( 6 ) This book is the collection of four lectures delivered...

( 6 ) This book is the collection of four lectures delivered in Hussainia Irshad during the four days of 18th to 21st Ramzan 1364 . Hussania Irshad is one of the main Islamic centers in Tehran. In the days prior to accomplishment of revolution it used to be the meeting center of the intelligentsia and the revolutionary minds. They would assemble there to listen to the great philosophers like Dr. Ali Shariati, and others including the author of this book.

I have had the privilege of being among most of such gatherings and of having benefited from those discourses. The combatant revolutionary youth of Iran by attending such assemblies learnt to rely on the dauntless Oracle of Ali, his encouraging behest and revolutionary phraseology in Nehjul Balagha whence they were inspired and activated to overthrow the cursed Pehlvi Regime.

They frustrated the lethargic and ill-based logic of the tyrannical supporters of the regime of evil with the powerful logic of Ali. The main theme of the book, that is, attraction and repulsion of Ali and other subjects like Ali's concept of a Government, the uprising and insurgency of the Kharijites, and the necessity of combat against hypocrisy have been deAli with in a very scholarly, philosophic, authentic and sagacious manner.

From the viewpoint of arrangement, editing, chapterisation, the manner in which the themes have been explored and deAli with and the selection of topics, the book gives a happy look and lends novelty to the subject. ( 7 ) Its author is the late Murtaza Mutahhari who devoted his life to the sacred cause of Islam. He was with little match a high-ranking Islamist well versed in various branches of Islamic knowledge and the Holy Quran.

He was a philosopher and a writer, aware of Schools of East and West and a research scholar of fortitude. He was an active and pious personality. With this all he was a logician. He has left behind immense and analytical writings. His works as a whole pursue the course advocated by his school. He was a contemporary pious and combatant thinker. His pen, his pace and his eloquence remained always busy in promoting the cause of revolution and in participating in the teamwork of compatriots.

On 12 Behman Mah 1298 H.S. i.e. in Jamadi-ul-Awal of 1338 H.Q he was born in a noble radical cleric's family of village Fareeman near the holy city of Mashhad.