While several government, military, and religious authorities have spoken at speeches, sermons, and interviews about severe punishment of protesters who were detained on Ashura, demanding that Iranian judiciary issue verdicts of “muhareb” for them, in a recent sermon, Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi who is the spiritual leader of extremist fundamentalists in Iran called the post-election events “corruption on earth.” According to Iranian laws, punishment for a “corrupter on earth” and “muhareb” is death. It is said that during the serial murders of opposition authors and intellectuals in 1998, Mesbah Yazdi provided motivation and “fatwa” necessary for determining the victims’ “muhareb” state. At a gathering of IRGC commanders, Mesbah Yazdi who now heads Imam Khomeini’s Educational and Research Institute in Qum said: “Seditions and events which have taken place in the country over the past few months have not been unprecedented in the history and they won’t be the last of them, either. Of course the types of slogans, actions, and covers are different now, but they share the same titles of one or more ‘corruptions on earth.’” On another occasion a month after the elections in Iran, Mesbah Yazdi had said “Disagreeing with the Supreme Leader is Infidelity. Such disagreement shows a conviction that there exists a source of legitimacy other than God.” After the verdicts for five Ashura protesters who are facing execution was announced, concern about such statements which obviously provide religious justification for execution of political dissidents who criticize the Islamic Republic’s Leader on grounds of identification as “muhraeb” has been rising. Over the past few months, several sources have reported of Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi’s having issued “fatwa’s” after calling anti-government protesters as “muhareb,” news which has never been denied by this extremist cleric who is a member of the Council of Experts, nor those close to him. Also in the said sermon, Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi attacked Jews and said that, “most of the corruption centers in the world belong to Jews and Zionists. They are trying to corrupt other people and rule the world.” The Iranian Jewish community is 25,000 members strong and they are represented by an MP in the Iranian Parliament.
