Minaret Moments: Ayatollah Khamenei’s Friday Oration.
Don’t listen to those who speak of democracy. They all are against Islam. They want to take the nation away from its mission. Break the poisonous pens of all those who speak of nationalism, democracy, and such things.”
- Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini
Qom, 13 March, 1979
Simple calls to pray in the Islamic world never usually grab the sort of international publicity that this past Friday’s call did.
From a large-scale minaret erected at Tehran University, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei gave a speech which managed to raise the eye-brows of both Mr David Miliband (Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs) and the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.
The Iranian Ambassador to the UK, Rasul Movaheddian who was thereby later summoned by the Foreign Ministry and Downing Street had to obiviously provide an explanation for exactly why Khamenei slandered the UK in this post-electoral national address.
Ayatollah Khamenei spoke of at some level about the UK Government providing glib interference into Iranian affairs. Warning that further civil demonstrations for the presidential challenger Mir-Hossein Mousavi would not be tolerated, whilst also stating that no official recount of the ballot would be considered.
Speaking in defence of the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, I believe Ayatollah Khamenei showed his personal consternation with regard to how the BBC and other Western media outlets.
Natually latching onto reporting about what support and favour Hossein Mousavi had won among important political ranks within Iran, the BBC from Khamenei’s point of view were complicit in helping the protesters to operate step-changes in expressing their dissent.
Welinks:
http://www.geo.tv/6-21-2009/44583.htm
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/98446.htm?sectionid=351020101
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,527022,00.html
http://www.almanar.com.lb/NewsSite/NewsDetails.aspx?id=90723&language=en
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2009/06_june/19/persian.shtml
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/local/san_francisco&id=6866895
