The More We Die, The Stronger We

Imagine You Are Walking Down A Leafy Path...the Sun Is Receding, And You Are Walking Alone, Caressed By The Breezy Light Of The Late Afternoon. Then Suddenly, You Feel A Large Drop On Your Right Arm. Is It Raining? You Look Up. The Sky Is Still Deceptively Sunny...seconds Later Another Drop. Then, With The Sun Still Perched In The Sky, You Are Drenched In A Shower Of Rain. This Is How Memories Invade Me, Abruptly And Unexpectedly.

I No Longer Believe That We Can Keep Silent. We Never Really Do, Mind You. In One Way Or Another We Articulate What Has Happened To Us Through The Kind Of People We Become.

None Of Us Can Avoid Being Contaminated By The World's Evils; It's All A Matter Of What Attitude You Take Towards Them.

You Don't Read Gatsby, I Said, To Learn Whether Adultery Is Good Or Bad But To Learn About How Complicated Issues Such As Adultery And Fidelity And Marriage Are. A Great Novel Heightens Your Senses And Sensitivity To The Complexities Of Life And Of Individuals, And Prevents You From The Self-righteousness That Sees Morality In Fixed Formulas About Good And Evil.

Look At Ayatollah Khomeini's Revolution And The Slogans That They Used: Anti-imperialism; Anti-colonialism; The Struggle Of The Have-nots Against The Haves; The State Monopoly Over Economy, Which Was Very Much Patterned After The Soviet Union. All Of These Things Did Not Come Out Of Islam. Islam Is Not That Developed.