Did Ahmadinejad's Imam really say that?!

Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi

Ayatollah and Consultant

to

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

(Image from Israel National News)

The following information will need to be double- and even triple-checked by somebody with better sources than I, but here's a report -- based on allegations by Iranian dissidents -- of statements said to have been made by a leading Shi'ite religious leader in Iran.

Writing for the Israel National News, the journalist Nissan Ratzlav-Katz informs us in his article "Ahmadinejad's Imam: Islam Allows Raping, Torturing Prisoners" that "[a]ccording to Iranian pro-democracy sources," Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi gave his legal opinions on certain delicate questions concerning whether or not the use of "psychological, emotional and physical pressure" to obtain confessions was "valid and considered credible according to Islam." Concerning those queries, the ayatollah allegedly explained:

Getting a confession from any person who is against the Velayat-e Faqih ("Guardianship of the Islamic Jurists", or the regime of Iran's mullahs) is permissible under any condition.

The purported follow-up question to this opinion was likely prompted by the current rumors of rape having been perpetrated on many of the political prisoners arrested during and after the recent demonstrations in Iran over the disputed election:

Can an interrogator rape the prisoner in order to obtain a confession?

The ayatollah then reportedly made the following statement:

The necessary precaution is for the interrogator to perform a ritual washing first and say prayers while raping the prisoner.

This outrageous statement specifying the 'precaution' is then elaborated upon in a way that I'd prefer not to include on this family-safe blog, so go to the website if you really need to know the details. I'll just add this astounding judgement purportedly pronounced by the ayatollah concerning "the rape of virgin female prisoners":

If the judgment for the [female] prisoner is execution, then rape before execution brings the interrogator a spiritual reward equivalent to making the mandated Haj pilgrimage [to Mecca], but if there is no execution decreed, then the reward would be equivalent to making a pilgrimage to [the Shi'ite holy city of] Karbala.

I'd ordinarily dismiss as a false report anything so disgustingly depraved as to be literally incredible, but I've previously seen Islamic legal opinions written by the late Ayatollah Khomeini that rival this still-living ayatollah's legal decisions, so I'm not ruling out of court the possibility that Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi really does hold that rape can be a sacred religious act.

Can anyone supply confirmation . . . and if accurate, the legal reasoning of this Shi'ite cleric?

UPDATE: Regular commenter Erdal informs us about this story:

[Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi] didn't say it. This started as a dirty satire in some corner of the internet, sombody didn't get the joke, spread it as real, and you know the rest. The official party line is of course that rapes don't happen in Iran's prisons, which is as bizarre a statement as this story.

Thanks, Erdal. I've found a link to a site debunking the report.

"Leaked Memo" on Iran's Election Revisited

Iran Behind the Mask?

Artist: Brian Stauffer

(Image from New York Times)

On June 18th, I expressed open skepticism about a memo supposedly written by the Iranian Minister of Interior, Sadegh Mahsouli, and sent to the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, providing the actual results on votes cast in the recent presidential election in Iran. My suspicions were based partly on a pre-election poll conducted for Terror Free Tomorrow by Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty, who told us in their Washington Post article, "The Iranian People Speak" (Monday, June 15, 2009), that Ahmadinejad was far ahead, and because of that poll, I conceded that the vast majority of Iranians may actually have voted to return this current, hardline president to power.

However, I asked for clarification from experts and received a response from an Iranian, one of my former political science students at Yonsei's Underwood International College, who openly questioned the official election results (though he did not express a decided opinion on the memo's authenticity). Also, a regular reader offered a link that questioned whether or not the opinion poll by Ballen and Doherty offered accurate predictions. Moreover, a recent opinion piece, "A Different Iranian Revolution," published in the New York Times (June 18, 2009) by a certain "Shane M.," a student in Iran who has adopted this very 'Western' pseudonym, argued that even if the opinion poll were accurate when it was taken, the percentages could well have shifted radically by the time of the recent election:

Let's also forget the polls, carried out in May by Terror Free Tomorrow: The Center for Public Opinion, that have been making the rounds this past week, with numbers that showed Mr. Ahmadinejad well ahead in the election, even in Mr. Moussavi's hometown, Tabriz. Maybe last month Mr. Ahmadinejad was indeed on his way to victory. But then came the debates.

Starting on June 1, the country was treated to an experience without precedent in the 30 years of the Islamic Republic of Iran: six back-to-back live and unscripted debates among the four presidential candidates. Iranians everywhere were riveted, and the poll numbers began to move.

By the Wednesday before the election, Mr. Moussavi was backed by about 44 percent of respondents, while Mr. Ahmadinejad was favored by around 38 percent. So let's not cloud the results with numbers that were, like bagels, stale a week later. (And let's ignore the claim that polling by Iranians in Iran is "notoriously untrustworthy." A consortium of pollsters and social scientists working for a diverse range of political and social organizations systematically measured public opinion for months before the election.)

Such a major shift has happened before. A month before the 1997 elections, the establishment candidate, Ali Akbar Nategh-Nouri, was trouncing his opponents in surveys. Then, a week before the vote, the tide changed, bringing to power a reformer, Mohammad Khatami.

The reason for this fluidity in voter preference is simple. Iran has no real political parties that can command a fixed number of predictable votes. With elections driven primarily by personality politics, Iranians are always swing voters. So Mr. Moussavi, hampered by a lack of access to state-run news media and allowed only two months to campaign, began to make inroads into Mr. Ahmadinejad's lead only during the final days leading into the election, his poll numbers rising with his visits to provincial cities and the debate appearances.

These details -- offered by one who sounds as though he knows what he's writing about -- put the memo in a very different light. It may indeed be fake (as the usually politically astute JK insists), but it might also nevertheless offer analytical results calculated by some Iranian willing to put forward projections at to the 'real' details and deciding to publicize them in a way guaranteed to get attention.

Or the memo may really be authentic.

I await more comments -- on the memo, the election, and the direction that events are taking us -- but I note in passing that if voter preference is so fluid and personality-based as "Shane" maintains, then perhaps nobody, not even the Iranians, can tell us where they are going (though this direction would be welcome).

Sympathy for some devils...

Satan Unbowed

(Image from IndyPlanet)

One of the scholars who posts to the Milton List -- Margaret Thickstun, the Elizabeth J. McCormack Professor of English at Hamilton College (Clinton, New York) -- left this message today:

A student of mine has produced a graphic novel version of Book 1 of Paradise Lost (24-pages, three-colors, professionally printed) that is available for $3.13 at IndyPlanet, if anyone is interested. I will be bringing copies to Murfreesboro as well, where I will also be talking about the project and process -- a very interesting pedagogical experience. Here's the link to see the cover.

Or you could just look above at the image of Satan in all his borrowed glory. A view of Satan falling from that glory is accessible through Hamilton College, which also tells more about Stephen Orlando, the student and graphic artist himself:

As a recipient of last year's Steven Daniel Smallen Memorial Fund for Student Creativity Grant, Orlando started working on his first self-published book, a graphic novel adaptation of Milton's Paradise Lost: Book One. While completing the 24-page anthology, Orlando worked closely with Hamilton Professor of English Margie Thickstun who helped check his script for accuracy. Thickstun plans to present the finished book at this year's national Conference on John Milton, to be held in October in Murfreesboro, Tenn.

Orlando seems to have collaborated with a number of other students: Hugh Vogt, Blake Wilkie, Matty Ryan, and Jeff Spokes. Or so the Indyplanet webpage says. By the way, here's the IndyPlanet blurb for John Milton's Paradise Lost:

Follow Satan as he is cast out of heaven and raises himself and his army from the lake of fire. When all appears lost for him, it is the strength of his army's support that renews Satan's drive as he establishes his kingdom in Hell, and discovers a new purpose in life: the constant opposition of good.

Having raised an army in Heaven and lost the battle against his creator, Satan vows an eternity of revenge. From the ashes of his former defeat he is renewed with his goal of tainting all that his creator has molded, and sets his sights on the fledgling work called Earth.

My children adore graphic novels, so they'd doubtless love this one, too. At only 3 dollars and 13 cents, it may be too cheap to pass up, so I may have to get them a copy. I just hope that it doesn't raise too much sympathy for the devil, in whose rebellion against authority they just might glimpse a dim reflection of their own little rebellions against my authority.

Speaking of sympathy for outcasts, I confess to having felt a twinge of sympathy for President Ahmadinejad himself despite my having absolutely no sympathy for his views and my having been opposed to Columbia University's invitation for him to speak -- and I see that I'm not alone in thinking that Columbia's president, Lee Bollinger, stepped across an important line last week by inviting Ahmadinejad to speak as a guest but then openly insulting him as "a petty and cruel dictator" who is "either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated."

The conservative Stewdog, of What's the Rumpus, had this to say:

I read the reports of the event and frankly am just as troubled by the treatment of "Rock My Dinner Shed" as I am by Columbia's decision to invite him. If you are going to invite a head of state to your campus, he is your guest and no matter how despicable he might be, he is entitled to be treated with courtesy and respect. The opening remarks and the behavior of the University's representatives were anything but civil. In my opinion, the guy deserves all he gets, but there is a time and a place. Columbia is clueless!

And the liberal Jacob T. Levy, of the New Republic's Open University, expressed similar misgivings:

I hesitate to say this ... because there's an obvious sense in which Lee Bollinger is the hero of the hour, ... but I can't get over the sense that he did exactly the wrong thing. One can refuse to invite. One can invite, and treat courteously, while relying on the general principle that such an invitation does not imply endorsement of the views expressed. But I'm not sure that inviting-and-insulting is the right thing to do; I was astonished to find myself in a bit of sympathy with Ahmadinejad's objections in the name of hospitality. The rules of hospitality are of a very different kind from the rules of intellectual discourse and debate -- but they're old and deep rules, not conditional on the extramural behavior or character of the guest, and I'm very uncomfortable with seeing them thrown overboard.

Stewdog and Levy are right, and Levy speaks the truth especially well: the rules of hospitality are old and deep rules, not to be lightly tossed aside.

I might point out that on this score, the Muslim world is usually far more sensitive than Westerners, for Muslims are famously hospitable, and I suspect that they'll remember this gratuitous lack of hospitality on Bollinger's part.