Nouri al-Maliki
Secretary General of the Islamic Dawa Party
In the name of God, the most gracious, the most merciful
((O Prophet, indeed We have sent you as a witness and a bringer of good tidings and a warner * And one who invites to Allah, by His permission, and an illuminating lamp.))
First of all, we congratulate the Islamic nation, our wise religious authority, and our noble Iraqi people on the anniversary of the birth of the Seal of the Messengers, the Prophet of Monotheism, Unity, Mercy, and Peace, Muhammad ibn Abdullah (may God bless him and his family and grant them peace), and his grandson, the great Imam Ja’far ibn Muhammad al-Sadiq (peace be upon him), after whom the doctrine of the Household of the Prophet is named, and on the Islamic Unity Week. We also congratulate the preachers, their supporters, and the “Dawa” movement on the sixty-ninth anniversary of the founding of the Islamic Dawa Party.
The memory of the birth of the Noble Messenger establishes in the consciousness and memory of the nation the fact that it is one nation with all its sects and denominations, that the destiny of its children is one, their enemy is one, and that the challenges they face are common challenges. Because the concept of one nation is a fixed and established Quranic concept, and it is the other side of the concept of the Muslim community, which embraces all who testify to the two testimonies and acknowledge their meanings, even if the Takfiri schools try to exclude other Muslims from the framework of the nation, through fatwas of takfir, sectarian propaganda, and psychological and armed terrorism, and these remain miserable attempts that contradict the principles of Islam and its Sharia, and are met with categorical rejection by the overwhelming majority of the nation, its jurists and symbols, its Shiites and Sunnis and all other Muslims, which means that the differences in Muslims’ readings of the doctrinal and jurisprudential constants of Islam based on the texts of the Quran and the Noble Sunnah, and the history of Muslims, do not lead to the exit of the doctrines, sects and religious social systems of Muslims from the general circle of Islam, and what results from this legal truth of the sanctity of their blood, honor and money, and the unity of their destinies.
The religious, ideological and intellectual other, especially the adversarial and hostile one, does not differentiate between Muslims in his enmity and conspiracy; because he views Islam, its doctrine and its Sharia as a single system, and works to target it in its entirety, its aims and objectives, and to target its followers, regardless of the differences in their sects. This other has always called Muslims “Muhammadans”, meaning followers of Muhammad (peace be upon him and his family), realizing that Muslims of all sects and denominations are one nation, believing in one God, one Prophet, one Book and one Qiblah. It is true that this adversary works constantly, and in every way, to exploit the doctrinal, jurisprudential and historical differences between Muslims, in order to transform them into hotbeds of tension, sedition and field conflicts, which he sometimes succeeds in, thanks to the ability of some Muslims to transform differences into conflicts and starting points for exclusion, aggression, excommunication and terrorism.
Thus, the Messenger of God is the axis of the unity, cohesion and solidarity of the nation, and from his noble Sunnah we derive the teachings of love, compassion and solidarity among Muslims and among the sons of one nation. Just as the Messenger of God is the axis of the unity of the nation, his grandson, Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq, whose birth anniversary we are also celebrating, is the axis of the unity of the followers of the school of the Household of the Prophet, whether in its general global framework or within the framework of the followers of the school of thought in one nation. Imam al-Sadiq was the figure to whose centrality and religious and temporal leadership the followers of the Household of the Prophet unanimously agreed. He was also an imam and teacher for the imams of other Islamic schools of thought, as attested to by Imam Malik, Imam Abu Hanifa, Imam al-Shafi’i and others.
In the march of the followers of the Ahl al-Bayt School, a significant sign appears in the form of the establishment of the Islamic Dawa Party, which is an important occasion through which we remember the exceptional and unique men who, with their awareness, summarized centuries of social, political and religious accumulations, and expressed the theoretical and practical needs of the nation and its arenas, when they took the initiative to establish a unique organizational Islamic movement, which bore the name “The Islamic Dawa Party”, and at their forefront was the founding leader, the martyr Sayyid Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, and a number of his companions and students, from whose contributions, efforts and sacrifices we draw today and tomorrow the best provision.
The Islamic Dawa Party’s journey has been distinguished by its contributions at all levels. From the giving of pure blood that was shed for the sake of faith and the homeland, since 1971, to the martyrs of the resistance to terrorism during the last years, which is a giving that is rarely matched among all organized groups in the world, to the giving of jihad, resistance and struggle in the face of the most brutal oppressive racist sectarian regime, which the enemy himself witnessed, to the giving of thought and ink that the religious seminaries, universities, study centers and libraries witnessed, to the giving of preaching, advocacy and guidance that filled the cities and towns of Iraq and extended to many countries of the world, to the giving of organization and collective Islamic work that established the culture of organization in the religious milieu and the system of educated ideological elites, and praised in many Islamic countries the edifices of the Islamic movement movement that continued to mobilize the nation towards its issues, as this qualitative and conscious movement continues to practice its duties and work to achieve its goals as its fathers and sponsors drew them in those countries, even if the names, structures and slogans have changed.
Therefore, the sixty-nine years of the Islamic Dawa Party’s journey were years filled with sacrifices and complex offerings. Not a day passed in this journey of toil without a new planting of new sacrifices, a new thought, a new movement, and a new achievement. This is a basic indicator of the dynamism of the “Dawa” movements and their ability to innovate, renew, review, and hold accountable. The “preachers’” constant review of the party’s journey, the party’s accountability, the “preachers’” accountability, and the continuous oversight of the party’s work by the authority, the “Dawa” movement, and the nation remain the mechanisms that enhance the party’s ability to renew its intellectual variables, work contexts, and organizational structures, and to overcome its trials, disasters, and setbacks, and protect it from further mistakes, and fortify it against repeating them and failing again.
The party’s ability to review and renew also gave it greater strength and determination to continue to perform its duties and strive to achieve its goals, including its cultural, social and political behavior after 2003, especially in terms of rebuilding Iraq, its political system, its state and its rule, and working effectively in the joints and components of society, despite the difficulty of this process and the extent of its burdens, as it is being built on the ruins of a totalitarian individual dictatorial regime, a corrupt and failed rule, an exhausted and destructive state, and in the midst of a society that was suffering from the most heinous forms of oppression, persecution and suffocation, in addition to the effects of the siege caused by this regime, which deprived Iraqi society of many of the elements of normal life.
The stage we are living in requires us to proceed with confident, studied and strong steps, coupled with trust in God (the Most High), adherence to the theory and thought of “calling” and drawing inspiration from the lessons of integrity, sacrifice and reform from the lives of the founding “callers”, leaders and martyrs; through which we can achieve the goals and objectives we aspire to that serve the interests of our nation, our homeland, our people and our public.
Our Islamic and national reality today faces many challenges, on the political, security, cultural and economic levels, starting with the tragedies that our Palestinian people are exposed to at the hands of the Zionist gangs, and not ending with the aggressive Western waves that exploit some of the gaps in the immunity of our societies, to target our religious values and our societal culture, by spreading their deviant ideas and behaviors, in an attempt to create a societal cultural impossibility, so that our societies accept these deviant, offensive ideas, and imitate their behaviors, and circulate their concepts and terms, and they turn into a reality over time, imposed on the state, its institutions and legislation, and on society and its traditions, and they are, in general, ideas and behaviors that lead to moral dissolution, individual and social corruption, and the destruction of the family and the foundations of a healthy society.
The strangest thing of all is that some Western countries punish Muslim countries and societies that want, by adhering to the teachings of their religion, moral values and customs, and by issuing relevant protective laws, to protect themselves from this moral decay, moral corruption and social transformation. Perhaps these interventions and punishments are the worst types of arrogance, haughtiness and hegemony, in their cultural and intellectual nature, which we will continue to denounce, confront and resist, in order to preserve the moral and religious security of our families and societies.
In the face of these challenges, the Islamic ranks must be united, and Muslims must be one hand, with all their sects and intellectual orientations, and the national ranks must also be united; because the security and political challenges associated with waves of impossibility, distortion, and targeting of the Muslim community, the Muslim family, and the Muslim individual do not distinguish between one Muslim and another, or one sect and another, nor do they distinguish between a Muslim and a Christian, a Mandaean, or a Yazidi, or an Arab and a Kurd, a Turkmen, a Fayli, a Shabak, an Assyrian, or a Chaldean, as long as they live in a healthy environment that adheres to authentic religious and human values, customs, and traditions. In light of this, our hands remain extended to all partners of religion and sect of the nation, for the sake of understanding, cooperation, and solidarity; in order to achieve the supreme interests of our nation, our homeland, and our people.
As we live these days the memories of the birth of the Great Messenger and the Truthful Imam and the establishment of the Islamic Dawa Party, we emphasize that our thorny ideological and national path will continue to draw inspiration from the biography of the Messenger of Allah (may Allah bless him and his family and grant them peace) and his Household (peace be upon them) for the indications of steadfastness in values, teachings and morals, and the meanings of steadfastness, confrontation and resistance in the face of all waves targeting our nation and our Islamic and national reality, whether in the religious, intellectual and cultural aspects or the sovereign and political aspects or the social aspects or the economic and living aspects, which are the same foundations upon which our struggling party was established and upon which the auspicious “preachers” were raised. We ask Allah (the Almighty), by the blessing of these fragrant occasions, to protect our nation, our Iraq and our people from all evil and harm.
((And let there be among you a group inviting to what is good, enjoining what is right and forbidding what is wrong, and those will be the successful.))