Janet Afary and Juan Cole write a letter to Mullah Khamenei

“On Behalf of Ramin Jahanbegloo”, it is claimed. But “on the occasion of Jahanbegloo’s arrest” would have been more appropriate, because it seems to me their goal is to take advantage of this person’s arrest to represent his case, incalculably to the benefit of the Shiite Mafia, as an anomaly in the Islamist Republican system.

Addressing a murderer with the blood of tens of thousands of Iranians on his hands as “Your Excellency” and calling Shiite Mafia Inc. a “government” (the negative terms “regime” and “dictatorship”, you see, are reserved for an actual government overthrown in 1979), Afary and Cole write,

“We feel compelled to remind you, Your Excellency, that the rights of individuals to freedom of thought, opinion, and speech are explicitly protected under the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran (Article 23), as well as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Articles 18, 19, 21), to which the Islamic Republic of Iran is also a state party. The arbitrary arrest of Dr. Jahanbegloo does further harm to the reputation of Iran as a country where scholarly research and inquiry are highly valued. Dr. Jahanbegloo’s arrest and detention can only be conceived as a direct attack on the principles of academic freedom and critical intellectual inquiry.”

At the risk of stating the obvious, this is a letter written nearly 28 years after the establishment of a regime that has proved, since day one of its existence, its utter disregard for such rights that are supposed protected (supposed on behalf and for the benefit of what they consider to be ignorant readers) by Afary and Cole. Article 23 of the Constitution of the Islamic Occupation Republic mentioned here, for instance, states: “The investigation of individuals' beliefs is forbidden, and no one may be molested or taken to task simply for holding a certain belief.” Has the Islamic Republic ever abided by this or any other such decorative articles in its so called constitution?

Readers should demand of Afary and Cole to explain on which planet they have been living these years. But more importantly, they should recognize these political perverts as what they are.