Sayyid Ahmad Khatami ( fa, احمد خاتمی, born 8 May 1960) is a senior Iranian Shia cleric, member of

Guardian Council The Guardian Council, (also called Council of Guardians or Constitutional Council, fa, شورای نگهبان, Shourā-ye Negahbān) is an appointed and constitutionally mandated 12-member council that wields considerable power and influence i ...

and a senior member of the Assembly of Experts. In December 2005,

Ali Khamenei Sayyid Ali Hosseini Khamenei ( fa, سید علی حسینی خامنه‌ای, ; born 19 April 1939) is a Twelver Shia ''marja and the second and current Supreme Leader of Iran, in office since 1989. He was previously the third president o ...

appointed him as Tehran’s substitute

Friday prayer In Islam, Friday prayer or Congregational prayer ( ar, صَلَاة ٱلْجُمُعَة, ') is a prayer ('' ṣalāt'') that Muslims hold every Friday, after noon instead of the Zuhr prayer. Muslims ordinarily pray five times each day according ...

leader. He is also a conservative and

principlist Principlism is an applied ethics approach to the examination of moral dilemmas that is based upon the application of certain ethical principles. This approach to ethical decision-making has been adopted enthusiastically in many different professio ...

politician. He was born in the city of Semnan, Iran. He studied at seminaries in

Qom Qom (also spelled as "Ghom", "Ghum", or "Qum") ( fa, قم ) is the seventh largest metropolis and also the seventh largest city in Iran. Qom is the capital of Qom Province. It is located to the south of Tehran. At the 2016 census, its popul ...

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 Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...

cleric and try to understand

Islam Islam (; ar, ۘالِإسلَام, , ) is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic Monotheism#Islam, monotheistic religion centred primarily around the Quran, a religious text considered by Muslims to be the direct word of God in Islam, God (or ...

." In 2007, he addressed the death sentence issued by Imam Khomeini against Salman Rushdie, saying "In the Islamic Iran that revolutionary ''

fatwa A fatwā ( ; ar, فتوى; plural ''fatāwā'' ) is a legal ruling on a point of Islamic law (''sharia'') given by a qualified '' Faqih'' (Islamic jurist) in response to a question posed by a private individual, judge or government. A jurist i ...

'' of

Imam Imam (; ar, إمام '; plural: ') is an Islamic leadership position. For Sunni Muslims, Imam is most commonly used as the title of a worship leader of a mosque. In this context, imams may lead Islamic worship services, lead prayers, ser ...

homeiniis still alive and cannot be changed." In regard to the

2009 Iranian election protests After incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared victory in the 2009 Iranian presidential election, protests broke out in major cities across Iran in support of opposition candidates Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi. The protests con ...

, Khatami denounced demonstrators as

rioters A riot is a form of civil disorder commonly characterized by a group lashing out in a violent public disturbance against authority, property, or people. Riots typically involve destruction of property, public or private. The property targeted ...

who wage war against God ("'' mohareb''"), (a

capital crime Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that t ...

in Islamic law), and more recently accused reformist presidential candidates

Mir Hossein Mousavi ''Mir'' (russian: Мир, ; ) was a space station that operated in low Earth orbit from 1986 to 2001, operated by the Soviet Union and later by Russia. ''Mir'' was the first modular space station and was assembled in orbit from 1986 to& ...

and Mehdi Karroubi of Mohareb as "leaders of sedition."Iran opposition leader ready to 'pay any price'
by ALI AKBAR DAREINI, AP, 16 February 2011, accessed 4 March 2011

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* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Khatami, Ahmad Iranian ayatollahs Living people Members of the Assembly of Experts 1960 births People from Semnan, Iran Society of Seminary Teachers of Qom members

See also

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