Thursday nights are sacred nights, and English-speaking students at the institute would all gather to recite their prayers. When I was invited to attend this event for the first time, I saw Sheikh Mansour Leghaei, the former Sydney-based cleric who had just been deported from Australia. Even though I had never met him before, he hugged me very hard once he heard that I was from Australia, and wanted to get to know me better. He began to criticize and curse the Australian government for deporting him. Two months later, I bumped into him on the street. He greeted me and pointed to a government building and said, “These people know me. If you need anything just come here.” I later discovered that the building he pointed to was an office for the Iranian intelligence services. I never saw Mr. Leghaei again, and today he prides himself on being one of my most ruthless critics.
I began to change drastically while studying at Al-Mahdi. Many things occurred before my very eyes during the first few months of my studies that proved to me that the Iranian regime was indeed a corrupt system. Female students, while segregated in female-only institutes, were regularly sexually assaulted by Islamic clerics, and administrators of the educational institutes who had access to students’ portfolios preyed on them by accessing their details to find out whether a female student was single, divorced, or married.
On the third floor of the Al-Mahdi Institute, which I studied and resided in, elderly Islamic studies students from India and Pakistan would engage in sexual activities in the empty dorms with young male Azerbaijani students. One of these young men, who has now developed into a prominent scholar in Azerbaijan, was referred to as “Motorbike,” because “he would give anyone a ride” when most teachers and students were worshipping in the lower ground floor mosque. The piety of the students was judged based on their loyalty to the regime and its supreme leader Ali Khamenei, and not by good actions. I realized that if you were a proud and outspoken patriot who reported to the intelligence agencies about other students, you could get away with literally anything.
The male teachers in this institute also preyed on younger male students. I remember asking one of my teachers, Mr. Behbehani, for the Wi-Fi password and he responded saying, “Open it so that I can give it to you.” When I gave him a death stare, he said, “Open your Wi-Fi on your phone so that I can give you the password.” He was exposing his vulgar nature indeed, as he was in fact referring to his desire to sexually assault me.
One of the disgraceful incidents that has been buried and is never mentioned within Al-Mahdi Institute involved one of my former friends, Mohammad, aged 27, from Nepal. He had spent at least five years studying a 6–12-month Farsi and Islamic Studies program at Al-Mahdi due to him being tongue-tied from birth. He needed extra time to improve his pronunciation of the language. During this time, he got to know a young girl aged 16, who was the daughter of a religious martyr killed during a visit to Iraq. Mohammad was dark skinned, dressed like an American rapper with baggy jeans and extra-large shirts, and also spoke English. Regardless of his difficulty in speech, he did attract the eyes of many Iranian women who admired westerners, especially those who had the “American style.” Mohammad ended up impregnating the 16-year-old girl in 2008, and was instantly expelled from Al-Mahdi Institute and deported back to Nepal, not as a form of punishment, but to remove him from the scene of the investigation and lessen the level of shame that was about to shower upon the institute. The institute then entered into a financial arrangement with the girl’s parents and settled the case with 40,000,000 Iranian rials, less than $15,000 USD, considering the Iranian economic situation. Her parents agreed not to approach the media regarding this incident as it would bring shame to the religion. But Mohammad was not happy that he was deported, so he wrote a letter to the Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, asking him to intervene and allow him back into Iran to complete his Islamic studies. Months later, Mohammad was back in Iran from Nepal and continued his studies as though none of this ever happened.
With all of this corruption taking place before me, a struggle remained within me to accept it as normality, both religiously and culturally. Therefore, I began to justify everything I saw although I knew deep down that it was wrong – according to my Australian upbringing, of course. However, I was in Iran, and on my way to becoming an Islamic scholar; therefore, I put my Australian values aside, not willingly, but because I had been brainwashed to.
My Encounter with Iran’s Supreme Leader
In October 2010, Ali Khamenei visited the Iranian Holy City of Qum for the first time in ten years. At the time, I was studying at Al-Mahdi Institute. I was infatuated with Khamenei and his “aura”; I was a follower of his teachings and loved his existence. I was approached by the dean of students at the time, and was asked to meet with a cleric in the Imam Khomeini University, located in front of the main “Jihad Roundabout” in Bajak, the Holy City of Qum. I attended the university and met with the cleric who was the main motivational speaker of the Iranian Sepah, also known as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. He invited me to attend a gathering in the Holy Shrine of Qum, where the supreme leader Ali Khamenei would be delivering a speech to scholars and students of the Islamic seminary. The plan was to take a student from every country, and I was chosen to represent the students from Australia.
I attended the event, with around 500 other people from Iran and abroad. The Quran was recited as we all waited patiently for Khamenei to deliver his short speech. When refreshments were served, I was seated exactly thirty-three seats away from Khamenei himself. I counted the seats as I was enamored by his character and personality. When the event had finished, I inquired how I would be able to get in touch with Khamenei himself. My former Iranian-American friend, Mr. Bagheri, assisted me in writing a letter to Khamenei, as I had not yet mastered the Farsi language. The lines of my letter were filled with praise and respect towards him and his status as leader. I took the opportunity to introduce myself and my humble projects and activities. At the bottom of the letter, I included my contact details and the names of eminent ayatollahs who could verify the content of the letter. I handed the sealed letter to the brother of the late Ayatollah Ahmadi Faqih, and requested that he hand it to Khamenei in the upcoming Friday prayers, as they travelled from Qum to Tehran to attend the Friday sermon each week.
A month later, I received a call from Khamenei’s office in Qum. The caller greeted me and requested that I visited the office located in Safa’iyeh Street, and that it was with regards to the letter that I had written. After my classes had ended for the day, I raced to the office of Khamenei to see what the response was. Eagerly waiting, I was sent to an office located in the underground level, where I saw a humble and elderly man waiting for me in his office. I introduced myself, and he opened the safe and reached for an envelope. He told me to take the envelope to the Islamic bank located on the same street, in front of the office of Ayatollah Makarem. Although I did not request money in my letter, I accepted it as a blessing from my then “spiritual leader”. When I reached the Islamic bank, I handed the document that was in the envelope over to the female bank teller. Noticing that I was a foreigner, she asked me if I had come with a vehicle. I answered no, I came on foot. She advised me to hire a taxi as I should not be carrying this amount of money on my person in public. I did not know how much the amount was, but I began to feel that Khamenei, or his office, wanted to gift me a large amount of cash. The bank teller took a cloth bag and began to fill it with stacks of money. After the transaction was completed, Khamenei’s office had gifted me an amount equal to $10,000 USD.
It was the first time I had received such a large amount of money. I purchased comfortable sleeping mattresses for myself and eight of my friends in the dorm. I gifted $2000 to a struggling teacher of mine who was getting married the following week, and