Slander against Mir-Hossein Mousavi
From Freemason to Beheshti’s Killer
Mir-Hossein Mousavi’s latest statement has so enraged the revolutionary and radical conservative faction that we have witnessed their most severe attacks since the beginning of the Green Movement. The level of attacks has gone beyond calling him a seditionist and deceived by American and Israeli intelligence services, reaching much stranger claims.
It seems their bag of tricks is so empty and their previous accusations so worn out and repetitive that they have lost their impact. For this reason, they have resorted to bizarre slanders, even to the point that some of their own wise figures have raised their voices.
Freemason based on an opponent of the regime
Kayhan initially accused him of being an old man and the leader of the 88 sect, but probably later realized that these attributes only serve to vent anger and rage, not to build a new case. Hence, they innovated the claim that Mir-Hossein is a Freemason. Another has called him Beheshti’s killer, and some others have issued his death sentence.
Even Hossein Roozitalab said he couldn’t believe this person was the head of the executive branch in the 1980s. His comment was met with reminders that the head of the executive branch is the president, and the prime minister, according to all accounts and documents, was beloved by Ayatollah Khomeini. Yasser Jabari also claimed that if the events of 88 had happened in the 1980s, Ayatollah Khomeini would not have tolerated Mir-Hossein at all, and the reason for the current leadership’s tolerance is that the elites abandoned him.
He was criticized again for his statement being self-defeating and suggesting that Ayatollah Khomeini’s capacity for consensus-building was greater than the current leadership’s. The situation has become so absurd that some have protested that with this approach, some revolutionaries are taking, they would have to question the entire leadership and guidance of the Imam in the 1980s. Hassan Zeidabadi wrote on his Telegram channel that Hossein Shariatmadari claimed that in the early 2000s, two prominent security experts announced that Engineer Mousavi was a Mason.
If it was determined in the early 2000s that Engineer Mousavi was a Mason, then why was he later selected as a member of the Expediency Discernment Council and his candidacy for the 2009 presidential election approved by the Guardian Council?
A system that had a Mason as its prime minister for eight critical years during the war, who knew all the ins and outs of its security issues, how can it still claim any credibility or competence for its institutions? Until now, I have responded to some of Kayhan’s writings with humor, but with the pace the newspaper’s editor is taking, humor is no longer sufficient.
Beheshti’s killer without evidence
A media activist associated with the revolutionary faction also claimed that since all of Mir-Hossein’s critics were assassinated at the beginning of the revolution, the assassinations must have been his doing. The claim of Mir-Hossein’s role in the assassination of Ayat, who was a serious opponent of his, has been presented in some conservative circles and their media since 2009, not before, and is occasionally raised as a pretext. The irony is that now they want to blame the July 7 bombing on Mir-Hossein as well.
This conservative media activist placed Beheshti, the secretary-general of the Republican Party, in the same category as Ayat as one of Mir-Hossein’s critics and attributed his assassination to the then-prime minister. However, historically, not only is there no evidence of such a disagreement, but on the contrary, Mir-Hossein and Beheshti were aligned and united. A Twitter user, to illustrate the absurdity of this claim, replied that probably in 2009, Mir-Hossein also threatened Beheshti’s two sons, saying if you don’t accept my advisory position, I’ll kill you. Alireza Beheshti, the son of Martyr Beheshti, was one of Mir-Hossein’s advisors who was arrested in 2009 and spent some time in prison.
Again, the issue of slander
A few years ago, Hossein Bastani made a documentary on BBC Persian titled ‘Slander to Preserve the System,’ concluding that the slanders and accusations against the system’s political and ideological critics and opponents have a jurisprudential backing attributed to Ayatollah Khomeini.
Fars News Agency, in a detailed article, borrowed from the memories and statements of various political figures to refute the claim made in this documentary, arguing that in belief, fatwa, and even beyond that, the Imam’s approach was not like this. It then concludes that the question now arises, if the Imam considered lying, slander, and defamation permissible, he would have certainly deemed it permissible against his number one enemy, the Shah and his regime, and used it in propaganda. But do we have any such example? The definitive answer is no.
Now this writing should be held as a mirror to these media and asked, if you believe Ayatollah Khomeini was not even willing to slander his number one enemy, the Shah and the previous regime, how can you be willing to do the same to his prime minister and still consider yourselves supporters and followers of Ayatollah Khomeini? The radical revolutionary faction has long been trapped in a double standard.
Because they pursue their politics solely and simply based on current interests and needs, but to prove their righteousness, they have to rely on the ethics, religion, and their own leaders. This approach has led them to a contradiction resulting in this double standard in their ethics and politics.
Regarding the discussion of slander and its jurisprudential roots, Soroush Mahallati once said in an interview that this theory has had serious supporters as a fatwa in recent centuries and has consistently had proponents in non-political spaces, such as the late Ayatollah Mirza Javad Agha Tabrizi, a revered contemporary scholar, who accepted this theory in his book ‘Ershad al-Talib.’ Some clerics critical of the revolution also hold this belief.
For example, Ayatollah Seyed Taghi Ghomi in his book ‘Mabani Manhaj al-Salihin’ holds the same view and even extends the permission for slander to all religious opponents whom he considers people of doubt and innovation. Ayatollah Seyed Sadegh Rouhani also holds this belief in his book ‘Fiqh al-Sadiq.’ In any case, these gentlemen have discussed and expressed their opinions openly, and the issue goes beyond a mere political disagreement. This fatwa indeed has significant potential to justify unethical behaviors, especially in the political realm.