Akbar Ganji's 3rd Letter

Akbar Ganji has written another letter. This one is to Ayatollah Montazeri. This is a man for whom he has great respect. I will publish an excerpt. To read the whole letter, please go to Free Ganji.

...After the widespread executions of the [political] prisoners in the summer of 1988 and the general silence against this crime against humanity, you were the only one who stood up against it; everybody else seems to have forgotten that whoever remains silent against crime, shares equally in that crime. Afterwards, when they kept you prisoner in your own house, you still defended all political prisoners regardless of their different beliefs and views and you were and still are a serious patron of their families. Your courage and consistency is such that even your serious enemies have had to acknowledge it many times.

Although you were one of the main writers of the constitution [of the Islamic Republic] and one of the theoreticians of the theory of the rule of the jurisprudent, you realized very early that the main problem is because of this very theory. This theory, once it descends from the abstract world to our earth and becomes reality, shows its true inhuman face. You tried to reduce the rule of the jurisprudent to the “supervision” of the jurisprudent so that the stagnation that the Islamic Republic is faced with might be resolved; but Iran’s problem can only be resolved through the decline of the concept of the rule of the jurisprudent and [the stepping down of] its instance. ...

Esteemed Ayatollah!

You are well aware that the world of politics is different from the world of poetry. Ambiguity and equivocation are in the nature of poetry, but clarity and frankness are natural to the arena of democratic politics. So, Mr. Khomeini frankly said: "Shah must go!" Now we must say with perfect clarity and frankness: "Mr. Khamenei must go!" Why? Since based on Mr. Khomeini's theory, Mr. Khamenei is now automatically removed from Leadership. Mr. Khomeini says: "Any individual from the people of a nation has the right to directly question, in the public, the ruler of the muslims and the ruler has to give a convincing answer; otherwise, if he, ie. the ruler, has acted against his Islamic duties, he is automatically removed from the office of the ruler." (Ayatollah Khomeini, Sahife-i Nur, vol. 4, p. 190) ...

Akbar Ganji
Friday July 22, 2005
Forty-second day of hunger strike

Thank God he is still alive. I may not be pleased with his past, but I am neither pleased with mine. Thanks, and have a good day.