers people either as brothers in religion or as equals
in creation. This necessitates staying away from plundering people's property
as booty, harming their chastity and shedding their blood, whether they are
Muslims or not. The justice society of Islam is in charge of building the
ground that will carry all humanity to divine perfection under the guidance of
the just imam. It is possible to define the political equivalent of this
structure, which will rise on an individual and social basis, as the “State of
Divine Justice.”
The ideal of the state of divine
justice is not a new idea. However, it is not possible to say that this is a
theory that was spoken in pre-Islamic times. It did not possess the maturity to
encompass, transcend and transform the known world and the social models of
that time, and the people with the power to realize it. In order to progress
theoretically, it was necessary to wait for the multi-divided and strict
hierarchical social models of polytheistic religions to be overcome, to
consider the universe, including man and society, as the manifestation of the
transcendent power of a single god as well as to connect human existence only
to this god and to re-imagine the form of relations with social classes. In
other words, building a society and administration based on the creed of tawhid
became the basic condition of the state of divine justice. Although the core of
this ideal was laid in Sadr-i Islam, this idea could not sprout and flourish
due to known processes. Nor did it disappear completely, but remained on the
agenda of the Muslim community. The vision of an age of justice that was left
to future, but that would necessarily take place, continued to exist on the
agenda of the Muslim community. In this sense, the understanding of Imam Mahdi
in Sunni and Shiite thought forms the cornerstone of the belief that the state
of divine justice will prevail on earth.
While the Twelve Imam Shiism
offered a comprehensive political theory and management model to the Muslim
community, it also transformed the Velayet-Imamet and Mahdaviyya line into an
area. The Imam, who is the guardian of Allah on this area, will assume the
responsibility of administering the Muslim community in order to lead them to
human perfection along with earthly and otherworldly righteousness, and thus,
the Muslim community will be an example to the peoples of the earth under his
imamate. After the Prophet, Imam Ali and his successors made efforts to fulfill
this duty, but only Imam Ali was able to be at the head of the political power.
In the life of eleven Imams, in a period of approximately 250 years, the
political attitudes that Muslims and a Muslim leader may encounter have been
experienced and the principles of the personal, social and political duties of
Muslims have been determined from the occultation of the Twelfth Imam Muhammad
Mahdi al-Muntazar to his appearance. One of these principles came to the fore
by becoming evident over time: to prepare the conditions for the appearance
that will take place in order to fill the earth with justice by establishing
the state of divine justice and eliminating oppression.
Almost the last five hundred
years of human history consists of a picture drawn by Europe and a story it
tells. In the last two hundred years of this story, Muslims have almost no
active role in history. The Muslim world, which spent three hundred years of a
five-hundred-year period resisting Europe in order to preserve what exists, has
turned into a completely passive structure in the last two centuries, and has
been transformed by European concepts and systems in the form and extent they
want. This period of Muslim history includes the struggle between those who
want to imitate Europe and transform into a social model that they can accept,
and those who resist this but cannot preserve the old model and cannot propose
a new one. The history of Egypt, the important country of the Arab world, of
the Ottoman Empire, the real organized power of the struggle with the West, and
of Iran, the driving power of the Shiite world, present similar examples in
this sense. Only one of them managed to draw a paradigmatic barrier by saying
"no" to the historical attack led by Europe and America in the last
quarter of the twentieth century: Iran.
Imam Khomeini, in his struggle
since the 1940s, drew attention to the invasion and influence of the West in
the Islamic world, and argued that the Western project does not serve a purpose
that works for the benefit of the humanity, including Muslim societies.
According to him, the West was attacking all over the world, especially the
Muslim world, in order to plunder natural resources, enslave peoples and
dictate the socio-cultural, political and economic conditions that would ensure
its continuation. In fact, the process that has been operating since the French
occupation of Egypt has developed against the Muslim peoples entirely. In Imam
Khomeini's thought, there was nothing that the West offered or performed for
the benefit of humanity. What is meant by this is neither the denial, nor
complete rejection nor denigration of the progress made by the West in the
field of technology and scientific study, but rather making it a means of transferring
the earth's resources to the West instead of being mobilized for the
construction of a just world. From this point of view, everything that can be
considered as colonial operation is activities that detach the all human
societies from their divine/natural rights, render them passive and enslave
them spiritually and physically, which are acts that constitute the opposite of
justice, namely oppression. In that case, not only Muslims but also every
society should raise their voices against oppression, defend their rights and
eliminate the centers of persecution.
Imam Khomeini argued that the
main condition for Mahdawiyyah to come to the stage of history, as a conception
that includes the human family, was that the Muslim community showed the will
to control its own destiny, and he said that the appearance of Imam Muhammad
Mahdi al-Muntazar depends on the maturation of the conditions. Of course, Allah
would realize the appearance of Imam Mahdi, but his appearance would not take
place in a world that was not ready for it, but after the transformation of
mind and heart that peoples could accept such a great development. For the
realization of these conditions, Muslims had to stand up in every way against
the colonialists who are still directly and indirectly occupying their lands,
cut their hands off the Islamic countries, awaken other peoples infested by the
colonialists and invite them to become the masters of their own destiny. This
call resonated in Iran, and in February 1979, the Iranian people succeeded in
destroying the American imperialism that had engulfed their country like an
octopus. We can understand the meaning of this development that shook the
Western world when we consider that at that time, approximately 150 thousand
Westerners and thousands of Zionists, of which approximately 50 thousand were
American citizens living in Iran, that they have penetrated to the capillaries
of Iran, and that the Western embassies in Tehran are the centers of an
intelligence and terror network that keeps the whole country under control. The
Western world, especially America, not only lost a vassal country that it had
gained enormous benefits with this development in Iran, but also faced a new
ideological challenge just before the collapse of the Socialist Bloc: the anti-colonial
"the State of Divine Justice" process led by Veliyy-i Faqih.
Twelve Imam Shi'ism has the
belief that a comprehensive, in-depth and difficult struggle will begin with
the appearance and resurrection of Imam Muhammad Mahdi al-Muntazar, at the last
moment of humanity, and this struggle will be supported by the appearance of
Jesus Christ. With a narrative through symbols, the believers of the Muslim and
Christian world will embark on a global struggle with the global powers that
corrupt societies, ignore their rights, destroy their countries and transfer
the earth's resources to their own countries, and finally, they will emerge
victorious from this difficult struggle and start the last period of the
humanity, which will pass with justice and prosperity. The scholars and their
successors who were involved in the construction process of the Iranian Islamic
Revolution are of the opinion that this Revolution, which shook the Western
world deeply, is only a beginning and a beacon of the uninterrupted struggle
that will last until the appearance of Imam Muhammad Mahdi al-Muntazar.
According to them, Imam Mahdi will appear only after the formation of a large
community with the awareness, determination and opportunity to fight the
colonial powers that surround the world like an octopus, and he will assume the
responsibility of the imamate of this community. This reveals the necessity of
the steps that will lead to this result. In this process, the Islamic Republic
of Iran will be a center of fundamental importance where all these necessities
are planned and put into the field of execution. In this sense, the Islamic
Republic of Iran represents an ideology with a state rather than a state with
an ideology.
The Islamic Republic of Iran has
some means of mobilizing the peoples in order to realize the vision of the
state of divine justice against the global powers that have strangled the
humanity, and uses these tools at different levels according to time and place.
One of them is the armed forces. The Islamic Revolution Guards Army, which
constitutes a part of the armed forces, is responsible for protecting the
Iranian country and the Islamic Revolution inside and outside. However, this is
not his only task. Defined as an ideological armed force in the Constitution
and organized accordingly, the Army of the Guards of the Islamic Revolution is
tasked with removing the colonial forces first from Western Asia and then from
wherever possible. This duty arises from the foreign policy principles set out
in the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran. As a result of the
execution of this duty, the Islamic Revolution Guards Army will end the
invasion of global powers on the humanity and will contribute to the
preparation of the conditions for the appearance. In this sense, the main
mission of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution is to work together with
every internal and external element subject to Veliyy-i Faqih to continuously
reproduce the Revolution, to present the values of the Revolution to the peoples,
and in this process, explicitly or covertly, to remove the military forces of
the colonialists from the region as well as to neutralize their political and
diplomatic influence. The Islamic Revolution Guards Army has carried out its
duties with the hands of an elite staff until today, when it evolved from a
simple organization and became an army with enormous opportunities in every
field. For those who are not aware of his existence and do not have enough
information about himself, General Qassem Soleimani, who came out of the
shadows recently, is one of the favorites of this elite staff.
The life story of General Qasem Soleimani,
who opened his eyes as the child of an ordinary Iranian family and left the
world as one of the leading figures in the direct and indirect struggle with
the American imperialism that shook the whole world, is important in terms of
reflecting the perspective of the Islamic Revolution on the individual and the
society. Soleimani, whose footprints we see everywhere in the struggle against
the occupation and terrorism, at a time when the Islamic geography is covered
in blood, occupations and terrorism render the states inoperable and people
leave their lands, was not only a member of the payroll of one of the armed
forces in the constitutional scheme of a state, but also the hand in the field
of application of the creed and political mission represented by Veliyy-i
Faqih, whom all Muslims accepted as the legitimate ruler of the Islamic
Republic of Iran, by defining him with the title of Imam-i Ummah. In other
words, General Qasem Soleimani was the military embodiment of the Mahdevi
movement, which was advancing towards the appearance under the leadership of
Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Khamenei, the Leader of the Islamic Revolution. Everything
that was mobilized in the process, including the opportunities created by his
personality and the countless martyrs in the struggle carried out in an area of
several million square kilometers, was spent for the realization of the
ideological core of the Revolution, which is for the good of all humanity.
Soleimani, who was on the ground to organize and support the resistance in
Afghanistan against both the Russian and American occupation, and the same
Soleimani, whose name was mentioned in the most difficult scenes of the
struggle against the Zionist regime, was as much a military as the commander of
this mobilization. Until the international terror campaign against Syria and
the developments in the Iraqi field as an extension of it made it obvious, this
general, who was one of the performers of the long-term but determined goal of
the Revolution, was regarded as a loyal commander of the Karbala front, which
was reopened in every age, to Imam Hussein by the anti-imperialist peoples in
general and the Iranian people in particular.
General Qasem Soleimani lived to
raise the banner of the struggle that would last from the Prophet to the
appearance of Imam Muhammad Mahdi al-Muntazar and hand it over to his
successor. As a result of this struggle, which was blended with the guidance of
the Veliyy-i faqih and his own experience, the American dominance in Iraq was
shaken. The takfiri terrorist organization, which dreamed of a state that would
be organized and armed by the American and European countries, while the surrounding
countries provided logistics facilities, and that it would establish through
massacres in Iraq and Syria, lost this power. People who were victims of
takfiri terrorism, especially Yazidis, Turkmens and Kurds, were able to
breathe. The Syrian Arab Republic has come back from the brink of existential
destruction. The Zionist regime has faced a fully equipped Hezbollah in the
north and resistance organizations signed by Soleimani in each of the
ammunition fired against the Zionist regime in the south, and has lost every
war it waged since 2006. General Qasem Soleimani accomplished countless
military and humanitarian achievements that he could fit into the last seven
years of his life, which we can embody in the examples of Fallujah, Mosul and
Aleppo, by looking into the eyes of a whole Western imperialism. But he didn't
own any of them. He never ignored the divine will, the Veliyy-i faqih, his
friends who were with him, many of whom were martyred in the fronts, his
ordinary soldiers, and the oppressed peoples with children, women and men
praying for him. He believed that going into the presence of Allah with the
consent of the oppressed and innocent people is the biggest relief on the path
of perfection. As such, he considered establishing justice in himself, in his
army and among the people as the basic condition for the realization of his
ultimate goal. All these demonstrate the role played by Soleimani in the
process leading to the “State of Divine Justice.” He was tasked with organizing
the peoples in an extremely difficult geography and mobilizing them against the
colonialists by the order of the Veliyy-i Faqih. Bearing this heavy
responsibility, Soleimani spent his life on numerous fronts in a geography
stretching from Afghanistan to Yemen until God chose him.
Earth is a place of separation. General Qasem Soleimani left this world by making the tens of millions in Iran and the oppressed peoples on all fronts touched by his hand feel the pain of separation. As he pointed out in one of his speeches, Imam Hussein is valuable, but Islam, for which Imam Hussein sacrificed his life, is more valuable. Martyr General Qasem Soleimani, who fought against the imperialists in the world and sacrificed his life to end their invasion of the peoples, is precious, but the wish of Islam to liberate the peoples, represented by Veliyy-i Faqih, whose beard was washed with tears at his funeral, is more valuable. Martyr General Soleimani took his place in the future with a legacy that directly affects the perfection process of man, which we can summarize as being the assistant of Veliyy-i Faqih, protecting the oppressed peoples and advising to take part in a struggle that will last until the appearance with faith and patience. His presence will make itself felt not only in Iran and in the memory of the Iranian people, but also in every scene where those who seek justice and those who persecute peoples come face to face.