Ayatollah Khamenei, the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, met this Wednesday with a number of poets on the occasion of Imam Hassan Mujtaba's (a.s.) birthday anniversary. Speaking at the meeting, His Eminence referred to the efforts of some people to draw youth towards excessive sexuality in poetry, stressing: "If poetry is influenced by the sexual instinct in an excessive way, this is a very bad thing. Unfortunately today, some hands are dragging poetry towards this direction. After our youth moved forward in pure, gentle, spiritual, epic and revolutionary environments, some hands began to work in different places particularly in the virtual world, let alone other places. They began to drag youth towards excessive sexuality. This is an alarming situation."
The Leader of the Islamic Revolution warned poets not to take an impartial position in the confrontation between truth and evil: "Impartiality makes no sense in the fight between truth and evil. Sometimes, it is not clear who is right. This is a different issue, but when there is a truth and an evil, it makes no sense to adopt an impartial position. Here, we should support truth and stand up against evil. Now, someone does so in the military form and someone else does it in the form of politics. We can stand up against evil in different forms. Some people can do so with eloquent language and with philosophy. In any case, we should stand up against evil. Poets cannot be impartial in the battle between truth and evil."