The Cultural Invasion

Imam Khamenei has raised the issue of the cultural invasion and defined it to be achieved when ‘a political or economical group attacks the cultural foundations and bases of a certain nation in order to accomplish their goals and lead such nation to follow and become independent on such a group’. His eminence determines the method of achieving such goals through shaking the convictions and beliefs of the new generations and deviating such generations from revolutionary, efficient thinking that intimidates imperialism.
His eminence also warned that such invasion is a practice that is characterized by calmness as well as avoiding noise and spotlight. It is like a chemical bomb that goes off and no one could feel it. Few hours of the explosion, however, faces and hands are fully contaminated. As a result, some may not give special attention to the same, but as they are declining it, they only prove the word of the Prince of Believers to be true when he says, “He who sleeps and is watched, his watchdogs shall not fall asleep.”

Escalation of the Cultural Invasion
His eminence the Leader of the Nation points out that cultural invasion has already existed before but it is escalating now. A hundred years ago, there was a cultural invasion against Islam, but not in the same way it is now. The difference between the two cases is simply explained by the following example. Whenever one would face a lazy enemy, his military preparedness shall completely differ from a reverse situation, that is, when he is encountering an alert enemy. At that time, the Islamic world was fast asleep. It was intoxicated and unconscious. Today, however, Islam has become the major enemy of the West, that is, Islam has waken up and become vigilant.
Mentioning today’s Islam is associated with many endless attitudes, such as contained in the character of Imam Khomeini.

Means of Cultural Invasion
According to Imam Khamenei, there are two methods that had been followed by the international imperialism to separate and disengage new generations from religion:
The first method: spreading desires, opening the road for moral dissolution and eliminating decency in relations between men and women.
The second method: it is represented by the scientific and intellectual current. The scientific advancement has become a means to skin away people from religious beliefs and it was taken as a justification to extinguish the light of religious belief within souls.

The Difference between Cultural Interaction and Cultural Invasion
Imam Khamenei differentiated and distinguished between cultural invasions and interacting with the cultures of others. He gave an example about the way man’s body works. A human body deals in two ways with foreign elements:
In the first, when a man eats a meal that contains various vitamins, food is mixed with saliva and food is pushed into the stomach. The stomach then absorbs whatever it deems necessary and beneficial for the body and leaves the residue and finally it pushes it out. Such an interaction is a positive one.
In the second, we bring a man; we tie him up and handcuff him and then infuse a material into his body that he refuses and dislikes. In this case, should the doctor be the enemy, what would the material he would induces to the body of his enemy be?
Accordingly, the aim of cultural exchange is to enrich our culture and drives it more towards perfection whereas the purpose of the cultural invasion is to eradicate and terminate our culture.
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