Fighting the culture and practices of corruption

Sayyed Fadlullah: American democracy is but a project to extend US hegemony in the Middle East and the rest of the world.

Asked in his weekly seminar the following question:The Bush Administration considers that its message impels her to spread democracy in the world, although America has, for several years, fought the Islamic Republic on the ground that it seeks to spread Islamic revolutionary thought. In this respect, some writers believe that the real battle is between the spread of democracy and the spread of Islam. Are we strong enough to do that? And how do you view the spread of Islam in the world ?

The Religious Authority, Sayyed Muhammad Hussein Fadlullah, said:

Islam is a universal message that seeks good for all human kind. As such, it is but natural for it to strive, as any other universal message, to reach the entire world, with no boundaries or obstacles standing between the message and those who are desperately awaiting it.

Thus, the issue of reaching the oppressed, the needy and in fact all men, becomes a cause. And promoting the Islamic thought becomes a right that could not be seen as a kind of dominance or hegemony. In this respect, the Quran calls for adopting wisdom and arguing in the best way. Islam does not believe in spreading the Message by force. It explicitly says in the Quran: "And if your Lord had pleased, surely all those who are on earth would have believed… will you then force men till they become believers".

It believes in leaving the choice to the people: "Let him who please believe and let him who believe disbelieve".

Moreover, the Message that is imposed by force will be laying the foundations to its subsequent collapse.

Islam believes that if it aims to guide people, the means should conform to the goals. The goals, in this case, do not justify the means, they rather clean them. As for the claims that the sword spread Islam, it is refuted by the historical facts: the Muslims did not reach Southeast Asia by force; it was the merchants who carried their thought before carrying their merchandize. In Iran too, it was not the sword that convinced the Persians with their great civilization of Islam but rather its concepts, doctrine and thought, which made them forego their beliefs and adopt the new religion as the call for unification that is inherent in man's nature.

As we admit, on the other hand, that the spread of Islam was accompanied by certain negative acts and mistakes committed by those who claim to be Islamic, yet this does not mean that it was spread by force.

We refer those who hold such claims to Gustaphe Lubin who said that history did not witness any conquerors who are more merciful than the Arabs.

We finally believe that thought and revolution could not be exported by means of force. Yet thought has no homeland, and forbidding free thought from reaching all places is an aggression against the freedom of thought and that of the individuals that is guaranteed by all international charters and laws.

But America has fought Iran and besieged it since the advent of the Islamic revolution, on the pretense that Iran is trying to export its revolution, although Imam Khumeini used to say that “exporting the revolution is to present Islam as it is… And that exporting the revolution is not done by force but by Islamic ethics".

This open war against Iran has always aimed it hindering the spread of the general Islamic awareness, not because Islam represents the opposite of the West, since Islam is affected by the Western civilization, just as it affects it, but because America has always sought to prevent a human Arab and Islamic power that possesses all the elements of civilization from unifying and returning to hold its place in the world.

In fact, America's Administration is not promoting democracy but rather preventing its spread, except in the places where there are regional or international gains for the Americans , making sure that the new regimes that are supposedly democratic are actually under US hegemony…

Thus America's praise for some of what is happening in the region and considering them as American achievements is a kind of deceit to the entire world. It is trying to say that Bush's project to export democracy is in the peak of its success, while what we are witnessing in our region and in the world is but a project of killing, terror and tragedy that aims at subjecting and dominating the world's nations.

When the American President talks about democracy, he is trying to deceive the world. His country cannot claim that it supports the peoples of the world while they are in fact responsible for most of its tragedies including that of the Palestinians, the Iraqis and for all the destruction in the region.

Washington is trying to incite sectarian and racial wars that originate from Iraq where America has spread terrorism, closed any opportunity of democratic development for the country and sought to make it a bridge to spread its bloody violence to the region.

Therefore, we warn the Lebanese that America that is integrating the Lebanese elections in its democratic project might not be unwilling to spread chaos in Lebanon afterwards, to suggest that this is what it might take to spread democracy. We also warn that the slogan from "Tehran to Beirut" that Bush has raised might also turn violent in many parts of the region as the American plan unfolds.

This American talk that the world is turning towards democracy is a warning that the slogan of "from _ Marrakech to Tashkent" has fallen under the American universal hegemony. Would the Arab and Muslims wake up?