User:BillGarrisonJr/Plastic key

Supposedly about 1984 the Iranian government distributed golden-colored, plastic ‘Paradise Keys’ to its soldiers; they were told that these keys would ‘open the gates of Paradise’ where 72 ‘houri’ (celestial virgins) awaited battlefield martyrs. This is unsubstantiated; soldiers were issued metallic identification tags, and/or plastic identification cards, along with a copy of Shaykh Abbas Qomi (d. 1959) prayer book entitled ‘Mafatih ul-Jenan’ or “Keys to Paradise”. Some contend this comingling of military items enabled opponents of Khomeini to misrepresent that the soldiers had been issued ‘Plastic Keys to Heaven’ – a concept that they hoped would evoke derision in the Western media against Khomeini [cite: “Khomeini’s Search for Perfection: Theory and Reality” by Baqer Moin in Pioneers of Islamic Revival, 2005 ed. by Ali Rahnema, p. 68.]. Although 500,000 of these keys were allegedly ordered from Taiwan, and were allegedly found by Iraqi soldiers in the clinched fists of dead Iranian soldiers, no photographs of them have appeared.