Do Ayatollahs Fart?
Posted by KamangirJan 6
When I wrote a piece about how the Islamic Republic benefits from turning the Ayatollahs into holy figures, in my Persian blog [Persian], I had no idea about the backlash it would create. The reactions, however, offer a good insight into what the main problem in Iran is. It is not Ahmadinejad or the Ayatollahs who have “corrupted” Iran, as some people like to put it. It is the corrupted framework of thought they have infested Iran with which is the core problem.
In the post, for which I had used the title “The Picture of the Day: Ayatolah, Fart, and a Question”, I had used a picture, also shown here, which is taken less than a week ago in Jamaran, the old residence of Ayatollah Khomeini, the former leader of the Islamic Republic. The picture shows a lady touching the window of his room, because “it is blessed”. The picture also shows a couch Ayatollah used to sit on and recite Quran. It is now covered by a white cloth and is in effect “blessed”, for many Iranians. The woman is a family member of a martyr, as this group of visitors is described by the state-run Fars News, but, nevertheless, the reactions showed that many other Iranians share the same point of view, to different extents.
In the post I implicitly referred to the propaganda of the regime, which through very deliberate use of music and light, portrays Khomeini as a saint (see this example on YouTube). I had asked, “This couch is an important piece of furniture to this woman, not because of the history behind it, but because it has been touched by the Ayatollah. Now the question is, knowing that the Ayatollah was a very old man, is it not possible that he had to pass his gas, right on the couch, at least once?” I had continued, “Now, the question is, how many of these worshipers do you think will not slap you on the face if you tell them that someone has farted on this holy couch?”
From the 44 comments which are written for that post, so far, 12 people think the author “does not understand these issues” or even that “this is crap”. Two other comments agree with the idea but do not like the way it is written. Seven other comments are irrelevant to the topic and the rest, which constitute half the total, agree with the author.
While I accept that I did intentionally use a provocative language in order to get more people involved in the discussion, the 25% ratio of the comments which condemn the blogger for the post is very informative, and yet depressing. I do not have the statistics, but over the time I have had reasons to believe that the readers of my Persian blog are mainly educated people, or students, many of whom live outside Iran. This, to my understanding, means the regime has been able to sell its ideas and that to many Iranian the Ayatollah are indeed made of light, and not flesh.
Thanks to Lisa Goldman for reminding me of two misspellings here.
Related: Ahmadinejad’s Holy Saliva
This shows the problem in all religions, especially when the belief is in one God, no others; people cannot seem to resist to give adoration and even assign powers to work miracles to ordinary humans.
In Islam, Christianity and Judaism, worship is reserved only for the creator. In Islam you’re not even supposed to have pictures of people on the wall, to avoid these wrong actions of assigning any kind of glory to people that belongs to God alone.
That’s where many religions take a wrong turn, when greedy and powerhungry people manipulate the populace and lead them astray.
This is from a religious viewpoint.
People that don’t belong to any faith probably think they’re all a bunch of mindless sheep. Mob mentality is certainly very real and many people just don’t think for themselves.
Always question authority, always challenge orthodoxy.
It is not exclusively religious problem.
Do you know that Stalin killed millions of Russians, he sent them to gulags, he “transfered” them from one place to another, he made KGB the power in the land, he killed his friends and co-workers. I will not mention thousands upon thousands Poles, Ukrainians, Latvians, Estonians and people of other nationalities killed by his orders.
Guess what?
Many Russians still adore and admire Stalin. They long for the time he ruled Russia.
Mindless sheep are everywhere.
“It is the corrupted framework of thought they have infested Iran with which is the core problem”
THOUGHT are created by human being ( well, at least last time I checked)…
1. So thought do not infest on their own
2. Corrupted thoughts and actions have increased to a new historical level since Mullahs have controlled Iranian government
3. Therefore, we can easily conclude Mullahs thoughts have infested Iran…
Fair?
Kamangir: Fair. What I mean is that it is not like you remove the Mullahs form Iran and then boom! Iran becomes a good place to live. The Mullahs have laid eggs, so to speak, inside the minds of the Iranians and therefore their removal does not help much.
Not knowing any Persian what-so-ever, I love clicking on your Persian blog and just scrolling down. The image reminds me of what cursive english would look like reflected in a clear mountain pond with a slight ripple and flipped across the y-axis.
Kamangir: Fair. What I mean is that it is not like you remove the Mullahs form Iran and then boom! Iran becomes a good place to live. The Mullahs have laid eggs, so to speak, inside the minds of the Iranians and therefore their removal does not help much.
laid eggs inside minds…and on couches, peeyoo! :D
Obviously those sacred farts must be saved having come out of a regal holy ass but as they’re not always started by impure thoughts but mostly simply a spontaneous physical reaction to basic environmental stimulants, don’t you think it’s probable the Ayatollah occasionally got, you know, a hard on while sitting on that couch? If so, shouldn’t the couch be examined for pre-ejaculatory fluid which, again, must be saved as it must be Blessed for coming out of a regal holy dick?
to be honest i ve heard from a friend which he is a researcher in london that if dome one fart for 20 yr and then they store that farts u can make small atomic bomb and this is true, i forgot wher i saw the research somewher on the internet. the moral of the story is that usa is acusing the regime of iran makin bomb because they started storing that fart for more than 25 year since the revoulotion and i reckon ayatulah (curopted one not all of them)now are ready to bomb israil.
What you are talking about here is the sin of idolatry. As a Christian, I was taught that all human beings are tempted to sin – a fact which should be obvious to anybody! And when it comes to idolatry, something need not be called an “idol” to be treated as one in fact.
Even today, Christians are cautioned to avoid putting material objects, other people, or any allegiance or pursuit in the place that rightfully belongs to God. Cars, houses, money, celebrities, political allegiances, ambitions, sports, work, one’s own ego – anything at all is liable to be misused in that way. Idolatry is in the eye of the beholder, not in the object being idolized.
With all of the instances of Islamists having destroyed, or planning to destroy, other cultures’ historical religious artifacts because they consider them idolatrous (e.g., the Bamiyan Buddha statues) – we now have the spectacle of Muslims worshipping an old couch.
Of course, they’d deny actually worshipping the couch. Evidently, they do not comprehend that this is what they are doing, but their behavior speaks for itself.
Reportedly, some Pakistani Muslims collect and idolize dangerous artifacts from their country’s nuclear weapons program in much the same way.