Posted on 12/22/2009

The news of Ayatollah Montazeri’s passing hit me like a shock.
I still can’t quite believe that millions of his admirers are carrying his pure body through the streets of Qom, bearing him to the shrine for burial.

I knew he had been unwell; I knew he had grown old. But somehow it felt as if there were an unspoken pact with fate that he would never leave us. Only a month or two ago, in a short piece, I had asked him to step forward and help establish truth-seeking and national reconciliation committees in this country.

I was certain that “the successful guarantee of such a project would be possible only if figures of the stature and integrity of Ayatollah Montazeri stepped forward and pledged their personal credibility to its success.”

I was certain that “just as he never turned anyone away, if he were to approach others to advance this project, there would be no one who would refuse to join him wholeheartedly.”

I hoped—and I was sure—that “the honor of restoring bonds of friendship and peace among the people, and returning tranquility to our country, would be recorded forever in the history of this land under the name of the most honorable figure of our contemporary era, Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri.”

His integrity of character, his vast forbearance, and his honorable defense of all victims of violence throughout these years had turned Ayatollah Montazeri into the moral backbone our society needed to cross over to a humane, rights-based order. He was a true symbol of the defense of human rights, an embodiment of humanity, and the refuge and sanctuary of those crushed by oppression.

Parliamentarians like to claim that “the Majles is the house of the nation.” But experience in our country tells a different story: it was Ayatollah Montazeri’s house—his beit—that became the people’s true home.

There, my mother and my wife, both condemned to death, could petition for mercy. There, he received the families and mothers of those killed in mass executions. There, he protested the injustices inflicted on the Bahá’í religious minority. There, he embraced wronged reformists, even those infatuated with Khomeini’s power who, once cast out, found his door open again. There, he grieved for the members of a group whose hands were stained with his own beloved son’s blood. And there, he reduced to nothing the pomp of the highest authority of the state—a state for which he himself had suffered prison and hardship for years—when he resigned his position rather than remain silent in the face of mass executions.

He was the champion of overcoming rigid ideology, superstition, doctrinaire religiosity, and the lust for power. He would neither close his eyes to the massacre of dissenters in the name of doctrinal purity, nor would he, for the sake of power, place his seal of approval on the criminal excesses of rulers. Pride and arrogance could not keep him from acknowledging the errors of the past—those of the system and its leadership.

Ayatollah Montazeri was the people’s sanctuary.

Modern Iranian history has no replacement for him. The void he leaves is irreparable; the grief of losing him is searing, full of pain and sorrow. His absence will always be felt.

Human-rights advocates, the fighters for freedom and peace, and his kin and survivors have lost not only a spiritual father, but also their surest and most enduring refuge.

If his beit now stands empty, Ayatollah Montazeri has taken up residence in the hearts and souls of millions. His house has expanded to the size of those countless hearts and minds across the world.

Ayatollah Montazeri—the man, his humane ideals, and the memory of his steadfast protection of the oppressed—will remain forever inscribed on the future pages of this nation’s history.

His defense of political prisoners of every persuasion, creed, and era made him the perpetual hero of human rights in our land and the spiritual father of this movement.

How deeply he is missed.

With respect,
Reza Fani Yazdi

Tuesday, December 22, 2009