He has spent the last 25 years of his life in devotion to Islam and the values of the Islamic Republic of Iran. He is a member of a “hayat”, one of the network of neighbourhood religious committees that organises regular mourning ceremonies to commemorate Imam Hossein, the grandson of the prophet Muhammad and a key figure in Iran’s majority Shia faith.
But over the last five weeks he has had a crisis of conscience watching Iran unravel in the wake of the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini after her arrest by the morality police and the subsequent waves of protest.
