What is happening in Iran today is a consequence of forty-seven years of imposing an ideology on people and calling it religion to rally the ignorant masses. Those uninformed and often uneducated are easily manipulated and convinced that an ideology and a wrongful interpretation of a religion are based on the word and rule of God. In countries where the population is religious since birth and religion is innate and intuitive, invoking God captures listening souls and closes the way to inquire or ask questions because the people fear blasphemy due to reasoning, questioning, research, or examination of facts. Pragmatism is seen as a refusal of divine rule and power, and secularism is defined as blasphemy and disbelief. A secular person is called an atheist. The best way to convince people, brainwash them, and make them accept the power’s thinking and ideology is to attribute what they say to God and the Prophet. In many of these dictatorships, illiteracy is encouraged, and the country often has a high rate of illiterate people who can’t read or write, and illiterates with degrees.

The Iranian people finally realized that they had been lied to, oppressed, and sought freedom from a brutal regime and the murderous power. Prisons are filled with people guilty of the crime of opinion or thought, and too often, women who dared to show their hair. No legal trials, no defense or lawyers, but a group of men who condemn people to death without a chance of defense, a valid accusation, a crime committed, or any legitimacy on their part.  It is hard to believe that this happened and is still happening in the twenty-first century. You would think you traveled in time to medieval Europe, the Dark Ages, or some uncivilized region where people lack basic rules, structure, knowledge of God, or human laws.

The rejection of injustice and despair pushed the people to demonstrate in the streets, and the government answered by murdering them by tens of thousands, assassinating them to keep power. A genocide against their own who refuse a bloody ideology that qualifies to compete with Nazism and Stalinism. 

They pretend that they are Muslims, while the person they called, and still call, their supreme leader, Khomeini, states in his book that a father who marries his daughter before she reaches puberty will go to paradise and declared legal age for marriage for girls at nine years old, encouraging the abuse of women and pedophilia. Stealing from little girls their childhood and their innocence, condemning them to a cruel nightmare that God did not want for them, with the world watching and not reacting.

Every regime of this sort hijacks a religion to brainwash the population and justify its crimes. No religion justifies or confirms what they do. Just like Catholicism does not agree with the power of the Medieval clergy, or what Jozef Tiso did during WWII, none of them went by the teachings of Jesus. Judaism also would not accept the violence in the Middle East, which opposes the teachings of Abraham and Moses. Islam also condemns terrorism and the brutal dictatorships in countries like Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and many others that claim that Islam is their religion and call their countries Muslim Nations.

It is sad to see them justify their crimes by Islam, while they know as much as the world knows that everything they say and do is against Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. These leaders claim Islam as their religion and the Prophet Mohammed as their beacon, their guide, and model, but do not follow any of his teachings. The Prophet’s biography states that when he established the first community of believers, Madina had neither a prison nor a religious police force. He did not persecute women or allow any oppression against them.

Islam gave women respect and rights, like the right to work, vote, manage their finances and assets, divorce, and inherit. They had a voice, could express themselves, and argue for their rights as well as men did. These countries have governments with an obsession with women and treat them with disrespect, humiliation, and oppression. They declare by law that women are minor citizens and men’s property. In some of these countries, women can’t drive, work, vote, or own property. Marital abuse is not a crime, and if a woman is a victim of rape, she does not have the right to press charges because it is her fault. There is no verse in scripture that says women must cover the way they are forced to, and no mention of covering in specific colors such as black, blue, or others.

Their rulers keep power for life, either kings or presidents; they stay in power until they die, and even the presidents name their sons to inherit power. They oppress, kill in cold blood, and execute with no law or trial or crime, while the Prophet himself never imposed himself on anyone and did not stay in charge of his people as long as these rulers who call themselves Muslims, while they are obviously not. Their brutality and cruelty contradict all three religions of God. The prophet Mohammad, they claim to follow, was compassionate, merciful, tolerant, generous, open to discussion, and respected men and women equally. The Quran states in chapter 3, verse 159:

“It is out of Allah’s mercy that you ˹O Prophet˺ have been lenient with them. Had you been cruel or hard-hearted, they would have certainly abandoned you. So pardon them, ask Allah’s forgiveness for them, and consult with them in ˹conducting˺ matters. Once you make a decision, put your trust in Allah. Surely Allah loves those who trust in Him”. Quran 3:159

The Prophet was instructed by God to consult with his people, and God describes him as lenient. Which one of these so-called religious leaders possesses any of these qualities or acts according to the scripture or the prophetic tradition?

What they preach and have been spreading in the world to indoctrinate the people is no religion but an ideology of ignorance, hate, and violence. There is no Judaism, Christianity, or Islam in what they preach.

What has been happening in countries like Iran is a shame, an insult to Islam and any human soul who believes in God, morals, ethics, and humanism. The laws are not based on Sharia, as they claim, but on the ruler’s interpretation, which asserts divine authority, as in Ancient Egypt under Pharaoh.

The real meaning of Sharia, which means law in Arabic, is a set of laws based on rules and regulations based on the Quran that were revealed to the prophet in Madina when he started the first community of believers as a guidance in daily life in matters like family laws, marriage, child custody, adoption, divorce, inheritance, finances, business transactions, contract laws, property laws, ownership, legal rights, and women rights. It is a sort of legal code to go by; it is not what these people’s ideology or the media depict.

Some interpretations differ from one culture to another, and secular countries go by the legal code written by men that is often based on ethics inspired by the scripture, but it never resembles the brutalities of these countries ruled by autocracy and theocracy based on lies, oppression, dictatorship, and violence.

 The people are desperate for freedom and human rights and are asking the world for help. Many other countries are living the same nightmare, also for decades, and the pain of women and little girls must be heard and taken into serious consideration.