“It Was Not Your Fault” – Hajj Rahman Altayeb’s Ironic Apology to Ayatollah Khomeini

Hajj Rahman Altayeb, a fighter, prisoner, freed man, and brother of two martyrs, released an audio file in response to events in Iran since the triumph of the Islamic Revolution, offering an ironic apology to Ayatollah Khomeini under the title “It Was Not Your Fault.”

He stated that we still have not understood what made us prisoners of your ambitions, how poorly we understand religion, and that we think religion should make all decisions for us, saying: “It was our fault that we didn’t understand why you were exiled one day, but 15 years later you were brought back safe and sound with the rank of Imamate to seize power.

It was our fault that when they asked you in the Iranian sky after 15 years of exile what feeling you had, and you calmly said ‘nothing,’ we did not understand what you meant.

It was our fault that when they brought you to Tehran in a motorcade with a special Air France plane and French government intelligence officers held your hand so you wouldn’t fall from the stairs, we couldn’t see who we were truly dealing with.

It was our fault that when you strolled through the streets of Tehran in an American Chevrolet Blazer, the Great Satan’s car, with that foreign license plate and at the hand of your English ally, we didn’t understand what was going on.

It was our fault that when they said your picture had fallen on the moon, at first we laughed but two minutes later naively peeked from behind the curtain to see if this had really happened, cursed be our limited intellect.

It was our fault that in the name of being revolutionary, we closed our eyes to executions, crimes, and senseless massacres and confiscation of innocent people’s property, thinking that God would be pleased with us this way.

It was our fault that when you said we want to export Islam to Muslim countries, we didn’t understand what you meant and why we should carry coals to Newcastle.

It was our fault that we remained silent about the hostage-taking of American Embassy employees. Actually, it was our fault that we didn’t understand why you held the hostages captive for 444 days and why you released them on the exact day Reagan was sworn in as President of the United States.

It was our fault that when you dragged our classmates and neighbors, whom we would have given our lives for until that day, to firing squads and destroyed the best young people of the country, we turned our faces away and refused to see.

It was our fault that when on the first day you said you would make water and electricity free and shortly after said the economy is ass business, we couldn’t put two and two together and understand how far off track we were. It was our fault that despite one million deaths in a war you yourself started with the slogan “the path to Jerusalem goes through Karbala,” you still beat the war drums, and we didn’t understand that the blood and lives of these people meant nothing to you.

It was our fault that we didn’t understand that when we handed over the country with both hands to an English-speaking Indian-descended person, it was obvious that our lives and these people’s lives would have no value to him and never will. It was our fault that with the very first arrest and beating of our sisters and mothers for mandatory hijab, we didn’t understand that we would reach a point where chained dogs would splash acid on our women’s faces and we would only witness these atrocities and say nothing.

It was our fault that when you shut down newspapers with a single order and imprisoned or executed every voice calling for freedom in the name of counter-revolution, we didn’t understand that you had come to silence the voice of freedom. It was our fault that we were colorblind and didn’t understand why the country, within just a few months of your arrival, became stained with the blood of innocent people—Kurds, Turkomans, and Arabs—and the rest of it dressed in mourning for those killed in the dark war.

Yes, we were truly the ones to blame for not understanding how you and your government ignited every sedition in the name of exporting revolution to the Middle East and other parts of the world, spent the nation’s wealth on your ambitions, while we remained consumed with subsidy cuts, dollar price increases, slow internet speeds, Telegram filtering, reformism, elections, rule of law, preserving the JCPOA, and dozens of other diversionary points, and we still have not understood what reality surrounds us.

It is our fault that we still haven’t understood that what made us prisoners of your ambitions is our poor understanding of religion, and that we believe religion should make all our decisions and that we call foolish and imaginary sanctities the very essence of wisdom even in the 21st century, and we even take pride in it.