Leading the demonstrations

Translated by M. B. Khoshnevisan

2021-11-30

When the Eid al-Fitr came to an end, it was announced that the demonstrations would be held from the same location for more three other days. The issue was also advertised for two days. On the sixteenth day, the military occupied all the streets of Tehran since early in the morning.

It was dawn when some of the guys came to our house and said, "Haj Agha, it was announced the day before yesterday that they want to shoot Mr. Qaffari, so he will not come today and you will come in his place." Since I already had the experience of doing so, I wondered if I should accept or not; So I consulted the holy Qur'an. An ayah came the meaning of which is: "So go forth with My servants by night; surely you will be pursued." I did this at dawn. "So go forth with My servants by night" has been addressed to Hazrat Musa ibn Omran (AS) who was asked to take and leave the population of the Israelites. "And surely you will be pursued". This ayah gave me strength, because I was not at the level of the elders, and I was a young clergy and needed a power that the Qur'an gave me. So I accepted and told the guys that I would come. When I left home, my Niyat or intention was that the bullet that they want to shot at that person, would hit at me and I prepared myself for martyrdom. Now that I remember that scene, I know that my intention was a complete pure one for God, and there was no other impurity. I along with a number of the mosque guys and the youths who were ready to do such things went to the location of the demonstrations namely Qeitarieh by car. When we arrived there, I saw that the military forces had filled everywhere in a way that the people had no power to chant slogans. So they were walking without saying anything. Thus, at the very bottom of Qeitarieh, which was the beginning of the crowd, I went on top of a truck and chanted "Allah-o Akbar", and people followed me as a cleric and answered "Allah-o Akbar" and after Allah-o Akbar, we chanted "Long live Khomeini" and so on. We continued until the crowd increased and when we reached the middle of the street, people realized that the slogan should only come from here. I had said several times that no one but me has the right to chant slogans and the slogans should come from the same car. The slogan that was chanted had to go to the end of the crowd. I mean, it wasn't like I was chanting and everyone was responding immediately. Rather, I, who chanted, responded piece by piece until the chant went from the beginning of the crowd to the end of the crowd. And with this quality, it took a few minutes to chant a slogan. When the previous slogan was over, I changed the slogan. Of course, I did not have a slogan myself and they gave it to me.

Source: Mahdiyyeh, Hussein (ed.), (2018), The emigrant to God (Memoirs of the late Ayatollah Moayyedi), Document Center of Islamic Revolution, pp98-100.