The bloody
wedding has ended and the
fraudulent groom has left the
bridal chamber.
The ballot
boxes tremble and ogres dance in
the dark.
The dead,
in their white shrouds, stand
and watch, and the prisoners
clap with severed hands.
And, with a
mixture of rage and hatred, the
people of the world see off the
groom.
The times
weep openly and the republic
sinks deep into blood.
Satan
laughs, the stars dim and virtue
slumbers.
Mr.
Khamenei,
At
a time that is marked by a
dearth of justice and virtue,
everyone is remonstrating with
you and I am grateful to you.
This is not to say that I
have no remonstrations. I do.
I have many, but I have
conveyed them to God.
Your ears have been so
dulled and deafened by
eulogists’ words of praise that
they are deaf to remonstrations.
But I am most grateful to you.
You said that “the ruling
system’s sanctity has been
violated” and its integrity
ravished. Believe me, I had
never heard such good news from
anyone in my life.
Congratulations, you have
acknowledged and announced the
sordidness and wretchedness of
religious tyranny.
I
am glad that the sighs of the
weary have reached the heavens
and lit the flame of divine
wrath. You were prepared to
shame God rather than to be
shamed yourself. To have people
turn their backs on religion and
the prophethood rather than to
turn their backs on your
guardianship. To have the Law,
the Way and the Truth crumpled
rather to have your garb of
leadership wrinkled. But God did
not will it. Grieving hearts,
silenced voices, spilt blood,
severed hands and torn
chastities did not want it and
did not allow it. The pure and
the pious and the prophets did
not want it. The deprived, the
caring, the oppressed and the
opponents of oppression did not
allow it.
“The
angel has hidden its face and
the ogre vaunts its beauty.”
This was the tale of the
republic under your
guardianship. And now, praise be
to God, the veil of the ogre’s
false virtue has been torn away.
Its secret has been exposed and
its immorality laid bare. And,
with rage and amazement, the
world saw it naked.
Mr.
Khamenei,
I
know that you are going through
difficult and bitter days. You
made a mistake. A grave mistake.
I showed you the way out of this
mistake twelve years ago.
I told you to adopt
freedom as a method. Never mind
about its rightfulness and its
virtue; you should use it to
attain a successful State. Don’t
you want this?
Why do you send out spies
and informers to discover what’s
in people’s minds or to use
tricks and ploys to make the
people tell them something
against their will. Why must you
listen to reports that are based
on information that is obtained
by stealth and contains a
mixture of truths, untruths and
half-truths?
Allow newspapers,
parties, association, critics,
commentators, teachers, writers,
etc. to operate freely. People
will tell you what’s on their
minds plainly and in a thousand
different ways. They will open
the windows of news and views to
you and help you run the land
and the State. Don’t strangulate
newspapers. They are society’s
lungs.
But
you opted for erroneous and
misguided ways. And now you are
cursed with doom. You have
fallen victim to the closed
system that you created
yourself. A system in which
neither criticism nor opinions
can grow. A system in which
neither learning nor news can
flourish.
You think that you can
obtain full and comprehensive
information by reading
confidential bulletins and
listening to obsequious aides.
But both the election of Khatami
and the green election of Musavi
must have shown you that the
opium of complacency and the
bewitchment of tyranny have
robbed you of cleverness and
knowledge. And, now, in order to
redress the sin that stemmed
from ignorance and tyranny, you
have embarked on more heinous
crimes. You are trying to wash
blood with blood, in the hope of
achieving cleanliness.
As
if cheating and treachery were
not enough, you embarked on
crimes and murder. As if
treachery and murder were not
enough, you licensed the raping
of detainees. As if murder, rape
and cheating were still not
enough, you accused people of
spying and immorality. You did
not even have mercy on
dervishes, clerics, writers and
university students and slashed
them all with your blade. To cap
it all, you gave prizes to the
lackeys and criminals, and
laughed down your beard at
everyone. Then, you had a
soldier sentenced for stealing
an electric shaver!
I
was amazed by God’s patience. I
knew that:
God’s
compassion will show you endless
mercy
But once
you exceed the limit, He’ll
shame and disgrace you
I knew that
grieving mothers and mourning
fathers were weeping in secret,
and murmuring these words to
God: “Our Lord, bring us forth
from this city whose people are
evildoers, and appoint to us a
protector from Thee.” (Nisa, 75)
I knew of
the many hands that were raised
to God in supplication against
you. Prisons were temples and
worshippers were (and are)
prostrating themselves night and
day in prayer, in the hope that
God will unseat the unjust
ruler.
When Neda
Agha-Soltan was felled and
martyred, when her throat was
pierced with the bullet of
injustice, I cried to the
Almighty: Can You not hear Your
creatures’ cries? Like Jesus on
the cross, I lamented: God, why
have You forsaken us? Can You
not see the evildoers who have
stained all the green with red?
Can You not see the morose and
sour people who have made bitter
everything that is sweet?
Surely, You can see how the
flames are devouring the
haystack of security and human
dignity. You can see the
detainees’ desolate confessions.
You can see the evil conceits of
the oppressors. And yet how can
You remain complacent?
Then
came the day when I heard that
forced and resentful admission:
“The ruling system’s sanctity
has been violated.” And these
words washed all my grief away.
They were as invigorating as
water from a mountain spring. It
was as if they were not the
speaker’s words, but Your words,
which had entered his speech.
I realized that You were
bent on granting people’s
prayers and had ordered the wind
to redirect the flames towards
the oppressors’ thickets. And I
prostrated myself in gratitude.
Mr.
Khamenei,
I
want to tell you that the page
has turned. The ruling system’s
luck has ended. Its integrity
has been ravished. Its disgrace
has been recorded in history.
That which is indecent
has been exposed. God, too, has
turned away from you and
divested you of
His protection. The
impudent things that you were
doing in hiding, behind a veil
of duplicity, have been
revealed. The sighs of the
grieving, the dead and the
silenced voices have proved
effective and set your cloak
ablaze. I am afraid to have to
tell you that the door to
repentance has also been closed
to you. Nor will religion
furnish you with any cure now
that your religious legitimacy
has vanished. The new, green
Iran no
longer resembles the black,
ruined
Iran
of the past. By the grace of
God, the greenness and whiteness
of this movement has got the
better of the blackness of your
tyranny. The soil, water,
clouds, the wind, the mist, the
sun and the cosmos are at hand
to rebel against you on God’s
command.
For
years, under the umbrella of
your protection and your
guardianship, your lackeys and
helpers set upon the masses like
hungry hyenas; robbed them of
security and justice; silenced
their voices; deprived them of
their of dignity; stole their
peace; squeezed their throats;
filled their eyes with tears and
their hearts with sorrow; made
them taste the poison of
cruelty; held them captive like
a nation under occupation;
trampled their rights; plundered
their freedom; insulted them;
mocked their ideas; turned their
religion on its head; sanctified
the profane; peddled
superstitions; made their lives
bitter; turned their days into
nights; tampered with their
votes; entrusted universities to
the ignorant; set up a lies- and
insults-factory by the name of
radio and television; taught the
people grief and servitude;
decreed that romance is
forbidden and sanctioned the
spilling of blood; staged
contrived rallies and
demonstrations; and bragged to
the world that everyone was
devoted to the ruling system.
In
prisons and the killing grounds,
they surpassed the Mongols in
killing, raping, beating,
injuring and torturing people.
They trampled the shari’ah and
the law
underfoot. They raised
the banner of ignorance and
fanaticism. They elevated the
ignorant and cudgeled the
learned. They deprived the young
of pleasure and the elderly, of
dignity. They manufactured a
colourful array of ayatollahs
and obtained from them deadly
fatwas, so that they could
strangle writers and critics
with the rope of inhumanity and
dismember them with the cleaver
of savagery. Cursed with the
disease of paranoia, they
stirred up endless commotions
and crises, leading to more
detentions, absurd confessions
and lethal punishments. And the
agents of military and judicial
tyranny pushed injustice to the
extreme limits, as if the ruling
system had sworn an oath that it
would in no way fall short of
Saddam Hussein and Hajjaj.
These
chilling ploys, the bogus
righteousness, the inane
cleverness, the overt and covert
cruelties, the bullying, the
duplicities, the injustices, the
killings, the cheating and vote
rigging – over a period of years
– lit a flame in the consciences
of the people that burnt the
guardianship’s lair. The
protests after the elections
were not “manoeuvres”; nor were
they “sedition”; nor did they
resemble the legendary mosque
that was erected by hypocrites
(contrary to the coins made ad
nauseam by your Mint).
They were an expression
of a refusal to put up with all
the plunder and pillage. Wakeful
consciences refused to forego
their votes, their elections,
their rights and their freedom
of opinion, and they quietly and
calmly rose up against the
plunderers of their votes, their
rights and their freedom. The
thieves grimaced in agony, but
we heard the sound of God’s
laughter.
He was pleased with us.
He heard our prayers and exposed
the killers and their masters.
Taraneh Mousavi’s death was the
death of tyranny.
Mr.
Khamenei,
The
green movement is standing firm
now for the creation of a green Iran, like a blessed tree that has
its roots in the soil and its
head in the skies. And, with the
consent of God,
it is bearing fruit (“Its
roots are firm and its branches
are in heaven” (Abraham, 24)).
This movement now has its own
green martyrs, its own green
poems and poets, its own art and
literature, and its own
discourse and speakers. It is
the product of 20 years of
caring cultural struggle by
enlighteners and strugglers in
the arena of politics and
culture. Your efforts to break
it up with militarism and by
encouraging eulogists, in the
style of Sultan Sanjar and
Sultan Mahmoud, are in vain.
You may break yourself
instead.
The
greatest victory of the
rebellion of consciences against
plunderers was that the people
lost their fear and the
legitimacy of the guardianship
crumbled. Neither the insolence
of military men, nor the raping
by the wicked, nor spitting in
the eye of decency, nor
exaggerating the tattered glory
of power, nor relying on
sadistic brutality, nor
attacking the human sciences,
nor the eulogies of highly-paid
sycophants, nor the poetry of
dimwitted poem peddlers will
bend the back of the resistance.
Religious tyranny has been
disgraced in the eyes of the
religious and irreligious. And
in the green field of the
resistance movement, it is
harvest time. We have prayed to
God for this and God is with us.
There
is no sweeter testimony to this
reversal in fortunes than that
the approach of every
celebratory occasion only makes
you mourn. And everything that
once made you laugh now only
makes you weep and shudder. The
universities that you wanted to
see as your minions have now
turned into your nightmare.
Street demonstrations,
ritual gatherings, Ramadan,
Muharram, the hajj, grieving the
martyrdom of Shi’i Imams have
turned into emblems of
misfortune for you and proceed
to your detriment.
We
are a fortunate generation. We
will see religious tyranny
crumble and we will rejoice. A
moral society and a post
religious State( that transcends
religion) is the shining destiny
of the people and their green
movement.
We will value and esteem
freedom; the same freedom that
you snubbed and are today paying
the price for snubbing. The
proponents of fascism sold you
the idea that freedom means
decadence and debauchery. They
did not recognize that the cure
for the deadly diseases of your
ruling system lay in auspicious
freedom.
You’re
wasting your time trying to
fight economic corruption
(although it is not even a
sincere and serious battle).
If you had allowed press
freedom, they would have
revealed the cases of corruption
and frightened away all the
corrupt people. If you had
allowed the press to criticize
you, they would have prevented
you from falling into the abyss
of tyranny, the conceits of
supremacy and the corruptions of
power.
If you had allowed them
to report the people’s views
truthfully, they would have
sobered you up and prevented you
from stumbling around with the
drunkenness of ignorance.
Newspapers are our homeland’s
schools, not “the enemy’s
bases”. And what could be better
than for the schools’ gates to
be thrown open and for you to be
a pupil?
And
we will esteem faith; the very
faith that you turned into a
plaything in the interests of
power. The religiosity that you
used to teach people grief and
servitude. You did not realize
that joy and freedom are the
true companions of faith; that
the compulsions of jurists rob
people of the liberty of
devotion; and that a power that
is based on religion corrupts
both power and religion. Ruling
over joyful, free,
knowledgeable, nimble people is
something to boast about; not
over captive, grief-stricken
serfs.
* * * * *
I ask
myself, Who am I writing this
for?
For a ruling system that
fortune has abandoned, a system
that is drowning, a system that
has fallen out of favour with
the masses and the elites, a
system that has been utterly
disgraced? And then I remember
the words of the Glorious
Creator:
“And
when a certain nation of them
said, ‘Why do you admonish a
people God is about to destroy
or to chastise with a terrible
chastisement?’ They said, ‘So
that we may be free of blame in
the sight of your Lord and that
they may guard themselves
against evil.’” (Al-A’raf, 164)
O
God, be my witness: I, who have
cared about religion all my life
and who have taught religion,
dissociate myself from this
tyranny-worshipping system. And
if there was ever a day when, by
some oversight or error, I
assisted the oppressors, I beg
for forgiveness and absolution.
O
God of wisdom and virtue! By the
sincerity of the truthful and
the piety of the pious, let our
prayers unite with the prayers
of the devout and the
benevolent; hear our pained
grievances; bestow your mercy on
the aggrieved hearts and tearful
eyes of the oppressed; and bring
an end to a people’s outrage and
bewilderment. Do not entrust
Your friends to enemies. And
rescue wisdom and virtue from
the clutches of the dastardly.
Tell
the wind to pull out the tent of
tyranny. Tell fire to burn
injustice root and branch. Tell
water to drown the pharaohs.
Tell the soil to swallow up the
avaricious. Tell the clouds to
rain down mercy, justice, joy
and kindness on this wronged and
deprived people. And turn the
thorn-land of the oppressors’
wickedness into the
flower-filled garden of the just
and the virtuous.
Blessed
Ramadan 1430
September
2009
Abdulkarim
Soroush
Translated from the Persian by
Nilou Mobasser
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