Section 5 – Deteriorating internal conditions and brain drain

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Section 5 Deteriorating internal conditions and brain drain

The Revolution and the internal situation
Moral decline before and after the Revolution
The conditions of Sunni Muslims in Iran
The Shia leader must be Iranian
Why did Farsi resign?
False leadership
Shariatmadari disavows his party
Khomeini and internal revolutions

Deteriorating internal conditions and brain drain

Iranian newspapers highlighted reports of a brain drain from Iran and blamed the Iranian Revolutionary Guard committees for the flight of scientific and professional talents out of the country. The Ettela’at and Kayhan newspapers reported that many doctors, scientists, dentists, and university professors were leaving Tehran, adding that some ministers, senior state officials, and some religious leaders had repeatedly warned that the country had been shocked by the brain drain occurring in Iran after the Revolution.

For several weeks press reports have focused on the worsening emigration abroad and its repercussions on the country’s situation. The papers attributed the cause of the exodus to the increased rounds of interrogation and purges of those accused of collaboration with the Shah’s regime. The Ettela’at newspaper reported that out of some 14 000 doctors, 5 000 emigrated abroad since the start of the revolution.

The pro-Khomeini newspaper Kayhan reported that the committees conducting the purges knew that around 200 dentists—some of them university professors—left Iran during recent months, adding that this number equals one in ten dentists in Iran. The paper asked whether the purging committees were aware that scientists were gradually leaving the country and that senior-level professors had begun to emigrate from Iran to teach in colonial countries.^[1]

Ned Timko wrote in the Christian Science Monitor that “The leftists have made gains among Iranian workers; they are a ticking time bomb threatening the ruling order. Recent developments show the following: unemployment rates range between 20% and 50%, likewise inflation, and meat prices have nearly doubled. Political activity is rising while production is low. The new regime doubled wages and in many cases more than doubled them, and in theory granted workers a share of profits. But quite a few diplomats say this—like Khomeini’s appropriation of the anti-imperialism slogan—may ultimately favour the left. In a factory owned by a Czech, workers prevented clerics from entering.”^[2] This is the gist of the article.

1. The Revolution and the internal situation

The West German newspaper Der Spiegel presented a study on the internal situation in Iran. Given the importance of this study, and because most newspapers that have recently covered Iran have provided information consistent with this study, we present a summary of this study below.

Loud American rock music has returned to the ears again, and banks have failed to implement Khomeini’s order to refrain from using the dollar. In big hotels, customers pay in US dollars. A Dutchman who brought Swiss francs and Dutch guilders tried to exchange them for tomans in vain. Everyone only wants dollars, even at the bank branch at Tehran Airport.

If we look at Iran a year after the Revolution, we find it suffering from an unenviable economic situation, with a sharp drop in living standards, disappearance of foodstuffs, rising unemployment, and a terrible political fragmentation that contains a grave danger to the state.

During his rule, Mehdi Bazargan ordered the construction of five million homes to solve the housing crisis facing poor working classes in all Iranian cities, but it is impossible to achieve this since state resources are scarce and it is extremely difficult to obtain building materials such as cement, iron, and wood.

Few in Iran know that Khomeini was building a revolutionary network from his exile in Iraq, a network that received the full support of the Iraqi Ba’ath government in Baghdad, and this network reached every corner in Iran. Khomeini’s emissaries travelled everywhere in Iran, distributing funds needed for the Revolution and preparing the masses. They also helped the poor build homes or finance their marriages. Today, Khomeini’s supporters are unable to provide assistance to students and needy families.

Industrial production has halved and continues to decline. Shoe factories lack leather and car factories lack parts. Their production has fallen to 50 000 cars, down from 100 000. Merchants complain of falling sales and meagre profits, and the streets are filled with unemployed youth who do not want to clash with their families at home, just as in Berlin in 1929 and Beirut in 1976.

Tehran’s marble-built railway station has become a shelter for the displaced. Today, Iran has 3.8 million unemployed people. In the square formerly called the Pahlavi Square, small boys in ragged clothes sell American cigarettes. Currently, half of the shops are always closed because the owners fear theft or attacks by unemployed youths, or because they have temporarily left Iran. Those who remain in their shops face a flood of jobseekers willing to work for very low wages. The victim said the perpetrators carry multiple types of weapons; thieves no longer care about money as much as they care about foodstuffs, whose prices have risen 30 percent. Staple goods are steadily disappearing, like rice and sugar, so any boycott would have a terrible effect. Even if America does not blockade Iranian ports, food supplies will suffer greatly because the state did not import its needs and the reserves are insufficient, in addition to one quarter of cultivable lands no longer being sown as a result of political events, therefore Iran will face a disaster in the coming harvest with dire consequences..

There is in Iran today a new class: masses of youths armed with American and German submachine guns equal in number to the police forces. They have taken up duties, control the streets and other assets, and each receives what equals 2000 marks monthly—one of the highest salaries in Iran at present. By the end of last year their number in Tehran alone reached 10000 armed men. Negative phenomena have begun to appear widely in the capital’s streets.

Thus, administrative collapse, rising unemployment, inflation, and food shortages are the problems facing the new regime, which has so far been unable to influence the younger generation’s interest in Western music, free theatre, and arts. The French film “State of Siege” earned the highest box-office income in Tehran cinemas. School and university female students who had worn the black chador in sympathy with the revolution have removed it and returned to European dress, walking freely in the markets.

Merchants, who bore the burden of the Khomeini movement’s expenses—9000 merchants in Tehran—have stopped donations and payments because the new regime did not deliver what they hoped for.^[3]

Iranian Revolutionary newspapers spoke of the brain drain and departure of scientific competencies from Iran, attributing the reason to increased rounds of interrogation and searches. If the scientists could express their freedoms they would not have left their country.

Field reports spoke of economic collapse, rise in unemployment, increase in crime and highway robbery—even that the Revolutionary Guard Corps had become a refuge for criminals and thieves—and as a result many shop owners were forced to close for fear of robbery.

How can a country survive when a third of its doctors have emigrated abroad because they were shocked by the Revolution? Would it not be better for Khomeini and his revolutionaries to study these abnormal phenomena instead of conspiring against the Gulf, Iraq, Syria, and many other countries in the Islamic world? Is this the Islamic Revolution we want to present to the people as an alternative to the corrupt conditions in our Islamic world, or did Khomeini’s revolutionaries seek to harm Islam by pretending to be its advocates?

2. Moral decline before and after the Revolution

The Iranian magazine Ettela’at stated: Drug abuse in Iran has become part of social customs and traditions. Drugs were distributed in the hospitable receptions of courtly families, merchants and residents of northern Tehran. Most modern buildings in Tehran contain a special room for using and smoking opium—thus the moral building blocks of Iranian society decayed and collapsed. Drug addiction is one of the greatest problems for the Iranian government; it has swallowed young people in a very strange way, and if this problem is not addressed it will soon become a suffocating social crisis threatening the very fabric of Iranian society.

The statistics presented by the Iranian Ministry of Health in 1978 to the United Nations say: 2,754 kilograms of opium, 47,696 kilograms of heroin, and 496,345 kilograms of hashish were seized from smugglers in ten Iranian provinces. Seizures in the capital Tehran are estimated at 30 kilograms of opium, 27,178 kilograms of heroin, and 2,800,245 kilograms of hashish.

A statistic in Iran indicated: in 1970 the land area allocated to poppy cultivation for opium production was 12,000 hectares; in 1975 it became 17,000 hectares and in 1976 it reached 22,000 hectares.

There are many statistics in Iran showing prisons full of traffickers, yet the number of traffickers and addicts has increased in recent years. In eight months of 1976 there were 12,000 smugglers being pursued in Iran for arrest, and the number of addicts in unofficial statistics is about one million. But the Ministry of Health statistics estimate the number of addicts between 600,000 and 700,000, and the number of addicts holding narcotics-use cards is 164,000.^[4]

The Khomeini Revolution came and forbade the sale of alcohol and renewed the ban on selling narcotics, knowing that the ban had already been in effect late in the Shah’s days, although the same hands that signed the ban decision ran many of the networks that promoted and trafficked it. Eight months after the Revolution, the following news came: Scotland Yard police sources reported that Iranian heroin might become available in London like how hot dogs and hamburgers are available. This indicated that Iran had become the source of 58 percent of the heroin smuggled into the British Isles.

Information available to Interpol indicates that drug mafias are exploiting the political chaos in Iran to establish a number of centres for converting opium into heroin and to recruit Iranian travellers to carry increasing quantities of heroin to European capitals.^[5]

Iran is believed to have the second-highest rate of heroin addiction in the world after the United States, and 75% of addicts are between the ages of 15 and 30.^[6]

Comment

On 18 October 1979, eight months after the Revolution, Interpol reports stated that the political chaos in Iran had helped increase drug exports from Iran to Europe. A Scotland Yard report stated that 58% of the heroin smuggled into the British Isles originated in Iran. Security forces in an Arab country seized a type of drug that smugglers nicknamed “Khomeini”. When discussing the moral collapse in Iran, Khomeini’s supporters reply: This is a legacy we inherited from the corrupt era of the Shah, and we need a considerable amount of time to repair what the tyrant has corrupted. We say: It is true that the Shah’s era was a cause of this moral collapse, but there are other more important reasons:

Most Ayatollahs and religious authorities use tobacco and are not ashamed to smoke it in mosques, Hussainiyyat, and other public seminars. They encourage its cultivation, and legalizing tobacco paves the way to legalizing other substances..
Mut’ah: Among the Shia practices is temporary marriage. This marriage permits a man to live with an unmarried woman for a set period, then abandon her and enjoy another woman, while she enjoys another man. Mut’ah is forbidden in our religion, and its prevalence in Iran has contributed to the spread of adultery and debauchery. A number of scholars and merchants who visited Iran spoke about this phenomenon, explaining how most hotels and homes have been transformed into brothels for prostitution and debauchery. Some statistics indicate that the number of nightclubs and brothels frequented by boys and girls for huge “hashish” parties is very large, and the visitors number over three million, while the number of narcotics-card holders is one million. The Shah’s government executed a few in 1971 but to no avail.
Taqiyya and Lying: The Shia religious authorities educate youth and students to lie, and if lying becomes widespread in a nation, its morals will be lost and its values will collapse.

These are the reasons for the moral collapse in Iran. The revolutionary leadership issued a decree banning drugs and alcohol, but this decree is of no use, because the important thing is to prevent the causes that lead to substance use.

Once again, we return to the question: If Khomeini and his revolutionaries truly wanted Islam and sought to please Allah, wouldn’t they have been obligated to address this moral collapse and resolve the internal situation instead of conspiring against the Muslims of the Gulf, Iraq, and Syria?

3. The conditions of Sunni Muslims in Iran

The conditions of Sunnis in Iran remind us of the conditions of Muslims in the Soviet Union, the Philippines, and Abyssinia. When discussing them, a number of questions arise:

What is the percentage of Sunni Muslims in Iran?
How many of their students are at Al Azhar University or the Islamic University?
Do they participate with their Muslim brothers in the Islamic world in Islamic activities and work?
What is their percentage in the governments that have succeeded Iran, and what is their percentage in parliament?

There is no field study showing the percentage of Sunni Muslims in Iran. It appears that most of those who have written about Iran have been influenced by information and studies published by extremist Shia clerics. In a book published by Dar al Ma’arif in Egypt, the author states that the percentage of Sunni Muslims in Iran is 4%, according to the 1966 census, which means their number is 850, 000. In a book published by al Nahar by a Shia writer named Hassan Amin, he claimed that the percentage of Sunni Muslims is 8%. It seems that Dr. Muhammad Abdul-Ghani Saudi was influenced by Hassan Amin and claimed that the percentage of Sunnis in Iran is 8%. These percentages mentioned by these writers, if they indicate anything, indicate the lies of some of them and the ignorance of others.

Relying on some studies, such as the study presented by Dr. Musa al Musawi in his book Iran fi Rub’ Qarn and the book Iran: Dictatorship and Development by the British writer Frederick Lyday, a specialist in Gulf affairs and African issues, and a study presented by the French newspaper Le Monde on February 19, 1979, and information from our friends familiar with such matters, we present a very brief study of Muslims’ conditions:

I. Arab Muslims

We discussed their situation in the Chapter Two, when we discussed the Shia conspiracy against the Gulf. Their population is approximately three million, most of whom are Sunni Muslims. They are deprived of important jobs, and their poor economic conditions prevent them from educating their children. Most of their children work in the Gulf states as servants or in very menial jobs. In 1958 an organization named “Ahvaz Liberation Front” emerged and attacked the Shah’s regime in the mid-1960s, but its activities stopped in 1975 after settling Iraq-Iran disputes.

II. Kurdish Muslims

Their spiritual leader, Sheikh Husseini, said in an interview with Reuters on 6 August 1979, that the Kurds number three and a half million, and most of them are Sunni Muslims. The Shia succeeded in spreading their doctrine among the Kurds, and a small minority of them converted to Shi’ism.

The Kurds live in Kurdistan and Luristan in western Iran. Their region is neglected and harshly persecuted. Cultural and political reforms reached only Kermanshah due to its location between Baghdad and Tehran. The Kurds are deprived of participation in governance; for many years none entered the cabinet, there is not a single Kurdish ambassador among ambassadors, and they have four MPs while the constitution stipulates one MP per 200,000 voters. Kurds have rebelled many times, but the state used extermination and annihilation, and they live in extreme misery.

In 1965, the Kurds founded the Kurdistan Democratic Party. A revolutionary trend emerged within the party in 1965, and this trend led to an 18 month long guerrilla war against the Shah in 1967.

III. Baluchis

Their population is approximately one million, the vast majority of whom are Sunni. They live in eastern and southeastern Iran. They rear livestock, are the poorest segment, have the lowest average annual income. From extreme poverty they eat wild grasses and date pits; some walk naked with only dust as their covering. They live tribally, brave, inheriting armed resistance traditions from their ancestors in Iran and Pakistan.

IV. Turks

They live in the northwest in Azerbaijan and the northeastern regions of Khorasan, most are Sunni and number about six million. Inhabitants speak Turkish; the most prominent city is Tabriz. One of the notable movements in Azerbaijan is the Azerbaijan Democratic Association, which merged with the Tudeh Party in 1960.

v. Turkmen

Their population is approximately one million, the mostly Sunni. They live in northeast Iran, working in agriculture and sheep-rearing.

Iran also has minorities of Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, and Baha’is who constitute about 2% of the population.

The Herald Tribune reported on 20 February 1979, that Persians constitute 50% of the population. According to a 1970 census, the Shia constituted 62% and Sunnis 36%. This matches statistics published by al Mustaqbil magazine, issue 123, dated 30/06/1979.

It is worth noting that the Sunni proportion in Iran used to be 65% during the Safavid era about three centuries ago and has been decreasing until it reached 36%, and will continue to decrease because they are targets of Shia expansion.

Situation of Sunni Muslims after the Revolution

Sunnis believed they would regain their rights as citizens after the era of oppression and tyranny had ended. How could this not be the case, given that this Revolution called for Islam, and Islam is the religion of truth and justice?

Sunnis were shocked by the reality of this Revolution when they learned that it was Shia and Magian. In Ahvaz, the election results indicated that Sunni Muslims would not have a single representative in the Assembly of Experts. In the Azerbaijan region, the election results were not announced when the authorities found that the non-Shia candidates had won. Then, the elections were rerun, and the authorities imposed whom those that they wanted.

As for Kurdistan, the authorities imposed two Shia clerics from Khomeini’s faction, even though they were not Kurds.

It has been proven that Khomeini’s Revolution was Persian first and Shia second.

As for its Shia nature, this can be determined from Khomeini’s books and statements, then from the composition of the Revolutionary Council, the Council of Ministers, Army leadership, and finally the Constitution. We have quoted some of its paragraphs in the second chapter of this book: Khomeini between extremism and moderation.

As for it being pagan Persian, here is the evidence:

I. Nowruz Festival

Khomeini delivered a speech on the occasion of the Iranian New Year (Nowruz), broadcasted by Radio Tehran on 20/03/1979, in which he called for supporting the government and urged the people to support the army. He said, “We need an army that must enjoy the support and endorsement of the people.” He warned army personnel against who had devoted themselves to serving the tyrant.^[7]

The Iranian New Year, or Nowruz, is a pre-Islamic Zoroastrian holiday that Islam abolished. Khomeini’s revolutionaries attacked Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi because he worked to revive Persian Zoroastrian customs and traditions that Islam abolished. How could Khomeini then forget the teachings of Islam and return to the same den that the Shah had entered?

II. The Gulf is Persian

Khomeini was quoted saying to Yasser Arafat at the start of his rule, “The Gulf is Islamic, not Arab or Persian.” The Arabs were pleased with Khomeini’s statement. However, if this statement is accurately attributed to Khomeini then it is misleading and deceptive. During his first term, Dr. Sanjabi, the Foreign Minister, confirmed in an interview with the French newspaper Le Monde that the withdrawal of Iranian forces from three islands overlooking the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz (Abu Musa, the Lesser Tunb, and the Greater Tunb) was not on the table. Sanjabi was quoted as saying that these three islands are Iranian. Mr. Entezam, the Iranian Assistant Prime Minister for administrative affairs and the official government spokesman, was asked about changing the name of the Persian Gulf. He replied that the Iranian people would never agree to changing the name of the Persian Gulf.^[8]

4. The Shia leader must be Iranian

Ahmed Khomeini, son of Ayatollah Khomeini, raised the issue of the nationality of the expected successor to his father as Supreme Leader of the Iranian nation in an open letter to Ayatollah Hossein Montazeri, head of the Constituent Assembly. The son pointed to the contradiction that extensive powers, especially the supreme command of the Iranian army, had been granted to a leader not constitutionally required to hold Iranian nationality.

In implicitly addressing the problem of his father’s succession he posed the question: “Should the Supreme Leader be Iraqi, as was the case with Ayatollah Hakim, who was the leader of the Shia community until his death a few years ago, or Pakistani or Kuwaiti?”

He also pointed out that the Constituent Assembly had entrusted him with command of the Iranian army, adding, “In the event of a war between Iran and Iraq, what can an Iraqi Supreme Leader do? Declare war on his country? Otherwise, what will we do?” He concluded his remarks by saying, “If you say that Islam knows no borders, then you jest.”^[9]

Yes, O Khosrow Khomeini, the Islam that Allah has honoured us to carry knows no borders, that is true and not a jest. As for your Magian chauvinism , it only knows borders and sectarianism.

5. Why did Farsi resign?

Iranian radio reported that the Islamic Republic Party, the most important political group in Iran, had decided not to nominate a candidate for the presidential elections scheduled for 25 January 1980. This party, whose policies are completely inspired by Imam Khomeini, had nominated Jalaluddin Farsi for the elections. Farsi, whose father and mother are Afghan, was forced to withdraw his candidacy for the presidency because he did not meet the election requirements stipulated in the constitution, which stipulate that the candidate be “of Iranian origin.”

Jalaluddin Farsi is one of the Shia extremists. He is highly respected and appreciated by Khomeini and supported by the Islamic Republic Party, the most powerful party in Iran. He is one of those who fought against the Shah. Moreover, he is Iranian, but he traces his roots back to Afghan origins. Therefore, he withdrew his candidacy because he is not “of Iranian origin.”

The Ansar accepted the leadership of the Quraysh, even though they were not originally from Madinah. The issue of race and lineage in Islam is a pre-Islamic issue. History does not record such issues among the righteous generations as those raised by the masters of Qom.^[10]

6. False leadership

Khomeini’s Shia planned horrendously for many years; they knew the danger non-Persians would pose to them when their state was established. They also planned to prevent any survival of Sunni Muslims in Iran. One of the most important actions they took was to contain the party movements in Ahvaz, Kurdistan, and Azerbaijan by appointing Shia leaders for them.

In Ahvaz, Sayyed Abbas Mahri was one of the leaders of the Ahvaz Liberation Front, which was founded in 1964 and had offices in most Arab countries. The Front’s goal was to liberate the Ahvaz region from Persian control and return it to Arab countries. Mahri was Persian, not Arab. How could the gullible people of Ahvaz accept his leadership, when it was proven that he was from Khomeini’s group and tried to annex Kuwait to Iran, and for this reason the Kuwaiti authorities expelled him?

Among Ahvaz’s Arab leaders is Imam Taher al Khaqani. The Ahvazis failed to notice that al Khaqani was a Shia, and that the Imami Jafari doctrine was, in reality, a partisan organisation whose members could not hold two loyalties at once, unless their loyalty to the other party was merely formal, intended to uncover their secrets and hidden affairs. The Ahvazis awoke from a deep slumber to find their secrets exposed to their opponents. The following are two pieces of news that reveal al Khaqani’s character.

Al Khaqani calls for loyalty to Khomeini: Imam Taher al Khaqani, the religious leader of the Arab minority in the oil-rich province of Khuzestan- Ahvaz, issued a statement calling on his followers to remain loyal to the Islamic Revolution and urging them to rid themselves of the Revolution’s enemies. Al Khaqani stated that Iran is a religious state, not a racist one, and indicated that Khomeini’s struggle must be given paramount consideration. “We will not allow anyone to give up an inch of Iran, whether in Khuzestan-Ahvaz or in any other part of the country,” he added. He will remain in Qom for some time for health reasons… He had moved there from Khorramshahr last Sunday with some members of his family.^[11]
Al Khaqani refused to declare Jihad: Al Khaqani was asked about his position on the ongoing dispute between the people of Ahvaz and the government. He replied, “The Ahvazi Arabs once asked me to declare Jihad against the government, but I refused.” He added that he had persuaded the officials of the Arab Cultural Centre in Khorramshahr to close it to avoid provoking the authorities, and that he had informed the authorities of this. He was asked about Ayatollah Karami of Ahvaz, who had good relations with Admiral Ahmed Madani. He replied that Karami was a supporter of the Shah and considered him a prophet. He now supports Khomeini because he is an opportunist.^[12]

7. Shariatmadari disavows his party

Ayatollah Kazem Shariatmadari, the second most prominent man in Iran and the religious leader of Azerbaijan, called for calm and national unity in a statement broadcasted on Saturday, 05/01/1980. He emphasised that any discord in the country only benefits colonialism and harms Islam. He believed that all Iranians must remain united to confront the common enemy, American imperialism. He stated that he had no connection with the Muslim People’s Republican Party, whose members declare loyalty to him and who clashed in Tabriz with supporters of Imam Khomeini. He said, “If this party, which has dissolved itself, resumes its activities, I will never support it.”^[13]

The Tehran government accused the Muslim People’s Republican Party of plotting to overthrow the government and arrested 20 officers at the Tabriz Air Base. The so-called Islamic Revolutionary Court charged them with plotting to overthrow the government. The Islamic Revolutionary Court in Tabriz had sentenced 11 opponents to the revolution to death.^[14]

Indeed there is a feud between Shariatmadari and Khomeini, but this dispute does not exceed Shia fundamentals; if a danger threatens the Shia, they will suspend their disagreement until they avert the danger.

8. Khomeini and internal revolts

Ayatollah Khomeini threatened to go to personally to Kurdistan if he sensed any shortcoming by the army in eliminating the enemy as quickly as possible. When Taleqani and Hashem Sabbaghian, the Minister of the Interior and Commander of the Army, said that the Kurds had asked for a period of time to consider their demands, Khomeini replied, “They are deceiving you… These people are lying to you. They want to obtain another period of time to increase their military equipment.”^[15]

Khomeini described the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the People’s Feda’iyin Organisation, which played a prominent role in the February revolution, as corrupt, accusing them of being agents of foreign powers and agents of America. Referring to the fighting in the Kurdish region of Iran, he said that Sayed Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou, the leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, and Sheikh Izz al Din al Husseini, the Kurdish spiritual leader, were corrupt and responsible for killings in the area. Ayatollah Khomeini described the rebels as infidels who must be treated harshly.^[16]

Khomeini threatened to fight them himself and refused to give them a reprieve, even though the army, which Khomeini accused of weakness, had performed wonders in both Kurdistan and Ahvaz.

Islam is innocent of them.

“I will drink the blood of the Arabs!”

Sheikh Muhammad Tahir al Khaqani, the Shia religious leader in the Khuzestan region, was quoted saying in an interview with the Middle East newspaper, “The governor, Admiral Ahmed Madani, told me that the Arabs were stirring up trouble and threatened to deliver a severe blow to them.” He said, “I will drink their blood like water if they continue to pressure us to achieve their demands.”^[17]

On the ethics of the chief judges of the Islamic courts

Enemies of Islam know well the morals of judges in our Islamic history. The judges of this nation set the finest examples in honesty, piety and impartiality. A dhimmi (non-Muslim subject), whether a Jew or a Christian, could dispute with the Amir al Mu’minin, and the judge would make no distinction between them in adjudication. The judge might have been imprisoned, along with others, in order to evade this position for fear of falling into sin without realising it. We are not here to discuss the impartiality of judges in the glorious history of Islam. Volumes have been written on this topic, and the justice of the judges of Islam has been attested to by both friend and foe… but we are discussing the revolutionary courts unjustly attributed to Islam.

Paris Match magazine said regarding those sentenced by Ayatollah Sadeq Khalkhali, head of the Islamic Courts in Iran, reported, “Many of those sentenced to death in the city of Sanandaj were wounded and brought in on stretchers.” The Fedayeen-e-Khalq organisation said that Khalkhali sentenced young children to death in Kurdistan. Khalkhali denied such news in an interview with the Iranian magazine Ettela’at, some Arab newspapers cited his press conference on 16 October 1979.

On 08/08/1979, Reuters quoted Sadeq Khalkhali as saying: “I sent a group to assassinate the Shah, who lives with his family in Mexico.” He said of Bakhtiar, “If I had the opportunity, I would strangle Shapour Bakhtiar with my own hands.” Ayatollah Khalkhali revealed that the man who executed Sayyed Amir Abbas Hoveyda was forced to fire a second bullet at his head because the first bullet had lodged in his neck. He added that he personally sentenced more than 400 people to death in Tehran alone, and he also sentenced several others in Ahvaz province. Their bodies were brought from prison at night. He said, “On some nights, the bodies of 30 or more people were transported in trucks.”

Is this man the head of an Islamic court or a gang leader? Have you ever heard of a judge wishing to strangle a defendant with his own hands?

And Allah has His own ways with His creation.

And further:

These are some conditions of Sunni Muslims in Iran before and after the Revolution:

They suffer the most extreme forms of poverty and misery, lacking the freedom to express themselves. What have we offered them?
It is regrettable that no Islamic journal has presented their problems: would it harm the owners of those journals to visit Baluchistan and survey the population’s conditions? Is it not the right of your brothers in Ahvaz, Kurdistan, Baluchistan, Azerbaijan and Turkmen regions that their tragedies be spread on the pages of these journals? Is it not incumbent on leaders of Islamic groups to visit these regions and hear the inhabitants’ perspectives?
Shia universities devote unparalleled attention to Shia affairs in the Gulf, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. So why do the Islamic University, Al Azhar, and religious institutes in Arab countries neglect the Sunnis in Iran?
Why aren’t seminars and conferences held to save the Muslim children of Iran from the clutches of Magian and esoteric doctrines?

Perhaps the great leaders of Islamic groups would answer, as usual, with rhetoric without integrity: “Do you want us to help the Arab nationalists in Ahvaz, the Kurdish nationalists in Kurdistan, and the communists in Azerbaijan?”

I say: Is no our negligence the cause of these deviations? How did the nationalists and communists precede us to lands that produced our most eminent scholars and war heroes?

O preachers in every land: Your brothers in Iran are in dire need of your support and care.

O merchants and philanthropists, the Muslim regions of Iran call upon you to build schools, Masjids, and clubs.

The earth is shaking beneath us, difficult days await us, and a certain danger threatens us. Unity of word, sincerity of intention, and cooperation in righteousness and piety are essential. Allah will surely support those who support Him. Allah is Powerful and Mighty. May His salutations and peace be upon His Messenger.

^[1] Reuters, 05/08/1979

^[2] Translation of Arabic Newspapers, 26/12/1979.

^[3] Translation of the study in Arab newspapers, 16/01/1980.

^[4] Al Watan, from the Iranian magazine Ettela’at, issues dated 30/09/1979 and 08/10/1979.

^[5] Al Watan al ‘Arabi magazine, published in Paris, issue 140, dated 18-25/10/1979

^[6] Le Monde, 19/02/1979.

^[7] Al Anba’, 21/03/1979

^[8] Press conference, 11/03/1979, as reported by Arab newspapers on 12/03/1979.

^[9] Tehran, Agence France-Presse, 15/10/1979.

^[10] Agence France-Presse, 19.01.1980.

^[11] Tehran, KUNA, al Wakalat, 23/07/1979.

^[12] Middle East Translation, 07/09/1979.

^[13] Tehran, Wakalat al Anba’, 06/01/1980.

^[14] Tehran, Agence France-Presse, 20/01/1980.

^[15] Tehran, KUNA, al Wakalat, 01/09/1979.

^[16] Al Siyasah from Reuters, 19/08/79.

^[17] Al Qabas, Kuwait, 07/09/1979, from the Middle East.