| Ahmad Khatami | |
|---|---|
| Personal details | |
| Born | 1960 Nīr, Iran |
| Political party | Conservative |
| Religion | Usuli Twelver Shi'a Islam |
Ayatollah Seyyed Ahmad Khatami is a senior Iranian Ayatollah,[1] as well as a senior member of the Assembly of Experts.[2] In December of 2005, Ali Khamenei appointed him as Tehran’s substitute Friday prayer leader.[3]
He was born in the town of Nīr, Northern Iran. He studied at seminaries in Qom and Semnan.
In 2006, during the Pope Benedict XVI Islam controversy, Khatami asked the Pope to "fall on his knees in front of a senior Muslim cleric and try to understand Islam."[4] In 2007, he addressed the death sentence issued by Imam Khomeini against Salman Rushdie, saying "In the Islamic Iran that revolutionary fatwa of Imam [Khomeini] is still alive and cannot be changed."[5] In regard to the 2009 Iranian election protests, Khatami denounced demonstrators as rioters who wage war against God ("mohareb"), (a capital crime in Islamic law),[6] and more recently accused reformist presidential candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mahdi Karroubi of Mohareb as "leaders of sedition."[7]