Replacing the Religion

📆 Date: 1403/06/29 – 15 Rabi al-Awwal 1446
📌 Meshkat-e Noor session
📌 Weekly session on the commentary and interpretation of al-Sahifa al-Sajjadiyya (Supplication 20)
👤 Lecture by Master Ali Saei
🗒 Some of the points discussed in the session:

🌼 If we benefit from righteous guidance without replacing it, we will witness the appearance of the Imam.
🌼 We must equip ourselves with righteous guidance, acquire a source of strength, and preserve it.
🌼 Replacement may happen deliberately, inadvertently, or through heedlessness. Satan lies in wait, seeking to weaken our religious memory and make us forget God, even for a moment.
Replacement begins in this way and eventually leads to doubt about religion.
🌼 At every moment, we must be equipped with the Two Weighty Things; otherwise, a fall awaits us.
🌼 Replacing religion in any way is condemned.
🌼 The inviolability of religion does not mean religious authoritarianism; it means affirming the truth of religion.
🌼 Someone who defends religion is not defending a personal opinion, but rather the truth they have come to know with their very being.
🌼 We must continually take truth as our standard for judgment and discernment, and recognize the essence of things through truth.
🌼 Take wisdom from anyone who brings it to you. Pay attention to what they say; do not be distracted by the person themselves.
This hadith has a particular scope and context. The Master says: “People are not the measure of truth. Know the truth, and then you will know its adherents.”
🌼 At times, truth and its adherent become one, just as light becomes one with the sun.
🌼 Truth is with Ali, ever his companion. Wherever Ali is, there too is the truth.
Truth is Ali himself; Ali is with the truth, and the truth is with Ali. The truth goes wherever Ali goes (Ali is the central headquarters of truth). Whoever becomes one with the truth becomes its highest emblem.
🌼 Is there a religion called “humanity”? Can a religion of humanity be devised alongside the divine religion?
🌼 Could setting an inferior substitute in place of the original be a good replacement?
🌼 As progress advances, new technology replaces old technology. But once technology has reached its peak—once the fruit is fully ripe and sweet—what substitute could one seek for it? Does the pinnacle of human craft need a replacement?
🌼 Water has no substitute. How can one become more knowledgeable than the very summit of knowledge?
🌼 So not everything can be replaced; substitutes for some things are nothing but frauds.
🌼 God’s religion has no equal.
🌼 If anyone can, let them create something like an atom, make water, or make bread.
🌼 The Qur’an is like water, like a ruby. One who cannot distinguish a ruby may present glass in its place, but among those who know rubies, it will have no standing.
🌼 The Qur’anic verses have no equal; only God is able to bring forth verses like them.
🌼 When God changes or replaces something, it is for a reason of wisdom or expediency, as a test, a concession, an act of mercy, or a penalty.
🌼 God may change His law if He wills, but His words cannot be changed.
🌼 God erases or confirms whatever He wills. God knows what to change and what to leave unchanged.
🌼 God’s decree cannot be changed.
🌼 He has words that cannot be changed; He has a word by which He created the heavens and the earth. God’s way never changes; this is what He has willed.
🌼 No one can call God to account for why He has kept a law in force or changed it.
🌼 A religion of humanity lies outside humanity.
🌼 A religion without the Two Weighty Things is a religion without humanity.

🌼 Human beings try to free themselves from the bounds of God’s religion, though doing so means their own destruction.
🌼 Even the Messenger of God cannot change God’s command or choose a substitute for it; he has no such authority.
🌼 Yet human beings presume to invent a religion of their own.
🌼 God showed the Children of Israel so many miracles, yet some people’s affliction is disbelief, others’ is polytheism.
When the Children of Israel had crossed the sea, they came upon a people worshipping idols. They said, “Moses, make a god for us too, like the gods they have.” Moses replied, “You are an ignorant people.”
🌼 And even now, our situation is much the same: with few exceptions, most people worship all kinds of things.
🌼 If a person replaces their god, what can we expect but that they will replace their religion too?
🌼 God does not change the special blessing He has bestowed; He does not replace the blessing of the Prophethood, Ali and his descendants. But the people themselves changed their blessing and found a substitute for Ali.
🌼 Society is no place for trial and error.
🌼 Modern medicine, which has replaced divine medicine, has cost people their wealth, their lives and their peace of mind. This does not mean herbal medicine; that is only one branch of divine medicine.
🌼 We cannot reach light and illumination by journeying through darkness. To search for light within darkness is a sign of ignorance.
🌼 If human beings were meant to attain knowledge on their own, why have so many prophets been sent?
🌼 So-called civilised societies have abandoned both humanity and civilisation.
🌼 All human beings should have become like prophets and received God’s revelation. But because they have become corrupted, they now need prophets.
God’s Book was written in the heart of every one of us.
🌼 The Imam of Our Time will appear when the earth is filled with oppression and injustice. If God does not come to the people’s aid, they will be destroyed.
🌼 Only someone who knows the right path can turn back from the wrong one.
🌼 If humanity’s trial and error were permissible, later generations would not repeat the mistakes of those before them. But what becomes of the generations that were sacrificed? How can such a loss be made good?