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Rafsanjani,"Leave the people if they do not want you."

Influential cleric and former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani delivers his sermon during Friday prayers at Tehran University

The complete video of Rafsanjani's sermon is available on YouTube. All of the clips are posted here:
Voice of Democratic Iran: Khandaniha

From Nico Pitney at Huffington Post:

Rafsanjani's most important line? Via email, Portland State University professor R. Kevin Hill writes:

There was subtext and not-so-sub-subtext in several of Rafsanjani's remarks, based on the transcript of a live-blogger (caveats about accuracy, accuracy of translation, etc.) excerpt of which follows. If this is accurate, and I'm reading the oblique sermon style correctly, he's articulating a principle of popular sovereignty and calling on the government to resign. I've highlighted the crucial remark:

"The Imam [Khomeini] would always quote the Prophet [Muhammad] who would say to Ali [Muhammad's successor]: leave the people if they do not want you.

From Ian Black at the Guardian:

Tehran University's prayer hall has been the stage for high drama since the early days of the Islamic revolution, and Hashemi Rafsanjani'sappearance today was another of many electrifying moments in Iran's recent history.

Surrounded by heavy security under the cantilevered roof, the former president spoke out in public for the first time since last month's disputed election, warning that the country was "in crisis."

That may be a statement of the blindingly obvious – but it carries force precisely because of Rafsanjani's special place in Iranian politics: he is both hugely influential and deeply unpopular, a bitter rival of the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and – crucially – one of the surviving giants of the revolutionary era.

Whatever he said, his very presence at such a tense time would have guaranteed rapt attention – one reason why his sermon was not, as is usual, broadcast live on state TV whose cameras are mounted permanently in the university mosque.

The sense of excitement was heightened because of the presence of Mir Hossein Mousavi, who claims to have beaten Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on 12 June and who rejects the election result as "illegitimate." His fellow candidate, the reformist cleric Mehdi Karoubi, was also there.

Rafsanjani's calls to restore trust by releasing prisoners, freeing the media, using only legal means, and by dialogue between opposition and the regime, were couched in the language of legitimacy and justice. "Don't let our enemies laugh at us by putting people in prison," the cleric urged. "We must search for unity to find a way out of our quandary."

Specific proposals had been laid before the expediency council (an advisory body to the supreme leader) he said, a reminder that he has a real role to play.

"His demands were in line with what the reformists want but he did not explicitly challenge the legitimacy of the Ahmadinejad government," concluded one veteran Iranian political analyst. "This was an effort to play the role of power-broker – the role that Khamenei should have played but did not."

Rafsanjani also stressed the importance of the "republic" in the Islamic Republic of Iran, a deliberate riposte to those hardliners who stand accused of planning an Islamic dictatorship. His references to Ayatollah Khomeni praised the late leader's positive attitude towards ordinary people – a clear invitation to make an unflattering comparison with Khamenei.

The sermon was not an overt challenge to the regime, but it did graphically underline the divisions he was warning about: as he was speaking the crowd burst into competing slogans of "death to the dictator" and "death to opponents". No one could have had any doubt who was who. Predictably, trouble erupted in the streets immediately afterwards.

Normally, Friday prayers at Tehran University are a showcase for the regime, which makes sure that thousands of its loyal supporters are bussed in to fill the hall and shout familiar slogans: death to America, death to Israel, and other favourites. That makes it a regular port of call for foreign journalists, invited to witness the peculiarly Iranian combination of religion and politics, prayer and agitprop. Foreign media coverage has been drastically reduced as part of the post-election crackdown. But profound divisions, not defiant unity, are now on open display.

Much more at:
Nico Pitney on the Uprising in Iran - Huffington Post
rafsanjani-speaks-out-at-friday-prayers


“Listen to the reeds as they sway apart,
hear them speak of lost friends.”
-Rumi

And the World Bears Witness in China: The Heroism of Tursun Gul

"Our private lives continuously intersect with the history of our time. Rarely was this more evident than in Tiananmen Square in 1989 when I saw a million students rise up in protest. My friend climbed atop our taxi and shouted, 'Democracy is not only for America! Democracy is not only for China! Democracy is for the whole world!'"
-Huston Smith


The images from around the world bear witness to a global reality. "We are not sheep", they cry from the streets of Tehran to the streets of Urumqi. In both Iran and China, the ruling forces have duped many of the poor, rural citizens of their country into acting as proxy agents for their power grab. In China especially in Tibet and the Uighur regions, much like the British did during the height of their empire in the 18th and 19th centuries, ethnic groups are set against each other to distract the people away from the real foe - the unjust government.

The riots this week in China were bloody and many innocents died. It is time for the Han Chinese and the Uighurs to realize that their common enemy is the corrupt government that wants to keep all the citizens of China in bondage.

Background from the New York Times:

"Many Han migrants, at the encouragement of the Chinese government, have settled among the Muslim Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking race that is the largest ethnic group in oil-rich region of Xinjiang. The influx of Han, the dominant ethnic group in China, has transformed Xinjiang: the percentage of Han in the population was 40 percent in 2000, up from 6 percent in 1949.

But migration has fueled ethnic tensions, as Uighurs complain about the loss of jobs, the proliferation of Han-owned businesses and the disintegration of their own culture.

On Sunday at least 156 people were killed in the deadliest ethnic violence in China in decades. Raging Uighurs battled security forces and attacked Han civilians across Urumqi.

The riot had evolved from a protest march held by more than 1,000 Uighurs to demand that the government investigate an earlier brawl between Han and Uighurs in southern China."

Now we must look at the image of Tursun Gul standing fearlessly against the iron war horses of the Chinese military much like the celebrated photo of Man against tank in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Huston Smith, probably the world's foremost scholar on religion was in China and at Tiananmen Square during the uprising in 1989. Huston writes in his just published autobiography, "Our private lives continuously intersect with the history of our time. Rarely was this more evident than in Tiananmen Square in 1989 when I saw a million students rise up in protest. My friend climbed atop our taxi and shouted, 'Democracy is not only for America! Democracy is not only for China! Democracy is for the whole world!'"

From ABC News:

Her name is Tursun Gul. She is a migrant worker and she is not from Urumqi. In person, she looks younger than she does in the pictures but her eyes are tired. She was injured in a car accident and now uses a crutch to help her walk.

She told us why she took to the streets in protest on Tuesday.

“My husband, younger brother and older brothers, 5 in all, were arrested,” she said, “We were eating when it happened. The police came and took them away and they never returned. I don’t know why they took them.”

When we asked if she was not frightened walking up to a line of heavily armed soldiers she retorted, “How could I be afraid when I did not commit any crime? We’re just migrant workers from another part of Xinjiang. We’re not guilty of anything.”

Tursun, a mother of two young children, said she does not know where her brothers and her husband are being held and she does not know when, or if, they will be released. And she does not know how she will support her family now.

“There is no one to take care of us,” she lamented.

Other local residents we spoke to told us that more than 20 men were taken from the area. None of them have been seen since. According to official figures, more than 1400 people have been arrested in connection with this week’s violence.

More at:
Uighur Woman Who Stood Against Soldiers - ABC News
Buy Huston Smith's Autobiography at:
Tales of Wonder: Adventures Chasing the Divine, an Autobiography by Huston Smith