Mankind’s Need for Religion and Spirituality

Mankind’s Need for Religion and
Spirituality
www.mahjubah.com
By Dr. Zahra Mostafavi
Associate Professor, Faculty of
Theology, University of Tehran
Humans inherently tend
to accept religion and
shape their lives
according to religious doctrines. On
this basis, we can say that religion
is born with the human being.
Having this in mind and attending
to man’s history, we can infer that
humans bring the essence of
religion with themselves, without
the help of any messenger. This
essence is a bunch of their beliefs
which is manifested as a series of
customs and ceremonies. Man is
innerly conscious that no creature,
even himself, is independent and
standing on his own.

In other words, man’s
understanding reached a point at
which he could feel a Supreme
Power and then accept it, and this
power is the Unique God. Man
understood God and pondered over
His nature, and through this he
found himself an inseparable part
of this spiritual entity and this is the
way in which an effective and
piercing instrument seems to be
necessary to interact with God.
Some people believe that this
medium is the heart and spirit; some
others claim this to rituals be
wisdom and intellect. Another
group considers to be sufficient.
They believe that it is enough to
perform religious customs and
prayers. But it is obvious that
anywhere this belief comes from, it
has its roots in religion.
Therefore the history of religions
is an important and mysterious part
of man’s history, because mankind,
after passing the primitive stage of
its history and attaining the best
levels of civilization, has been in
search of a truth beyond himself
and the universe around him. He
does this with the help of prophets
and his own understanding and
inquisitive nature.
With the advent of prophets in
various ages and their heavenly
mission, the human being, the
wonder of creation, gradually
became able to adopt a specific
approach towards the facts of
creation and the things around him,
and ultimately surrendered to
religion, a strong and extensive
chain which was inspired by the
prophets, from Adam to the Seal
of Divine Messengers, Prophet
Muhammad (SAW). Man found it
irresistible to praise and revere the
everlasting truth.
While the human being got to
know himself through the help of
the prophets, and could establish a
wider relationship with his
environment, he had no other
recourse than pondering on the
Creator’s work. Although heretic
beliefs, in their primitive stages,
were a trial of man and enabled him
to pave the way for knowing the
truth, they could not satisfy the
curious human soul.
Thus the inborn longing for the
advent of a messenger forms that
everlasting source of truth, who has
a repository of knowledge and
compensates the human ignorance,
comprises a part of the history of
human development all through the
history.
In each age and according to the
specifications of time and place,
the grounds became suitable for the
advent of a prophet. Worshiping the
idols and the tendency toward
praising the nature, cruelty and lack
of justice, poverty and
discontentment, ethical corruption,
disobedience, and a lot of other
factors brought about the coming
of a prophet in each era.
History shows that the consistent
advent of prophets is not just due
to the atrocity of man over man,
but it peruses a greater goal: wiping
out the custom of worshiping
several gods or idols and inviting
mankind to appreciate the unique
Lord.
Prophets came to remind man of
his promise to God, to awaken the
latent intellects, and to tear out the
shrouds of ignorance and
superstitions, and the chains of
slavery. And that is the mystery of
the human mind’s enlightenment and
wisdom which became fertile by the
help and teachings of prophets.
Modern man, with all his ability
and success in material
achievement, has not been able to
replace spirituality with any
mundane or material concept. That
is why human inclination towards
religion and spirituality is
exceedingly increasing.
The man, who thought if he can
accomplish all his material needs
and have a total license to do
anything he wishes, will be happy
and prosperous thereafter, has now
come to the conclusion that only
God and religion can quench his
thirst.
Marxism and materialism, with all
their atheist slogans and utter
materialism, were unsuccessful for
both this world and the world to
come. Their attempt to protect the
flimsy materialistic structure has
been unsuccessful. They tried for
70 years, but now their theory which
was weaker than a cobweb, has
been destroyed.
Imam Khomeini, in his famous
letter to President Mikhail
Gorbachev, before the
disintegration of the Soviet Union,
states this situation in the best way:
“Mr. Gorbachev, you should turn
to reality. The main problem of your
country is not economics,
ownership, or liberty. Your problem
is lack of faith in God; the same
problem which led the West to
corruption and destruction. Your
major drawback is the war you have
waged against God and the source
of life and creation.
“Mr. Gorbachev, everybody
knows that from now on we should
look for communism in the museums
of political history; since Marxism
can satisfy none of the human
genuine needs; since it is a
materialistic school, and materialism
cannot save humanity from lack of
spirituality, which is the most
essential human affliction in the East
and the West.”
As the late Imam states in this
part of his letter, the most crucial
problem of the modern man is
atheism and lack of faith in
spirituality. This lack of faith has
brought about a discomfort and
inconvenience to human soul, in
spite of all the welfare which
technology has availed man of.
Humans still feel that something is
missing.
Psychological ailments, family
disconcertment, murder, and
thousands of other problems human
beings face in the present age.
Shrouds of ignorance have veiled
the heart, ear, and eye of the modern
man, so that he is quite alienated
from himself, and cannot reflect on
himself, which is the micro
universe. That is why surveying the
major world has not been able to
remind him of God, Who is beyond
this world.
It seems however that this
disillusionment has caused humanity
to turn to spirituality at the onset of
the 21st century. For this reason
many western intellectuals believe
that religious beliefs will become
rampant in this century. They
consider the 21st century the era
in which religion penetrates all
aspects of human existence. They
present some figures and statistics
to prognosticate that the new
century is a period of religious
enthusiasm, and the expectations
of people will drastically increase
in this respect.
Many western critics believe
that the religious tendency will be
stranger than what is imagined.
They announce that at present,
there is no social power stronger
than religion in the world.
Emphasizing the fact that people
are increasingly turning to God,
religion, and spirituality (in the East
and the West), experts have
demonstrated that the view of
returning to secularism has come
to an end. The hallucination that
materialism is exterminating
religions and nothing can prevent
it, is a groundless one. Despite all
promises, harbingers, ambitions,
and attempts of modern civilization
for the well-being of human race
and despite its success in the way
of procuring all the means for the
welfare and comfort of man
(which nobody can deny), the
civilized and seemingly modern
view is being severely challenged.
In fact the new civilization has
contradictory results, that is,
negative and positive
consequences are abundant in it.
Among the negative outputs of this
crisis and are: emotional gaps,
mental disorders, family eruptions,
social disintegrations, dangerous
ecological crises, political crises,
exploitation of the third world
countries, genocides and world
wars, class distinctions, and the
like.
Intellectuals and religious critics
in the East and the West believe
that problems and crises of the
modern world are due to humanistic
doctrines and the alienation of man.
Modern humanistic civilization looks
for all the prosperity, success,
salvation, and futurity in the world
outside and in utilizing its facilities
and assets, and through this wants
to develop human capacities. But
ignoring the ethics and the soul on
the whole, resulted in a condition in
which people cannot establish a
good relationship with their self,
other people, or the environment.
For these critics, such “selfnegligence”
and crisis, and
complications resulting from it, are
ultimately related to forgetting the
root of mankind, and also related to
man’s disregard of his
responsibilities.
The ethical crisis of the
contemporary man is to the extent
that men are coming to this
conclusion: The only hope for the
survival of the world is that faith to
religious criteria and values
becomes dominant in the world. The
universal ethics can only rely on the
main tenets which are common
among great religions, since only
religion can offer values which are
absolute and based on truth, and
practical.

The writer of the article is
Imam Khomeini’s (RA)
daughter. She is not only a
professor at University of
Tehran, but also she is a woman
activist. Her responsibilities are
as follows:
Secretary General of Women
Society Islamic Republic of Iran.
Secretary General Union of
Supporting the Palestinian
Rights.
Head of the Society for
Defending the Palestinian
Nation.
Translated by Mahdi Havashki