In the name of Allah (swt), the All-Merciful, the All-Compassionate
The funeral of the Grand Āyatullah who was recently killed is being presented not only as a moment of mourning, but as a moment of moral awakening. The slogan “Bāyad Barkhāst — We Must Rise” captures the idea that grief in Islam is never meant to end in passivity; it must become responsibility, clarity, and action. In that sense, the funeral is not merely about farewell, but about renewing a covenant with a way of seeing the world.
The great leader is being remembered not as a one-dimensional political figure, but as a scholar, a poet, a teacher, and a servant of the Ahlul Bayt (ʿa). His legacy explicitly stresses that he was a man whose public image was flattened by headlines, while his own words reveal a deeper spiritual, intellectual, and moral life. It describes him as someone who wrote poetry, engaged directly with youth, and spent decades speaking as a scholar rather than merely as a ruler.
Who Was He?
To understand why a funeral can become a call to rise, one must first understand who a great leader can be beyond his political role. The Grand Āyatullāh’s role as a scholar made him an individual who sought dialogue, corrected caricatures, and addressed Western youth directly in his letters. He was a man shaped by imprisonment, hardship, and assassination attempts, yet still willing to speak the language of invitation and justice.
Islam, in its fullest sense, does not separate inner devotion from outer life. A scholar in this tradition is not merely a transmitter of legal rulings; he is meant to be a witness to the coherence of revelation, ethics, society, and history. The life of the Grand Āyatullāh is therefore not of a technocrat or a politician first, but of someone trying to live Islam as a whole vision of existence.
His connection to the Ahlul Bayt (ʿa) is also central to how he is being remembered. In this frame, service to the Prophet’s family is not sentimental language; it is a claim about knowledge, loyalty, and spiritual inheritance. To be a servant of the Ahlul Bayt (ʿa) is to stand inside a tradition where love of the Imāms (ʿa) is inseparable from justice, sacrifice, patience, and principled action.
Beyond Ritual Islam
One of the deepest themes in this moment is the insistence that Muslims must not reduce religion to rituals alone. Prayer, fasting, pilgrimage, Khums, and remembrance of the Ahlul Bayt (ʿa) are essential, but they are not meant to isolate faith from the social world. The Islamic worldview being invoked here says that worship must shape how a believer thinks about power, justice, knowledge, family, youth, community, and history.
This is why the slogan “We Must Rise” carries more weight than a political rallying cry. It suggests that Muslims should rise from spiritual narrowness, from reactive identity, and from a passive relationship with the world. The believer is not meant to be a spectator of history; he or she is meant to be an actor whose choices are measured before God.
The Noble Qurʾān repeatedly presents faith as action, not abstraction. One of the clearest verses is, And say, ‘Go on working: Allah will see your conduct, and His Apostle and the faithful [as well]…’”1 Another major verse says, “Say, ‘Indeed my prayer and my worship, my life and my death are for the sake of Allah, the Lord of all the worlds.’”2, which is a complete statement of tawḥīd as a way of living.
These verses reject the idea that religion is only a private set of ceremonies. They teach that every deed has direction, and that the direction should be toward God. When the Noble Qurʾān says life and death are for Allah (swt), it means that the believer’s work, speech, politics, family life, study, and service all become part of worship when rooted in sincere tawḥīd.
Tawḥīd as a Worldview
This is where the call for a holistic Islamic worldview becomes essential. Tawḥīd is not only the belief that God is one; it is the lens through which reality itself is read. If God is the source, owner, and final return of all things, then no area of life can be treated as spiritually neutral or detached from accountability.
In that sense, the world is not divided into sacred and secular compartments. A Muslim does not pray to God in the mosque and then forget God in society, economics, politics, education, or family life. Instead, all of these spheres are places where one either rises toward God or slips into heedlessness.
That is why a holistic worldview matters so much in the Muslim world today. A fragmented Muslim consciousness can preserve rituals while losing direction, can preserve identity while losing purpose, and can preserve slogans while losing sincerity. A tawḥīd-centered worldview restores coherence: it teaches that every action should begin with God, serve God, and return to God.
The Qurʾānic language is strikingly active. It does not say the believer merely “feels” God; it says the believer acts, strives, gives, resists, remembers, and returns. Even the verse “Work/Act” is a command that turns faith outward into responsibility. This is the opposite of passivity, because the servant of God is always answerable for what he makes of his life.
The Noble Qurʾān offers a framework in which every action can become an offering. “My prayer and my service of sacrifice, my life and my death, are (all) for Allah (swt), the Lord of all the worlds”3 compresses the whole human condition into one orientation: everything belongs to God. That verse is not only about worship in the formal sense; it is about the total meaning of existence.
Another verse worth placing at the center of this reflection is Qurʾān 9:105, “‘Go on working: Allah will see your conduct, and His Apostle and the faithful [as well]’” This verse ties visibility, accountability, and action together. It teaches that work is never lost in the spiritual sense, because God sees what human beings do, and that seeing confers moral significance on every deed.
When read together, these verses dissolve the false separation between devotion and responsibility. The one who prays but does not serve, or who speaks about God but ignores justice, has not fully internalized tawḥīd. The one who sees life itself as a trust before God, however, begins to understand why rising — Bāyad Barkhāst — is not optional.
This is also why this funeral message matters beyond mourning. A funeral in Islam is a reminder that every person will return to God, and therefore every life must be judged by what it was used for. If the Sayyid is remembered as a scholar, servant of the Ahlul Bayt (ʿa), and teacher of a holistic Islam, then the community is being asked not just to grieve, but to continue the path.
Why Mourning Becomes Duty
In many cultures, mourning can become an endpoint. In the Islamic moral imagination, however, mourning should refine commitment. The slogan “We Must Rise” turns grief into an ethical demand: rise in understanding, rise in discipline, rise in service, and rise in fidelity to truth. That is why the funeral language is inseparable from the broader project of awakening.4
This helps explain why his legacy emphasizes dialogue with youth, honesty about media distortion, and the need to look beyond headlines. Its message is that the world often receives Islam through fragments, but the believer must recover the whole picture. The same logic applies here: the life being mourned is being used to point toward a larger way of seeing, one that refuses reduction.
This broader way of seeing is deeply Qurʾānic. It recognizes that the human being is not merely a body that performs rites, but a consciousness that must orient itself toward God in every domain. It also recognizes that scholarship and service are not separate from spirituality; in the best Islamic tradition, knowledge becomes a form of worship when it guides people toward tawḥīd.
Toward A Wholesome Picture of Islam
For Muslims around the world, the deeper challenge is not simply to admire a symbol of resistance or mourn a leader. The real challenge is to develop an Islamic worldview that sees the world through the lens of tawḥīd rather than fragmentation. That means asking for every action: does this bring me nearer to God, or does it pull me into ego, distraction, and passivity?
It also means refusing the false idea that religion is only for personal comfort. The Noble Qurʾān’s demand to “act” makes clear that belief must become visible in conduct. A Muslim who understands this will treat study, justice, family, public service, and resistance to oppression as part of the same sacred whole.
In that light, the Grand Āyatullāh’s funeral is not only a historical event. It is a reminder that a life devoted to scholarship, the Ahlul Bayt (ʿa), and a holistic reading of Islam can still speak to the present. The slogan “Bāyad Barkhāst — We Must Rise” is therefore not just about loss; it is about inheritance, and the burden of carrying that inheritance forward.
Sources:
- Noble Qurʾān, Sūrah at-Tawbah (9), Verse 105. ↩︎
- Noble Qurʾān, Sūrah al-Anʿām (6), Verse 162. ↩︎
- Noble Qurʾān, Sūrah al-Anʿām (6), Verse 162. ↩︎
- ‘We Must Rise’ Official Slogan for Martyred Leader’s Farewell Ceremony https://ardabil.iqna.ir/en/news/3497937/we-must-rise-official-slogan-for-martyred-leaders-farewell-ceremony ↩︎