The Role of Islamic Councils in Extending the Martyrdom and Sacrifice Culture and Honoring Sacrificers and Martyrs’ Families

Counseling and getting advice has been considered as an important principle in Islam. In the holy Quran, Muslims are advised to use each other’s counseling. Besides, the holy prophet (PBUH) and other innocents have advised people to council for their affairs verbally and practically in many sayings. In some principles of the constitutions of the country, especially in the seventh principle, rulers have emphasized authorities to manage the country’s affairs by councils as decision-making bases.

News ID: ۵۶۸۶۵

چهارشنبه - ۰۷ آبان ۲۰۰۷ / 2007 07 August

Counseling and getting advice has been considered as an important principle in Islam. In the holy Quran, Muslims are advised to use each other’s counseling. Besides, the holy prophet (PBUH) and other innocents have advised people to council for their affairs verbally and practically in many sayings. In some principles of the constitutions of the country, especially in the seventh principle, rulers have emphasized authorities to manage the country’s affairs by councils as decision-making bases. Principles 6, 7, 101, and 106 of the constitutions, as a heritage of the revolution’s martyrs, have been derived from the holy Quran’s verses express the counseling system and internalization of people’s participation and governance.

Islamic councils are the most important products of the Islamic revolution and the most prominent symbol of people’s cooperation in decision-makings in the legal frame of the Islamic republic of Iran’s system. It is obvious that everything is done in the form of councils in our society fundamentally. It has been stipulated in the sixth principle that all affairs of the country must be managed based on public opinions such as elections, councils, and referendums. There have been many debates about councils and functions they have or may have, but there has been little attention to communicative functions of councils especially in limited and small areas. Islamic councils should act in a way that they can move in line of actualizing national integrity as well as preserving freedom and independence in action in the frame of laws and satisfying regional and local needs. However, the collective spirit of councils must be originated from the governing culture in the society.
Then, active presence of sacrificers and martyrs’ families will do that in a society whose culture is based on martyrdom and sacrifice. Thus, all of them must enter in all of these fields, especially councils, with full self-confidence having a pure insight, behavior, and intention whose reflection will be seen in clean souls and be a guardian for the martyrdom culture. In the present world and in the 20th century in which machines and computers are mingled with people’s lives, compassion and kindness have been affected by them. Humanity has become a rarity in this mechanical wilderness and to reach it, we must pass hard tangles.
Technology and progress have become tools in hand of human beings to pillage, loot, and kill. Having courageous warriors, we are sure that we will never surrender the lack of self-determination and self-esteem. We are ready to take the fourth pace of the revolution, which is, according to the supreme leader, the spiritual self-construction. However, we were attacked by cultural invasion, sidetracked the main way so that we resorted to dated culture of the west and peripheral matters, and we got away from the reality that is preserving noble Islamic and cultural values. They were values for which our men and women lost their lives.
Any way, in such conditions, mass media can play the best role in reviving pure values of Islam. It is necessary to say that the martyrdom culture has an extended and wide definition that needs the attention of artists, scientists, culture-lovers… to be internalized logically and fundamentally in the society as well as spreading its spiritual values and merits. There has been neglects and delinquency in this field and we do not have enough time to elaborate it right now. By the way, it is up to people’s elected ones to revive the bloody history of the Islamic revolution worthily and take the danger of our generation’s cultural gap serious. They are the generation who must be the standard-bearer of this sacred movement, while they have not been present in the passed events of the revolution.
Cultural and social councils and commissions can take important steps to provide suitable beds for making people, especially the young generation, familiar with the martyrdom culture by planning and holding martyrs’ memorials. They can show that how much martyrs took risk for elevation of rightness and destruction of oppression, hypocrisy, inhumanity…and lost their whole beings to let God’s religion survive. Undoubtedly, these martyrs will be models in the history to whom many youths will glorify for their faith and solidity and they will follow them throughout centuries. As in our time and in the sacred defense epic, there have been so many young and determined people, modeled by Imam Hussein, took their lives in their hands and went to the fronts to guard their society’s honor, greatness, and faith.
They fought for months in a sacred jihad for the sake God until their clean bloods were spilled on earth and they became everlasting. Undoubtedly, faithful and revolutionary people expect their selected people to do some things and so, in addition to fulfill their task and mission of taking part in elections and throwing their votes into poll boxes and supported the revolution and the sacred system of the Islamic republic of Iran, they gave hope to friends, compassionate people, and committed ant true servers and made serious enemies of the revolution, the pure Islam, and Valeyat Faqih understood that they would never be cheated by them and be committed to martyrs’ blood, devotees, freemen, and MIAs and their reverenced families by presenting at poll boxes. In fact, they fulfilled their canonical task.
Now, it is a heavy burden on our shoulders. In the year named the continuance of Imam Ali’s year by the supreme leader of the revolution, we should try to solve the problems of people especially the reverenced sacrificers and martyrs’ families. We suggest some practical solutions as follows:
1. We should perform Islamic social justice according to the constitutions. As the supreme leader has said in his advice, we should take the cultural invasion serious and pay attention to people’s livelihood status by specific planning and timing so that its reflection becomes tangible in the society and creates eagerness, hope, and life in hearts of the revolution’s friends.
2. We should fulfill our propagandistic slogans about the youth’s employment, removing discrimination, studying shortage and needs, removing people’s social, cultural, instructional, medical, convenience, and economical shortage and needs, and providing plans and applicable solutions in these fields to plan and offer to related authorities. For example, cities like Kerman that have much religious and cultural background and there are big mosques in these cities can be proofs for this claim. If such places do not grow, they cannot match committed and faithful youths’ spirit; because, the youth desire modernism.
Then, one of the Islamic councils such as Kerman’s council must be extension of religious places and mosques in a way that they become responsible to adolescents and youths’ spiritual needs. It is also of a great importance that, unfortunately, our youths have been misled to unsafe pleasure like addiction because of not having cultural places such as cultural centers, cinemas, theaters, etc. which will be solved by founding and extending cultural and athletic centers.
3. There should be a close contact between people and their cities’ representatives in the parliament to suggest them approve acts and regulations that fortify and regain rights of martyrs’ families, brave devotees, combatants, and vulnerable people of the society.
4. We should avoid wing and linear questions that finally result in political struggles between society and people’s representatives and distance between them and their tasks.
5. We should fight constantly unpleasant discriminations that are contrary to the spirit of Islam’s social justice and perform divine punishments in the frame of Quran and pure Islam’s laws and regulations.
6. We should visit the reverenced families of martyrs and sacrificers and get deep information of their lives as well as satisfying deeply their livelihood status.
7. We should encourage martyrs’ children, who are considered as big resources of the revolution, and provide suitable plans in order to enhance their cultural levels.
8. We should make close relations with organs and missions that are in contact with martyrs, combatants and devotees’ families someway in order to recognizing their problems and provide special plans to solve their problems and difficulties.
9. We should make contact with personalities in organizations, civil cultural associations, and others to make use of their experiences in order to provide plans of optimizing the society’s cultural status.
10. We should adorn allies, squares, streets, and passages with martyrs’ names according to the clause 24 of the amendment 71 of councils’ laws.
11. We should support and favor artists especially selected artists who try to cherish the memory of the sacred defense and martyrs by producing movies.
12. We should coordinate with related organs to provide jobs for martyrs and sacrificers’ children.
13. We should make contacts with sacrificers, devotees, and martyrs’ families by taking part ceremonies and seminars.
14. We should make planning to found cultural, athletic, and recreational centers, specified for martyrs’ families in different regions of cities cooperated by related organs and executive authorities.
15. We should recognize prominent families of sacrificers and introduce them to people through Medias.
16. We should provide suitable bed for municipalities’ cooperation with organizations activating in affairs of martyr families in solving problems of martyrs’ families including getting constructional permit, paying taxes…. Now, when Islamic councils provide backgrounds for more extensive people’s cooperation in such activities as one of the revolution’s results, we should know it as a good opening for creating more integrity in order to all-out solving problems and development of our country. God willing, our great Muslim nation will witness activeness in councils which are obedient of the leadership, supporters of the government, deprived people, poor, and all vulnerable groups of the society’s rights, especially the ones who are under the poverty line. We hope these all happen in the year name as Imam Ali’s year. We wish that all authorities and people’s representatives in Islamic councils listen to the supreme leader’s conscientiously and well-intentioned guidance and warnings, and perform them one by one in the society.

Writer: Zahra Iranmanesh: Persian Language MA and the Member of Kerman’s Islamic Council