Provision is According to Readiness
Ali Al‑Madhoosh
On the anniversary of the martyrdom of the great messenger‑thinker Izz al‑Din Salim, President of the Iraqi Governing Council, on 17 May 2004 – he who ruled Iraq for only a few days, after which we were struck by his martyrdom when a car bomb exploded in his convoy on the road.
The tragedy that befell us is not merely a car bomb that exploded in his path. Rather, the explosion targeted the values, foundations, and constants upon which the honourable have been raised.
Some men are not assassinated because of a lack of security precautions, but because time is too short to bear their purity for long.
The martyr Izz al‑Din Salim was a project of mind, religion, and morality before being a project of power. He was a voice of qualitative consciousness at a time when the masses were searching for spoils more than they were searching for truth. Hence the question is painful for us, and the truth is bitter:
Did we lose him… or were we not worthy of him remaining among us?
It is narrated in the tradition: "As you will be, so will be the rulers appointed over you." As if leadership and governance are not a political coincidence, but a moral mirror that reflects the inner image of peoples. The Qur’an affirms this: "And thus We make some of the wrongdoers allies of one another for what they used to earn" (Qur’an 6:129). Major crises do not begin in palaces, but from the atrophy of consciousness within souls.
Perhaps Iraq at that time was not ready for a leadership that carried the thought of Izz al‑Din Salim. So the man rose (to his Lord), and the country has continued to pay the price of that void to this day. Since that moment, many names and leaders have come to this homeland, but the rare among them were of the size of Iraq, of the size of its civilisation, and of the size of the blood that has watered it throughout history.
When the righteous becomes a stranger, the sincere a burden, and the thinker a danger – then the problem is not only in the ruler, but in the popular receptivity that extinguishes every candle before it can light the path.
Therefore, the anniversary of Izz al‑Din Salim is not an occasion to weep for a man who departed as a martyr to his Lord and fulfilled his promises, but rather a painful moment of recognition that homelands sometimes lose their great men… because they have not yet risen to the level of deserving them.
May God have mercy on you, O martyr leader, the stranger – the day you were born, the day you were martyred, and the day you are raised to life.
عزالدين سلِم