They consider it probable that if they show contempt and...

They consider it probable that if they show contempt and audacity and violate a cleric, that the people will rebel and rise up against them. However if the clerics oppose one another and defame one another and do not behave with Islamic manners and morals, they will fall from their position in the community, and the people will abandon them. [^1] The people expect you to be ruhani [spiritual, a cleric], well-mannered with the manners of Islam, and to be of the party of Allah.

Restrain yourselves from the splendor and glitter of life and artificiality, and do not refuse any kind of self-sacrifice in the way of the advancement of Islamic ideals and service to the nation of Islam. Step forward on the way of God the Almighty to please Him, and except for the unique Creator pay attention to no one.

However, if, contrary to what is expected, it is seen that instead of paying attention to metaphysics, all you care about is this world, and just like the others you try to gain worldly and personal interests, and you fight with one another for the sake of the world and its base pleasures, and you take Islam and the Qur’an, may Allah forbid it, as playthings, simply to reach sinister goals and your own dirty, disgraceful and worldly intentions, and you turn your religion into a market place, then the people will be turned away and become cynical.

So, you will be responsible. If some of those who wear the turban and burden the seminaries fight and brawl with each other and malign and slander one another because of personal grudges and the pursuit of worldly interests, and rivalry over some positions, they commit some treason against Islam and the Qur’an and they violate the divine trust. God the Almighty has placed the holy religion of Islam in our hands as a trust. The noble Qur’an is a great divine trust.

The ‘ulama and ruhaniyyun [clergy] are the bearers of the divine trust, and they bear the responsibility to protect that trust from betrayal. This stubbornness and personal and worldly antagonisms are treachery against Islam and the great Prophet of Islam. I do not know what purpose is served by these oppositions, formations of cliques, and confrontations. If it is for the sake of the world, you do not have much of that!