The Mullahs' Massacre on the Road to Qom

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News filtered out of Iran this Sunday of demonstrations protesting the arrest of supporters of Ayatollah Mohammad Kazemeini Boroujerdi, an Iranian cleric fighting against the Political Religion that has dominated his country since Khomeini. Rumors also spread that these demonstrations have become violent with fatalities reported. This is when Pajamas Media turns to the American who is more associated with the Iranian freedom movement than any we can think of Michael Ledeen for an inside report:

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by Michael Ledeen

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 Shiite sage was fit to govern the Islamic Republic. The Boroujerdis retained the traditional Shiite view the one famously held by Ayatollah Sistani in Iraq that clerics should stay out of government and tend to their flock.

Anyone who acts against the most fundamental doctrine of the Iranian clerical fascist state is going to have a lot of trouble, and Ayatollah Boroujerdi has had plenty of it. He has been in and out of prison, and repeatedly in front of the Special Court for the Clergy, since 1994. According to Amnesty International, he has reportedly developed heart and kidney problems as a result of torture.

His latest round of defiance seems to have started in late June, when he preached to a large crowd in a Tehran sports stadium. A month later, on July 30th, the secret police came to his house, apparently to arrest him. But they found that he was protected by scores of supporters, so they arrested some of them instead. According to Amnesty, one of them had a heart attack and was moved to a nearby hospital. And another said that he was arrested at his home and dragged off to three weeks of solitary confinement and daily threats.

They tried again on August 3rd, and were again driven off by his defenders. A month later, Boroujerdi was visited by a government agent, and a tape recording of that conversation has been smuggled out of Iran. It was made available to me by Banafsheh Zand Bonazzi, a leading Iranian-American activist who lives in New York City.

The security agent told the Ayatollah that he, too, was a religious man, having attended a seminary after the revolution. He says that his visit is a kind of courtesy call, offering Boroujerdi the chance to surrender in a civilized way and then face trial. There is no escape possible, he says, for one way or another Boroujerdi will face charges of insulting the government and the clerisy, and perhaps even having been an accomplice to murder.

Boroujerdi will have none of this. He says that he has already prepared himself for martyrdom (and indeed when he was arrested on Sunday, he was wearing a funeral shroud). He tells the agent that he has already suffered a heart attack, and that he will now contact the foreign press. This enrages the agent, who warns Boroujerdi that no place will be safe for him, even the mosque. He brags that Boroujerdi’s father was murdered, and says that he doesn t give a damn about the foreign press, which he calls meaningless.

Boroujerdi did indeed contact the media, but you may have noticed there wasn t much coverage until the past few days. Amnesty s press release was dated October 3rd, and there was little coverage of it. He also wrote to such world leaders as Kofi Annan and Javier Solana, to their apparent indifference.

The secret police came again for Boroujerdi on the morning of September 28th, again found he was defended, and again dragged off many of his supporters. In its press release five days later, Amnesty demonstrated its celebrated droll sense of humor, writing that there are fears that the Ayatollah may be at risk of imminent arrest. But at least they wrote.

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.

The second fact is widely, in fact compulsively, denied by a plethora of self-proclaimed experts on Iran. And that is the bravery of Iranians who wish to be free to practice their religion and politics as they see fit, rather than as their tyrants insist. Thousands of people stood up to the regime s killers, in defense of a solitary mullah whose crime was to preach traditional Shi ite values. That s a major event, especially because Islam is not very popular these days in Iran. Just a couple of months ago an Iranian ayatollah told me that it was not unusual to find the central mosque in major cities like Shiraz and Tabriz virtually empty for Friday prayers. He said that a grand total of five people had shown up in Tabriz one Friday.

I doubt most of those poor souls were protecting Boroujerdi out of religious conviction. I think most of them were using his protest to challenge the regime for political reasons, because they wish to be free. There are tens of millions of these people, awaiting their moment and searching for their leaders. If thousands risked their lives for an unpopular cause simply because it was a way to stick their thumbs in the mullahs eyes, imagine how many would take similar risks if they received the political support we have been promising, but failing to deliver, for so many years now.

Michael Ledeen - the historian and Freedom Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute - writes frequently for Pajamas Medias Politics Central.