Contest Winning Essay

Author's Introduction

by Stephen Faller

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This piece is the winning essay and the end of our contest. I think it will seem a little unusual for Western readers, because it comes from Iran. Some of the style and usage elements are not what we are used to. But I think the real strength of the piece is its ability to imagine the Matrix into the fabric of another culture and religion -- in this case, Islam.

Please enjoy the essay and congratulations to Mohammad Mozaffari.

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Essay

by Mohammad Mozaffari

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I think the Matrix movie is related to every religion.  E.g. Christianity, Greek Mythologies or even my religion Islam. In my essay I'm going to discuss the main issues of the movie. And I will consider Neo as The One.

1. the most important thing in the movie is "The One" thing. Well if we discuss this in Islam we can find a lot of things. We, the shiya Muslims believe that there is a guide. Who is hidden now but he will be shown when the world needs him. His name is M-o-h-a-m-m-a-d. We write his name this way to show our respect to him. We have had 11 guides before but the one I told his name above is still hidden. But he is alive. As we see in the movie Neo may be The One. He defeated Smith and the people in Zion survived the machines. Our last holy guide will come when there is no peace, no mercy, and no love in the world he will come as Neo came. And he will help the people as Neo helped them. And he will bring peace to the world as Neo did. He will bring the things that we cannot even think about them: Love and peace anywhere in the world. No child is crying. No one is being killed. Etc... .

2. In the movie there are some people like Neo, Trinity, Morpheus and Agent Smith who have the ability to do some extra-ordinary things. some extra-believers in Islam also can do these things. They get these powers by praying too much, by believing in God and Judgment day too much. By doing everything that the God has told us. I've read in a book that a man stopped a child while he was falling in the air, just like Neo who stops the bullets in the air. The people asked that man "how did you do that?" He said "During my entire life I've done what the God wanted. Now after all these years. God, with his unlimited power did what I wanted."

3. As we see in the movie, Neo can know about things that are happening somewhere else and also the things that are going to happen. Some people can also do this. A friend of our first guide, Imam Ali could know when and how somebody will die. He knew that he is going to die because of believing in our holy guide. But he was not afraid. He was on his strong belief till the end of his life. There are also some people that can see the real face of the people. Some of the people believe that everybody has a real face which is related to what has he/she done. If we have done good things our real face would be shining and beautiful. But if we have done bad things our real face would be ugly or even horrible. Some people call the real face the "Sorate-e-Barzakhi". They believe that our real face is the face that we will have in the 6th world after we die.

4. Somewhere in the first Matrix movie, Morpheus offered Neo two pills and said that there will be no turning back. God offered us in the same way but without pills. I am going to explain this. We (the Muslim people) believe (but not all of us) that there are 7 worlds for every person. Any one of us had passed 4 worlds and we are living in the 5th world and we have 2 worlds ahead of us. In the first world which we call it the "Zar", have been only the spirits of us. God told all the spirits that do you believe in me and will you do as I tell you and will you believe in my last messenger, "Mohammad"? All of the spirits answered with yes. Also God told them that there will be no turning back. If you do the right things as my messengers will tell you, in your lives you will go to heaven and live happily, peacefully forever. And if you do the wrong things like not believing in me, hell will be your destination. All of us answered with yes but unfortunately there are some people who do not even believe in God. And I think that, Cypher represents such a people that first promise to do something but they do not keep their promise.

5. Let me say something about death. Based on my knowledge of Islam I think that it is impossible that a dead person get back to life. As we see in the movie both Neo and Trinity die but they were revived. We believe that Jesus Christ had the ability to revive people but he got this ability from God. We believe that with God's unlimited power everything is possible. But when Neo or Trinity revived there had been no mention related to God or his unlimited power. We believe that when the Jesus Christ wanted to revive somebody (or any other miracles that our messenger, has done). They where first saying by the permission of God and his unlimited power....

6. Well let's talk about this sentence: "He's doing his superman thing". There are some people who have this ability too. In Islam we call it "Tei-o-alarth". It means that if somebody has this ability, he can go from one side of the earth to another side in no time. One of the miracles that happened to our holy messenger was that he went from Mecca to Jerusalem in no time. And then he flied into the skis and saw the worlds that I talked about them above (the 7 worlds). And he was told what his believers will have to do. And then we was returned to the earth.

7. As the final issue I want to talk about the Matrix itself. As we see in the movie, the machines have enslaved the human bodies and are using them as their source of energy. I don't think that even in the future something like this will happen. It is somehow impossible. Because I think that God is so merciful that will not allow this to happen. You see it is out of God's mercy to see that millions of people are slaves for the machines. And a lot of them are even afraid of them. I think that the machines will never have this power. Because I believe that there is no intelligence more powerful than the human's mind.

Finally I should say that this movie is the greatest movie I've ever seen. It has a lot of new things, a lot of new ideas. Some of them are logical some of them are no.

Mohammad Mozaffari.