In the Name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful
Welcome you dear ones, youth and champions. I am very happy to meet you. If I could, I would see each and every one of you up close, but you are too many and this is not possible. I ask Allah the Exalted to bestow His blessings and guidance on all you brothers and sisters and on your coaches and managers.
I always warmly thank our youth whenever they achieve victory in any arena. This is because your victory and championship engenders a feeling of pride in our people. This is important for a nation. The enemies of nations have always tried to humiliate them. Humiliation does not only mean insulting or abusing someone. The most important kind of humiliation is to engender a feeling of shame and degradation in a people. When a people ignore their own prominence, advantages and values, when they consider themselves to be mean and small, they will get nowhere. In such circumstances, anyone can dominate them. Nations should know their achievements.
You can see that those peoples who do not have an outstanding history and an important past create one for themselves. They create an identity for themselves through movies and other such media outlets. This is while they have tried for many years to engender a feeling of humiliation in a people like our people who enjoy a glorious past and who have stood at the peak of civilization, culture, knowledge and human values throughout history. You have heard and seen the statements that are made with the purpose of ignoring national achievements. When a people enjoy a sense of pride, this is a step towards great achievements. I enjoy seeing that our youth achieve victories in athletic arenas and that they dedicate their victories to their people. They make our people happy both in words and in action and they transfer their feeling of pride to the people's hearts. This is a very great blessing for me. This is why I issue messages and thank these athletes. And what I say in these messages cannot at all express what I feel in my heart. Therefore, I thank you.
There is an important point which is the fact that when you stand on the medal platform in any form and with any achievement, you are watched by hundreds of millions of people. You behavior is an indicator of your people, your culture and your national identity. It is very important how you behave there. The young lady who stands on the medal platform while she is wearing chador shows that she is resistant in the face of the overt and covert invasions which are launched by anti-culture, anti-religion and anti-modesty centers against this course of action. This way, she shows her strong character. That is to say, this way she is introducing her people. The young individual who prostrates himself in gratitude after he achieves a victory, who shouts the name of a religious personality and who wears a shirt or blouse on which the name of Fatima Zahra (God's greetings be upon her) or Abul Fadhl has been written is introducing himself and the spirituality and resistance of his people.
Today, international propaganda organizations have focused all their efforts on combating spirituality, religion, modesty and chastity. This is among the definite plans of Zionism throughout the world. They are furthering this goal and they are intensifying it on a daily basis. Take a look at movies and stories about the clothes that European women used to wear 50, 100 years ago and compare this with today. Compare western and European sexual behavior 50, 100 years ago with the present time and see how significantly things have changed in this regard. Moral decadence has reached a point where you are severely criticized if you say that you do not agree with homosexuality. This is a very strange phenomenon.
They feel proud of immodesty and nudity. They feel proud of violating sexual norms. This is the same thing that exists in our narrations. There is a narration which says, "Good deeds are considered to be immoral and immoral acts are considered to be good deeds". This is what has happened in the western world. And the news and media empire is using all its power to promote anti-spirituality and anti-morality. Today, their efforts have increased by a thousand times compared to 15, 20 years ago, with the emergence of social media networks and other media outlets.
In such circumstances, Iranian youth enter the arena and introduce themselves as the manifestation of spirituality. What does this mean? This means that their hearts, their souls and their morale are capable of resisting this great wave of deviation. This is what can introduce you. Although it is true that you work hard and go to a lot of trouble to win a competition - well, you work hard and pressure yourselves whether in wrestling, weightlifting or in team sports - your spiritual resistance is not less important than your physical resistance in the eyes of insightful people in the world and sometimes, it is more important to them. This indicates that our people are a people who are able to stand up against the propaganda efforts of harmful and destructive apparatuses.
In a world which likes women to wear such clothes and which is proud of it and in a world which promotes deviant, wrong, harmful and deadly nudity, our young women stand there [while they are wearing hijab] or our young men do not shake hands with the lady who wants to put the medal around their neck. These are very valuable. Four, five, six year ago, I saw an American magazine which had written, "In a certain restaurant, the employees are young women who are naked or semi-naked". The owner of the restaurant was proud of this and he had published his photo and the photo of his restaurant and those girls in that magazine.
It is not the case that we praise, out of religious prejudice, someone who does something good. Rather, these are signs of the resistance, steadfastness and hardness of the people of Iran. These are things that make a nation valuable. You should appreciate the value of these characteristics and you should promote them as much as you can. Spirituality in sports helps sports. It helps national dignity as well. Thankfully, our youth are religious youth.
Legal violations - including international or domestic violations - should be strictly avoided. It should not be the case that championship in sports means ignoring every violation. This should not be the case. Violation is violation from the highest to the lowest levels. Each official, ordinary person and outstanding personality and each scientific, sporting, industrial and political champion who violates a law should be legally confronted in accordance with their violation. It is not at all appropriate to show indifference and lack of responsibility in sporting areas.
Well, I would like to thank the participants of the Asian Games - whether competitions related to the dear disabled athletes or other competitions. Thankfully, they came back with many achievements. I followed these competitions. Of course, I am not interested in watching competitions on TV. That is to say, I do not have the time to do this. But whenever sports news comes in, I follow it enthusiastically and I thank God that you came back with many achievements.
You too should thank God. You should thank God. Whenever you make an achievement, this achievement comes from God: "And whatever favor is bestowed on you, it is from Allah" [The Holy Quran, 16: 53]. Whatever blessing you have has been bestowed on you by God. The physical capability that you have is from God. Your power of determination - which is the most important thing in the area of sports and championship - is from God. It is God Who has given you this power of making decisions. It is God Who has given you such victories. Therefore, you should thank Allah the Exalted and thanking Him has certain requirements.
Well, you youth - who achieve a victory, in any form, in sporting arenas - win popularity among the people. This popularity has certain characteristics and it has certain problems as well. You should tolerate these problems.
First, when you achieve popularity, you should try to avoid confining it to sporting areas. In the Amin-Allah Dua you read, "Make me popular in Your earth and in Your heaven" [Iqbal al-A'mal, page 470]. This popularity is good. You should become popular both on earth and in heaven. You should do something to make divine angles and the pure souls of saints to love you in heaven.
Second, when you become popular among the youth of the country, they look at you and they learn from you. You become their role models. Every good move that you make sometimes leads to millions of good moves on the part of youth. Notice how valuable this is. When you make a good move, show good behavior, make a good statement and show a good intention, this is duplicated in millions because you are a role model. This is very valuable and it promotes good in society.
Counsel to do good means acting in a way that good deeds become popular. With this course of action, you are doing a practical counsel to do good. God forbid, the opposite is possible as well. If a role model does something in a certain arena which is against ethics, piety and chastity, this also becomes a pattern if the people find out about it. You should be careful about this as well. This course of action is duplicated as well. Therefore, winning a competition and becoming popular among the people is a two-edged sword. It is very good if we can be committed to its requirements. It is very dangerous if, God forbid, we fail to do so. This is what I wanted to say to you.
The points that the honorable Minister of Sports raised were good points. These issues are good issues. What he said was what I had in mind as well. I also wanted to say that you should prioritize sporting issues and that you should promote public and mainstream sports. Public sports means public health. Since long ago, I have been defending- - because of many reasons which are clear and some of which I mentioned - professional and competitive sports against those people who criticized it. But public sports means the physical health of all the people. Unfortunately, these public sports have not been developed the way they should have. Take a look at city life which is marked by lack of activity and junk and imitative foods which are available to the people in stores and which the people use. But the main problem is lack of activity. These things weaken the people's bodies. Bodies should be strong and healthy and this is achieved through public sports. You should definitely pay attention to public sports.
Besides, our good and pious athletes - who promote and smooth the path of good deeds in society - should not at all be intimidated by the peripheral and non-sporting issues which are raised here and there. You should not attach any significance to such issues. As soon as you do a good deed, those people who are prepared to criticize such deeds begin to launch an invasion in the yellow press, social media networks and other such media. You should not pay any attention to these people at all. You should take a look and see what the truth is, what values are and what wise hearts understand and want. You should pay attention to such things.
In any case, we thank Allah the Exalted that you exist and we are happy that our country thankfully builds champions not only in sporting arenas - where you exist - but also in all arenas. In the arena of knowledge too, our country builds champions. We build champions. Iranian society, the Islamic Revolution and the holy Islamic Republic benefit from those individuals who build champions in the arena of knowledge, morality and different other arenas. Of course, they try to destroy, undermine and humiliate this, but the truth is what I said. Thankfully, building champions in this country is a well-established process and we should increase it on a daily basis. And this is in your hands, the hands of officials and the hands of all those people who influence society's mentality.
I would like to thank you again. I entrust all of you to Almighty God and I will pray for all of you.
Greetings be upon you and Allah's mercy and blessings