The hanged of ‘Moharebé’: the origin of the crime against God that plunged Iran into the Middle Ages

Footballer Amir Nasr Azadani has managed to dribble to death at the last second and will not be hanged. He can consider himself lucky, although he has not been exempt from harsh punishment by the Iranian regime. The player, who made headlines around the world during the 2022 World Cup in Qatar when his death sentence was revealed for having supported the demands of the women of his country, will have to serve 26 years in prison after a trial without guarantees like the one that Other defendants have suffered from the demonstrations. Nasr Azadani has come off relatively well, if one can say so, because the Iranian Justice sentenced three people to death on Monday accused of killing several police officers during anti-government protests. These sentences, which can still be appealed, bring the total number of people sentenced to death in relation to the demonstrations to 17. Four have already been executed and another two are on hold, after the Supreme Court rejected their appeals. What all of them have in common is that they have been convicted of ‘moharebé’, a crime that has been dominating the news in Iran for many years and leading international criticism against the country’s Islamic Penal Code. In Spain it is translated as “crime against God”, in the Iranian media as “enemy of God” and in the Anglo-Saxons as “war against God”, “war against God and the State” and “enmity with Allah”. An infraction is almost always equivalent to the death penalty. Related News Standard football No Iranian footballer Amir Nasr Azadani avoids execution, but is sentenced to 26 years in prison for a “crime against God” MZ Iran sentences three other people to death accused of killing several police officers during protests Since it was established in Iran with the historic Islamic Revolution of 1979, more than 400 people have been executed for this crime. Year after year, it is not uncommon to see those convicted of ‘moharebé’ hanged in the public squares of the country, by means of cranes, surrounded by a massive public that witnesses the gloomy spectacle. On Saturday, for example, the victims were Mohammad Mehdi Karami and Seyed Mohammad Hosseini, for participating in the riots in the town of Karaj. The first, 22, was the Iranian-Kurdish karate champion, who had won several national titles and represented his country in international competitions. The second, 20, was an orphan and worked as a volunteer training children. The Sharia It all started on February 11, 1979 in Tehran. This was reported by ABC: «The revolutionary forces have taken the Shah’s palace, the main public buildings, the radio and television. Some 500 people have died, including the head of the Army and the commander of the Imperial Guard. Nothing is known about the prime minister, Shapur Bakhtiar. There are rumors that he has been killed or committed suicide, although the most likely version is that he is hiding somewhere in the country. In any case, the Government of him has ceased to exist ». The Islamic Revolution, the most important political earthquake in recent Iranian history, had triumphed. Historian Eric Hobsbawn called it the first contemporary revolution not to have its roots in the European Enlightenment, a first for 20th-century history. In these more than four decades, however, the republican regime –considered since then the representative of God on Earth– has not found its place in the world, largely due to its confrontations with the United States, Israel and other countries of the European Union, as well as for its controversial abuse of the death penalty for religious reasons, against which numerous international organizations have been fighting since the 1980s. The country’s criminal laws were divided into two categories. On the one hand, the Islamic criminal code, based on the Sharia and which serves as a legislative base, and the ‘Majlis’, a criminal procedure code voted by Parliament. It is true that murder was always the main crime that carries the death penalty, but Iran planned an extensive application of the death penalty, which means that many other charges can be sufficient cause to hang in court. Shah Reza Pahlavi, in 1973 PUBLIC DOMAIN Homosexuals and opposition Among them were drug trafficking, homosexual relationships and acts considered political rebellion. That is why the crime of ‘Moharebé’ is used today, for example, to prosecute and sentence political opponents to death under the pretext of religious crime, in processes in which the accused do not have the right to hire an independent lawyer. Many of these cases, as reported, are based on forced confessions. That is why human rights organizations warn of the “serious risk of mass executions of protesters.” After the revolution, the new republic began to apply Islamic law throughout the country, which functions as a code of conduct for Muslims. The process to get here was violent and surprising, because the fall of the corrupt and dictatorial regime of the Shah of Persia also meant the disappearance of what had been until then the fifth largest army in the world. Muslim social discontent began with the modernizing reforms that Reza Pahlavi had undertaken under strong US influence. This discontent was taken advantage of and channeled by the Shiite clergy, despite the brutal repression carried out by the empire’s police forces. «The repression reaches schizophrenic extremes. The Shah speaks of the mullahs as ‘pigs rolling in their own excrement’. Cassettes with the Ayatollah’s preaching circulate throughout the country, despite the fact that it is a crime to pronounce Khomeini’s name. His son even died tortured. They put him in a cauldron of boiling oil,” ABC reported ten days before Khomeini landed in Tehran after a year in exile. Khomeini was the leader of the revolution that imposed the Sharia The fall of the Shah After months of demonstrations in Tehran and other large cities, Muslims managed to remove Reza Pahlavi from the throne and put an end to 2,500 years of empire. That Khomeini landing on February 11, 1979 triggered the flight of the Shah and the failure of the attempt to maintain a pro-Western regime under Prime Minister Bakhtiar. Two months later, a referendum won with a large majority gave Khomeini the power to proclaim the current Islamic Republic. According to official data, it was supported by 99.9% of the population, which was later endowed with a constitution marked by the ideals of an Islamic government, with the Sharia and the aforementioned “crime against God.” Khomeini continued to impose all the fundamentalist measures that still govern the country today, with revolutionary committees patrolling the streets to enforce behavior and dress codes, which plunged the country into the Middle Ages. What was sold as a modernization was a true return to the past, with the aim of erasing any vestige of Western influence. The new Islamic Iran did not tremble when confronting foreign superpowers, nor did it mind deploying its own repression to eliminate all political opposition in a few years through, among other things, the well-known “crime against God.” . This was also reflected by ABC in July 1981: “The persecuted organization of Islamic Students has lost some three hundred members in the last week, victims of the repression that is plaguing the country.” And in October: “Khomeini is an old and sick man who has sworn eternal hatred to the values ​​of the West.” Since then, Iran has undergone an enormous transformation. It stopped being a rural society and became an urban society. Its population has gone from 37.5 million inhabitants to 86. That means that 45 million inhabitants have been born with the Islamic Republic already established and have no direct memory of a law other than the Sharia. They have never lived without the threat of the ‘moharebé’.