ideology | Humanist Heritage Canada

Sometime on the weekend of February 28 and March 1, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei was killed during airstrikes on Tehran, Iran. For government leaders in many western nations, this was considered a beneficial killing. Iran’s state media described him as a “martyr” in a statement broadcast on state television. The attack on his compound, is claimed to have also killed his daughter, grandchild, daughter-in-law, and son-in-law. At 86 years old, Khamenei and had led Iran for more than 36 years

At around the time that Khamenei was killed, Canada’s Prime Minister released a statement regarding attacks on Iran. The statement includes three primary policies:

“The Canadian government is closely following Iran-related hostilities throughout the Middle East and urges all Canadians in Iran to shelter in place. Canadians in the wider region should follow local advice and take all necessary precautions.

Canada’s position remains clear: the Islamic Republic of Iran is the principal source of instability and terror throughout the Middle East, has one of the world’s worst human rights records, and must never be allowed to obtain or develop nuclear weapons.

Canada and our international partners have consistently called upon the Iranian regime to end its nuclear program, including at the 2025 G7 Leaders’ Summit in Kananaskis and with the United Nations’ reimposition of sanctions in September.

Despite diplomatic efforts, Iran has neither fully dismantled its nuclear program, halted all enrichment activities, nor ended its support for regional terrorist proxy groups. Canada stands with the Iranian people in their long and courageous struggle against Iran’s oppressive regime. Canada has listed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist entity, and has sanctioned 256 Iranian entities and 222 individuals in response to the regime’s repression and its violence both against its own people, and persistently, beyond its borders. Canada reaffirms Israel’s right to defend itself and to ensure the security of its people.

Canada supports the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent its regime from further threatening international peace and security.

The Canadian government urges the protection of all civilians in this conflict. We will take all possible measures to protect our nationals and Canadian diplomatic missions throughout the region.”

Humanists International (HI) has consistently expressed concerns regarding human rights in Iran. In January of 2026, HI joined a join civil rights report that, “highlighted widespread and coordinated lethal repression against largely peaceful protest movements in Iran, including mass unlawful killings, arbitrary detention, and severe restrictions on communication and civil liberties. The appeal calls on the HRC to respond decisively to the rapidly deteriorating situation and to uphold its responsibility to prevent further violations.“

Khamenei had consistently reaffirmed the 1989 fatwa issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini calling for the death of author Salman Rushdie – a fatwas that led to a violent attack on Rushdie as recently as 2022.

Despite Iran’s government under President Mohammad Khatami declaring in 1998 that it would neither support nor hinder the assassination, Khamenei has maintained that the fatwa remains “solid and irrevocable” in 2017 and 2019. Iranian state media and hardline outlets celebrated attacks on Rushdie as “divine vengeance” or “divine retribution”, praising assailants and predicting future attacks on Western figures.

Ayatollah Alireza Arafi will be Khamenei’s replacement. He is a senior Iranian Shia cleric who has taken a notably hardline stance on religious pluralism and non-Islamic belief systems within Iran.

Arafi is strongly opposed to atheism, which he considers a form of idolatry — placing it in the same category as a rejection of divine authority. He extends this criticism to Christianity, particularly the phenomenon of house churches in Iran, which he views as an ideological threat to Shia Islam and the foundations of the Islamic Republic.

His positions are deeply rooted in the velayat-e faqih (guardianship of the Islamic jurist) system that underpins Iran’s theocratic governance. From this perspective, alternative belief systems are not merely personal choices but existential challenges to the state’s religious legitimacy.

Rather than tolerating religious diversity, Arafi has actively promoted the expansion of Shia Islam globally. During his tenure as head of Al-Mustafa International University (2009–2018), he claimed the institution helped convert 50 million people to Shia Islam. This figure seems to be very disputable.

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The views, opinions and analyses expressed in the articles on Humanist Freedoms are those of the contributor(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the publishers.

On 12 August 2022, Salman Rushdie was brutally attacked and severely injured during a speaking event in Chautauqua, New York. As a publication devoted to humanism and human rights – including the right to freedom of expression which is so fundamentally linked to this situation – HumanistFreedoms.com condemns the attack and expresses hope for Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie’s best possible recovery.

While there are many stories about the attack in mainstream media providing reports of the attempted murder, the attacker’s name and hints to his motivation, these particulars seem to be little more than incidental to the attack. There seems to be little point in re-sharing information that is so readily available . Indeed, there seems to be much more sense in focusing on who the attacker was in the bigger picture. This latest attacker was nothing other than the inevitable and violent hand of extremist ideology.

Some of us at HumanistFreedoms.com had the opportunity and privilege to attend Rushdie’s reading from one of his novels when he visited the Toronto Public Library in 2015. It was a lovely and engaging evening – exactly the way attending a reading ought to be. The way the event in Chautauqua ought to have been. A room full of mostly mild, curious and intelligent individuals; a brief and charming interview; an author sharing their own voice with those who wished to hear it. It was the kind of thing Rushdie had so clearly been doing for many previous years and clearly expected to do for many future years as well. After all, who goes to hear an author speak other than those who want to hear what he has written and may have to say about it?

It is not possible, however, to have attended a reading by Salman Rushdie without being aware that he had lived under the threat of attack and assassination since 1989 when a fanatical ideologue and politician issued a faith-based assassination order against him. His conversation never seems to be far from that simple fact nor from the implications that it carried: sometimes people attend these events to prevent others from hearing the things that may be said.

The fact that the fanatical politician/ideologue/religious leader who had ordered the assassination happened to be a high ranking Shia clergy member and the “supreme leader” of a nation ought to have been enough to keep fanaticism and the perpetual probability of violence on anybody’s mind. In 1989, someone tried to complete the assassination and blew himself (and some of a hotel) up. Apparently there is a shrine in Tehran describing the person

Salman Rushdie: Violently attacked due to a work of fiction written almost forty years go.

as a “martyr”. in other words, a religious hero.

Fanaticism is a state that must be developed, encouraged and maintained. It must be cultivated. The fanatic and their cultivator each bear a portion of the responsibility for any violence which they promote and enact. To claim anything else is cowardice, at best – but more probably an indicator of traits worse by far than mere cowardice.

In the Iranian government’s first public comment on this more recent attack, its foreign Ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said “Regarding the attack on Salman Rushdie, we do not consider anyone other than [Rushdie] and his supporters worthy of blame and even condemnation.” The message is clear when it comes to ideologues. Cross them and you’ll get what they think you deserve.

But not everyone is like that. Not everyone flinches from truth.

The attacker’s mother had some different perspectives to offer, “As I said to the FBI I’m not going to bother talking to him again. He’s responsible for his actions. I have another two minors that I need to take care of. They are upset, they’re shocked. All we can do is try to move on from this, without him.“

Only a few things more need to be said in context of an initial reaction to this brutality. Violence is the inevitable conclusion when extremist ideology, and let us emphasize any extremist ideology, is left unchecked, when fanatics are allowed to persist in delusions that their opinions and preferences cannot be challenged, when destroying another human being is considered a morally-entitled response to being offended.

And what do the humanist organizations have to say so far? We might have wished for more…and more emphatic than what we have been able to locate so far (Frankly, Rex Murphy seems to have done a better job of it). But we searched several prominent English-language humanist organizations with Salman Rushdie’s name and here is what we found on 2022/08/16

Unrelated to the attempted slaughter of an author by the violent hand of ideologues, one of our humanist mentors had recently shared a quotation from Martin Luther King: “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter.”

Citations, References And Other Reading

The views, opinions and analyses expressed in the articles on Humanist Freedoms are those of the contributor(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the publishers.

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