By: Kayhan Int’l Staff Writer
    
The 21st of Ramadhan, marked the 1400th anniversary of the martyrdom of Imam Ali ibn Taleb (AS) and with it the end of the model government of social justice, the like of which the world has yet to see.
Imam Ali (AS), whose martyrdom as the Symbol of Justice and the Barometer to discern faith from hypocrisy, was commemorated by both Shi’a and Sunni Muslims in this blessed fasting month from Egypt and East Africa till the Subcontinent, and wherever Muslim communities are found around the world – except for his birthplace Mecca and the city of Medina where he spent the greater part of his 63-year old life, because Hijaz is presently under the illegal rule of the followers of his assassin Ibn Moljam –  had warned Muslims of the dangers of divisions and extremist tendencies.
His peerless personality was the mirror of all Godly attributes. He neither preached violence nor discrimination, despite his proverbial physical strength as an indomitable swordsman. This was the reason many Jews, Arab polytheist, atheists, Christians, Zoroastrians, and others, used to embrace the truth of Islam when they came into direct contact with him.
His flawlessly eloquent sermons which are indeed timeless bezels of wisdom, as vouched even by Christian literati of the Arabic language, such as Abdul-Masih al-Antaki and George Jordaq, are testimony to the humanitarian values he preached, to the extent that he felt shocked on hearing reports of the stripping of non-Muslim women of the Iraqi city of Anbar of their jewelry by forces of the rebel Mu’awiya ibn Abu Sufyan who raided Iraq to kill and plunder people.
"His exact words in Sermon 27 read: "I have come to know that every one of them entered upon Muslim women and other women under protection of Islam and took away their ornaments from legs, arms, necks and ears and no woman could resist… If any Muslim dies of grief after all this he is not to be blamed but rather there is justification for him before me.”
For the sake of unity, Imam Ali (AS) never even bore grudge against those who had deprived him for 25 long years of his rights of political leadership, and was always there to assist them whenever they sought his advice in many a crucial matter.
His epistle to Malek al-Ashtar, his governor of the then Christian majority Egypt to treat the population of that ancient cradle of civilization with fairness and justice without discriminating against the populace "who after all God’s creatures and fellow humans” is being hailed today as the finest charter of human rights and keys to proper administration.
Wonder, how many Muslim rulers are willing to follow the instructions of this Great Man in governing the lands they rule!
If there was any sense of justice among the rulers of Muslim countries, then Syria and Iraq would not have been destabilized by terrorists, Yemen would have been spared of almost five years of state terrorism by the Saudis, the people of Bahrain would not have been deprived of their birthrights, the usurpation of Palestine would not have become such a chronic question, some ten million Nigerian people would not have been discriminated against for following the jurisprudential school of the Prophet’s Ahl al-Bayt, Afghanistan would not have left to the mercy of the US, and the Rohingya Muslims would not have been subjected to genocide.