Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is killed in Israeli strike, ending 36-year rule

And? Does it matter? They’re not press that will only post opinions from Iranians. A counter perspective is useful, yes?

I don't have it bookmarked but he did teach that and had his friend Lajevardi whom he supported and praised carry it out. And his Islamic enforcement police regularly engaged in it. And he has defended his Islamic enforcement police the Basij, whose job is to enforce his teachings, when they have conducted systemic rapes.

https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmin...

Here he is defending the practice https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/aug/27/iran-ayatollah...

Amnesty talking about his Basij Islamic enforcement police conducting the practice: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/12/iran-security...

Challenges to his systemic use of rape and if it disqualifies his legitimacy back in 2009 https://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/15/world/middleeast/15iran.h...

2011 Frontline coverage of the practice https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tehranbureau/2011/0...

More coverage of the practice https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1890900/iran-rape-tortu...

In addition to the routine/sactioned religious police rapes how many executions have there been under this moderate? How many women arrested for religious reasons? Under his leadership the death decree against Salman Rushdie was never lifted. How many died of torture in detention after he called for people to be punished? If this is moderation then what does fundamentalism look like?

Hmmm, this may have been a 'mis-interpretation' but it seems odd that it wouldn't, you know, be corrected with a public 'correct' interpretation in all these years and with so much rape being done by religious police serving directly under him. Instead of easily issuing a public statement he defended the rapists indicating that in fact, it was a correct interpretation. https://wncri.org/2015/11/13/female-prisoners-virgins-raped/

"We want to suppress voters under some false boogeyman of 'illegal voters'. You are refusing to give us data which we need to do this, so instead, we'll keep ICE in your cities who have been shown to have no issues with escalating violence, until you do."

I struggle to believe you cannot connect those dots.

In addition, why would ICE enforcement in a city go away because voter rolls are turned over? Is illegal immigration in Minnesota a problem worthy of active enforcement or not?

In other words, oppression of citizenry to advance the efforts of a government to suppress voting that it dislikes.

> 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.

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.