Rachel Silverman
Ayatollah Hossein Kazemeyni Boroujerdi
symbolizes clerical resistance against the Shi’ite Islamist regime in
Iran. Boroujerdi threatens the regime by presenting a coherent ideological argument against the
Islamist regime from the perspective of a well-respected and
high-ranking Shi’ite cleric. He supports separation of religion and
state and rejects the regime’s anti-Semitic worldview. In discussing
women’s rights, he said,” if religion and the state be separated , these
problems will be solved through a great vision.”
Boroujerdi challenges the regime’s ideological underpinning: the
concept of Velayat e-Faqi, or the Rule of the Supreme Jurist. Ayatollah
Khomeini invented this concept to justify the totalitarian rule of a
clerical regime which controls Iranian society. Many Shi’ite clerics
question some regime policies, but very few senior clerics directly
oppose the system’s ideological foundations. According to Muslim writer
Stephen Schwartz, executive director of the Center for Islamic
Pluralism, “Like his father, Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Mohammad Ali
Kazemeyni Boroujerdi (1924-2002), Boroujerdi preaches the pre-Khomeini
interpretation of Iranian Shiism, which calls for religion to be kept
apart from politics.” His insistence on separating religion and politics
undermines the Islamist regime’s ideological basis.
t of April 23, 2013, he not only blasted the regime for financing
foreign tyrants such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and Assad but also condemned
its religious foundation. He wrote,”The day a republic was supposedly
intermingled with Islamism, the unholy incongruence as it completely
contradicted the divine laws, to mix faith and politics, became my
nightmare. The whole concept is nothing more than a lie, a deception,
opportunism and excess via a religion whose foundations are based in
righteousness, conviction, esteem and generosity.”
Boroujerdi expressed his solidarity with
world Jewry on Hanukkah in 2010. He said,”Unlike the current
anti-Semitic regime of Iran who creates animosity and hatred among those
who descend from the prophet Ibrahim. Mr. Boroujerdi respects peaceful
acceptance of different religious beliefs.” He opposes the anti-Semitic
ideology of a regime which is building nuclear weapons with the
genocidal intention of destroying Israel and the Jews.
He is a pacifist who rejects the militarist ideology of the Islamist
regime in Iran and supports peaceful relations between Arabs and Jews.
He said,”Every kind of war and bloodshed under any title and reason
damages human spirit.” He honors the Jewish people’s ancient roots in
the Middle East. He said,” Bnai Israel is one of the most ancient tribe
in Middle East which its evidences and documents are in holy books.
Since a long time ago, Arab and Hebrew races which have one root, lived
together peacefully in….Palestine, Jordan, Hejaz, Syria, Iraq and
Lebanon, they traded, exchanged and treated friendly together…all the
inhabitants of these states are holy Abraham’s children so, every kind
of flight and conflict, causes to damage to their origin and separation
from their root.” The contrast between his respect for the Jews and the
regime’s genocidal anti-Semitism is startling.
Unlike Iranian Islamist clerics, he supports gender equality. He
wrote, ”women have the same position in creation that men have achieved
and each law violates their personality and credit integrity is
worthless .All judgments which lead to humiliating and regressing women
are as the Human Rights violators…..Islamic laws are based on
jurisprudence, it means, they can be changed according to the different
situation of time and place,” . He challenges fundamentalist
interpretations of Islam which are used by Sunni Wahhabis and Shi’ite
Islamists to justify oppression of women. His flexible approach toward
Islamic jurisprudence represents an alternative to rigid conceptions of
Islamic law.
In 2009, he defended Iran’s persecuted Bahai minority. The Islamist
regime has systematically oppressed Bahais, murdering their leaders,
invalidating their marriages, and denying them access to education and
employment. His support for the despised Bahai minority is an act of
extraordinary moral courage.
Boroujerdi and his followers have paid a high price for their bold
dissent against the regime. The regime attacked him and his followers
with tear gas in October, 2006, and he was sentenced to 11 years in
prison. In reality, he will remain in prison until the regime falls
because the clerics feel threatened by his ideas. He has been denied
medical care for many serious conditions
His family has also been severely persecuted by the regime. His
father, also an Ayatollah, died in a Tehran hospital under suspicious
circumstances in 2002. His wife Akram Validusti was briefly arrested in
2006 and suffers chronic heart failure. The couple’s oldest son Mahdi
was tortured in front of both his parents. Not surprisingly, his
children cannot attend university, and his two sons Mahdi and Mohammed
were fired from their jobs in 2007.
Israelis and American Jews must learn about Boroujerdi’s struggle
against Shi’ite Islamist totalitarianism in Iran. He deserves Western
support for rejecting Islamist tyranny and anti-Semitism and defending
women, Bahais, and peace under dangerous conditions. The West’s refusal
to embrace him and demand his release is unconscionable
No comments:
Post a Comment