Читать книгу The Tragedy of Islam - Imam Mohammad Tawhidi - Страница 13

I landed in Tehran at 2:22 am on February 3, 2007. Amar, a taxi driver my family friends had arranged to meet me at the airport, took me to the Holy City of Qum. I told him to take me to the Imam Khomeini Islamic Seminary, located at Jihad Roundabout, because I was familiar with that institute and its people. I had depended on them to assist me in finding the department I would need to attend later that morning. The reception was open 24 hours, and Amar helped me unload my luggage and waved goodbye to me. Now I was all alone. I entered the reception and informed them that I had come to study permanently. I was transferred to another location, a student dormitory, where students from all countries waited for their interview with the university committee.

I spent over five months in a dormitory with prospective students from Russia, Iraq, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Africa, the UK, and the USA. The room I was placed in included six other students waiting their turn, with the entire building holding over 50 other students. It was not a pleasant time. Many had applied to study in this university simply because there was no other option for them in life. They had either come from war-torn countries, or fled their families. Some were converts to Islam. Fights would break out between them, and some students were extremely violent. Some of those who were calm during the day annoyed me with their loud snoring during the night. There was a clear clash of too many cultures and traditions within one building. One student would purposely burp very loudly to show his appreciation of the food, while another would pass wind, as in his culture it was very similar to sneezing. I couldn’t wait to be transferred to the university dormitories where I heard that the conditions were a lot more livable and amicable.

I returned one day to the dorm to find my locker had been broken into, and an amount of $20 had been stolen from me. I maintained my calmness and reported it to the administration. A week later, I was transferred to Al-Mahdi Institute, where students entering the Islamic seminary are required to reach a level of fluency in the Farsi language. I had imagined I would be transferred directly to an Arabic university because of my Arabic background, but I was required to perfect my Farsi language first. By now it was nearly 2008.

Al-Mahdi Institute can be safely described as an ideological training base, operated by retired members of the Iranian intelligence services. It consists of three floors and an underground level. The rooms in the underground level and first floor are used as classrooms and a large mosque, while the remaining floors are utilized as dormitories.

Although its job is to teach Farsi to students so that they can understand Islamic texts, and more importantly the speeches of the supreme leader Ali Khamenei, it also monitors and investigates foreign students as they are completing their extensive Farsi course.

For me, this appeared to be a make-or-break situation. This institute was nothing like what was described to us. The bed bases were hard wooden boards, and all of the students slept on bunk beds. The common showers were semi-operational and in the worst condition possible. Cockroaches and other insects climbed up and down the walls in the showers and toilets. Mice infested the building, the food was military-style, soaked in what Persians call “kafoor” (camphor in English), an ingredient added to food in the army to lower men’s sexual drive.

The most difficult part of Al-Mahdi was the fact that our room contained 12 students, all varying in age and culture. Some were not genuine students. They were convicted criminals who had escaped their countries and sought refuge within the Islamic seminary, and were prepared to engage in its educational system only for the sake of shelter and food. There were no washing machines in this institute, and most students could not afford to wash their own clothes or blankets in commercial laundromats, and therefore would wash them in the showers and hang them on the balcony rails. I, on the other hand, came from a more affluent life in Australia, and I began to wonder whether I could stay in this institute much longer. With the growing political tensions around Iran, several students were arrested after being revealed to be spies. They had infiltrated the Islamic seminary in Iran to report back to their home countries about their own citizens being groomed as Islamic missionaries.

During my first week, I struggled to live and sleep comfortably. I found that having so many students and cultures in one room did not prove to be a very successful idea. Here too, the students burped and passed wind as contentedly as they would sneeze, while others would try on my western clothing without my permission for the purpose of mere photography. By the end of my first week, and on Friday which is the only weekend day in Iran, I woke up to the loud sound of sheep bleating. I thought that I was dreaming, but unfortunately I was not. I raced outside my dorm to find out what the chaos was all about, but I was too late. Three sheep were already slaughtered in the middle of the school courtyard, with their blood gushing on the ground. The school was preparing for a feast.

I contacted my father and informed him of the harsh living conditions in this institute, which sadly was the only pathway to any accredited Islamic university in Qum. My dreams were being shattered as the days passed. I became stressed. I had come a long way and expected some hardship, but it seemed to me that the administration had purposely allowed such an atmosphere to dominate the institute in order to create missionaries who would be able to endure all conditions of life, regardless of where they are sent to preach. My father told me that the matter was purely my own decision, and I was welcome to return to Australia at any time.

One evening during this difficult time, I decided to go for a long walk alone. My heart was full of love for the Iranian government, specifically its supreme leader Ali Khamenei and its former leader Khomeini. I was ready to sacrifice my life for the Iranian regime and I believed that, although it would be tough, six months of patience in the institute would be worth it, since what I would achieve through the course would outweigh the struggle. Therefore, I made the decision to stay and pursue my Islamic studies. While my family and relatives back home in Australia thought I would not last long in Iran under such conditions, they seemed impressed with my patience and determination as the years passed.

I managed to get along with everyone else by finding a common ground, this being that we were all amateur Islamists who subscribed to an extremist ideology. We all loved Hizbullah, and were prepared to join them at all costs. We detested the USA and cursed it daily along with Israel and the UK. The ideology of the Iranian regime was simply part of my religion, to the point that we would twist the religion to benefit the Iranian regime. My father did not raise me as a radical, but my community, friends, surroundings, and teachers did. I never knew that I was a believer in an extremist ideology, because I simply thought that was the only way to be. This ideology had become normality for me in Iran, and we were all taught to become soldiers of religion, who would return to our countries, in my case Australia, and preach Islam – the hardline Iranian revolutionary type of Islam. I also came across other students from Australia and elsewhere in the West, which made life a lot easier.

Our Farsi language classes in Al-Mahdi Institute began at 8 am and paused at 12 for noon prayers and lunch, then continued from 3 pm to 5 pm. The entire curriculum focused on indoctrinating the students and teaching us material that presented the Iranian regime as God’s righteous government on this planet; however, it was presented in Farsi. They were hitting two birds with one stone by teaching us the language and the history, merits, supposed achievements, miracles, and glory of the Islamic government of Iran.

The Islamic lectures, school, and mosque programs I had attended in Australia had preached a much more basic version of this indoctrination, so the path was already paved for my brain to be controlled by the regime-dominated educational atmosphere. I was completely radicalized, and willing to kill anyone who spoke a single word against Ali Khamenei, whom I saw as the link between myself and God. Even as a new student, I was expected to wear military-style cargo pants to look like one of the Islamic revolutionary guards. Although it was never official, the Iranian intelligence authorities enjoyed seeing foreign students adapt to their traditions and allowed it to continue. In other countries, an individual would be immediately questioned and possibly even arrested for dressing like the police or military personnel.

The Farsi Course was rather easy for me to complete, as I was born in Iran and was familiar with the language. Farsi consists of at least 50% Arabic, which made it even easier for me to master, as Arabic is my mother tongue.

The entire educational program in Al-Mahdi is designed to last for six months; however, it took us over two years to complete the program. There are many holidays in Iran. Iranians celebrate the births of 12 divine successors of Prophet Mohammad with a three-day weekend, and the martyrdom of 11 of them with longer weekends. The Prophet and his daughter Fatima’s births and deaths are also commemorated with week-long holidays. The three holy months of Ramadhan, Muharram, and Safar, which usually fall around May, October, and December, are long holidays.*The Iranians themselves have their own national weekends when they celebrate the Persian Nowruz festival for two weeks, and other days marking the country’s 1979 revolution and war victories. They also took us on excursions to other Iranian states to introduce us to their culture, food, and religious cities.

Thursday nights are sacred nights, and English-speaking students at the institute would all gather to recite their prayers. When I was invited to attend this event for the first time, I saw Sheikh Mansour Leghaei, the former Sydney-based cleric who had just been deported from Australia. Even though I had never met him before, he hugged me very hard once he heard that I was from Australia, and wanted to get to know me better. He began to criticize and curse the Australian government for deporting him. Two months later, I bumped into him on the street. He greeted me and pointed to a government building and said, “These people know me. If you need anything just come here.” I later discovered that the building he pointed to was an office for the Iranian intelligence services. I never saw Mr. Leghaei again, and today he prides himself on being one of my most ruthless critics.

I began to change drastically while studying at Al-Mahdi. Many things occurred before my very eyes during the first few months of my studies that proved to me that the Iranian regime was indeed a corrupt system. Female students, while segregated in female-only institutes, were regularly sexually assaulted by Islamic clerics, and administrators of the educational institutes who had access to students’ portfolios preyed on them by accessing their details to find out whether a female student was single, divorced, or married.

On the third floor of the Al-Mahdi Institute, which I studied and resided in, elderly Islamic studies students from India and Pakistan would engage in sexual activities in the empty dorms with young male Azerbaijani students. One of these young men, who has now developed into a prominent scholar in Azerbaijan, was referred to as “Motorbike,” because “he would give anyone a ride” when most teachers and students were worshipping in the lower ground floor mosque. The piety of the students was judged based on their loyalty to the regime and its supreme leader Ali Khamenei, and not by good actions. I realized that if you were a proud and outspoken patriot who reported to the intelligence agencies about other students, you could get away with literally anything.

The male teachers in this institute also preyed on younger male students. I remember asking one of my teachers, Mr. Behbehani, for the Wi-Fi password and he responded saying, “Open it so that I can give it to you.” When I gave him a death stare, he said, “Open your Wi-Fi on your phone so that I can give you the password.” He was exposing his vulgar nature indeed, as he was in fact referring to his desire to sexually assault me.

One of the disgraceful incidents that has been buried and is never mentioned within Al-Mahdi Institute involved one of my former friends, Mohammad, aged 27, from Nepal. He had spent at least five years studying a 6–12-month Farsi and Islamic Studies program at Al-Mahdi due to him being tongue-tied from birth. He needed extra time to improve his pronunciation of the language. During this time, he got to know a young girl aged 16, who was the daughter of a religious martyr killed during a visit to Iraq. Mohammad was dark skinned, dressed like an American rapper with baggy jeans and extra-large shirts, and also spoke English. Regardless of his difficulty in speech, he did attract the eyes of many Iranian women who admired westerners, especially those who had the “American style.” Mohammad ended up impregnating the 16-year-old girl in 2008, and was instantly expelled from Al-Mahdi Institute and deported back to Nepal, not as a form of punishment, but to remove him from the scene of the investigation and lessen the level of shame that was about to shower upon the institute. The institute then entered into a financial arrangement with the girl’s parents and settled the case with 40,000,000 Iranian rials, less than $15,000 USD, considering the Iranian economic situation. Her parents agreed not to approach the media regarding this incident as it would bring shame to the religion. But Mohammad was not happy that he was deported, so he wrote a letter to the Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, asking him to intervene and allow him back into Iran to complete his Islamic studies. Months later, Mohammad was back in Iran from Nepal and continued his studies as though none of this ever happened.

With all of this corruption taking place before me, a struggle remained within me to accept it as normality, both religiously and culturally. Therefore, I began to justify everything I saw although I knew deep down that it was wrong – according to my Australian upbringing, of course. However, I was in Iran, and on my way to becoming an Islamic scholar; therefore, I put my Australian values aside, not willingly, but because I had been brainwashed to.