Many Americans I talk to have never heard about the religious fatwa against nuclear weapons issued by Iran’s Supreme leader the Grand Ali Hosseini Ayatollah Khamenei – the media in the United States just doesn’t focus on that.
The fatwa absolutely “forbids the production, proliferation and use of nuclear weapons by Iran.”
The Grand Ayatollah went on to say that “nuclear weapons were forbidden in Islam and people are to avoid that.” Again people I talk to never of that. That is because everyone is being told by the entertainment based corporate owned media in America that Iran is hell bent on acquiring nuclear weapons – that is simply not true.
The fatwa forbids the production, proliferation and use of nuclear weapons by Iran.
The Ayatollah went on to say that nuclear weapons were “forbidden in Islam and people are to avoid that.” How much clearer does it get?
A fatwā in the Islamic faith is a juristic ruling concerning Islamic law issued by an Islamic scholar. In this case the Ayatollah himself.
“We are not after nuclear weapons, nor do we believe they can bring supremacy”, he said.
Khamenei is the Supreme Leader of Iran (see article: Iranhttp://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/5314.htm) and a Twelver Shi’a marja (see article: Profile: Ayatollah Ali Khameneihttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3018932.stm).
Khamenei had also served as the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran from 1981 to 1989.
In 2010, Forbes selected him 26th in the list of ‘World’s Most Powerful People’. He is without a doubt the most powerful man in Iran.
A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination of fission and fusion.
Only two nuclear weapons have ever been used in the course of warfare, both by the United States near the end of World War II.
The first on 6 August 1945, a uranium gun-type fission bomb code-named “Little Boy” was detonated over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Three days later, on 9 August, a second bomb – a plutonium implosion-type fission bomb code-named “Fat Man” was exploded over Nagasaki, Japan.
These two bombings resulted in the deaths of approximately 200,000 Japanese people—mostly civilians.
Ideologically speaking the Ayatollah considers the seeking after or possession of nuclear weapons a “grave sin” (see: video: IRAN Ayatollah Khamenei Re-Issues Fatwa Against Nuclear Weapons “A Grave Sin” Feb/22/2012 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95HuFUiAEig).