This Is The Way I Nurture My Sons and Daughters
I tried to be a friend of, not to impose myself on, my sons or daughters. When I noted an error on their part, I did not seek their attention through harshness or beating, but through suggestion and reference; also directly, with gentle or sharp words that do not injure.
I want them to enjoy their lives, and I have helped them in their life choices. I used to let them be, without meddling in their affairs, until they could benefit from the experience of their mistakes, the positive and negative points of which I discussed with them.
I have attempted largely to nurture them by focusing on their humanness, rather than the surface. I have been to them-and continue to be-a friend, and have won their confidence in return; for in my home, I live in a gentle atmosphere with my older and younger children who speak to me without any reservation. I make sure that there is never any barrier between us, the father being a storehouse of the secrets of his children. They will not share their secrets with anyone else, and he must create the opportunities of trust in him.
Return To The Meadows of Childhood
Does our eminence have any recollections of this which might benefit our youth?
When I go back to my early youth, the last stages of my childhood, I was that little boy who ran about in the streets of the blessed city of Najaf, with its mosques and Alid sanctuary, and in the classes of the scholars. I found myself a boy of eleven planning with friends (and I particularly remember the martyr Sayyid Mahdi alHakim) the publication of a magazine to be called al-Adab. It became a handwritten magazine, and we used to prepare the issues according to the number of subscribers. We actually began writing from that time onwards, and sought articles from some of the great personalities in Najaf.
I remember when I was fourteen I recited some qasidas, some of which were distributed. I feel some voids in me, for my childhood was not all one of play and pleasure. I used to go with my father to learn at a place in Najaf on the outskirts of the desert, with one of the tributaries of the Euphrates running through it. There we used to play in the gardens.
My memories of Najaf include a love for reading the supplications of the month of Ramadan to the believers, and I used to go-in the most intense heat-to the Alid sanctuary to sit there. Many of the older folk would sit around me and I would recite the supplications to them. My family used to fear for my health because of the intense heat, especially since I was fasting.
From the very outset, my life has been filled with learning, for I used to read the magazine al-Risala in that place, along with translated stories and newspapers. And we used to come and go at that time to the Publications Assembly, which was the first such cultural establishment to be opened in a religious circle in blessed Najaf. All my memories then are related to education and culture, and we used to stay up at night in gatherings, where students would discuss and debate about their studies. During that time, we were discovering new ideas, far beyond our years. This was the result of the abundance of knowledge there.
Have you done any academic studies?
I have done no academic studies except at one grade. I entered the "Publications Institution" in the third grade, and left it in the fourth. My seminary studies were in concord with the education of the time.
Try To Study Us and Our Past
The final question: What would you like to say to your children who work in the cause of Islam?
What I would like to say to my brethren and children who work in the cause of Islam is that we were aware of the actual state of Islam at a time when many-especially in blessed Najaf- did not come to grips with current realities. The experience of our generation, which included the martyr al-Sadr and many 'ulama, had been filling the needs of Muslims through a dynamic Islam. We employed the methods of the times, while guarding the basic gems and intellectual bases of Islam.
Our experience, one in which rivers of blood have been spilled, all types of injury and suffering endured perhaps an experience itself weakened by injury-was a pioneering experience, creating the conditions for the realities of Islam which people now live in. We do not wish to declare that we are the fathers of this experience, but we did help bring this experience to fruition. This experience shows that the human being, when he seeks the future, and trusts in God, has faith in Islam, expends his every effort, and avails himself of every circumstance, must succeed, even if it takes a while.
I would like to say to every member of the next generation that we were at a stage ripe with opportunities. Now you must try to study our weaknesses and strengths. Do not study us as individual personalities. Study us rather for what we have done and our ideas. You may not find the ideas we came up with then to be any longer important; you live a normal life, because an Islamic atmosphere makes these ideas something normal- exactly like the man who takes food after others have struggled to cook it. But these ideas which you take for granted emerged after much struggle in society.
