Please avoid the way of Ayatollahs in Israel

The article 301 of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s penal code states that if a non-Muslim kills a Muslim, the punishment will be death, but if the opposite were to happen, it’s only imprisonment. That’s the way of Ayatollahs. By leaving Iran, I intentionally escaped the sovereignty of such stone-minded people, who believed a deity had given them a sacred mission and bestowed upon them absolute sovereignty over others, thus allowing them to pursue their goals by doing any mean. They saw themselves as superior human beings, and an inferior person like me had to exit the border in order to have a normal life. I escaped religious people who couldn’t believe irreligious people exist; and that was the problem. People like us were invisible to them, hence we couldn’t have any rights since we were basically non-existent. In fact, even if you were religious but interpret the holly text differently, you still were in the no-rights zone. A typical function of a theocracy.

But I’m not so naive as to think that only Islam can cause such circumstances. Any set of beliefs based on dogma that justifies any phenomenon by attributing it to that dogma can produce the same results if they gain absolute sovereignty over a territory. You don’t necessarily need Ayatollahs to create such a hell. Actually, the term ‘Ayatollah’ is highly formal and refers only to senior Shia Muslim clerics. In everyday conversation, Iranians refer to the clerical class as “the Akhonds”.

Experience taught me the hard way that being an Akhond is essentially a way of life rather than being a member of a religious-political class. Not all Akhonds are Muslim and not all of them are official clergymen. They can be found in all kinds of societies, dressed in all kinds of ways. To me, anyone who sees themselves as so mighty that they start to see others as inferior beings who must kneel before them is an Akhond. Those who enjoy igniting conflicts in the name of the sacred mission they believe they are on are Akhonds. Only someone who doesn’t enjoy killing can bring peace, and for this reason Akhonds cannot be peacekeepers. It may be too controversial, but the way I see it, folks like Ben Gevir and Smotrich are definitely Akhonds. All I’m saying is, be careful not to follow in the footsteps of the Ayatollahs in Israel. The Middle East does not need another theocracy.