Imamate and leadership

Sayyid Mujtaba Musavi Lari

Sayyid Mujtaba Musavi Lari is the son of the late Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Asghar Lari, one of the great religious scholars and social personalities of Iran. His grandfather was the late Ayatollah Hajj Sayyid Abd ul-Husayn Lari, who fought for freedom in the Constitutional Revolution.

In 1342/1963, he traveled toGermany for medical treatment, and returning toIran after a stay of several months, he wrote a book calledThe Face of Western Civilization. The book includes a comparative discussion of Western and Islamic civilization, and in it, the author seeks to prove, by way of a comprehensive, reasoned, and exact comparison, the superiority of the comprehensive and multidimensional civilization of Islam to that of the West. This book has recently been reprinted for the seventh time. In 1349/1970, it was translated into English by a British Orientalist, F. G. Goulding, and it aroused much attention in Europe. Articles concerning the book appeared in several Western periodicals, and the BBC arranged an interview with the translator in which the reasons for translating the book and the reception accorded it in England were discussed. The English version of the book has up to now been printed three times in England, five times in Iran, and twice in America.

About three years after the publication of the English translation, Rudolf Singler, a German university professor, translated it into German, and the version he produced proved influential in Germany. One of the leaders of the Social Democratic Party informed the translator in a letter that the book had left a profound impression upon him, causing him to change his views of Islam, and that he would recommend the book to his friends . The German translation has now been reprinted three times.

At the same time that the first printing of the German translation was published, an Indian Muslim scholar by the name of Maulana Raushan Ali translated it into Urdu for distribution inIndia and Pakistan. This Urdu translation has now been reprinted five times.

Lesson One

Lesson Three

Lesson Five

Lesson Seven

Lesson Nine

Lesson Eleven

To be continued …