QUR’ANIC COMPETITIONS

As a substantial factor in orienting and encouraging youth, Qur’anic competitions were highly considered and supported by the leader of the Islamic revolution, to the extents that he had announced in his valuable declaration that he is a ‘supporter’ of these competitions.
The Islamic revolution is a revolution whose victory was founded on Qur’an in order to build a Qur’anic society under the leadership of a great man whose blood had been mixed with Qur’an, and the people of the Islamic Iran defended this revolution by their blood and sacrificed their lives for the sake of realizing the glorious teachings of the Qur’an under the command of the grand leader of the Islamic revolution. After the late Imam, the strongest supporter of Qur’anic activities and fields that may attract people toward Qur’an, is the Imam’s eminent student, the wise leader of the revolution Ayatollah Khamenei. His encouragement and valuable recommendations to the youth in order direct themselves toward Qur’an and his vast consideration to reciters, memorizers and interpreters have had a lot of consequences that will be shown more and more through time.
Holding Qur’anic competitions in all social institutions, from school and university to offices and armed forces, have encouraged more people to learn this divine book, deal with it and tend to be related to it. Besides holding marvelous international competitions on recitation, memorization and interpretation of the Qur’an in the Islamic Republic of Iran led to contacting and relating known reciters and memorizers in the world with each other, and emphasized, more than before, the necessity of unifying the Islamic world on the bases of the Qur’an against the arrogant powers in the world.
Witnessing the high level of recitation and memorization in Iran, reciters and memorizers from different Islamic countries acknowledged that after-revolution Iran has paid special attentions to Qur’anic affairs, to such extent that Iran’s Qur’anic heroes, specifically memorizers, climbed the highest summits of success, and they acknowledged themselves that non of the Islamic countries known in this field have reached such level, and that does not concern Iranian adults only, but our youth have also reached, in international level, such stage that they were able gain glorious successes in competing with adults who have spent long years memorizing and reciting the Holy Qur’an, and came fist in these competition. The remarkable example for that is our blossom, of whom we are proud, Ali Reza-Zada who gained the excellent place this year in the Qur’an international competition held in Saudi Arabia
Ali Reza-Zada Jouybari, this brilliant blossom, is one of the young memorizers who had well shone in Qur’anic competitions, although some memorizers of his age may prefer not to participate in these competitions.
But Ali Reza-Zada was able to gain one of the first places of Qur’an memorization for three years in domestic competitions.
Ali drew the attention of His Excellency the leader of the Islamic Republic in the final ceremony of the eighteenth round of the international competition on reciting, memorizing and interpreting the holy Qur’an, after responding from the stage to the Qur’anic questions of the eminent reciters, memorizers and professors from all over the world. Every one witnessed how this Iranian brilliant blossom pleased the leader of the revolution and portrait a satisfactory smile on his face when he answered the questions of the eminent Egyptian professors.
After that when Ali went to greet the leader, His Excellency talked to him warmly and questioned him in front of the people. Perhaps every body would like to know what the leader said to him. Ali was listening politely to His Excellency and talking himself from time to time. When he felt that the leader had no more questions to ask, he tried to stand up and go back as regard from him to His Excellency, but every time he intended to go the leader’s hand was falling on his shoulder to turn him back to his place.
Asked about that warm conversation between him and the leader, Ali said that the leader of the revolution was inquiring about his knowledge, learning status and home address.
After Ali, there were, then, attractive Qur’anic programs, but none of them had the attraction of Ali’s program. His program delighted eminent memorizers and reciters gathered there from all over the world. No doubt, this Qur’anic blossom has no comparable in the Islamic world. What supports this claim a statement made by Sayyid Sa’eed, the known Egyptian reciter, as he said:
We have millions of Qur’an memorizers in the Arabic world, but none of them, old and young, is like Ali Reza-Zada.
This statement was made in a Qur’anic gathering in Lebanon. Professor Sayyid Sa’eed requested the video tapes of Ali’s programs in Lebanon and said, ‘I want to take this tape to Al-Azhar University in Egypt, so that they would follow the Iranian children’s method (in memorizing) and teach their children this way.’
In spite of all this success, Ali Reza-Zada is still considering and participating in Qur’anic competitions. Although participating in these competitions urges the memorizer to repeat his learning many times and try to fix it, but participating in these competitions is unity-creator and pleasure-maker. In these competitions, every faithful participant is a ‘winner’ and there is no loser in them as it is the case in other competitions, because if a memorizer cannot gain a winning place here, he will not lose any thing, since what he cares about is dealing with the Qur’an, this glorious divine word that builds human beings.