Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes Are Choking Freedom Worldwide

by Paul Marshall

  In the predominantly Sunni province of Sistan-Baluchistan, the moderate and Sunni cleric Moulavi (a Sunni religious title) Ahmad Narouee was arrested in October 2008. An advocate of peaceful dialogue with Shia Iran, in spite of the killings of nearly 400 members of his clan since 1979, Narouee has been held incommunicado. Two other Sunni clerics, Moulavis Muhammad Yousof Sohrabi and Abdoulghodus Mallazahi, were executed in 2008 following a televised confession that they had been deliberately and actively causing Sunni–Shia divisions. More than 130 people in the Sistan-Baluchistan province, primarily Sunnis, have been executed or killed for similar charges since 2004.85

  Sufis

  Sufism has a long history in Iran and, depending on how restrictively it is defined, has up to five million practitioners, amongst both Shia and Sunni. Sufi meditative and mystical approaches arouse deep antagonism among the country’s clerical rulers, who often regard them as heretics. After Ahmadinejad came to power, the demonization and persecution of Sufis increased significantly. One of the largest attacks took place in early 2006 in Qom, the center of Shia learning in Iran.86

  In September 2005, Ayatollah Hossein Nouri-Hamedani, an Islamic scholar in Qom, labeled Sufis a “danger to Islam,” and, in February 2006, security forces cracked down on them. Government-controlled newspapers ran articles attacking Sufis, the governor of Qom charged them with foreign ties, and leaflets describing them as enemies of Islam were spread by paramilitaries. Clashes broke out for two days after police attempted to shut down a husseinieh, or Sufi house of worship, on February 13. Human rights groups report that Sufis, including women and children, were protesting peacefully when the police, aided by members of the conservative Islamic organizations Fatemiyon and Hojjatiyeh, attacked those in the building. In addition to beating the protesters, police used tear gas and explosives, injuring hundreds.

  On February 14, 2006, after the newspaper Kayhan quoted senior clerics in Qom saying that Sufism should be eradicated from the city, government forces razed the husseinieh and surrounding houses, and arrested more than 1,000 people. Over 170 were held in Fajr prison and reportedly tortured to obtain confessions to be read on national television. Authorities released some detainees only after they had signed agreements promising to report to intelligences offices and not attend Sufi meetings in Qom. On May 4, 2006, fifty-two Sufis were sentenced to a year’s imprisonment and seventy-four lashes, as were their lawyers, Farshid Yadollahi and Omid Behrouzi, who additionally received a five-year prohibition on practicing law.87

  On October 10, 2006, the residence of Sufi leader Nurali Tabandeh in Gonabad, in Khorasan province, was surrounded by approximately 300 security personnel.88 Commentators suggest that the government wanted to avoid any large gathering of Sufis, since dervishes from throughout the country travel annually to Gonabad to celebrate Eid al-Fitr, the end of Ramadan, with Tabandeh.89 He was arrested on May 21, 2007, apparently without formal charges.

  In November 2007, many Shia clerics complained because Iranian state television had covered the Rumi International Congress, which celebrated the 800th anniversary of the birth of Rumi, a Persian poet and mystic. Deputy Culture Minister Mohsen Parviz then responded with a statement implying that Sufism should not be promoted in Iran. A week later, following a confrontation in the Western city of Borujerd between members of a Sufi lodge and Shias from a nearby mosque, police and Special Forces used tear gas to storm the lodge, injuring dozens, and made arrests. Government forces also partially demolished a Sufi monastery, called Hossaini-ye Nematollahi Gonabadi, in the same city.90

  A dervish hosseinieh was demolished in Isfahan on February 18, 2009.91 On the following day in the same city, forty dervishes were arrested by agents from the Ministry of Intelligence.92 According to one report, more than 800 were arrested in Tehran on February 22, 2009, and charged with public order and security offenses after gathering to protest the demolition. Of these, 100 were sent to Evin prison for interrogation and fifteen kept in solitary confinement over the course of three months. As one dervish says, “Anyone who stands up to the current regime is charged with waging a war against God or trying to overthrow the Islamic establishment.”93

  Shia Reformers

  The regime’s suppression of religious views is not limited to religious minorities. Any Shia Muslim who questions doctrine, or the unrestricted power of the clergy and the supreme leader, or questions any part of the religious establishment, can be accused of some version of “insulting Islam.” Many Shia religious leaders, including clergy, human rights activists, women’s rights activists, journalists, writers, and lawyers have been charged with blasphemy or even apostasy because they have dared to question or criticize any of the regime’s “divine” rules. Apart from Hojjatoleslam Hassan Yousefi Eshkevari, discussed above, the following are some of the more prominent cases.

  Abdolkarim Soroush

  Abdolkarim Soroush, or Souroush, born Husayn Haj Farajullah Dabbagh, is a world-famous Muslim intellectual who argues for the reconciliation of Islamic and democratic traditions, most especially in Iran, his birthplace. In 1980, he was invited by the regime to return from the United Kingdom, where he was teaching, to help incorporate Islamic studies into the nation’s higher education. While eager to educate his fellow Iranians about Islam and its heritage, Soroush quickly became disillusioned by the regime’s coercive nature. He began to argue for the need to interpret religious practices, though not “essences,” according to the needs of each time in history. In 1983, he stopped working for the government and began teaching at the University of Tehran and publishing articles challenging the Mullahs’ rule and their mixing political power with religion. The prominent Iranian journalist and political dissident Akbar Ganji was one of his students.94

  Soroush’s open criticism of the regime resulted in his arrest on May 10, 1996, and interrogation by the Ministry of Information. Ministry officials warned him not to lecture at the university or to travel abroad. At other public lectures, thugs have attacked him with clubs and knives—apparently with the approval of the regime. Both Tehran and Isfahan universities barred him from holding or attending public programs on their campus. He was then summarily dismissed from his job and prohibited from teaching and routinely threatened with death.95 Due to these pressures, he left Iran in 2000 and has since been a visiting scholar at Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, the Free University of Amsterdam, Berlin’s Wissenschaftskolleg, and Georgetown University. In 2004, he received the prestigious Erasmus Prize and, in 2005, was named by Time magazine as one of the world’s leading 100 public intellectuals. In July 2004, despite threats against his life, he returned for a time to Iran.96

  During a 2008 interview, Soroush stated directly that he believed the Qur’an represented a “prophetic experience.” Thus, he has explained, Muhammad “was at the same time the receiver and the producer of the Koran,” and the “words, images, rules and regulations” of the Muslim Holy Book came from a human mind “imbued with divinity and inspired by God” rather than represented a word-for-word transcription of God’s revelation. While his statements drew accusations of heresy from some Iranian clerics, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei surprisingly interjected that such statements should be refuted using “religious truths” rather than “by declaring apostasy and anger.”97

  Ayatollah Sayed Hossein Kazemeyni Boroujerdi

  Ayatollah Boroujerdi has emphasized that “there is no compulsion in religion” and advocates the separation of religion and state. Since 1996, he has been repeatedly summoned before the Special Court for the Clergy and imprisoned. However, he has continued to lead and teach his followers. On June 30, 2006, he led a large Islamic ceremony at Tehran’s Shahid Keshvari Stadium. In subsequent months, security agents twice attempted to arrest him but were unable to do so. They did arrest members of his family, as well as some of his religious students. On September 7, 2006, he was summoned to appear before the prosecutor for the Special Court for the Clergy. Fearing what might happen, he wrote urgent appeals to P
ope John Paul II, Javier Solana, who was head of the Council of Europe, and Kofi Annan, then UN Secretary General, telling them his life would be in danger if he appeared before the court. On September 28, security forces arrested about forty of Boroujerdi’s followers and took them to the notorious Evin prison, run by the Ministry of Intelligence. One was held in solitary confinement for twenty-two days, and another was tortured and had to be transferred to the Taleqani hospital with a presumed heart attack.98

  On October 8, security forces arrested Boroujerdi, as well as about 300 of his followers, at his residence in what became a violent confrontation. More of his family, reportedly including his eighty-six-year-old mother, were arrested and taken to prison with him. Some followers have been released, and others rearrested, while Boroujerdi continues to be held at Evin prison, suffering from Parkinson’s disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and kidney and heart problems, some of which are due to previous imprisonments and torture. His health has significantly worsened in prison, and he has been denied medical attention. Due in part to this refusal, on July 22, 2007, Boroujerdi started a hunger strike and was transferred to a hospital; he had reportedly lost sixty-six pounds since his arrest and had been tortured.99 In December 2008, he was transferred to a prison in the city of Yazd, which seems to have exacerbated his health problems. His visitation rights have been gradually reduced to the point that daily contacts with the outside world have been denied and weekly visits reduced to one every forty-five days.100 On August 19, 2009, perhaps due to health problems, Boroujerdi was transferred to Evin prison.101 The thirty charges against him include “waging war against God,” which carries the death penalty, “publicly calling political leadership by clergy unlawful,” and publicly using the term “religious dictatorship” instead of “Islamic Republic.”102

  Mohsen Kadivar

  Shia legal and religious scholar Mohsen Kadivar has been frequently disparaged by many other clerics for his criticism of the regime and his attempts to reconcile Islam and modern democracy. The fact that Kadivar, who was educated in a Shia seminary in Qom, argues carefully on the basis of Islam makes him one of the most formidable critics of the Islamic Republic. In 1999, his criticism resulted in his conviction and sentencing to eighteen months by the Special Court for the Clergy for “propagating against the sacred system of the Islamic Republic of Iran” and “publishing untruths and disturbing public minds.”103 He subsequently moved to the United States and has taught at Duke University.

  The conservative clerical establishment’s hostility to Kadivar is rooted in his analytical writings, going as far back as 1994, on Shia religious theories of government. Particularly incensing to many clerics was his critique of Velayat-e Faqih, the theory of political doctrine instituted by Khomeini in 1979 that places both temporal and spiritual power in the hands of a Shia cleric. Though critiques have been articulated by various scholars, Kadivar remains the most prominent and thorough in questioning the religious authenticity of this effective dictatorship. His three-volume The Theories of the State in Shiite Jurisprudence is a comprehensive attack on the principle of government by divine mandate. Kadivar examines the four sources that comprise the basis for the Velayat-e Faqih—the Qur’an, tradition (Sonnat), consensus of the Ulama, and reason (Aghl)—and he systematically undermines Khomeini’s doctrine. Ultimately, he concludes: “The principle of Velayat e-Faqih is neither intuitively obvious nor rationally necessary. It is neither a requirement of religion nor a necessity for denomination. It is neither a part of Shiite general principles nor a component of detailed observances. It is, by near consensus of the Shiite Ulama, nothing more than a jurisprudential minor hypothesis.” Kadivar goes on to say that, because the principle is expounded by clerics rather than by Allah, it is neither sacred nor infallible. He then insists that, as long as clerics possess no divine right to rule, Muslims are free to select their government in a democratic republic.104 His writings attempt to resolve contradictions between traditional Islamic teachings and a modern understanding of human rights. While he advocates neither a “modern Islam” nor an “Islamic modernity,” he has identified his writings as a search for “some interpretation of Islam [that is] compatible with a version of Modernity.”105

  Though not required to wear clerical robes, and despite numerous attempts by Iran’s clerical courts to defrock him, he insists on wearing his clerical robes while teaching, speaking and writing about democracy. In this way, he aims to exemplify a dedication both to the spiritual message of Islam and to the possibility of an Islamic democracy.106 In an interview with Spiegel during the summer of 2009, Kadivar called instead for “a truly Islamic and democratic state, a state that respects human dignity and does not refuse the rights of women, a state where people can freely elect their religious and secular leaders.”107

  Hashem Aghajari

  Hashem Aghajari is a veteran of the Iran–Iraq war, a former political activist with the Warriors of the Islamic Revolution, and a former history professor at Tarbiat Modares University in Tehran. On June 19, 2002, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the death of philosopher Ali Shariati, he delivered a speech entitled “Islamic Protestantism” to students in the western Iranian city of Hamedan. As one of Shariati’s followers, he argued that the clergy should not be seen as mediators between God and mankind, and he questioned the Shia doctrine of emulation in his oft-quoted words, “Muslims are not monkeys to blindly follow the clerics.” He went on to say: “Religion has performed badly when it has gone along with power…. Those who believe Islamic jurisprudence is a kind of divinity on earth, that it cannot be criticized, or judged by the law, must enter debates with Islamic thinkers and let voters choose.… Governments that suppress thinking under the name of religion are not only not religious governments but are not even humane governments.… It is time for the institution of religion to become separated from the institution of government.”108 Aghajari’s speech threatened hard-line clerics; he was arrested on August 8 on charges of “insulting Islam” and, in November 2002, sentenced to death for blasphemy and apostasy.109 This verdict led to widespread student protests and calls to reconsider the case and revoke the death sentence. Partly as a result, in January 2003, the Supreme Court annulled the verdict and sent it for retrial. However, the case was sent back to the same trial court, and, in May 2004, the court once again sentenced Aghajari to death. In June, the Supreme Court annulled this once more and assigned the case to branch 1083 of the Public Court of Tehran.

  The third trial began on July 10, 2004, with a crowd of fanatics gathered at the court entrance chanting, “Aghajari deserves death penalty.” The court charged him with four new offenses: “insulting religion and religious authorities” (articles 513, 514), “propaganda against the Islamic regime” (Article 500), and “publishing lies” for the purpose of inciting public opinion (Article 698). None carried the death penalty. In the course of the trial, Aghajari asserted that he was being tried for the “sin of thinking” and that “the Islam I believe in is an Islam which defends human rights, freedom, and democracy.”

  On July 20, the court found him not guilty of “propaganda against Islam” and “publishing lies,” but guilty of “insulting religion.” Under Article 513 he was sentenced to five years imprisonment, the maximum punishment for blasphemy, with two years off for time previously served. He was also suspended from all social services for an additional five years. On July 31, 2004, he was released on bail of one billion rials (more than $100,000), raised by friends. He returned to his teaching position but rarely speaks in public.

  Abdollah Nouri

  Abdollah Nouri was the Minister of the Interior for a total of four years in both President Rafsanjani’s and President Khatami’s first-term cabinets, serving until 1998. He was also one of the highest-ranking clergy to support the leading dissident cleric, Ayatollah Hussain Ali Montazeri, described below, and founded Khordad, a paper that allowed discussion of taboo subjects such as the limits on the Supreme Leader’s powers, the rights of un
orthodox clerics and groups to air their views, the right of women to divorce, and even whether laughing or clapping were un-Islamic. Soroush was one of its contributors.110

  Nouri was arrested and put on trial on November 27, 1999, on charges including using his newspaper to insult the prophet Muhammad and his direct descendants, insulting Ayatollah Khomeini, backing political parties wanting a secular Iran, and seeking friendly ties with the United States and Israel. The prosecutor cited articles in Khordad that stated people should be allowed to clap, whistle, and cheer at concerts and political rallies, that criticized divorce laws and the Islamic legal precept of qisas (retaliation), and that said of the clergy that “absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Nouri refused to back down, and he criticized regime clerics for reneging on promises of democracy and for defending a repressive system, which he believed violated Qur’anic precepts. He also declared, “I totally reject the court, its membership, and its competence to conduct this trial… what has happened to us, to our revolution, to our faith… that one group of clerics can make allegations against another like this?” Nouri’s challenge of the court’s legitimacy also questioned Khomeini’s legacy. Khomeini had established the clergy court by personal decree to deal with rising resistance to Islamic rule, and Nouri, citing the 1980 constitution, said that not even “the leader”—a reference to Khomeini—could establish courts outside the framework of the constitution.111