[cogman10]

> I don't have it bookmarked but he did teach that and had his friend Lajevardi whom he supported and praised carry it out.

Look, I'm simply not going to believe this claim without evidence.

You are presenting terrible practices in Iran that I disagree with, but that wasn't your original claim.

From the links you've given, rape was because political prisoners were believed to be slaves. That's a despicable and gross practice. It is not, however "school girls should be raped before they are executed for not wearing hats so that they can't get into heaven". The reason for the rape of prisoners was because the prisoners were viewed as slaves, not to keep them from heaven (from what I've read).

> If this is moderation then what does fundamentalism look like?

Relative to the region. Iran has been brutal to it's dissidents and enemies of the state.

However, if you compare the rights of women under Iran vs Saudi Arabia, you'll end up finding that women in Iran have more rights and freedoms. That's what relative means.

I'm not here to defend Khamenei. The reason I pushed back was because, as I said, you don't need to lie about someone you don't like. These are the facts you should present and represent. Talk about how Iran rapes political enemies. That is a horrible practice. But the extreme "He said to rape girls without hijabs and then kill them to keep them from heaven" is just a lie. Hell, you can pretty accurately say "He taught that political prisoners are slaves, which his government used to justify raping female prisoners". That's a true statement that makes him look horrible.

[_DeadFred_]

It looks like it was the previous Ayatollah who was Khamenei's religious teacher, but this one could easily have corrected things but instead chose to defend the practice/practitioners and never on the occasion of abuse over decades chose to correct the interpretation.

"such as the rape of virgin girls prior to their execution, were conducted in a systematic way and were based on the interpretation of an order by Ayatollah Khomeini (1979-1989)"

So his spiritual teacher ordered it with the vague cop-out by someone else that 'maybe it was misinterpreted' yet even though his Islamic police were raping for decades he never corrected what his teacher/spiritual leader said/meant.

Undisputed facts: it happened and the people doing it thought that it was sanctioned by the Ayatollah. Even though it happened for decades, this Ayatollah never corrected people that they had misunderstood. Did defend his Islamic police and did on occasions when they inflicted the violence after him basically saying “Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?”.

Decades and decades of rape, and of government officials thinking this is the official Islamic position, and he NEVER chose to say otherwise even though his Islamic police were acting on it.

I'm throttled after this but I believe it was his official policy, and nothing indicates otherwise. There was systemic rape and he defended/protected those doing it and never corrected the believed edict from his predecessor. Also it is extremely rare to get these edicts externally. We only have what I pointed out because an insider (Ayatollah Montazeri) was trying to defend his reputation after word got out of the justification for rape by Khomeini.

[selimthegrim]

I know someone who was in prison with Lajevardi in the 70s and the latter was an asshole even then according to him so I believe this