Boreal

FAREWELL POSTINGS

Neda

April 10, 2025

Neda! I forgot Neda! How could I forget Neda? Last night I went to be bed quite pleased with myself after a quick review of a print copy of Farewell Postings only to wake up in the middle of night with Neda starring back at me.

January 23, 1982 – June 20, 2009

She lies in the Tehran street with her headscarf half-off, blood pooling around her jeans and white sneakers.

“Don't be afraid, Neda dear, don't be afraid,” a white-haired man says desperately in Persian. Another man presses on her chest, trying to keep her alive.

Scarlet blood gushes from her nose and mouth and courses across her pale face. Men and women scream in horror as they realize she is dead or dying.

CAIRO — The Associated Press, Monday, Jun. 22, 2009

Neda was shot by a sniper during a peaceful demonstration in favour of fair elections. Despite not being the end of the world—as far as we know— it was in keeping with an admonition of Muhammad, quoted earlier, about killing young people, whom he accused of propagating “foolish thoughts and ideas.” He said to kill them wherever you find them (echoing Allah), and be amply rewarded on Judgement Day for doing so.

2:191 Kill them wherever you find them and drive them out from wherever they drove you out. Sedition is worse than slaughter. Do not fight them at the Sacred Mosque until they fight you at it. If they fight you there kill them. Such is the reward for the unbelievers.

The killing of Neda may have been Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran’s way of warning the demonstrators he was ready to kill them all, as he would make clear in a subsequent speech where he quoted Allah about slaughter being preferable to sedition. Should he decided on slaughter to avoid his faith-based government being toppled, like Khomeini before him, he will call upon the theocracy’s equivalent of a private army of more than a million zealots, the Revolutionary Guards, to do the killing.

So far, the Guards, in dealing with a new challenge to the rule of the Ayatollahs, the hijab protest, have tried to impress upon recalcitrant wearers, and their male supporters, of the need for them to cover their hair in public by not killing them, but by blinding them in one eye.

Iran protests: Victims shot in eyes hold on to hopes. BBC April 3, 2023

When I first met Abbas, I expressed the view that, with Khomeini’s victory, a progressive Islam for Iran might be in the cards. He was not of that opinion. Islam was now ruled by ruthless religious fanatics, he said. Things could only get worse, and stay that way for a long time. He pointed to the Catholic Church’s dominance in Europe and how many centuries it took to break that stranglehold. He held out more hope for Saudi Arabia because they were not ruled by a theocracy, therefore could change with the times. How right he was.

SpaceX mission lifts off with former NASA astronaut, three paying customers... the mission is making history as stem cell researcher Rayyanah Barnawi becomes the first woman from Saudi Arabia to travel to space. CNN May 22, 2023

Ali Al Qarni, another Saudi astronaut on this historic mission (the first Muslim in space was Saudi), at a news briefing said: "We are holding hands, we are working together for the betterment of humanity and just trying to innovate.” WOW!

The Prophet would be impressed, but for all the wrong reasons. For example, that a Muslim woman would spend days unveiled in close proximity of men to whom she is not related or married, to do science with no partition separating them. This is clearly an innovation in the religion for which the Saudis should be praised for they did it in spite of Muhammad’s admonition that “every innovation is a misguidance and every misguidance goes to Hell fire.”

In Paradise, Muhammad will be given, by a grateful God, an impressive mansion by an immense lake, the Kauthar, along with the river that feeds it, also referred to as the Kauthar. Allah will prevent him from offering some of his former companions water from the lake because, to quote Muhammad quoting God, “they introduced new things into the religion after you.”

Narrated Abdullah:

The Prophet said, "I am your predecessor at the Lake-Fount (Kauthar) and some men amongst you will be brought to me, and when I will try to hand them some water, they will be pulled away from me by force whereupon I will say, 'O Lord, my companions!' Then the Almighty will say, 'You do not know what they did after you left, they introduced new things into the religion after you.'"

Bukhari 88.173

Can we be clearer on the concept? The current Saudi leadership offers hope that Islam can be reformed, and damn the Ayatollahs.