The Ayatollah Speaks
Aug 17th, 2009 by pedestrian
… and splendidly. I’m sorry that I can’t capture the rye humor and the sharp criticisms in any English translation, but he spoke magnificently. So sharp and witty.
Also, note that some of it may sound weird or just plain nonsense. I’ve tried to stick to the original as much as possible, and in general, Iranian clerics speak differently than regular orators, this is “clergy-peak”.
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Here are some snippets:
- Go study the life of the Imam [Khomeini]. Don’t believe what comes out of the mouth of deceivers and those who spread lies.
- Look at what happened to the friends of the Imam. Most were martyred. The few who remain are now in prison for wanting to change this regime. Is this believable? Can you believe this? These dear people are devoutly religious and dedicated. How could such a thing be possible? I have known Mr. Mousavi for 25 years, I know his family, his father, I know every detail about his life. He wanted to bring chaos to the regime? He planned to condemn people to dying in the streets soaked in blood? He planned to raid people’s homes? He planned to destroy stores and banks? He planned for them to stand up on rooftops and target people’s hearts?
- I must tell you that in this system, Mir Hossein Mousavi is either unparalleled or almost unparalleled in terms of his dedication to religion and his country. I didn’t want to say this, but because I am very emotional, I must. Mir Hossein Mousavi, when he was in involved in high politics, and later when he wasn’t, would always make sure to send his religious donations [khoms and zakat, by religious law, every Muslim is responsible for giving a certain fraction of their income to charity through the grand ayatollah they follow.] And this was not about tricking people, or deceit. And anyways, he can’t trick me. I come from a long lineage of akhunds [mullahs- it is famous that you can never trick a cleric.] He would always come and give me the amount, and then leave in his Peykan [Iranian made Hillman Hunter] and each time he wold come, he would give me a lesson in politics.
- Dear clerics, you know Arabic, go read our texts. No one is allowed to torture prisoners. Even if by law, a criminal is condemned to a certain punishment, we are not allowed to punish him if he is sick. Read the words of Imam Ali. Imam Ali said that any prisoner who is being held captive, is tortured or hurt, and who has no access to the outside world, can not be forced into confession. Torture is not allowed. Confession under tajrid is not permissible, [meaning] a prisoner who has no access to his family, to newspapers, to TV, to the outside world, according to the Imam Ali we keep speaking of, and usually use to our benefits, he says this confession is illegitimate and unacceptable.
- Today I am here to warn you of dangers, and to propose solutions for them. [...]
- I told one of the officials who came to see me, who was there on behalf of a very high official, I told him: annul the election result. Hold a new election. The sky isn’t going to fall. This is a knot that is easily undone. A knot that can be undone with the hands, we don’t undo with our teeth. He said no, there’s been no fraud. I told him, there’s been no fraud, o.k. This sounds like the story of the man who told another man, I’ll give you 70 reasons why there’s no water in the pool. The other said, I’ll give you only one reason that there is, and he picked up the first man and threw him in the pool. They’ve acted so horrifically that now, even an election annulment will not do them any good.
- I’m left wondering what happened, I’m baffled and speechless.
- Work to raise your knowledge, your awareness, and the knowledge of others. That is why the tyrants are afraid of the tiniest hint of awareness that people have. They are afraid of two people talking to one another. They are even scared of the graveyards. Men, why are you afraid of the graveyard too? Are there banks in graveyards, or stores that you’re afraid will burn down? This is not going to be resolved by fear. They want to visit their dead, let them. What are they supposed to do? All they say is: “thanks so much for piercing my son’s heart, for shooting a bullet into it, now at least let me say a prayer on my martyr’s grave.” It used to be in the old days that they used the dead to add to their own popularity. If they wanted to prove how great and popular their tribe was, they counted the dead among them. I remember in the old days, when the government would give coupons, the families would take the birth certificate of their dead to get extras. But this we had never seen before: for them to be so terrified of the dead and of graveyards. What are you afraid of?
- Remind people of their rights, advise them, and know that what has happened today is unprecedented in terms of the hate it is creating among people towards some of their officials. Of course, those men, these officials, they say that it is not so. I say it is, they say it isn’t. We all say what we believe. I say that these protesters are at least 13 million, according to your own estimates. Of course, they say 13 is an unlucky number. That’s why they chose this number [referring to the vote rigging]. But that is not true, 13 is not unlucky, that is just superstition.
- Remember this: go anywhere that helps achieve your goals. Don’t go anywhere that does not help you achieve your goals, sit at home. Go anywhere when you can achieve your goals. I remember going to Tehran from Qom when I was a student, to protest. The friends of the Imam were careful to see where they could go that would be in the benefit of the Imam. Now you must do the same. You must see where you can be present that can help you achieve your aims. Go there, participate. [this is a very, very important statement. It means that the marja, the grand ayatollah is advising his followers to be present anywhere they feel they can protest.]
- The most important thing is knowledge and finding the roots of our problems. You must sit down and read, find the roots of these dilemmas. Know that this is only a game. All of this is a game. So that they can increase the power and authority of certain individuals. This news you hear, of asking them to dismiss somebody, to appoint somebody else, these are just games, these are just for amusement.
- Vaay beh haleh mellati keh sokhaneh roozeshoon gheyreh dardeshoon bashe: Pity the nation whose daily news is not that of their pain and suffering. [meaning, news like that of Mashaei's, about one official going and the other coming, those are just distractions that keep people from focusing on their suffering.] The pain today is the suffering of the prisoner who is held hostage by the tyrants. The pain is that confessions are forced. Pain is not letting them sit at the grave of their loved ones to say a prayer. Pain is attempting to free these prisoners. That is what we must focus on.
- Thank God, Praise the almighty that now, we have no part in the sins they are committing [he is no longer involved in government]. Torture, captivity, murder, … one of them is enough to burn you eternally in hell.
- [he recites a scripture and then translates it] Killing a person is much different than killing a movement. You are killing one movement, and honoring another. This is going to send you to hell.
- That clergy who is going against the people, how could he do that when it is the people who have always supported the clergy? Those who do not follow the people, they will see the result. Who has managed the clergy throughout history? The people. They have taken from the mouths of their wives and children, and they’ve given it to me to eat.
- They say, why have you broken our unity? Why have you created conflict? Well, the oppressed and the oppressors always have conflicts.
- [He tells a story about when Ayatollah Boroujerdi wrote some scriptures related to Sunni Muslims and was forced to take them out of his book because the "extremists" pressured him and told him that Shi'a Islam would suffer as a result.] That’s not how Shi’a Islam is going to be destroyed. Shia Islam will be destroyed by certain people saying the clery are thieves [Ahmadinejad]. This is how Shia Islam will be abolished. When the people believe that the clergy are thieves, their children are thieves they have been stealing for thirty years. And of course now that the dollars have gone to Turkey and they have denied it. I don’t know. No one has the right to accuse any one of theft in front of 200 million people, as you know, that night of the debates, 200 million people across the world were watching. What right do they have to accuse anyone of theft without evidence? Yes, certain people in this system have stolen, go and investigate. But [religiously] this has extreme punishment, for you to accuse someone of something [when they are not there to defend themselves.]
- We are responsible for not depending on any media outlet that lies. Whether it’s a newspaper that lies, the radio that lies, the TV that lies, a clergy like me sitting on this seat that lies, we should not listen to what they say. Listening to media outlets that lie is against the Koran. It’s not only so when the media belong to the West. No one said that if a media, if a newspaper claims to be Islamic, or claims to support Islam, it can go on lying.
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LISTEN:
a monument of reason, dignity and courage in the midst of a desert of brainless stupidity, self-degrading unworthiness and lethal hatred.
muchas gracias!
I’ve been looking for a translation of this speech all day. Thank you.
What a venerable old gentleman! A national treasure! Brave as a young boy! I’m thrilled…
The only thing I don’t understand is his utter admiration for the older ayatollah. How can he not SEE that some of our problems today go back to his time?!
When i read glorifying impressions of German and Gardner, I can’t help thinking about listening to Sanei once when I was young, describing (at the neck of noon, he used to say Ahkaam on radio) how if there is an earth quake, and a man who is showering upstairs falls on a woman who is bathing downstairs, then one has to pass a thread between them to establish if they have had intercourse!!!
Ped, sanei was one of the most ridiculed ayatollahs during the older one! They are all of the same fabric–with the exception of Montazeri (although he is the one who has plagued us with Velayat-e Faghih!)
pffff all my bottled up anger is now bursting!
Naj, I could barely walk or talk during that time, so I really can’t comment. But at least in the past few years that I was alert enough to follow the news, I think Sanei has acted with persistent akhond integrity. His ideas may not be liberal enough for me, but he’s sitting in Qom, and I appreciate his attempts to shake things up a bit, no matter how slightly. I don’t meant to say that to defend him, I don’t think the clerical establishment in Iran can really be “defended” on any grounds right now.
Are you sure about that? I’ve heard that story about three other ayatollahs as well!
If someone, like the quoted ayatollah, doesn’t want to run the risk of getting isolated and marginalized by main-stream-thinkers and -activists/cerics/politicians, he has got to make some (perhaps tactical) concession to find a more common point of departure or a kind of common ground / common denominator, which a sizeable number of people interested in the issue can agree with, from which he can start arguing – thus not frightening possible supporters of his main aim away. And the main objective/aim has to do with the present state of affairs, irrespective if all agree on the same assessment/have the same opinion of past events and past figures. It is quite sufficient if there are at least some tenuous, hardly perceivable, provable, identifiable links with these past events/figures. What’s the use of arguing on the basis of absolute truths, if you antagonize possible and reasonable supporters of the presumably (one) main objective: basic civil rights (e.g.freedom of speech/discussion/thinking/publishing/press)?
German, I agree: NOW is not the time to drag out corpses out of the graveyard. We have very, very urgent crises at hand, most especially the prisoners and the dead, and they should be our priority. Digging into the past is necessary, but not an IMMEDIATE necessity and isn’t going to help matters.
I guess I’m just more curios of how these people think INSIDE their own minds. Do they see the contradictions? Do they see that this wasn’t a monster that was born yesterday, but rather, was a long time in the making?
We will never know, if they see what you, Dear Pedestrian, with your well-founded insight and judgement see. But I think people with that experience shouldn’t be underestimated. It’s highly probable, that they see things the same identical way you grasp Iranian past and present reality. But complete, absolute, comprehensive truths referring to all aspects of one’s insight will make an(y) agreement (more) difficult (than need be). To achieve the support of an otherwise common and agreed opinion will be perhaps prevented . – I’m just imagining someone asking me for some doable help (giving him/her a lift in my car), at the same time telling me all possible truths referring to my person like “You do look really ugly today, besides that you are much too corpulent, have bandy legs…..” [The question, if one is to tell always and everywhere the truth, thus answers itself:] – That someone will very probably have told me a lot of absolute truths, only he will not get the lift he was asking for, as I will find any possible excuses (e.g., why I can’t give him/her a lift). – A cleric (ayatollah/catholic bishop) who wants to achieve any theological, social or political aim, wouldn’t be very successful if he started with a denial of the existence of God/Allah or a particularly highly esteemed saint or saint-like figure (like Mohammed/Khomenei/Virgin Maria/the present or a former Pope – you name it) (whatever he might privately and really think of that, whatever the real truth).
Sorry for that over-long interior mono-dialogue. I hope it won’t happen again.
German, I guess the crux of it is that I don’t think the past thirty years SHOULD fit into our box of “absolute truths.”
See, this is the problem: like I mention, we have very, very urgent needs right now. But ONCE those hurdles are past, one, ten or thirty years from now, we are going to actually have to come up with new alternatives. We have to start thinking of new alternatives now, we always have to have a strategy for once the tide has settled in.
And so my main worry is, given that these men are noble in helping us weather the storm – what is going to come after? Are we going to reach a compromise that won’t see us in the same quandary over and over again? They can keep their feelings about the so called saints to themselves, but through that, I just want to have an assessment of sorts about their vision of Iran post-trauma.
Dear Pedestrian,
completely d’accord – it’s really great, what you are saying! You are definitely right! I understand your (convincing!) point of view! I agree with you!
Thank you very much for your [incredible] patience [with some of your correspondents - like me] !
I wish you all the best
German
German, you don’t have to agree with everything I say! I’m not as bad as Ahmadinejad, I swear
LOL – as you usually write/blog, when you have fun or are laughing!
Yours
German
I said he’s a venerable old gentleman…not a saint.
All of the players in this destructive and inhuman political drama have come up through questionable ranks and are front and center at this most pivotal time in Iran’s history. Each is being peeled away by either their conscience (if they have one) or pressure from the Greens. The daily chiseling away is revealing, and leaves one trying to understand how superstition, social (and political) blindness, sober reasoning, perverse murderous intent and skewed perceptions of divinity exist simultaneously within individuals charged with the leadership of 70 million souls.
My bet is on selected and outstanding leaders from within the movement itself. I suspect their development is in the embryonic stage, but it too is as much ongoing as the chiseling away.
Nevertheless, at this stage, public demonstrations of sober reasoning from any source is both unexpected and laudable…especially when the threat of rape with a baton, flogging, public disgrace, or murder would have you do otherwise.
Gardener, I wasn’t referring to him, but Ayatollah Khomeini who many people certainly view as a saint.
I think it has been in the embryonic stage for a while … that’s why I’m very curios to know what the end result is going to look like!
Very interesting speech. Don’t know how important a speech like this is in terms of momentum for the opposition movemnt. People have tried to make alot of hay out of the growing or more open factionalism in the high clergy and of fatwas from leading marjas condemning the gov’t. but I’m not sure how much weight that carries any more among the Shi’a “masses.” I think in general across the Muslim world we’ve seen a steady erosion in clerical authority over the past thirty years. And that’s among the believers.
Lots of breathless talk on other sites about Sanei calling Ahmadinejad a “bastard” but it would seem to me that the much more shocking accusation here is kufr—actively deceiving people and pulling them away from the truth—a theme to which he continually returns, and which your translation points out.
I should add that there’s not just been a steady erosion in clerical authority in recent years but perhaps just as importantly clerical hierarchy too. Muqtada al-Sadr is a good non-Iranian example here. Of course, Khamenei is the ultimate example. But the “close the ranks” mentality that existed in Borujerdi’s time, of which Sanei also makes mention, has seemingly disappeared.
Ped;
my memory may be failing due to old age; but yes i am sure having listened to PLENTY of sexual ahkaams from Sanei. There were two of them, I forgot the name of the other.
I appreciate his calling Ahmadinejad a lying bastard, anyways.
You see, more and more of these “protest letters to supreme leader” are emerging; and in all of them, from mohtashami pour to fazel; a significant number of paragraphs are dedicated to a)how they are khodi; b)how they used to play with khamenei/khomeini failies; c)how they are relative of someone who has been a top official in the IRI … this line of defense somehow lumps together a whole bunch of these greens to me; and reminds me of how THEY were the oppressors in a past. That, I have not yet forgotten.
I am willing to forgive them; if they change and repent for things like keeping my “rotbeh 1″ cousin out of university because he came from a communist family; or keeping my top-of-the-class friend from residency of her choice because she wore makeup … these memories make me not give a damn shit about Jalayee poor, or a whole bunch of other ones who sell their authenticity to me in the clothes of “look we are the grandchild of a mullahs and we have an “shahid” uncle!”
Speaking of Shahid, I think all families of the Mojahedin-e khalgh, or peykar, have to be considered family of shahid; didn’t their children also die for “armed” resistance to transmogrification of their “version” of Iran?
I just think it will be unfair to suddenly glorify these killers of yesterday, without contextualizing the corpse they have once walked on. Everyone needs a properly contextualized place in history. It is abhoring to me to hear the greenos call “Rahnavard” the champion of women rights!! And yes, people have to be given credit for undergoing “estehale”. So, I am grateful to Sanei for using his podium. But, I still find something peculiar that the mullahs whose speeches and statements are tolerated are those who have been subjects of much of our jokes in the past.
Here’s something an Iranian writer, with a solid and politically independent brain, sent to me recently: (he somehow wrote it in response to you and I, when were were criticizing the kinds of people who were participating in these protest)
“Like all Johny-come-latelies, these Joojeh-akhoond’s drums are louder than anybody else’s. The “guillotine” did not appear yesterday. It was the exile-community that suffered the Shi’ite guillotine first, both inside and outside Iran, while all these bullshitter-reformists were silent, if not complicit. Now, some of them are exiled themselves but they’ve the temerity to tell us, Be careful, don’t touch the system, don’t say anything against velayat, WE will mange the protest, you be quiet!
They want to take credit for a defiant civil-rights movement when just a year ago they wouldn’t dream of instigating it. Accidental leaders indeed! And typical opportunists at that when they talk about “confessions” NOW! Didn’t they know “tavvaab-saazi” was in full force for 30 years? Where were you then mister? Have you ever heard of Mikonos?
And the Joojeh-Akhoond says, It’s too soon for saying “secularism and republic!” Excuse me, where were you Shi’ite mullahs, when Darolfonoon was founded? Who wrote Mashrootyat’s constitution and other laws? Who created the modern journalism, modern poetry, music, and arts in contemporary Iran? Do you want to take credit for Nima, Shamloo, radio music of Golha, Marzieh, Delkash, and Shajarian? New pop music of Viguen and Googoosh? Our historians Kassravi and Adamyat, and Yarshater? What was YOUR fucking contribution to the Iranian culture in the past 200 years? And you have face to tell the secular intellectuals, the heirs to all this, that YOU the mullahs are the true champions of freedom and democracy?! Get out of the way and let the breeze come in!”
Naj, by the time I was alert enough to notice what was going on around me, I didn’t have to endure any of that. I had Bahai friends in university, who didn’t yell out their faith, but who didn’t keep it a secret. Girls wore more lipstick and eyeshadow than I could or would ever dream of wearing.
Again, I really don’t mean to come out in defense of anyone. I’m just trying to tell you of what I’ve experienced as an Iranian student living in Iran the past few years.
To me, this seems like a battle that has raged on for quite some time, that can’t really be summed up in one line or two, that is really two different worldviews and two different visions. And I really want to stay away from making sweeping generalizations that “the people of Iran” want this or that. I wish I knew, but I’m not so sure. Adding to that quandary is that people can often let others dictate what they want , so that’s not a totally transparent analysis to begin with.
The clerical establishment’s primary concern is religious – so of course they are not going to contribute to music, art, literature, so of course they can’t claim to have had any contributions there and any claims otherwise on their part is pure delusion (I’ve looked at K.’s “poetry”). But what about the forces behind the constitutional revolution? Before the laws were written? How about vocally opposing the Shah at a time when few dared to? I think one of their contributions (or, in better words, not contribution to humanity or even Iran, but “advances on their own part”) has been that now, for better or worse, and I think worse, Shi’a Islam is a force to be reckoned with. I think religious reform is very necessary for Iran and the clerics are the ones who can lead that reform.
A lot has changed in the past thirty years, and I think we need a reconciliation of some sort. Everyone has changed, everyone has has a right to realize they’ve fucked up big time, and the establishment itself is no exception.
Jalaiepour is not an outstanding academic in any way, but he breathed new life into the Iranian newspaper business and for that I’ll always appreciate him. That was when taxi drivers in Tehran started carrying daily newspapers other than the sports dailies. Maybe he’s not smart enough or strong enough to rise above his own environment, but in that very environment, I think he has tried to do what he can. And in terms of his shahid brother, that is the only language these thugs may understand, so I can’t condemn him for using it.
In the end, I realize that they will try to glorify themselves, and it’s up to the outsiders to remind them of their incompetence. While they say they’ve realized their mistakes, they glorify some of those mistakes and beh roo khodeshoon nemiyaran that that’s a logical, philosophical and moral contradiction.