Dissention in Iran

In Iran, things aren’t always what the Mullahcracy wants us to believe, and all Muslim leaders aren’t exactly with the leadership on what Islam’s role in governing should be.

The news has finally caught up with the ongoing saga of the Ayatollah Hossein Kazemeini Boroujerdi, who has been challenging the legitimacy of the Iranian mullahcracy for many years. Both he and his father–who died 4 years ago, and whose grave has been desecrated–refused to embrace the Khomeinist doctrine that only a Shi’ite sage was fit to govern the Islamic Republic. The Boroujerdis retained the traditional Shi’ite view–the one famously held by Ayatollah Sistani in Iraq–that clerics should stay out of government and tend to their flock.

Well, Boroujerdi has been arrested again, and in order to do it, the government thugs apparently had to mow down hundreds of his supporters to get to him.

Boroujerdi was dragged off to his destiny on Sunday, in a dramatic confrontation that involved thousands of demonstrators, some in Tehran, and some on the road to Qom, where many of the country’s most prestigious religious schools and scholars are located. The official news media reported that more than two hundred supporters were arrested at the house in Tehran, but this is the least of it. Two Iranian friends in Europe, and one in the United States, have received reports that speak of more than seven hundred people murdered on the road to Qom. If that, or anything approaching it, is true, it testifies to two important facts. The first is the truly vicious and totalitarian nature of this regime, which will stop at nothing to silence any sign of criticism from the Iranian people. Somebody should tell Richard Armitage about this, since he has yet to announce any second thoughts about his infamous claim that Iran is “a kind of democracy.”

This is an interesting point given that, reading further, Islam is losing favor with the general population almost on a day-to-day basis.  Reports show that mosques are attended infrequently and are almost empty during prayer times.  I think it’s safe to say that the current regime does not represent even a slim quorum of the population.