Forgive me for rough editing on this, and deliver me from typos, my children are stirring.

The Quran says, “Do not say that those who are killed in God’s cause are dead; they are alive, but you are not aware of it.” Whether Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been martyred or not he is not dead, certainly not in his own head (it has since been confirmed, bless him). Khamenei is a man of Allah, and from Them he cannot be separated. He has surely believed and done good works and he is more than a good man. He is a great man. A historical leader to all suffering people, including this bad Buddhist. Peace be upon him, wherever he is.

It's almost funny to see the 'Americans'—blood on their hands and blood on their pants—portray Khamenei as the latest foil in the wrestling match they have made of the holy land. He's a lovely old man that shares poetry, bans nuclear weapons, and resists genocide and occupation. Khamenei is also a strong man, but his strength comes from God, not man. Khamenei is the man who fought Saddam Hussein before his 'American' friends turned on him, and fought the ISIS they created. What are they even talking about? Their propaganda is increasingly incoherent, while if you listen to Khamenei, he is a deeply cogent thinker. I invite you to read him directly, rather than taking obviously evil people's word on him.

I have (it was hard to get) a book of young Khamenei's speeches during Ramadan, 1974, called Islamic Beliefs: Reclaiming The Narrative. This was before the Islamic Revolution. It is a work of great philosophy, patiently and pertinently told. He is a philosopher king, and they don't make 'em like that anymore. In those sermons he said, “we must look to bring the ideas and system of Islam out of the realm of pure mental abstraction—like all schools of social thought—by looking at practical responsibilities, especially in the realm of social affairs, and reorienting theoretical discussions to see what their implications are for human life, what their goals are, and what methods they prescribe for meeting these goals.”

Westerners, who Eastern religion did not work on, reject any religious system as backwards because they corrupted Christianity so badly, but this is really a skills issue. Khamenei laid out clearly when religion is bad, and it's based on how you use it, not categorically. As he said then,

You're right! If you find a religion that helps the oppressor, that supports the tyrant, that never gives aid to the oppressed, that never helps the downtrodden, that whether now or in the future does not alleviate an ounce of human suffering—then, on our behalf, if you find such a religion, no matter where it is, reject it.

But this is not the religion that Khamenei was talking about then, nor is it the religion he lived through his works. What I found personally challenging about his thought (and which honestly haunts me still) is that Khamenei said it's not enough to just have faith. This is different from the corrupted Christian faith, which 'Americans' treat as blanket forgiveness to sin forevermore, simply because they are Christian, and Jesus forgave them. Khamenei said,

What do we think God's mercy is for? We think it is for the duties we neglected, for the commands we disobeyed, for the sinful places we frequented, for all the times we forgot about our moral responsibility towards God. In other words, we think that there is nothing for us to do, God must be merciful to us. We think that mercy—God's divine mercy—exists to replace the things that we don't do. However, the verse of the Qur'an we are discussing here [al-Imran, (3):132:134] says exactly the opposite of this! It says that you must take action, you must obey, so that perhaps you will receive God's mercy. God's mercy is there for the times when a nation takes up their moral responsibilities. God shows mercy to people when they obey Him and when they do their duties. Seven hundred million Muslims are just sitting there waiting for God's mercy to come to them and allowing people to violate their dignity, trample upon their faith, and take everything they have! Are you sitting hoping for God's mercy in these circumstances? In that case, you may as well get comfortable!

I want you to remember this. Of all fully-formed nations in the world only Iran answered the call of long-genocided Palestine as the White Empire—meaning the latest colony and all the colonizers—was exterminating them. Only Iran fulfilled their duty not just under Islam but under the genocide convention that all nations are supposed to follow (shout-out to Yemen and Lebanon, big asterisks). Only Iran stood up for human dignity and true human rights at incredibly personal risk. And Ayatollah Khamenei led them. We are so lucky to have him, which I say in the present tense, because that's how he sees it. Back then he said,

Satan calls out through the voice of a wicked person that the Prophet has been slain. It's obvious—Satan is always doing this. Satan's plans are clear, and his helpers are clear. He is always putting doubts into people's minds. He is always sapping their morale. Telling them they failed. That the Prophet has died! In this crisis, in this dead end, what does the faithful person who relies on God do? Is there a dead end greater than this? There is no way out. Your own soldiers have thrown down their weapons and fled. The enemy have surrounded you on all sides. No one is coming to your aid. But there is still a way out. To put your trust in God. To have hope. What dead end? Even if the Prophet of God has been slain. The God of the Prophet will never be slain! We still have our moral duties!

The Prophet (pbuh) of course was not slain, and I don't know if the Imam Khamenei was slain. But I know what the Quran tells about such instances, because the Resistance repeats it all the time. It says,

Do not say that those who are killed in God’s cause are dead; they are alive, but you are not aware of it. We shall certainly test you with fear and hunger, and loss of property, lives and crops. Give good news to those who endure with fortitude. Those who say, when afflicted with a calamity, ‘We belong to God and to Him we shall return,’ are the ones who will have blessings and mercy from their Lord: it is they who are on the right path!

People who believe in nothing find it hard to understand people that believe in something. They think you can just kill them. But that's not how good works work. You do them despite earthly rewards, which often go to the wicked. You do them for the good itself, which humans abbreviate as God. The Jews that asked for the prophet Jesus to be killed and the heirs of the empire that killed him should know, but Allah really has blinded some people, and left them to wander in their insolence.

I meet many good people who have an inherent distrust of religion, but like so many other categories they consider categorical, they are referring to Western religion. Just because Western completely botched Eastern religion doesn't make it a bad idea. We have to see that Roman Catholic Church was more Roman than Catholic. It became a vehicle for child rape, wealth accumulation, and imperialism and they're still doing the same things. God is obviously not the problem here, they've got their own problems. As Khamenei said,

If a thinker grew up in an outwardly Christian environment and knew nothing of religion except corrupt practices like the selling of indulgences or the false forgiveness of sins, perhaps he had the right to form this opinion of religion. But you, who live a hundred, or eighty, or fifty years after him, at a time when Islam is more or less showing its true self, and producing the most wonderful and dignified manifestations of humanity the world has seen, you do not have the right to say the same thing about Islam as he does about Christianity. If this is what you mean to do, then this is being intellectually dishonest.

I must repeat that I am Buddhist, that Buddhism changed and healed my heart (thanks Amma). I strive (and fail) to be intellectually honest above all. I read the people I'm told to hate, and very often I love them, because I have been getting my book recommendations from the worst people on Earth (thanks Western education). I have read Khamenei and I love him. I spent a bit of time with a Buddhist monk (Bhante G) that I think was pretty close to enlightenment and I get the same vibes from Khamenei Sir. In a Sinhala Buddhist sense, I worship the man, I'd bow if I met him, as I would a monk. What he said that challenged me the most was,

Faith that remains only in the heart will wither and die. You might think that it won't, that it will survive. We make this erroneous assumption that faith will somehow survive in the depths of one's heart. But the faith that remains in the heart without ever reaching your hands, your feet, your eyes, your brain, your limbs, your life, your potential, or your energy—according to the Qur'an, this faith has no value. I've tried to sum this up in the title I have to this lecture: ‘Life-giving Faith.’ A faith which works like an overflowing spring, a faith that is accompanied by duty, a faith that is a weight on the shoulders of the believer, a faith that is accompanied by action.

I struggle with this because as my wife says, my thoughts might be deep (I said that), but my praxis is weak. I don't do anything. I fear for my soul in this sense and I pray for strength to be more active. But Khamenei has had nothing to fear on this account for decades. He has done so much already. Besides helping liberate Iran, he has become the spiritual leader of a great Resistance, which cuts across Shia and Sunni. Who was supporting Palestine, while everybody else was corrupted with wealth and football teams and airlines? Of nations, Iran only. I repeat this because it doesn't get said enough. In fact, they slander Iran for existing at all. But I have seen faith accompanied by action, and it has moved my heart.

When the Al Aqsa Flood began in October 2023 I saw a young Hamas fighter in 'Israeli' drone footage, mortally wounded. They released it presumably to terrify people, but I saw something else. In his last moments, this dying man turned and prayed. I thought what is this? What is this faith that moves men against mountains? I began reading the Resistance (I edited a book on the subject, for no one) and wow, there was a wealth of philosophy there, philosophy lived in a way Western philosophy is not. Through action. And the fount of that philosophy is really Ayatollah Khamenei.

As the martyr Sayyed Nasrallah said (from a speech in ‘my’ book), “Since the Iranian revolution, from Khomeini to Khamenei, have always been openly adopting and supporting resistance faction in Lebanon, Palestine and the region.” And “personally speaking and based on my personal experience with Khamenei who repeated on more than one occasion that we all firmly believe in this divine promise, Gaza will triumph, Palestine will triumph, Palestine will prevail. He himself repeated the same words to us in the July war, when there was no victory looming on the horizon, and to our fellow brothers in Gaza.”

Remember the genocide, and remember who fought it. I have to believe in a God that does. Then consider who is slandering Khamenei. The people committing genocide and raping children in their spare time. How dare the people committing genocide malign the people fighting it? And paying for their principles with their own lives? When you hear anything bad about Iran, or Khamenei, or the Resistance, please, for the literal love of God, consider the source. At this point they're not even trying with their propaganda, you really don't have to try that hard.

Let's take the nuclear proliferation issue. America is just repeating the WMD script from Iraq because they're braindead and can't tell Iran and Iraq apart. But it makes no sense at all vis a vis Iran. The reason Iran doesn't have nukes is because Ayatollah Khamenei issued a fatwa against them! He said nuclear weapons are evil and should not be held or used. The moral position, and realpolitikally dangerous. Yet we're supposed to take the word of people that actually nuked two civilian cities, and proliferated hundreds of nukes with rabid 'Israel'? What a topsy-turvy world we live in. Every accusation is a confession.

In the same way, as the White Empire amassed an armada around him, threatening his life and his people's life, why did Khamenei's Iran not strike first? The people of the world would surely understand, and the press of the West would slander him anyways. But as I've discussed citing the Quran (just read the first few surahs), he followed an Islamic Art of War, which allows only defensive violence, and which tells you to desist if they do. He lived Islam even if it cost him his life! How can you silence a man like this? His actions will speak forever.

For many years I have felt lucky to walk the Earth as the same time as the Ayatollah Khamenei. I have of course never met him or spoken to him, but I speak to him all the time, he speaks through me. He is what I call a ‘friend in history’ like my friend Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, who I still speak with often. And in this vulgar sense, such people don't die either. They live as long as we remember them. But I don't think he would see it that way. He'd say we live as long as we remember God, and he remembers God, and he reminds others, through his words, through his deeds, through his body. Peace be with the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In the best possible sense, devoid of insular European pretence about the subject, he is a man of God, and as Allah said,

Those who stayed behind, said of their brothers, ‘Had they listened to us, they would not have been killed.’ Say to them, ‘Ward off death from yourselves, then, if what you say be true!’

Do not think of those who have been killed in God’s cause as dead. They are alive, and well provided for by their Lord; they are joyful because of what God has bestowed on them of His grace and they rejoice that those they left behind, who have not yet joined them, that they shall have no fear, nor shall they grieve; rejoicing in God’s grace and bounty. [They know that] God will not fail to requite the believers.

Those who responded to the call of God and the Messenger, despite their having received an injury, and such of them as did good deeds and feared God, shall have a great reward.

Those who, on being told that, ‘the enemy has gathered against you a great force, so fear them,’ only grew stronger in their faith and replied, ‘God is sufficient for us. He is the best guardian.’

They returned home with God’s favour and blessings, without having been touched by evil; for they pursued God’s pleasure. And God’s bounty is infinite.

It is Satan who instills fear [into you] of his followers; do not fear them. But fear Me, if you are true believers.

As the Great Satan crows about killing a great man, and killing countless innocent children, and rapes children in its spare time, remember what Khamenei never forgot and what the Resistance always reminds itself of. “Do not think of those who have been killed in God’s cause as dead. They are alive, and well provided for by their Lord.” Either way, Ayatollah Khamenei is not dead. The Resistance has not confirmed it [edit: they have], and anyways, I just spoke to him now. He's right there, with God.

References:

• Read the Quran, you cannot be an educated person without it. I read the GoodWord translation which someone literally handed me on the street in Oxford, I don't know if I recommend it, you're not supposed to read it in translation at all.
• Islamic Beliefs: Reclaiming The Narrative, Ayatollah Khamenei. This book took me months to get to Sri Lanka, but it exists. Unfortunately not in digital form that I can share with you immediately. I have retyped chapters of it in...
• Reading Resistance. This is a book I edited honestly for my own reference, it collects the works of Khamenei, Nasrallah, Al-Araj, Sinwar, and other friends in history. The Empire keeps picking them off, but I keep picking the book up. People died for this knowledge. Almost seems to be a requirement.