Professor Abdulaziz Sachedina, Professor and IIIT Chair in Islamic Studies at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, is now in Tehran to attend the International Congress on Quran in Imam Khomeinis (RA) Sirah and Thought. In an interview with IQNA, he gave us his viewpoints on the subject. What follows is the fisrt part of the interview. * First of all, you have been invited to the International Conference on Imam Khomeiini and the Holy Quran, which is slated to be held in the capital city of Tehran, Iran. What is your main purpose of attending upcoming event? * I am invited to present a paper on the subject of the relationship between the great leader of Iran, Imam Khomeini, and the Quran. In my opinion, the conference is a very meaningful one because this is the time we need to go back to Imam Khomeini and the Quran together to find out what exactly is in the Quran that Imam Khomeini was upholding in his Revolution and his aspiration for the people of Iran and also for the Muslims of the entire world. Therefore, for him the Quran as the source of his own inspiration was extremely important so that he would speak universally and to all the peoples of Islam around the world. In fact, I can go far and say that if there is anybody in the universe today thinking about the spiritual dimension of human existence and the message the Quran has for spirituality today, then they would listen to the message Imam Khomeini gave about the Holy Quran.
* You said universal message. We live in the 21st century. The Muslim world has been facing lots of challenges, if not crises. Would you please develop a little bit what you mean by the term universal message in the current situation of the Islamic world?
* The major issue confronting the global community and also the Muslim community around the world is to maintain what we call the sense and essence of right and wrong we do. We are engaged in economic development, political progression, and many aspects of sociological existence of humanity throughout the world. Therefore, I think today more than any other time the universal dimension of the Quran as explained and explored by Imam Khomeini himself makes a lot of sense. As a mater of fact, we are in search of a balance. A balance of extremes we are faced with, either we are extremely materialistic or we are extremely violent like ISIS or DAESH and many other communities. We are in extreme mode of doing something which needs to be balanced between materialism and spiritualism, between requirements of the individual, family, community, and international community. So you can imagine there is one man who thinks in such a way that he can influence individual, community, collectivity, nation, and international community. So you can start with individual and build up the nation that the Imam has.
I have known Imam Khomeini for a long time in my lifetime. I am 73 years old. Having lived in different parts of the world and different places, I can appreciate today what Imam Khomeini taught us about forty years ago. What he taught us was something universal. We all want to be good, rich, and successful. All these things lead us to explore a wide variety of ideas, ideologies, and schools of thought. What Imam did was to give us a focus on human being as the essence of Gods creation. It is human being that matters. If one part of humanity is hurting, all of the human beings should also hurt.
This is what we read in Saadis poem: Human beings are members of a whole In creation of one essence and soul. This poem of Sasdi is part of prophetic tradition. What happens to other beings is also your business. You cannot say: none of my business. Imam said part of your religious and spiritual responsibility is to think about others, to think about what happens to different peoples in different places.
According to Imam Khomeini, if you become indifferent, you are going to be complaisant. That means you do not care what your moral responsibility is. Moral complaisance is a problem. In the world in which we are very close now thanks to advanced means of communication, nobody is private anymore. We are all public and cannot afford to be indifferent toward each other. That is what Imam taught.
For the Imam the Quran was the source of inspiration to think about the verse 70 of Surah AL-ISRA: "we have honored the children of Adam and carried them on both land and sea. we have provided them with good things and greatly preferred them above much of our creation."
God has endowed honor and respect to all human beings, regardless of gender, race, creed, ethnicity, etc. Adam is the generic name in the Quran for human being. That is the spirit of the Quran that we find in the message of Imam Khomeini.