Jihad al-Akbar, The Greatest Jihad: Combat with the Self

Another Warning

Your future is dark: numerous enemies are surrounding you on every side and from all strata; dangerous fiendish plans are ready to be enacted which will destroy you and the seminaries. The colonialists dream about what they will do with you; they have deep dream about what they will do with Islam and the Muslims. With the pretense of Islam, they have drawn up dangerous plans for you.

Only in the shade of refinement, preparation and the proper arrangement and order will you be able to push away these corruption and difficulties, and frustrate the plans of the colonialists. I am now living the last days of my life. Sooner or later I will leave you. But I see before me dark black days ahead for you. If you do not reform and prepare yourselves, and if you do not rule your studies and your lives with order and discipline, then, God forbid, you will be doomed to annihilation.

Before you lose the chance, before you fall into the hands of the enemy with regard to every religious and scholarly affair, think! Wake up! Arise! The first stage is to decide to refine and purify your souls and to reform yourselves. Prepare and organize yourselves. Establish some order and discipline in the seminaries. Do not let others come to arrange [the affairs of] the seminaries.

Do not let others take hold of the seminaries with the excuse that ‘these people are not capable of it; it is not their sort of work; they are just a group of loafers who have gathered in the seminaries,’ and then in the name of organization and reform, to spoil the seminaries and take you under their own control. Do not give them an excuse. If you are organized and purified, and if in every respect you are well ordered and arranged others will not be able to aspire to control you.

There will then be no way to penetrate into the seminaries and the clerical society. Prepare and purify yourselves. Get ready to prevent the mischief with which you will be faced. Prepare your seminaries for resistance against the events which are to come. God forbid, black days lie ahead of you. The conditions are ripe for bad days to come. The colonialists want to destroy all aspects of Islam, and you must stand up against them.

With love of self and position, with arrogance and pride, you cannot mount any resistance. An evil scholar, a scholar who inclines toward the world, a scholar who thinks of preserving his position and administrative post, will not be able to combat the enemies of Islam. He will be more harmful than others. Take a step for the sake of God. Dispel the love of the world from your heart. Then you will be able to engage in combat.

From this moment on, develop and raise this point in your heart, that I must be an armed soldier of Islam, and sacrifice myself for Islam. I must work for Islam until I am destroyed. Do not make excuse for yourself that today is inappropriate. Try to be useful for the future of Islam. In short, become a human being! The colonialists are afraid of human beings. They are afraid of man. The colonialists, who want to plunder all we have, will not allow the training of human beings in religious and scholarly universities.

They are afraid of man. If a man is found in a country, it bothers them, and endangers their interests. It is your duty to make something of yourselves, to become perfect men, and to stand up against the vicious plans of the enemies of Islam. If you are not organized and prepared, of you do not resist and combat the lashes which whip the body of Islam every day, not only will you yourselves be destroyed, but also the precepts and laws of Islam will be annihilated, and you will be responsible.

You ‘ulama! You scholars! You Muslims! You will be responsible. First you ‘ulama and seminary students and then the rest of the Muslims will be responsible: “All of you are shepherds and all of you are responsible for tending the flock.” [^1]

You young people must strengthen your wills so that you can stand up against every oppression and injustice. Other than this there is no alternative: your dignity, the dignity of Islam, and the dignity of the Islamic countries depend upon your resistance and opposition.

God Almighty! Protect Islam, the Muslims and the Islamic countries from foreign evils. Cut the hands of the colonialists and traitors to Islam in the Islamic countries and in the seminaries. Grant success and help to the Islamic ‘ulama and to the great marja’[^2] in their defense of the sacred laws of the Noble Qur’an and their advancement of the holy ideals of Islam. Make the clergy of Islam aware of their heavy duties and important responsibilities in the present epoch.

Protect and keep safe the seminaries and clerical centers from the thievery and influence of the enemies of Islam and the hands of the colonialists. Grant the success of making something of themselves and purifying and refining the soul to the young generation of clerics and university students and to the entire Muslim community.

Free the people of Islam from the sleep of negligence, from frailty, from apathy and inflexibility of thought, so that with the lustrous revolutionary teachings of the Qur’an they may come to themselves, rise up, and in the shade of unity and oneness they may cut the hands of the colonialists and of the inveterate enemies of Islam from the Islamic countries, and so that they may regain the freedom, independence, nobility, and greatness which they have lost.

“Our Lord, pour down upon us patience, and make our steps firm and assist us against the unbelieving people” (Q 2:250).

[^1]: ‘Awali al-La’ali, vol. 1, p. 129, chap. 8, hadith 3. Al-Jami‘ as-Saghir, vol. 2, p. 45, 95.

[^2]: The maraji‘ at-taqlid are the sources of imitation for Islamic law. [Tr.]