How Not To Lie
Pity poor Ali Kordan, Iran’s Interior Minister, who today faces impeachment by the Iranian Parliament.
Here’s the story.
The former Revolutionary Guard had boasted that he had been awarded an “honorary degree of law” by the University of Oxford. Not so, cried his critics. So, to silence his doubters, Kordan released the certificate confirming his degree:
Well, that looks genuine enough. It has an Oxford University crest on it, and signatures and everything.Unfortunately, Alef News Agency, which is aligned with Korban’s political opponents, sent the certificate off to Oxford University, which responded with the following statement:
The University of Oxford has no record of Mr Ali Kordan receiving an honorary doctorate or any other degree from the University.
The document that has been made public is not a genuine University of Oxford degree certificate.
The names of the professors at the bottom of the document are people who have all at some stage held posts at the University of Oxford. However, none of them has worked in the field of Law, and none of them would have been a signatory of any University of Oxford degree certificate.
The Ministry of the Interior immediately responded by procuring the censorship of Alef. But the game was up. Kordan could no longer maintain that the degree was genuine. Here’s his explanation of why he honestly, genuinely, truthfully believed that he was the holder of an Oxford degree:
In a letter to the president on Saturday, Ali Kordan said he had pressed charges against the person who claimed to represent Oxford University in Tehran as soon as he realised his degree was fake…
“Over the past eight years, I never doubted the validity of the degree and that’s why I presented it in the course of the confidence vote,” Kordan wrote in his letter to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The minister, who was appointed in August, said he approached Oxford University after MPs cast doubt on his degree, but “to my utter disbelief, the university did not confirm (the degree) when my representative went there”.
Too late. Impeachment proceedings soon followed.
This presented a bit of a problem for Ahmadinejad. Iran’s constitution requires that his entire cabinet be approved by Parliament if more than half the cabinet ministers are replaced. Ahmadinejad has replaced nine of 21. Accordingly, the President opposed impeachment: on the grounds that it was illegal because the Minister had not “commit[ted] the offence while in office”.
Farce ensued.
The dispute over Kordan’s fake degree triggered a fistfight last week when the director of the presidential liaison office in parliament, Mohammad Abbasi, handed out checks for $5,000 to lawmakers who signed a letter stating that they would not vote for the impeachment.
When lawmaker Ali Asghar Zarei confronted Abbasi, a fight broke out in which the presidential liaison was injured. Zarei is regarded as one of Ahmadinejad’s most loyal supporters in parliament.
“Collecting these signatures was against morality,” Zarei said later, according to the semiofficial Fars News Agency. “I confronted him to prevent violations and wrongdoings that are contrary to the policy of the government.”
Abbasi was fired and banned permanently from the Parliament building.
You’d never catch a prominent British politician involved in anything like this, of course.
UPDATE: He has gone
Comments
| 4 November 2008, 9:56 am |
They could’ve found out even sooner if any of them knew how to use apostrophes!
| 4 November 2008, 9:56 am |
Damn, Greg got there first!
| 4 November 2008, 10:01 am |
What a crap fake degree certificate.
And lay off the good Revd Dr – there is a time and place to say NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO to facile demagoguery, and that time is today. But not in Norn Iron.
But, back on topic: something surprisingly similar happened in Ukraine a bit after the Orange Revolution: another lying lawyer (as if), Roman Zvarich.
Story is mentioned ( a bit in passing) here
when Justice Minister Roman Zvarich threatened to resign unless the ban on the re-export of gasoline (his family business) was lifted.
Next, it turned out that Roman Zvarich, a former U.S. citizen, had never in fact been a professor of law in the United States nor did he even have a degree in law. Nonetheless, he retained his post.
(I had been hoping that this “degree certificate” would have contained the same misspelling of “Proffessor” that Yanukovych’s documentation had for the 2004 elections, too. Alas)
| 4 November 2008, 10:08 am |
It seems that Profs Rolls and Cowey are both neuroscientists, while Prof Bryant is a psychologist.
I found that out in five minutes using Google.
Perhaps Kordan should have done the same.
| 4 November 2008, 10:09 am |
Didn’t George Galloway fake almost a decade long opposition to Saddam Hussein in order to get a job on Press TV, or something
| 4 November 2008, 10:26 am |
A fake honorary degree. A two-fer!
| 4 November 2008, 10:28 am |
Ali Kordan said he had pressed charges against the person who claimed to represent Oxford University in Tehran: Look at the wording: “..in order to be benefitted from it’s scientific privileges.” Clearly Borat had a hand in this. And who is behind Borat? It’s (apostrophe correctly used) those Jews again!
| 4 November 2008, 10:32 am |
“But I bought that fake degree in good faith!”
| 4 November 2008, 10:35 am |
“Here’s his explanation of why he honestly, genuinely, truthfully bought a fake certificate”
| 4 November 2008, 10:50 am |
everything.Unfortunately
There needs to be a space after the full stop.
| 4 November 2008, 10:54 am |
A fake honorary degree. A two-fer!
Is that like a genuine forgery? Or a fake forgery? Personally I think all social science degrees are fake anyway.
| 4 November 2008, 10:54 am |
While we’re getting tedious, you spelt “Palindrome” wrong on the other thread, Benji.
Sort it out.
| 4 November 2008, 10:59 am |
Professor Bryant a faculty?????
It looked like a fake the second I glanced at it.
| 4 November 2008, 11:00 am |
Over the past eight years, I never doubted the validity of the degree
This is most bizarre. Essentially, Kordan is saying that he was awarded the degree entirely under false pretenses, by a mysterious “Oxford University” and yet he was unaware of that. Kind of like accidentally being awarded a fake degree. Eh?
| 4 November 2008, 11:00 am |
Personally I think all social science degrees are fake anyway.
May as well be, in my case.
| 4 November 2008, 11:01 am |
I must admit to looking down on universities that don’t issue their honorary degree certificates in Latin
| 4 November 2008, 11:28 am |
On a different note, clearly in some areas Iranian universities are not bad
| 4 November 2008, 12:49 pm |
Why is the word “intitle” (sic) sort of floating off to the right as if someone had Tipexed out a part of the sentence?
| 4 November 2008, 1:20 pm |
This is quite normal in the Muslim world it would seem.
I knew a well brought up, perfectly nice young Turkish woman who informed me with no sense of embarrassment whatsoever how her boyfriend was going to forge his reference.
What it says for Muslim culture, I’m not sure. Of course I am fully aware that non-Muslims in the West forge documents as well – it was the lack of shame or embarrassment displayed by this nice young lady that was of interest. I don’t think you’d get that from most people of non-Muslim backgrounds in equivalent social classes.
| 4 November 2008, 1:31 pm |
How strange, then, that he has been drummed out of office in disgrace.
| 4 November 2008, 1:54 pm |
“I must admit to looking down on universities that don’t issue their honorary degree certificates in Latin”
Venchika alumnus augustus dextra ala universitatis domi haroldi
| 4 November 2008, 2:37 pm |
Construe, please.
| 4 November 2008, 2:53 pm |
I never cease to find it surprising that these Islamic regimes, which happily denounce the West at every turn, are full of politicians desperate to gain some legitimacy from our institutions.
| 4 November 2008, 3:11 pm |
universitatis domi haroldi
id est quondam politechnicus in nomine davidi T
| 4 November 2008, 3:37 pm |
id est quondam politechnicus in nomine davidi T
wankus pretentionus.
| 4 November 2008, 4:39 pm |
not really strange, david t. muslims may not approve of fraud or being fooled or having their institutions brought into disrepute, but do seem unworried about lying itself, or telling lies that no one is ever going to believe, often in contexts (such as in court) where others might think you should not be seen to be lying. i have wondered whether, because there is a measure of agreement that lying to kuffrs is ok, lying has become more a political than an ethical matter for muslims. the argument that it was ok because it happened when Kordan was not in office may illustrate this distinction.
| 4 November 2008, 4:43 pm |
“wankus pretentionus”
If that’s addressed to Venichka it should be “wanke pretentione”
| 4 November 2008, 5:29 pm |
I imagine it’s addressed at whomsoever thought it would be a jolly jape to rename “The Polytechnic of David T” as “The University of Harry’s Place”. As such, the slight is well deserved.
| 4 November 2008, 5:58 pm |
alembic, lying is OK in some cultures as long as you don’t get caught …
| 4 November 2008, 7:09 pm |
I know that Iranians are not Arabs but is this another example of what Tarek Heggy calls “big talk syndrome”, an unfortunate tendency to be fooled by their own rhetoric?
I am also reminded of “Comical Ali” in Iraq, who insisted that Iraq was winning the war even as American tanks appeared in the background.
| 4 November 2008, 8:19 pm |
Some Latin documentation in my academic experience had to contain an error, Raisin receipts for example. But I can’t imagine the Iranian bloke being asked to sing the ‘Gaudeamus Igitur’ as a consequence….Perhaps he wishes that was all he had to do.
| 4 November 2008, 10:30 pm |
LOL Redgown (I know people who wear redgowns – and may I ask, on both shoulders? just one? or pushed back? with or without a raisin string? – don’t generally use such modish abbreviations), but still. – - You have no idea how impressed I was, living in Kielce, Poland ( a beautiful but otherwise thoroughly horrible and vicious place), to hear the Gaudeamus as the theme tune to a programme for students on a local radio station. Common European identity or something. 1411! The Pope in Avignon!
| 6 November 2008, 6:40 pm |
Alas, the old red gown yielded to moth and anno domini long before now but, yes, it did have a raisin string when it existed. I confess I can’t see what makes the alias modish as opposed to simply [ex-] descriptive. And I, too, rejoice in internationalism, these days through my anarcho-syndicalist affinity group….
I very much doubt the degree certificate was written by someone whose first language was English (“…it’s scientific previleges.”) I’d like to think that Oxford University’s degree certificate template had the correct usage of the apostrophe… I guess degrees purchased off the internet aren’t genuine after-all…