7/16/2017 The Case of Mehdi Hashemi</ http://iran.qlineorientalist.com/Articles/MehdiHashemi/MehdiHashemi.html 1/40 The Case of Mehdi Hashemi Overlooked in the glare of publicity surrounding the Iran-contragate affair and the ensuing lurch towards Iraq and its allies is the trial of the leader of the militant Islamic movement who in a sense set it all in motion. Sayyed Mehdi Hashemi, son- in-law of Ayatollah Khomeini's heir-apparent, Ayatollah Sayyed Hosein-`Ali Montazeri, was executed on seven charges, including murder, cooperation with SAVAK, and hoarding weapons and munitions. The Eternal Martyr His story begins in the seventies, when the clergy was faced with the challenge of a growing fascination with Marxism and Third World revolution on the part of a dynamic student movement. The Vietnamese and Chinese revolutionaries and guerilla fighters like Che Guevera had fired the imagination of Iranian students, just as it had students around the world. Young Muslims were stretching their faith beyond the bounds of clerical Islam, increasingly adopting Marxizing jargon and ideas; prominent among them were the founders of the Organization of People's Mojahedin (formed in the mid-sixties) and Dr. `Ali Shari`ati (who had begun his political lectures in the late sixties). Under the pressure of these new ideas, even children of clerical families re-examined some fundamental ideas of their faith. One of the central events which would define Shi`ism was the martyrdom of the family of `Ali, the nephew of Mohammad, the prophet of Islam, in 680 AD. Just as the death and apparent failure of Jesus’s was explained as a soteriological victory by his disciples, the earthly failure of the revolt of `Ali's son Hosein against the leadership of the Islamic community had to be given a positive occult meaning by his followers, the Shi`a. They understood Imam Hosein, his father, and their other ten Imams to have had `isma , "protection" from error, including error about the future. And just as Jesus was mocked on the cross for not being able to save himself, so the Shi`a were faced with the problem of why, if Imam Hosein was endowed with `isma, he led himself, his family and his followers to a death whose horror is commemorated to this day with bitter lamentations. In March 1971, Sheikh Ne`matollah Salehi Najafabadi, said to have been a supporter of Khomeini 1 and to have been an friend of Mehdi Hashemi's 2 ... he could denounce pilgrimages to the blessed Shi`ite shrines and the recital of the Prophet's family's suffering". Resalat August 31, 1986 wrote a book, Shahid-e Javid [The Eternal Martyr], which both addressed these religious problems and underlined the relevance of Hosein's revolt for his younger compatriots. As one admirer said of it, "it is a delight for those dissatisfied with worthless mourning rituals, an instrument for those for whom Islam is hidden...to see the brilliance of true Islam and return to Islam," and as another, an ayatollah, said of it, it is especially for the young generation of intellectuals. 3 Rather than having gone to his death on a conscious mission of redemption "to revive Islam" with his own spilled blood and disgrace the ruling Ommayid caliphate (the commonly accepted tradition), Imam Hosein was to have revolted as a "seasoned politician." 4 "He didn't welcome oppression and didn't make suffering the greatest means to achieve his ends, but went forth to fight against a dictatorship to eliminate oppression and suffering." 5 He explained the quiescence of his father, Imam `Ali, as being a matter of political common sense. For his part, when it was politically opportune, Imam Hosein rebelled. 6 He heaps ridicule upon the idea that Imam Hosein made all his elaborate political preparations simply to get himself martyred 7 or to disgrace the ruling caliphate, 8 particularly since he asked to be pardoned after his revolt appeared doomed. 9 Thus, like much of the political clergy, next to the Imam Hosein as the model sufferer for people to suffer with, he set up the Imam Hosein as the model rebel for justice for a people to rebel with. Although this has some similarities with the way the mainstream Shi`ite revolutionaries saw Imam Hosein's defeat, they still saw his defeat as merely "apparent." The regime's popular slogan proclaims, "the blood triumphs over the sword which