Conference, “Iran: A Democratic Republic Guarantees Freedom for Iran and Peace for the Region”
Maryam Rajavi: Ramadan of Uprising, Ramadan of Revolution and the Glad Tidings of Freedom
Sisters and brothers,
Distinguished personalities from Muslim countries,
Representatives of Islamic communities in France,
Dear compatriots,
Greetings and salutes to you, and Ramadan Mubarak.
We are in the month of Ramadan, the month of liberating piety.
Ramadan is a month of solidarity for the building of a just and harmonious society.
Thus, we call upon followers of all faiths and beliefs, oppressed nationalities, and all our bereaved compatriots who have endured repression and plunder to unite in bringing down religious fascism and in reclaiming freedom and popular sovereignty.
For What Crime Were They Killed?
This Ramadan is the Ramadan of the unjustly spilled blood of thousands of Iran’s devoted souls.
It is a Ramadan in which the cry — “For what sin were they slain?” — has risen to the heavens.
For what crime were they killed?
Why were those most vibrant of lives cut down by bullets?
The Holy Qur’an reminds us:
وَلاَ تَحْسَبَنَّ الَّذِینَ قُتِلُواْ فِی سَبِیلِ اللّهِ أَمْوَاتًا بَلْ أَحْیاء عِندَ رَبِّهِمْ یرْزَقُونَ
“Do not think of those who are slain in the path of God as dead. They are alive, sustained in the presence of their Lord.”
Those who were killed in the path of God, in the path of freedom, that divine radiance, are not dead. They live on and are sustained in the presence of their Lord. They have rekindled the human world. They have awakened the horizon of revolution and liberty. They have gathered clouds over Iran’s restless sky, clouds heavy with the rain of freedom that will soon pour upon this thirsty homeland.
Yes, this Ramadan is a Ramadan of uprising, a Ramadan of revolution, and the glad tidings of freedom.
The Essence of Fasting
Indeed, the true essence of fasting has been understood by those heroes whose just uprising and resistance in this very Ramadan elevated a nation and shook the very apex of the Velayat-e Faqih regime (absolute clerical rule), despite all its fortifications.
When freedom fighters place their lives in their hands and strike at the very core of tyranny and repression, it signifies that the people of Iran possess the highest power to achieve their freedom.
Indeed, those who do not fear being torn apart can bring down even a Caesar.
The Qur’an declares:
یا أَیهَا الَّذِینَ آمَنُواْ كُتِبَ عَلَیكُمُ الصِّیامُ كَمَا كُتِبَ عَلَى الَّذِینَ مِن قَبْلِكُمْ لَعَلَّكُمْ تَتَّقُونَ
“O you who believe, fasting has been prescribed for you as it was prescribed for those before you, that you may attain righteousness.”
Fasting strengthens the human will to rise, to break from the status quo, to overturn unjust equilibria, and to establish relations free of oppression and the denial of liberty.
This is the logic of revolution and evolution to which our people responded in that crimson January. Today, many ask:
Is there a path to break through this massive wall and bring down this evil tyrant?
Is there a prepared and effective alternative capable of leading Iran to the great destination of freedom?
The answer is yes — there is.
A people who have traversed such a long and arduous road have forged, within the crucible of suffering itself, a democratic alternative: the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).
For 44 years, through its steadfast adherence to its principled opposition to both dictatorship and dependency, the NCRI, the longest-standing coalition in Iran’s history, has stood as a benchmark for democracy and independence in Iran’s future.
A Perverted and Inverted Interpretation of Islam
Dear friends,
For 47 years, the mullahs’ dictatorship has suppressed the Iranian people through military, political, judicial, economic, and propaganda apparatuses. It has exported reactionism, terrorism, and war throughout the region and beyond. It has anchored its rule in a perverted and inverted interpretation of Islam.
Allow me to briefly outline the principal mechanisms through which this regressive ideology exercises control over society and the population:
1. It has imposed compulsory religion and brutal despotism under the name of “Islamic governance,” denying the people free elections, legislative participation, and their rightful share in the country’s economic life.
2. It has concentrated absolute power in a single cleric who claims divine representation on earth.
3. It enforces a misogynistic order that bars women from political and social participation and subjects both women and society at large to repression under the guise of morality and chastity.
4. It is a system of religious discrimination that denies the political and social rights of followers of various religions, even our Sunni compatriots, portraying this exclusion as a defense of Islam. It goes without saying that, in the mass execution and killing of members of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran and of Shiites opposed to the doctrine of Velayat-e Faqih (absolute clerical rule), this regime has stopped at nothing.
5. It governs through executions and massacres, justifying these atrocities as the fulfillment of divine law according to its distorted interpretation of Sharia — including the execution of more than 100,000 members of the Resistance, notably the 1988 massacre of 30,000 political prisoners and the subsequent killing of protesters in January 2026.
6. It enforces inhuman punishments drawn from centuries and millennia past, falsely characterizing them as Sharia law.
7. It represents full-fledged demagoguery when it claims that excommunicating opponents and fabricating accusations is a religious obligation to preserve the regime, allegedly based on Khomeini’s fatwa. This includes labeling the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran as hypocrites and subjecting them to various forms of demonization.
8. Finally, it sustains itself through terrorism and warmongering, victimizing the nations of the region for its own ambitions, disregarding the sovereignty of other states, and fueling tensions and unrest under the pretext of exporting its so-called Islam and revolution.
What force is qualified to offer an alternative?
In the face of such a destructive ideology, what force or school of thought is capable of presenting a viable alternative?
The 47-year record of the Velayat-e Faqih regime stands before us. During this long period, no force dependent on foreign governments and powers has succeeded in creating a genuine alternative. Nor can any faction emerging from within this regime or from remnants of the previous dictatorship resolve this profound political and historical contradiction. However much they may be magnified through the engineering of the social and media landscape, they are incapable of achieving anything beyond imitating the Ahmed Chalabi model in Iraq, a model that has already proven to be a failure.
The son of the former dictator seeks to establish a neo-fascist system. His statement against the forces of Iranian Kurdistan demonstrated that the repression of oppressed nationalities constitutes an essential component of his agenda.
The truth is that the remnants of the Shah’s dictatorship function in practice as a significant obstacle to the regime’s overthrow and as its de facto ally. The disgraceful positions adopted by this current underscore a fundamental principle: the freedom of Iran requires a clear demarcation from the Shah’s dictatorship and firm adherence to the guiding principle of “neither Shah nor the mullahs.”
The People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran and the National Council of Resistance of Iran have consistently emphasized for the past 47 years to this date, the necessity of autonomy for ethnic nationalities within the framework of Iran’s territorial integrity.
Iran’s ethnic nationalities and various political parties all oppose this neo-fascism, which represents a recipe for division and bloodshed within Iran and for the continuation of militaristic expansionism in the region. By contrast, a genuine alternative must guarantee peace and coexistence.
History has shown that Iran’s solution is neither a dependent dictatorship nor a religious one.
For more than two decades, I have maintained that the solution for Iran lies neither in war nor in appeasement. The solution is the overthrow of the clerical regime by the Iranian people and Resistance.
The People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran: Antithesis of Clerical Exploitation of Religion
Only an alternative rooted in broad social support, political capacity, and a resilient organizational structure can withstand the regime. Crucially, it must be able and prepared to bear the costs of struggle while presenting a religious, intellectual, and cultural antithesis.
The PMOI/MEK, as a member organization of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, has been engaged in struggle against two dictatorships for more than six decades. This organized movement, which also organizes popular uprisings, and which believes in an authentic, tolerant, and democratic understanding of Islam, presents an intellectual and cultural antithesis to the doctrine of absolute clerical rule.
The late Dr. Manouchehr Hezarkhani, an Iranian thinker and member of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, used to say: “The secret of the PMOI’s progress lies in their having swept the dust from the face of religion.” He also said: “The Mojahedin pulled Iranian society’s mindset out of the Middle Ages and brought it into the modern era.” He further stated: “Massoud placed his interpretation of Islam against Khomeini’s interpretation, and this was a profoundly important act. Enduring the hardships and consequences was not easy; yet it transformed the resistance movement into an idealistic movement that politically knows what it wants and what it must do.”
Yes, this is indeed the truth: the antithesis presented by the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran over the past 47 years has been decisive in defeating the mullahs’ exploitation of religion. It has deprived the regime of its most important ideological instruments. It has opened the path for the people’s liberation struggle against the regime. It has succeeded in granting legitimacy to public protest, anger, and resistance against the so-called sacred institutions of this shameful regime.
In the day after the regime’s overthrow, this same antithesis and alternative, by virtue of its intellectual and ideological capacity, can serve as a unifying force for the ranks of the popular front. Moreover, despite the divisions sown by Khomeini and Khamenei between Shiites and Sunnis, this movement advocates friendship and solidarity between them in order to build a democratic society.
The Essence of Islam is Freedom
From the Mojahedin’s perspective:
• The essence of Islam is freedom — freedom from all forms of coercion, oppression, and exploitation.
• Democratic Islam defends sovereignty of the people.
• Islam views sovereignty as the right of the people. The greatest right of which the clerical regime has deprived our people is the right to sovereignty. This usurpation has been the source of all crimes and oppression against the people of Iran and the region.
• Islam upholds full equality between women and men.
• Islam respects human freedom of choice. Anything bearing the marks of coercion is contrary to Islam. We have consistently emphasized: no to compulsory hijab, no to compulsory religion, and no to compulsory governance.
• We advocate for the rights of followers of all religions and denominations. Followers of different religions are equal before the law and enjoy no privilege over one another.
Genuine Islam advocates brotherhood among all religions. Genuine Shiism is known as the staunch opponent of the doctrine of absolute clerical rule and considers Sunnis as its brothers.
• Islam stands for human rights.
• Islam respects laws enacted by people’s elected representatives.
• We believe in the dynamism of the Quran. In our view, the mullahs’ Sharia laws have nothing to do with Islam. The verses of the Quran reject immutable dogmas regarding people’s social and economic rights. Islam has always opened the way for the progress of human society and the improvement of social relations.
• As Massoud Rajavi has declared, “Genuine Islam is precisely the opposite of Khomeini. It does not need to impose its legitimacy and righteousness through coercion. In other words, we deeply believe that the true flourishing of Islam is possible through the rejection of all forms of social or political discrimination, privilege, and coercion.”
Grounded in this conviction, the Iranian Resistance proposed the plan for the separation of religion and state more than four decades ago.
The Clerical Regime: Principal Source of Regional Crisis and Insecurity
Dear friends,
We all remember the Shah’s hostility toward Arab and Muslim countries. Under the clerical regime, such hostility has expanded on an unprecedented scale through the export of fundamentalism and war to the region and its domination in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen.
Now, as Iran’s ruling religious dictatorship enters its final phase, it seeks to propagate the false narrative that its fall, and even the process of its collapse, would plunge the entire region into chaos and insecurity, similar to what occurred in Iraq or Libya.
Yet the Iranian regime has been the primary source and agent of regional crisis and instability for 45 years, and is responsible for the conditions in Iraq, Yemen, and Syria.
With its overthrow — and the presence of a democratic alternative — crisis, war, fundamentalism, and extremism will certainly give way to peace, friendship, and fraternity.
The Need for Muslim Solidarity and Support for the Iranian people and Resistance
Distinguished guests,
Our country, Iran, stands at the threshold of a decisive transformation, one that will impact the Middle East and perhaps the wider world.
This monumental mission, of course, rests with the Iranian people, their organized resistance and uprising, the Resistance Units, and the Army of Freedom. Yet we urge our Muslim brothers and sisters and all freedom-loving and philanthropic people worldwide for solidarity and support.
May governments abandon any policy of appeasement toward religious fascism and recognize the Iranian people’s struggle and resistance in its effort to overthrow the regime. May they acknowledge the legitimacy of the struggle of Iran’s rebellious youth against the Revolutionary Guard Corps and other repressive and coercive agencies of the regime.
Sisters and brothers,
The 10th of Ramadan marks the anniversary of the passing of Khadijah al-Kubra, the first woman to embrace Islam and a revered symbol for Muslims. May her legacy of rejecting idolatry and the values of ignorance and reaction inspire unity among all Muslims against our common adversary: the mullahs’ religious fascism.
In these moments, let us pray for the liberation of the entire region from the scourge of the Velayat-e Faqih regime and for an end to its warmongering and terrorism.
Let us pray for the men, women, and children of the region to be freed from the consequences of the regime’s warmongering and oppression.
May God bless the tens of thousands of young Iranians, and especially political prisoners facing the death sentence, held in the prisons of Ali Khamenei and in the hands of his torturers. May God help them and grant them strength and steadfastness
O God, help our people in their struggle against repression and oppression.
Deliver them from the painful poverty imposed upon them by the plundering clerical regime.
Strengthen the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran so that they may fulfill their commitments in the path of freedom for the people and the homeland and assist them in their great struggle.
Grant assistance to the people and rebellious youth of Iran as they prepare for future uprisings and for triumph over the oppressive rule of the clerics.
ربَّنَا اغْفِرْ لَنَا ذُنُوبَنَا وَ إِسْرَافَنَا فِي أَمْرِنَا وَ ثَبِّتْ أَقْدَامَنَا وَ انصُرْنَا عَلَى الْقَوْمِ الْكَافِرِينَ
“Our Lord, forgive us our sins and our excesses; make firm our steps and grant us victory over the infidels.”
