Skip to main content

Iran Arrests Religious Leader

Iran has arrested a religious leader and some of his followers who advocate separating religion and politics after clashes with police, Iranian news agencies reported yesterday.Hundreds of supporters of Ayatollah Mohammad Kazemeini Borujerdi had gathered on Saturday around his house in Tehran to protest the arrest of a number of Borujerdi's followers and restrictions imposed on him, press reports said.
"The ones behind Saturday's unrest were arrested. All including, Borujerdi, have been handed over to judiciary officials," said a security official in Tehran governor's office, identified only by his last name, Roshan.
Roshan said the police had previously sought to contain these "sectarian elements" but yesterday "they were carrying Molotov cocktails, knives, swords and clubs to confront the police." "They even (for a time) took members of the force hostage and threw acid on policemen and vandalized public property," he said, adding "calm has been restored" in the crowded neighborhood in downtown Tehran.
A report in reformist Hambastegi daily said the Special Court for Clergy had recently tried to arrest Borujerdi but faced resistance by his supporters. Questioning a pillar of state policy, the ayatollah has said: "We believe people have grown tired of political religion and they want to return to traditional religion. The objective of my followers and me is in defending traditional religion."
But the deputy head of Tehran police, Commander Nasser Shabani, accused the ayatollah of misinterpreting religion. "A person has gathered some naive people around to pledge donations and have their wishes come true, which is a sheer lie and distortion of religion," he told ILNA

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Debate Islam in Indonesia

http://www.thejakar taglobe.com/ opinion/interloc utors-of- indonesian- islam/560447 Interlocutors of Indonesian Islam Ahmad Najib Burhani | December 08, 2012 A few months ago, the Japanese anthropologist Mitsuo Nakamura told me that studying Nahdlatul Ulama as an organization was beyond the imagination of any American scholar from the 1950s to the ’70s. But he is not the only academic to have noticed this. George McT. Kahin of Cornell University stated the same thing. Even NU-expert Martin van Bruinessen was not expecting to study NU as his primary focus when he came to Indonesia for the first time in the 1980s.   During the early decades of Indonesian independence, NU was relatively unorganized and its management was largely based on the authority of religious teachers ( kyai ). Of course there were a number of scholars who studied NU-affiliated religious schools ( pesantren ) and its kyai, but not NU as an organization.   Even though NU was one of the ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Greenpeace boycott Palm oil products Duta Palma

Environmental organization Greenpeace India has demanded that all Indian palm oil importers and corporate consumers immediately stop palm oil sourcing from Indonesian companies like Duta Palma who make palm oil by destroying forests and tiger habitat in Indonesia. An investigative report issued by Greenpeace Indonesia released on Thursday links India's growing palm oil imports and corporate apathy to Duta Palma's destruction of hundreds of acres of Indonesian rainforests and tiger habitat in complete disregard of Indonesian government&# 39;s moratorium on such activities in the rainforest. Big Indian corporates like Ruchi Soya, Adani -Wilmar, Godrej Industries, Parle, Britannia are among many who use Indonesian palm oil in their products on a large scale.  "Duta Palma's dirty oil could well be entering into their supply chains. Yet, so far, no Indian company has taken any visible steps to clean up their supply chain, to delink their brands from the ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Blasphemy in the name of religion

The Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC) wishes to bring the attention of the Human Rights Council (HRC) to violations of the right to the freedom of expression and opinion that are being engendered through the use of Indonesia’s legal provisions prohibiting blasphemy. Religious blasphemy is prohibited in Indonesia under Law No. 1/PNPS/1965, with such provisions also being later adopted within the Penal Code (KUHP) under Article 156a. Paragraph (a) of this article uses vague language, which opens the door to abusive uses of this provision, to prohibit any acts and expression of views considered to be blasphemous, and carries a maximum punishment of five years imprisonment. A similar maximum punishment is also carried by paragraph (b) of the article, which prohibits any acts and expression of views calling for others to embrace atheism. Alexander Aan is an atheist currently undergoing a trial at the Muaro Sijunjung District Court, West Sumatra. According to his lawyers from ...
Post a Comment
Read more