Boreal

The Fractured Nation Interviews

Muhammad Abdullah

Khomeini On Sodomy And Bestiality

Muhammad: For a Muslim father there can be no greater satisfaction than giving your daughter to a deserving older man or cleric. As the Ayatollah Khomeini wrote in the Tahrirolvasyleh, his monumental collection of commentaries on Islamic jurisprudence and morality, “It is better for a girl to marry in such a time when she would begin menstruation at her husband's house rather than her father's home. Any father marrying his daughter so young will have a permanent place in heaven.”

Johnny: The Ayatollah Khomeini—now, there is one holy man with whom I am quite familiar!

Muhammad: We are all very familiar with the great and revered teacher, the Grand Ayatollah Khomeini.

Johnny: This may be a bit off topic—actually, just about this entire conversation has been off topic—but since you quoted the late “great” Ayatollah Khomeini on the subject of how old a girl should be before she is given away in marriage; what do you think of Khomeini’s views on bestiality and the sodomizing of baby girls?

Muhammad: What do you mean? The Ayatollah Khomeini said many things. He is a hero. The Islamic Republic is a tribute to his courage, his determination and clear Islamic thinking. What he did in Iran served as a model for us when the opportunity presented itself for Muslims across Canada to create their own Islamic republic in miniature, the Islamic municipalities. God could not have chosen a better example to follow. He could not have chosen a better  mouthpiece.

Johnny: Yes, but out of that mouth came such statements, statements that struck many people as strange, even by Islamic standards. Take, for example, his views on sodomizing baby girls. I remember his instructions by heart, they were so, so… disgust—disturbing. What I remember him saying was: “A man can have sexual pleasure from a child as young as a baby. However, he should not penetrate; sodomizing the child is OK. If the man penetrates and damages the child then he should be responsible for her subsistence all her life. This girl, however, does not count as one of his four permanent wives. The man will not be eligible to marry the girl’s sister.”

Muhammad: Your point would be?

Johnny: He even had views on sex with animals. For example, his advice on sex with chickens.

Muhammad: Khomeini was nothing if not thorough. You are taking what he wrote out of context. The Tahrirolvasyleh, better known as The Political, Philosophical, Social and Religious Principles of Ayatollah Khomeini, was a monumental achievement, a clear and precise guide for his disciples. They would have understood what the master meant. It was not intended for uninformed unbelievers looking to discredit the faith and one of its revered teachers.

Johnny: Well, what did he mean?

Muhammad: Khomeini was well aware of the voraciousness of a man’s sexual appetite. In fact, the Koran and the Prophet’s, the peace and blessings of God be upon him, instructions for the seclusion of women—the so-called Islamic prison that some writers, mostly dead writers, have claimed Islam is for Muslim women—was for their own protection. These so-called prisons are to protect them from this manly weakness which they are bound to provoke in men other than their husband.

Johnny: What does that have to do with sodomizing baby girls and copulating with chickens?

Muhammad: A good Muslim man can only have sexual relations with his wives, the women to whom he is legally married. What if a wife is not around when an overwhelming urge to copulate comes over him, but a female child is? Allah, The Loving, does not condone the sodomizing of a child, nor does the Ayatollah Khomeini – even under the most intense sexual duress. The revered Ayatollah’s views on the sodomizing of baby girls is meant as a warning to the would-be sodomizer that Allah, The Finder, will expect him to look after the welfare of that child if he damages her in any way. This is a very strong incentive against such an act.

Johnny: How about a cold shower or getting re-acquainted with your right-hand as a means of relieving the sexual tension and sparing the baby girl?

Muhammad: Idiot. Water in the deserts of Arabia, the ancestral home of Islam, was a precious commodity not to be wasted on relieving sexual tension. As for your crude reference to masturbation, the Messenger of God is unequivocal on the subject: “he who masturbates is cursed.” Better to sodomize a baby and pay the price if damage ensues than to be cursed by Allah, The All Seeing, and spend an eternity in hell.

Johnny: Since you put it that way! What about his view on bestiality, specifically sex with chickens as explained by Azar Nafisi in her memoir Reading Lolita in Teheran?

Muhammad: Women are simply not capable of understanding the logic behind the instructions of a great and learned man like the Ayatollah Khomeini. Even the learned and well-read Ayatollah Khomeini could not foresee what questions his disciples would ask. . Quite a few would have come to hear the Master from remote farms and villages, and he did not want God’s mouthpiece to be perceived as ignorant in the ways of peasants and young boys.

Peasant boys coming of age when the only relief of sexual tensions would have been a domesticated animal such as a lamb, a calf—yes, even a chicken, though the mechanics of such a union escape me—but the mechanics of such a union would not have escaped a great Islamic scholar like the Ayatollah Khomeini, whose attention to the smallest of details when it came to matters of the flesh, eh… of the faith, is well-known.

Johnny: Sex with chickens; that is mind-boggling, not to say gross.

Muhammad: [showing signs of frustration] Does anyone really care about whether a chicken or any other barnyard animal is used to satisfy a man’s sexual urge? Better than sodomizing a child! The Political, Philosophical, Social and Religious Principles of Ayatollah Khomeini is not a guide to sex with barnyard animals, but a guide to what you do with that animal afterwards.

The Ayatollah Khomeini believed that, in some circumstances, by having sex with an animal you had rendered that animal impure for consumption. The sex with chickens reference was just the Ayatollah imagining a question from a student about whether a chicken could be eaten after penetration; whether it had become impure in the eyes of Allah, the Provider, and whether eating it would offend Him.

Johnny: So what can you do with a chicken after you have sex with it?

Muhammad: According to our cultured and learned Ayatollah Khomeini, neither the man who has copulated with the chicken nor his immediate family or his next-door neighbours can eat of that chicken’s meat but it is acceptable for a neighbour who lives two doors away.

Johnny: Interesting.

Muhammad: The learned Ayatollah Khomeini did not come by his knowledge and scholarship by ignoring the more intimate details of human existence. He pondered these relationships—man-child, man-animal relationships—which lesser minds in the decadent West ignored, so as to ensure that even these relationships did not deviate from any behaviour that was acceptable to Allah, Lord of the Universe. He was an example for us all who are interested in living our lives as Allah, The Watchful, intended to the smallest detail.

Johnny: An example indeed!

Muhammad: Anyway, what has all this got to do with The Fracture?

Johnny: Not much, except perhaps that Islam’s attitude toward sex and women in particular exacerbated the tensions between followers of the Prophet and followers of other would-be saviours.

Muhammad: There is only one saviour; He is Allah, The Forgiving. Those who don’t believe in and fear him “shall burn forever in the fire of Hell. They are the vilest of all creatures,” so said Allah, The Merciful.