|
The United Nation and
Imam Ali?s Constitution
The aforementioned are some of the recommendations of
Imam Ali to Malik al-Ashtar whom he appointed as governor of Egypt.
To date they have remained to be known as the Alawi Constitution,
about which the Christian scholar George Geordac comments:
?There is nothing the in the United Nation Human
Rights declaration except that you would find its equivalent in the
constitution of Ali ibn Abi Taleb, but then you would find in his
constitution greater values and of higher essence.?
Kofi Annan, the UN secretary states:
?The words of Ali ibn Abi Talib,
?O Malik! The
people are either brothers in religion or your equal in creation?
must be adhered to by all organisations and it is a statement that
all humanity must embrace.?
After a few months, Annan suggested that the document
of Imam Ali to Malik al-Ashtar must be considered from the legal
viewpoint, and after lengthy studies and considerations by the UN
Legal Committee, member states voted that the document should be
considered as one of the sources of International Law.
Shebly Shmayyil, another Christian scholar states:
?Ali ibn Abi Talib is the leader and guide for mankind, and the East
and West has never seen anyone like him, neither in the past nor in
the present.
His
dealings with those took up arms and practiced terrorism
Imam Baqir states that his great grandfather ? Imam
Ali ? never labelled those who fought him with infidelity or
hypocrisy, but used to say, ?They are our brethrens who mutinied
against us.?
Imam Ali did not only endeavour to promote the
culture of coexistence, but rather relentlessly contributed to
creating an environment of awareness and understanding on individual
and social levels in order to facilitate a positive and continuous
coexistence.
Conclusion
Imam Ali endeavoured to instil coexistence by
implanting its principles through theory and practice such as
pluralism, tolerance, non-violence, and justice as mentioned above.
These notions without the application of justice remain theoretical
notions, hard to implement, and they do not go beyond mere concepts
like many others, and one of many other dreams. So we see that he
dedicated himself to instil and establish the principles of
coexistence, and at the peak of those principles is justice. In
every step and at all stages he transformed coexistence into an
intuitive principle; he elevated it from the realm of notion to that
of resolution. Thus his justice was able to support coexistence
with the secret of life and eternity, until he was assassinated in
the cause of that justice. The Christian scholar Jibran Khalil
Jibran declares, ?Ali was killed in the alcove of his worship
because of his intense justice?.
Fo?ad al-Sadiq
Imam Shirazi Centre for Research
www.siironline.org
|