The Ayatollah’s heir apparent — a profile

Press, 27 December 1985, Page 15

The Ayatollah’s heir apparent — a profile

By

AZHIR/TEIMOURIAN

Ayatollah Hosain-Ali Montazeri, who has been elected in Teheran by an Assembly of Experts (proKhomeiny theologians) to be Iran’s future Guardian Theologian or supreme leader after Ayatollah Khomeiny, has acquired the reputation of being a well-meaning simpleton who ought not to be in politics. He is the village mullah, cast upon higher planes by the tide of events. this is not completely without its attractions in revolutionary Iran. The image may, to some extent, be a cultivated one. He was born in 1925 into a farming family in the small town of Najafabad, near the city of Isfahan, in central Iran. His father wanted him to be a mullah and him to the shrike city of Qum,

later to be the centre of the country’s Islamic revolution. There, he apparently displayed some talent for theological discourse and was appointed to a junior teachng position by Grand Ayatollah Boroujerdi, his. former teacher who had risen to preeminence in the world of Shi’ism. There, too, he met a fiery cleric, Ruhollah Khomeiny, also from the margins of the central Iranian desert, with romantic notions about the golden age. of Islam in the deserts of Arabia 1300 years ago. The friendship between the two blossomed and Montazeri became a disciple for life. It is this relationship to which he owes his present success. In 1974, when Khomeiny, now a Grand Ayatollah, lived in exile in

Iraq and . plotted the downfall of the Shah, Montazeri was arrested and tortured by the political police, SAVAK. His treatment apparently caused him a minor nervous disorder which stays with him and served him as a badge of service to the Revolution. He was freed in 1978, when turmoil was sweeping the country, and the tide of the revolution seemed unstoppable. He had, by then, become established in the mind of the zealots as one of the most prestigious clerical supporters of Khomeiny and flew to Paris, the new place of residence for the exiled ayatollah, to consult him about their next step. There he was appointed the chairman of a : new body which Khomeiny set up: the Supreme Council of the Revolution, though he n&ver became the

moving spirit of that body. After the fall of the liberal government of Dr Shahpour Bakhtiar in February, 1979; Montazeri was elected chairman of the first Assembly of Experts, some 90 clerics who had the task of devising a constitution for the new regime. Again, he was completely over-shadowed by younger clerics and became a subject of daily ridicule in the millions of homes for being seen napping on television during the most crucial debates or for making irrelevant remarks. Today, he is generally referred to by ordinary Iranians in their private conversations as the “Tom Cat," not to cast any aspersions on

his personal morals, but to express the alienation of the speaker from the regime as a whole. The expression began with a popular television cartoon of. the Italian tale, Pinnochio, in which a sly, roundfaced cat bore a physical resemblance to Ayatollah Khomeiny’s most favoured disciple. He lives in a modest house in Qum, and receives a stream of officials and zealots who cannot secure a meeting with the ailing, 83-year-old Khomeiny. He is still the subject of the affection of many of the regime’s remaining supporters, who love bis simplicity and his accessibility. According to his father, who lived to see the Revolution. Hosain-Ali’s ideal

is to work on a farm and live in a traditional mud-brick house.

Another source of difficulty for the future reign of Ayatollah Montazeri will come from millions of deyout Shi’ites who support the Grand Ayatollahs, of whom there are about six in the country. These Muslims do not accept Montazeri as senior enough in theological achievement, and regard his elevation to the highest ground as a political move unacceptable in the world of religion. Already, among them, there is a widely observed movement to pay as little tax as possible to “Khomeiny’s usurper state.” A group of their clerical leaders, who call themselves the Free Clergy, have distributed tracts in. Teheran and the provinces denouncing the elevation of “this ordinary teacher”

as an insult to Islam. Ayatollah Montazeri is sometimes described by foreign observers as a pragmatic — and a relatively liberal — figure. I cannot think of any evidence to support the claim, apart from some of his exhortations to the Revolutionary Guards not to arrest innocent people without good, legal reasons or his advice that technocrats who did not actively oppose the Islamic Republic ought to be allowed to remain in their jobs. In a country where the possession of a cassette of songs by a woman singer constitutes proof of being a counter-revolutionary there are many “good” legal grounds for arresting people. In any case, the Guards have not paid much attention to what Montazeri bjas said in the past

Furthermore, an examination of some of his recent remarks' sboi dispel any notions of liberalist pragmatism from the mind “ observer. Note, for exampie-J™*?, sentences of his on 1 - as reported by the °rga the state, the Islamic Repubhc newspaper “The people ’L, defeat the Jewish rac ® . people of Qum. I ass “ r l i X be the youth of Qum, that you ~ ... i conquerors of-dear ' contmue the fiveyear over