Despite all the tension between myself and the Islamic seminaries, I wasn’t a noticeable figure. This meant that most high-ranking officials had not heard of me or my situation. I approached a well-known scholar who knew Makarem’s son, Masoud, and asked him to endorse me in Makarem’s office. I despised Makarem, but working for him meant that I had a strong backing in Iran and that I would be protected.
Grand Ayatollah Makarem’s office assigned me as the Head of the English Department in 2011-2012. I was responsible for the translation, editing, and publication of Makarem’s books and lessons, along with what was published on his website and social media accounts. I worked with two other colleagues, both named Mohammad, which made us three Mohammads. One day a caller to the department requested to speak with Mohammad, and all three of us went to the telephone at the same time.
Grand Ayatollah Makarem saw that I wasn’t only a translator who translated from Arabic to English, but also a scholar who eloquently crafted the context of his works in English, as I understood the subject matter. Other translators would translate word for word without giving too much importance to the fluency or context of the subject. He was very impressed with the feedback he received from his English-speaking followers on my work. However, I never placed my name on any of the works published because my critics would surely pressure Makarem to fire me.
My position in the office of Grand Ayatollah Makarem led me to becoming a regular guest on national television, preaching Sharia Law and presenting a series interpreting and explaining jurisprudential teachings in English, targeting Muslims in the West. Although many students knew that I was an opponent of the Iranian regime, the Iranian public didn’t, and neither did Ayatollah Makarem’s office. My previous preaching of Sharia Law on television presented me as a reasonable scholar, a fundamentalist fanatic, just as they desired.
The Iranian intelligence service does not generally pressure nor interrogate employees of ayatollahs affiliated with the regime, so I gathered that, because I worked for Makarem, the Iranian authorities assumed that I had changed my political views and preaching.
Makarem placed me on an extremely high salary compared to all of his other employees. I was possibly the second highest paid individual throughout his entire jurisdiction. I was receiving approximately $500 a fortnight, with gifts of $1000 on celebration days. Even though $500 a fortnight doesn’t sound like a lot of money to those living in the West, it is a very large amount compared to the student allowance granted by the university, which equated to less than $30 a month. The following are a few electronic payment receipts sent to my email from the headquarters of Grand Ayatollah Makarem Shirazi.
Ayatollah Makarem wanted to buy me as a person, and he saw me as a potential asset for his empire. I also used my salary to support other students within the university. This was one of the reasons why many began to accuse me of being funded by Israel, the UK, or the USA, because they saw me sponsoring other students without knowing where my income came from – and neither could I disclose it.
Imprisoned for Exposing a Scam Artist
Towards the end of 2012, I was presented with a lengthy English translation of Makarem’s Farsi exegesis of the Quran. I was told to review it and prepare it for publication. I skimmed through the entire work and realized that something wasn’t right. We had been scammed. Makarem’s office had paid a translator over $6000 USD when all he did was copy the Farsi text into Google Translate and forward the English translation from Google. Every page included characters such as “(?)” which indicates that Google Translate didn’t recognize or understand the Farsi word being used.
I was frustrated and demanded that the translator be brought in for questioning. After contacting him, we were told that he was visiting his home town in the USA, and that he would return in 20 days. When the dishonest translator returned to Qum, we called him in for a meeting and, lo and behold, it was a former friend of mine who had just been caught red handed, trying to scam his own Islamic authority whom he considers a “link between humanity and God.” I shall refer to him as Mr. HW.
I looked at Mr. HW and said, “Nice job, buddy!” and he was astonished to see that I was in such a place holding such a position! He came to the meeting thinking he could convince a few Iranians with broken English that the translation was perfect, but to his surprise I had been examining his translated document for the previous 20 days. In an awkward meeting for him, I pointed out a few of the flaws within his translation both to him and his employers. Wishing to stop me from continuing, he claimed that seven other people had translated it with him and that he was not responsible for the entire translation. We demanded that he return the $6000 USD to the office, or that he correct the entire document.Mr. HW was and still is a cleric with close ties to people who are related to the Iranian intelligence services. Before I knew it, and a few days later, I was picked up from the street by four police officers as I left Makarem’s office to go home.
I was thrown into a cell and, before the solider closed the door, I told him to not touch me. He opened the door and held me by my neck, then grabbed hold of my shirt and threw me against the wall, saying, “We made Montazari sit down. Who the hell are you?” Montazari was an opponent of the Islamic regime who was once the second in line to rule Iran after Khomeini. The guard then kicked me in my stomach with his right leg and slapped me very hard across my right eye with his left hand.
This time I was in a different intelligence headquarters, but the same interrogator came to interrogate me. It appeared to me that he was responsible for my case within the intelligence department. After having slept the night in the cell, I was told to wake up by the prison guard and prepare myself for breakfast. I was given a boiled potato. I peeled the skin off and ate the inside of the potato only, placing the potato skin on the crooked steel plate. The interrogator called me into the interrogation room at approximately 8 am. This time I sat on a chair and faced him while he sat on a couch, and no tea or water was offered. He began by asking me what I was doing in Makarem’s office, and I informed him that I was working in the English Department. Up until this stage, I never knew why I was detained, but when he asked me what my job was exactly, I knew that Mr. HW was behind it.
I told the interrogator that my job was to translate from Arabic to English. He said, “No, you also work on Farsi to English.” I denied this, and said that I only work on Arabic to English. Then he said, “You recently worked on a Farsi to English translation” – and this was when it clicked in my mind that Mr. HW had reported me to the intelligence services. I responded, “No, I never worked on this document or translated it. I was simply reviewing someone else’s translation.” He then began to show me documents containing screenshots of my Facebook posts, all containing Farsi translations in blue pen on the side of the paper. I was questioned about every Facebook post he could gather, and then asked why I even had a Facebook account, as Facebook is banned in Iran. My response was, “I saw that the grand Islamic authorities had Facebook accounts, therefore I thought it was legal to have one.” This answer was convenient at the time. The circumstances all began to add up and point at Mr. HW.
Mr. HW was a Facebook friend of mine, my Facebook account was private, and out of my 30 friends on Facebook