A lone cleric is loudly defying Iran's Leaders
NY Times / Michael Slackman
22-Oct-2009 (3 comments)

A short midlevel cleric, with a neat white beard and a clergyman’s calm bearing, Mehdi Karroubi has watched from his home in Tehran in recent months as his aides have been arrested, his offices raided, his newspaper shut down. He himself has been threatened with arrest and, indirectly, the death penalty.

His response: bring it on.

Once a second-tier opposition figure operating in the shadow of Mir Hussein Moussavi, his fellow challenger in Iran’s discredited presidential election in June, Mr. Karroubi has emerged in recent months as the last and most defiant opponent of the country’s leadership.

The authorities have dismissed as fabrications his accusations of official corruption, voting fraud and the torture and rape of detained protesters. A former confidant of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and a longtime conservative politician, he has lately been accused by the government of fomenting unrest and aiding Iran’s foreign enemies.

Four months after mass protests erupted in response to the dubious victory claims of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the opposition’s efforts have largely stalled in the face of unrelenting government pressure, arrests, long detentions, harsh sentences, censorship and a strategic refusal to compromise.

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Darius Kadivar

Before Karroubi consider Boroudjerdi ...

by Darius Kadivar on


mahmoudg

Still a clergy

by mahmoudg on

And we all want a complete separation of church and state, and a clergy leading the way to our salvation somehow seems very unapplealing.  A good Ayatollah is one without a Turban.


yolanda

.....

by yolanda on

Thank you for this very informative article.....OMG! The guy was in jail 9 times. I like his words:

 “I take refuge with you, oh God, from these catastrophes which some are causing and are not only a disgrace to the Islamic republic, but a disgrace to Iran.”

thank you!