Ata'ollah Mohajerani
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Ata'ollah Mohajerani (عطاالله مهاجرانی) is an Iranian politician, journalist, and author.
Mohajerani was Mohammad Khatami's first Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance of Iran. He was criticized heavily by the Iranian Supreme Leader of the time, Ayatollah Khamenei, and eventually resigned. He later became the president of the Iranian "International Center for Dialogue among Civilizations", but resigned from the post possibly after ethical allegations.
Mohajerani has been a representative from Shiraz in the first round of the parliamentary elections after the Iranian Revolution, where he was among the very critical opponents of Abolhassan Banisadr. Later, he became the Parliamentary Deputy to the Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi, when he started to write the weekly column Naghd-e Haal in the Ettela'at newspaper, and then Vice President of Parliamentary Affairs under Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
He is a member and a founder of Executives of Construction Party, which is considered a backer of Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
Mohajerani participated in the burying of Mehdi Bazargan, when few Iranian officials dared doing that because of Bazargan's very unpopular status among the higher ranks of the Islamic Republic government.
He has authored a few books, most famous of which are a book in critique of Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses, a book in support of Ferdowsi (and against attacks by Ahmad Shamlou), and a book on Zaynab bint Ali's role in and after Aashurah. The mentioned books are considered by some critics to be actually official positions and opinions of the Islamic Republic government on the matters, not his personal ones.
He is married to Jamileh Kadivar, who is also a politician. A scandal has been going on in July and August, 2004, about a possible second and third marriage by Mohajerani, to Mahsa Youssefi and Ms Valizadeh. Some people consider this a scandal to make him lose his public face, in order to remove him from the list of candidates for the Iranian presidential election of 2005, while others consider it a good reason for not trusting Mohajerani anymore with a political office. It should be noted that under the current Iranian law, it is allowed for a Muslim man to marry up to four women, but the act is considered unethical and backward in the major Iranian belief, specially among the intellectuals.
External links
- Mohajerani's Persian website (http://mohajerani.maktoub.ir/)
References
- The Mohajerani Problem (http://khabarnameh.gooya.com/nabavi/archives/014486.php), Ebrahim Nabavi's article on Mohajerani (in Persian)