Ahmad Khatami facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Ahmad Khatami
Khatami in 2019

Tehran's Temporary Friday Prayer Imam
Incumbent
Assumed office 18 December 2005
Appointed by	Ali Khamenei
Member of the Assembly of Experts
Incumbent
Assumed office 24 February 1999
Constituency	Kerman Province
Majority	873,584 (55.96%; 3rd term)

Personal details
Born	(1960-05-08) May 8, 1960 (age 64) Semnan, Iran
Political party	Society of Seminary Teachers of Qom

Sayyid Ahmad Khatami (Persian: احمد خاتمی, born 8 May 1960) is a senior Iranian Shia cleric, member of Guardian Council and a senior member of the Assembly of Experts. In December 2005, Ali Khamenei appointed him as Tehran’s substitute Friday prayer leader. He is also a conservative and principlist politician.

He was born in the city of Semnan, 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." 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." 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), and accused reformist presidential candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi of Mohareb as "leaders of sedition" in 2011.

See also