Another Side of Radical Islam

Many nations having Shariah Law or Mullah rule in the world are continuing to commit various forms of violence in the name of Islam. What Islamists and people like Ahmadinejad or Wahhabis or groups like Hamas, Hezbollah or Al Qaeda are doing is not Islam at all.  In those nations which have Shariah law or the laws of Mullahs, we have reports of sexual assault inside Iranian prisons by the prison guards under the refuge of sermons issued by the Mullahs. Such practices continue in Iran since the Islamic Revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini.

A highly influential Shi'a religious leader, with whom Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad regularly consults, apparently told followers last month that coercion by rape, torture and drugs is acceptable against all opponents of the Islamic regime. In the wake of a series of publications worldwide on the rape and torture of dissident prisoners in Iran's jails, supporters of Ahmadinejad gathered with him in Jamkaran on August 11, 2009. According to Iranian pro-democracy sources, the gathered crowd heard from Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi and Ahmadinejad.

According to the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center [ITIC], an independent intelligence analysis organization, Mesbah-Yazdi is considered Ahmadinejad's personal spiritual guide. A radical totalitarian even in Iranian terms, he holds messianic views, supports increasing Islamization, calls for violent suppression of domestic political opponents, and, according to the ITIC, "declared that obeying a president supported by the Supreme Leader was tantamount to obeying God."

At the Jamkaran gathering, Mesbah-Yazdi and Ahmadinejad answered questions about the rape and torture charges. The following text is from a transcript by Iranian dissidents to a series of questions and answers exchanged between the Ayatollah and some of his supporters.

Asked if a confession obtained "by applying psychological, emotional and physical pressure" was "valid and considered credible according to Islam," Mesbah-Yazdi replied: "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 Ayatollah gave the identical answer when asked about confessions obtained through drugging the prisoner with opiates or addictive substances.

"Can an interrogator rape the prisoner in order to obtain a confession?" was the follow-up question posed to the Islamic cleric.

Mesbah-Yazdi answered: "The necessary precaution is for the interrogator to perform a ritual washing first and say prayers while raping the prisoner. If the prisoner is female, it is permissible to rape through the vagina or anus. It is better not to have a witness present. If it is a male prisoner, then it's acceptable for someone else to watch while the rape is committed."

This reply, and reports of the rape of teen male prisoners in Iranian jails, may have prompted the following question: "Is the rape of men and young boys considered sodomy?"

Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi: "No, because it is not consensual. Of course, if the prisoner is aroused and enjoys the rape, then caution must be taken not to repeat the rape."

A related issue, in the eyes of the questioners, was the rape of virgin female prisoners. In this instance, Mesbah-Yazdi went beyond the permissibility issue and described the Allah-sanctioned rewards accorded the rapist-in-the-name-of-Islam:

"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."

One aspect of these permitted rapes troubled certain questioners: "What if the female prisoner gets pregnant? Is the child considered illegitimate?"

Mesbah-Yazdi answered: "The child borne to any weakling [a denigrating term for women] who is against the Supreme Leader is considered illegitimate, be it a result of rape by her interrogator or through intercourse with her husband, according to the written word in the Koran. However, if the child is raised by the jailer, then the child is considered a legitimate Shi'a Muslim."

Meanwhile, the same Ahmadinejad in another live interview with a state-run radio station said that that any rape or torture of political prisoners in Iranian detention centers in recent months had been carried out by “enemy” agents, not the government. 

Recently two prominent members of Iran’s human rights community, feminist lawyer and journalist Shadi Sadr and the blogger and activist Mojtaba Samienejad, published essays online from inside Iran arguing that far from being a new phenomenon, prison rape has a long history in the Islamic Republic.

In her essay Ms. Sadr wrote:

Published reports are available about the types of torture committed against women political prisoners after the 1979 Revolution. The most systematic type of reported rape has been the rape of virgin girls who were sentenced to death by execution for political reasons. They were raped on the night before execution.. These reports have been substantiated by frequent statements from the relatives of women political prisoners. On the day after the execution, authorities returned their daughter’s dead body to them along with a sum considered to be the alimony. Reports state that in order to lose their virginity, girls were forced to enter into a temporary marriage with men who were in charge of their prison. Otherwise it was feared that the executed prisoner would go to heaven because she was a virgin!

“During the 1980s, the rape of women political prisoners seems to have been prevalent. It was so prevalent as to make Ayatollah Montazeri, Khomeini’s deputy at the time, write the following to Khomeini in a letter dated October 7, 1986: “Did you know that young women are raped in some of the prisons of the Islamic Republic?”

Recently Mr. Samienejad, who was imprisoned in the past for blogging but has managed to avoid detention this year, published a post, in English, headlined, “Memories of Prison and Raped Prisoners.” Mr. Samienejad’s post began:

The practice of rape on prisoners, brought up by [reformist Mehdi] Karoubi in his letter to [former President Ali Akbar Hashemi] Rafsanjani, has existed for the last three decades in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Many prisoners have written about it in their memoirs, and rumors have always existed about the issue. Prisoner rape is one of the most horrific forms of human rights violations in Iran , but not much has been said about it until now, despite its widespread practice. Social stigmas have made people reluctant to discuss the issue, and an admission of the practice would have had grave implications for the Islamic Republic. However the taboo is broken now; Rafsanjani, the second most powerful figure of the regime, has now publicly been informed about rape in prisons. A door has been opened and the issue must now be discussed. I saw and heard about many rape cases during my prison term. With the issue now open for discussion, I want to retrieve from my memories some of the stories and retell them, so we can better know who these rapists are.

In the first of five harrowing memories, Mr. Samienejad writes that during his detention four years ago:

The terms ‘coke bottle’ and ‘baton’ were constantly used by my interrogators, who were threatening to use these objects on me.

Mr. Samienejad also describes his unsuccessful attempt to get prison authorities to accept a letter of complaint he wrote on behalf of another prisoner who appeared to have been raped. He concludes:

Prison authorities never investigate these cases and do not take them seriously. If I were to write all my memories of such cases I would have to write about many cases.

What you just read in this article are only a few examples of what I saw. In my two years of imprisonment, I witnessed and heard about hundreds of cases of rape. I will write about them gradually in the future.

Despite what he says is this first-hand knowledge of brutal abuses by Iranian authorities, Mr. Samienejad contacted The Lede today to say that it is important to him that outsiders understand that the blame lies within specific individuals.

According to Mr. Samienejad he and other Iranian activists were upset that an editorial about prison rape in New York Times was headlined “Shame On Iran.”

Iranian pro-democracy activist and eminet journalist Shirin Sadeghi wrote in an article: “On Friday June 19, a large group of mourners gathered at the Ghoba mosque in Tehran to await a speech about the martyrs of the post-election protests by presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi. According to one Iranian blog, 28-year-old Taraneh Mousavi was one of a group of people that was arrested by plain clothed security forces for attending the gathering.

Taraneh, whose first name is Persian for "song", disappeared into arrest.

“Weeks later, according to the blog, her mother received an anonymous call from a government agent saying that her daughter had been hospitalized in Imam Khomeini Hospital in Karaj, for "rupturing of her womb and anus in... an unfortunate accident".

“When Taraneh's family went to the hospital to find her, they were told she was not there.

“According to another Iranian blog which claims to have original information about Taraneh from her family, Iranian security forces contacted Taraneh's family after the hospital visit warning them not to publicize Taraneh's story and not to associate her disappearance with arrests made at post-election protests, claiming instead that she had tried to harm herself because of feeling guilty for having pre-marital sex.

“Witnesses have come forward to the various Internet sites who are covering Taraneh's story, stating that she was mentally and physically abused in Tehran's notorious Evin prison and also that a person who matches her physical description and injuries had been treated at the Imam Khomeini Hospital, was unconscious when witnessed and was later transferred out of the hospital while still unconscious.

“Taraneh's is not the first allegation of brutal raping of a post-election protester -- according to the UK Guardian, an 18 year old boy in Shiraz was repeatedly gang raped by prison officials while in detention after being arrested for participating in the protests on June 15. That boy's father won't let him back in the family home.

Despite its agitations for reform, Iranian society remains traditional, according to Iranian-British blogger Potkin Azarmehr, and it's the stigma of rape that is being used as a weapon against the protesters. "By killing protesters, the government makes martyrs of them, but by raping them and allowing them to live, it makes them shunned in society," Azarmehr said.

”Not that the stigma of rape is exclusive to Iran and other more traditional societies. A friend of Azarmehr's who is presently in Iran told him that he's "sick of hearing that people like Taraneh are better off dead" from friends abroad, just because they "can't handle the fact that she's been raped."

“The psychology of threatening protesters and political activists is not a new science. The strategies and ultimate goals are the same for any kind of torture: to humiliate, disembody [through denying the victim authority over his/her own physical self], extract confessions [whether true or false] and ultimately permanently terrorize the victims to prevent further 'disturbances'. The last part often fails spectacularly, as victims tend to feel even more antagonism toward the perpetrators, and even more of a 'do or die' mentality about agitating for change at any cost.

“Prison abuse and torture is also about marking these victims as defiled human beings -- it's like a scarlet letter of social isolation against them, to deny them the community support and strength which they need to move past those memories and not be defined by them. This is where others can step in and change the very attitudes toward abuse which so many institutions count on when they commit these crimes.

“The story of Taraneh's condition is still unfolding and there are no certain confirmations of its details beyond the reports of bloggers who are obliged to remain anonymous for safety reasons -- but the idea that political prisoners are being mistreated in this way is not new to Iran and is a significant element of a program of terror which has sustained the current system in Iran.”

With allegations of sexual assault in prisons brought to the fore in Iran, authorities met with Mehdi Karroubi, who had broached the taboo subject, to look into the claims.

Rapporteur of the Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Kazem Jalali, who heads a Parliament committee tasked with probing into the death and detention of those arrested in the post-election frenzy, said the board met with the leading opposition figure on August 24, 2009 to  examine the evidence provided on alleged 'jail rape.'

The three-hour meeting took place after Karroubi wrote a letter to the influential Head of the Assembly of Experts, Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, on July 29, claiming that jailers brutally 'raped' post-vote protesters in Iran's detention centers.

The publication of the letter caused an uproar inside and outside Iran, many clerics saying that, if true, the issue would be a catastrophe for the Islamic Republic.

Jalali told Mehr News Agency that six lawmakers -- including himself, Omidvar Rezaei, Ali Motahhari, Mehdi Sanaie, Parviz Sorouri and Farhad Tajari -- met Karroubi in his office on Monday where he talked about four alleged victims of jailhouse rape at the hands of security personnel.

According to Jalali, the two-time former Majlis speaker will introduce the alleged victims to the probe committee for further investigation.

Karroubi, however, said that while these four victims are ready to testify before Parliament, they do not feel safe doing so.

The head of the Majlis probe committee said that the four alleged victims would be scheduled to speak up about their torment in front of the board.

He added that the committee is also set to hold a meeting on the issue with Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani and the country's newly-appointed Judiciary Chief Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani.

Alongside the meeting with the probe committee, Karroubi's party, Etemad-e-Melli [National Trust], published a report on its website which made public remarks by an inmate who had allegedly been subject to sexual abuse.

The victim said that the defeated candidate Karroubi helped him get through difficult times after his experience, and get rid of suicidal thoughts.

The victim added that he had met with a representative of the former general prosecutor who, after listening to his account, expressed his sympathy, saying "alas" in reaction to the situation.

A 15-year-old boy, Reza, has alleged that he was locked up in Iran’s Basij militia base for 20 days, where he was beaten, raped repeatedly and subjected to sexual humiliation and abuse.

Reza is so horrified by the incident that he refuses to go outside and is terrified of being left alone.

“My life is over. I don’t think I can ever recover,” The Times quoted Reza, as saying.

A doctor treating him confirmed that he is suicidal, and bears the appalling injuries consistent with his story.

Reza’s family is also enduring the pain with him and exploring ways to flee Iran.

Reza’s ordeal began in mid-July, when he was arrested along with 40 other teenagers during an opposition demonstration.

He claimed that the arrested teenagers were taken to the Basij militia base, where they were blindfolded, stripped to their underwear, whipped with cables and then locked in a steel shipping container.

Reza claims that three men on the first night singled him out and pushed him to the ground. He further said that one held his head down, another sat on his back and the third urinated on him before raping him. [Source: Asian News International].

And here is another disturbing bulletin from Bangladesh on the persecution of religious minorities and the forceful conversion of Hindus by influential Muslim thugs.

The Bangladesh Minority Watch [BDMW], Dhaka, received an appeal from Ajoy Kumar Dey and his wife in Narayanganj alleging that their only minor son, Suvashish Dey, 17, was abducted on July 30 from their house, and forcibly converted to Islam. Suvashish is a student who passed Secondary School and High School with honors. But the police neither assisted in recovering their children nor arrested any perpetrators, despite specific allegations made to police. [General Diary Entry No. 1713 dated 31.7.2009 filed by Ajoy Kumar Dey]. Ajoy Kumar his wife believe that their only son was abducted for forceful conversion by the thugs belonging to Islamic fundamentalists groups.

Both the news on rape inside prison in Iran or forceful conversion in Bangladesh are matters of great concern. The global population favoring peace should raise its voices against such atrocious attitudes from Islamist regimes or nations with majority Muslim population before one more male or female prisoner is sexually abused in Iran, or any other religious minority member is abducted for forceful conversion in Bangladesh.