Grand Ayatollah Saanei:“The West’s concern about the integration of religion and politics roots it their failing to understand the true Islam”.

From: www.saanei.org

Grand Ayatollah Saanei:“The West’s concern about the integration of religion and politics roots it their failing to understand the true Islam”.

“The issue of the integration of religion and politics is not something new, and the potentials for such integration have been there in all divine religions and today those potentials are realized and fulfilled”, declared His Eminence in an interview with Brazilian television.

Expressing hope for the fulfillment of those potentials in other Islamic countries, His Eminence added, “Politics involves plans and courses of action taken towards public needs and satisfaction of people’s demands on the rules, and this is true for all human beings and all rules, and followers of the reveared religions such as Islam and Christianity attempt to extract the generalities of these plans from their religions and integrate them into the rules, whereas others attempt to integrate their own plans into the rules”.

Considering the West’s concern about the integration of religion and politics as to root in their failing to understand the true Islam, His Eminence declared, “The Islam we know and understand, which we believe to integrate into politics, is the Islam of peace and the Islam of denial of cruelty and injustice. It is the Islam of justice, knowledge, and logic, and this Islam would never threaten anyone. Hence, we have seen in the lives of our great religious leaders of right guidance (PBUT) through out the history, that non-Moslems worked with them and we have witnessed the non-Moslems great interest in them”.

“Another factor which has led to this misunderstanding is the behavior of those whose words and actions represent a frightening face of Islam to the West and to resolve this problem, the advocates of terrors, explosions, prisons, and punishments must make way for the powers who protect and respect people’s rights”, added His Honor.

Describing the role of the media as an important role, Grand Ayatollah Saanei stated, “All writers, speech makers, and thinkers are responsible to bring the human beings close together so that neither the West frightens Islam, nor Moslems are frightened by the West, and we hope everybody helps to develop Islamic culture and humanistic culture in the humane society”.

“Islam’s policy is that the power holders act in such a way that people would be interested in them, but lack of knowledge and failure to foresee the future among some power holders besides selfishness of some others has led to mispresentation of Islam”, added His Eminence.