You breathe their miracles and for their birthdays and days...

You breathe their miracles and for their birthdays and days of their deaths you have festivals and mourning ceremonies. Where are the treatises for the Shiite people, enamored of Ali, that say who Ali was and who Fatima was and how their children lived and how they thought, what they did and what they said?

Our people, who spend their lives in love with the Shiite saints and who cry over the difficulties they faced', who serve them for months and years, who glorify their name, spend money, give their sincerity and their patience to them, deserve to know the real lives of each one of their Imams. Their lives should serve as examples for each one of them.

Their lives, thoughts, words, silences, freedoms, their imprisonments, punishments, martyrdoms, should give awareness, life, chastity and humanness to people. But people know them only by their number. [That is, the 6th Imam, the 8th Imam, etc.]. If an ordinary person mourns for Imam Husayn and on the anniversary of his death ('ashura ) strikes his head with his dagger and bears the pain even with pleasure, and still knows Husayn in an oblique way and misunderstands Karbala, who is responsible?

If a woman cries with her whole being, if the recollection of the name of Fatima and Zaynab burns her to her bones and if knowing it is worth­while, she would, with complete love, give her life for them, and yet, if she does not thoroughly know Fatima and Zaynab, who is responsible? Neither this man nor this woman knows one line of their words. None of them have read one line about their lives.

They can only recall Fatima beside her house at the moment when her side was struck and they only know Zaynab from the moment when she leaves the tents to go together the bodies of the martyrs. They only know her from the morning of the day of 'Ashura up until noon, from then on they lose her. Their awareness of Zaynab ends the day when her work and great mandate, the legacy of Husayn, just begins. Their knowledge about Zaynab ends here. Then, who is responsible?

And, thus, educated and open minded boys and girls judge the situation and say, 'What is the use of this religion of crying and lamentation? What can such a religion do?' Mat knots do all this excitement, love, lamentation and cries for Husayn, Fatima and Zaynab untie for a backwards, imprisoned nation which needs awareness and commitment to negate oppression and in order to seek freedom.