Translation of the saying:
One of our companions informed us, he said: Mansoor Hashemi Khorasani wrote letters to some scholars and invited them to accompany him in preparing the ground for the Mahdi’s advent. However, due to their excessive arrogance, they did not respond to him, considered his invitation as misguidance, and insulted his messenger. When the news of this incident reached His Eminence, he turned toward his companion and said:
We belong to Allah and to Him we shall return. Indeed, this religion has suffered more damage from its scholars than from its ignorant ones, and it has endured more pain from its jurists than from its fools; because the error of an ignorant one is the error of an ignorant one, and the error of a scholar causes a world to err! A single evil deed of a jurist wipes out a thousand of his good deeds, and his little evil suffices for his much good! Woe to bad scholars; those who seek to please the ruler, so they make the truth as falsehood and falsehood as the truth, and issue fatwas against the oppressed and in favor of the arrogant; those who devour the wealth of the Mahdi and prevent from his way; when they hear my invitation toward him and consider it to be in misguidance to prevent people from accepting it and distract them from moving toward the Mahdi so that their rule on the earth remains eternal and they are obeyed instead of him; just like the rabbis of the Children of Israel, who denied the Prophets of Allah and prevented them from establishing His rulings so that their customs would be preserved forever and nothing of their sustenance in the morning and evening would diminish!
Woe to those who immerse themselves in voluntary acts of worship but neglect the most important obligation! They know the nisab[1] of gold and silver but are not aware of the cause of the absence![2] They know the Imam’s share of Khums but do not remember the Imam’s share of government! They consider performing prayer in the place of others invalid but claim that ruling instead of others is permissible! They see a speck in people’s eyes but do not see a tree trunk in them! They chase flies away from people’s backs but leave camels on them! While one who has been struck by an axe in his forehead does not care about a scratch on his finger, and one who is drowning in the sea is not concerned about his clothes getting wet! Was a covenant not taken from them, and did they not learn in the Book of Allah that they should not say anything but the truth about Allah, nor prevent from His way, nor help the oppressor against the oppressed one?! So woe to them for the humiliation in the life of the world, and woe to them for the fire that has been kindled for them.
