The latest assault on our moral sense comes — not for the first time — from Oberlin College, where a certain Professor Mohammad Jafar Mahallati has been teaching since 2007. There are many reasons for Oberlin to fire this man, but let’s start with the fact that Professor Mahallati defended the fatwa by Ayatollah Khomeini, which called for the murder of writer Salman Rushdie, who was stabbed many times on stage in Chautauqua, New York yesterday, because his less-than-flattering depiction of Muhammad constituted “blasphemy.”
Mahallati is listed as a professor of Islamic studies, but bills himself as something even grander – a “professor of peace.” And he has so far managed to resist all attempts to have him dismissed for his deeply disturbing past as a mouthpiece for the Khomeini regime. More on his story is here: “Oberlin College’s ‘Professor of Peace’ urged elimination of Jewish state,” by Benjamin Weinthal, Jerusalem Post, February 27, 2021:
According to a 1989 Reuters report, when asked about the then-supreme leader Ruhollah Khomeini’s fatwa and the “right to put a bounty on someone’s head,” Mahallati replied: “I think all Islamic countries agree with Iran. All Islamic nations and countries agree with Iran that any blasphemous statement against sacred Islamic figures should be condemned.
“I think that if Western countries really believe and respect freedom of speech, therefore they should also respect our freedom of speech. We certainly use that right in order to express ourselves, our religious beliefs, in the case of any blasphemous statement against sacred Islamic figures.”
According to Mohammed Jafar Mahallati, that fatwa urging that Salman Rushdie be killed should.be protected as an exercise of “freedom of speech.” Furthermore, all Islamic nations have agreed that blasphemous statements “against sacred Islamic figures” should be punished in such a manner.
Let’s go over what we already knew about Professor Mahallati before this latest revelation.
The Oberlin administration has continued for years to play down past accusations that Mahallati was involved in crimes against humanity. This accusation was first made in a letter sent to Oberlin’s president in 2020, signed by more than 600 Iranians in exile. Prior to joining Oberlin College in 2007, and before occupying a series of academic posts, Mahallati had been the ambassador to the UN for the Islamic Republic of Iran during the Iranian regime’s 1988 massacre of political prisoners. A report on that letter’s charges is here: “Iranian diplomat turned US professor accused of crimes against humanity,” by Benjamin Weinthal, Jerusalem Post, October 9, 2020:
The letter was written by human rights activists Kaveh Shahrooz and Lawdan Bazargan and was signed by 56 family members of the victims and former political prisoners, as well as 577 other signatories. Shahrooz, a prominent human rights advocate, wrote that: “The killings are now widely seen as constituting crimes against humanity. According to Iran’s second in command at the time, 3,800 prisoners were killed then. The number may be higher.
The letter said that Mahallati’s aim at the UN was to “obfuscate and lie to the international community about mass crimes perpetrated by the Iranian regime.”
Based on no more than a few questions about their political or religious beliefs, prisoners who had already faced (albeit inadequate) trials and sentencing, who had served several years in prison, and who had been subjected to gruesome torture were sent by the Death Commission to hang,” the letter said.
Kaveh Shahrooz continued, writing that “those prisoners who gave an answer unsatisfactory to the Death Commission were sent to a special line and hanged minutes later. My own uncle was among them. To this day, we don’t know where he’s buried,“ adding “as word got out about the killings, Amnesty and other groups began to send letters, telexes, and correspondences to Iranian officials. So, there’s simply no way to believe that Iran’s Ambassador the UN was unaware that this was happening.”
Shahrooz said “in fact, we know that Mr. Mahallati was aware of the killings. Because he’s quoted about them in UN reports. But he’s quoted as denying and downplaying them. He effectively misled the international community so the killings could continue.”
Mahallati’s role at the U.N. was to deny or minimize all the reports about the mass killings by the regime in Tehran as they were going on. He did this in various and contradictory ways. He appears to have claimed that those who died had been killed in the war with Iraq that was still ongoing; at the same time, he also claimed that there never had been any such deaths.
Scott Wargo, director of Media Relations for Oberlin College, wrote The Jerusalem Post by email when this letter signed by more than 600 Iranians, both relatives of those killed as well as political dissidents in exile, was received at Oberlin, saying “Professor Mahallati is a tenured professor and has been a teacher at Oberlin since 2007. We received the letter today expressing concerns about his statements during a meeting with United Nations representatives more than 30 years ago. We are in touch with Professor Mahallati to gather additional information.”
Note Scott Wargo’s defensive downplaying of Mahallati’s role. He refers to “statements [made by Mahallati] more than 30 years ago,” as if that passage of time was some kind of mitigation – who can remember back that far? It’s the same argument used by defense attorneys in trials of nonagenerian Nazis. And why dredge all this unpleasantness up anyway, when Professor Mahallati is a “tenured professor” and an [implicitly respected] “teacher at Oberlin since 2007.” Wargo then says the letter signed by 626 Iranians was “about [Mahallati’s] statements during a [single] meeting with U.N. representatives.” No, the accusation was not about “a single meeting with U.N. representatives.” Mahallati was Iran’s U.N. ambassador during the very time when mass killings were being carried out by the Islamic Republic. It was at these meetings of the General Assembly that Mahallati not once, but repeatedly, day after day, obfuscated, denied, and lied about those mass killings.
Mahallati claimed in an email reply to those who asked him to comment on the letter: “The accusers fail to provide a single solid document as evidence of my actual knowledge of these incidents. With no concrete evidence, they infer that I must have been informed and intentionally denied these atrocities. I categorically deny any knowledge and therefore responsibility regarding mass executions in Iran when I was serving at the United Nations.”
He added that “I was in New York the entire summer of 1988, focusing on peacemaking between Iran and Iraq and did not receive any briefing regarding executions. There was not a single communication from Tehran to Iran’s UN embassy informing Iranian diplomats of those incidents. During my short-lived ambassadorial position (1987-1989), I was focused on peacemaking efforts to end the Iran-Iraq war, the most prolonged and devastating war in modern history.”
So Mahallati, in his own view, is a peacemaker above all, helping to bring “the most prolonged and devastating war in modern history” to a close. He has his facts wrong. The Iran-Iraq war was not the most devastating war in modern history: three times as many people died in the Vietnam War as died in the Iran-Iraq War, six times as many people died in the Korean War as in the Iran-Iraq War, at least one hundred times as many died in World War II as in the Iran-Iraq War. By such wild exaggeration, Mahallati wants us to see him as a veritable prince of peace, reining in the steeds of a terrible war. The war ended, in any case, on August 20, 1988. What was Mahallati doing for the rest of his tenure as Iran’s U.N. Ambassador? He was denying the crimes of the Khomeini regime, attacking Israel, and defending a murderous fatwa.
As Iran’s U.N. Ambassador, and thus high up in the Islamic Republic’s pecking order, it is inconceivable that Mahallati would not have known about mass killings at home. And it was not necessary for that information to be sent in writing; telephone communication about such atrocities left no easily retrievable record. Wouldn’t the regime in which he played such a prominent diplomatic part have kept him informed? He was one of them. He had to know what it was he was instructed to deny. At the U.N., he was also the recipient of messages from many human rights groups, including Amnesty International, protesting in letters, faxes, and emails, the killings of political prisoners in Iran. Yet at the General Assembly, he continued steadfastly to deny that there were any such murders by the regime. Those who claimed such killings were going on failed to understand, he maintained, that the victims had actually died in the war against Iraq.
Oberlin certainly owes the relatives of those dissidents murdered in Iran an explanation of how someone involved in the coverup of the killings managed to become a tenured professor at Oberlin. Why did no one look into Mahallati’s background before he was hired, including talking to those who knew best what his conduct at the U.N. — in deflecting discussion about the killings in Iran — had been like? Wasn’t his having been the official representative of such a murderous regime enough to have made him ineligible to be hired? What ever happened to due diligence? Now that Rushdie has been stabbed, these questions are all the more urgent.
