Iran Lawmaker Says Women Should Not Be Treated by Male Doctors

Ayatollah Kazem Nourmofidi, representative of Iran in the northern Golestan province last week dismissed Gergij, the Friday prayer leader (imam) of Sunnis in Azadshahr. Nourmofidi also appointed a new imam for Azadshahr and nearby Galikosh which has a considerably large Sunni population and a Sunni seminary.

Both Shiite and Sunni Friday imams are appointed by the Supreme Leader or his representatives, but the imam's supporters say Shiite officials have no right to decide on their behalf, and their imams must be appointed by a council of Sunni clerics. Sunnis also oppose the interference of the Leader's representativesin running their seminaries.

Gergij's dismissal came after he made some remarks about Shiite Imams in his Friday sermon two weeks ago that some Shiites found offensive to their sanctities. Gergij said his remarks had been misinterpreted and he had meant no disrespect.

The sacking of Gergij has caused some unrest in Golestan province which has a large Turkmen and Balochi Sunni population. The Sunni imam's supporters have marched on the streets of Azadshahr and Galikosh several times since his dismissal by Khamenei's representative.

Gergij was summoned to the governor's office in Galikosh Thursday morning where hundreds gathered and chanted Allahu Akbar in his support. He was not allowed to return home before evening.

In a video distributed on social media Thursday, Gergij is seen reading from a prepared text and calling his supporters not to stage any protest rallies "to allow disputes to be resolved in a calm atmosphere". Some supporters have alleged that he was pressured to make the statement by security forces.

The Sunnis of Azadshahr were not allowed to hold their Friday prayers at the usual prayer groundsbut videos posted on social media Friday showed hundreds of local Sunnis gathered at a mosque in Galikosh where Gergij was led to the minbar (pulpit) to lead the prayers.

In a letter to Khamenei December 24, Abdolhamid Esmail-Zehi, the influential Sunni Friday imam of Zahedan in Sistan-Baluchistan province, said Gergij's dismissal troubled and disillusioned the Sunni population and could have "irreparable consequences for the unity of Shiite and Sunni Muslims in Iran.

Abdolhamid who is considered the most influential Sunni cleric in Iran has often criticized the Islamic Republic for treating the minority Muslim community as second-class citizens.

In the June presidential election, Abdolhamid who had in the previous elections supported reformist and moderate candidates threw his weight behind hardliner Ebrahim. But he put the onus on Raisi and said his government would be Iran’s “last hope".

The Sunni leader's pro-Taliban statementsafter the Taliban takeover in Kabul led to criticisms from rights groups.

Iran's Sunnis, who constitute between 5 and 10 percent of the population, often complain of discrimination, which bars them from key government and military positions.

Most Sunnis belong to Turkmen, Arab, Baluchi, and Kurdish ethnic groups who live in north-east, south-west, south-east, and north-west provinces respectively and may also be subject to ethnic discrimination.

The nationwide protests, which was called by the Coordination Council of Iranian Teachers’ Trade Associations, started Thursday morning in 120 cities and towns all over Iran.

The teachers gathered in front of the parliament building in Tehran and the provincial offices of the education ministry to protest the parliament’s adoption of a discriminatory ranking plan.

Videos on social media show large crowds of protesters shouting slogans against the relevant authorities asking their resignation.

In many cities the rallies were held in a peaceful atmosphere while security forces and officials were present to prevent any anti-regime slogans, but some scuffles were also reported in Tehran and Shiraz where the demos continued to midafternoon.

According to reports, the prosecutor's office of the Fars province had sent a text message to people in the province, threatening them to stay away from Thursday’s protests.

Police often respond with heavy-handed tactics since protests have gained momentum all over Iran. Several teachers have been arrested during the rallies.

Education International and its member organizations have urged Iran to allow teachers protest for fair pay and to release those jailed.

Academic Taghi Azad Armaki in an interview said that Iranian politicians and political activists have largely not noticed the significance of this shift, although ultimately it is going to be dangerous for the government since economic and social demands relate to concrete issues.

Armaki added that the protests in Esfahan last month over lack of water and the nationwide protests by teachers demanding a long overdue pay adjustment and job classification are the examples of this shift.

However, in most economic protests it does take long for people to shift their focus to the regime and raise slogans against the very essence of the Islamic Republic.

Meanwhile, he said that Iran's reformists have failed to represent the people before the government, partly because the conservative core of the regime has pushed them aside from the country's political dynamics and practically ignored their presence.

Other analysts have tried to explain other dimensions of the same problem. Conservative analyst Amir Mohebbian has said in an interview with the economic daily Donyaye Eqtesad, "We need to reconsider the concept of being revolutionary." He added that "Today, some revolutionaries look for what the people like and then they take a rejectionist stance against it."

Mohebbian was probably talking about Kazem Mousavi the lawmaker who said those who like sunglasses and western lifestyle should leave the country, or hardline journalist Hossein Shariatmadari who has said the government should ignore demands for a pay increase for government employees and further suggested that all social media outlets should be banned altogether.

Some reformists' view about what is going in the Iranian society also indicate that the situation described by Armaki is getting worse.Mohammad Reza Tajik has told reformist daily newspaper Sharq that Iran's reformists can no longer return to power by scaring the voters of their conservative rivals. People are looking beyond the traditional dichotomy of Conservatives versus reformists.

Tajik also pointed out that under current circumstances there is little or no room for reformists in Iranian politics. He said not only the ruling conservatives will not allow reformists to be politically active, but they even cannot tolerate some of the more or less independent or moderate conservative figures. He was possibly talking about the situation of Former Majles Speaker Ali Larijani who was barred by hardliners to run in the June 2021 presidential election.

According to Armaki, however, the only chance for reformists is to align themselves with various social groups and support their grievances, otherwise, they will be kicked out of the political circus if they want to continue their position as a political alternative to the current political system.

Speaking about hardliner conservatives such as Shariatmadari and Kazem Mousavi, Armaki said, "Hardliners do not want and cannot suppress the society's social and cultural demands. The most they can do is to fan short-lived controversies with their state of denial by saying that "There is no value in social media," or "Relations with the world are not important," or "We need to fight the corrupt West." He said the state of denial highlights the fact that hardliners cannot deal with these issues. But regardless of their denials, they have to face the consequences of some of those demands at one point, when the need to have good relations with the West, or supply water to Esfahan become urgent matters and endanger the regime.

"Seminaries must use the money coming from people who pay willingly. Seminaries must be independent [from the government]," Ayatollah Mostafa Mohaghegh-Damad, a professor of Islamic law at Shahid Beheshti University of Tehran, said in a speech on a book dedicated to the Centenary of the Qom Seminary. "Today one of the problems of the seminary is its dependence on the government."

The Qom Seminary, established by Sheikh Abdul-Karim Haeri-Yazdi in 1922, is the largest Shiite seminary (hawza) in Iran with over 75,000 students. Seminaries were self-funded before the Islamic Revolution but like many other religious institutions, they now receive huge sums annually from the government.

In his speech, Mohaghegh-Damad, a moderate religious figure and a member of Iran's Science Academy, cited examples of prominent Shiite religious leaders who have emphasized the importance of separating religion from politics.

The budget allocated to religious institutions in the first budget bill presented to Parliament by President Ebrahim Raisi recently is noticeably higher in comparison with the previous year's budget – at least on those instances where clear figures have been noted.

For instance, the budget proposed for the Seminaries Services Center has doubled. The Seminaries Services Center is to receive 2.8 trillion rials which is higher than the 2,157 trillion rials allocated to the Department of Environment and many other government bodies including the Crisis Management Headquarters. The Center also receives funding from the Supreme Leader's office.

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei ordered the Seminaries Services Center to be established in 1991 to provide housing assistance, health insurance, and similar services to seminary students, who are the future clerics and whose loyalty is important for the regime.

Critics say that in some cases the budgets proposed for government bodies and state entities is difficult to calculate from what is discernible in the budget bill, which does not provide sufficient details.

The government says its budget bill is based on restrictive monetary policies.

Based on the details provided in the bill, the budget of the Islamic Propaganda Organization itself has increased by 43% in comparison with the previous year and reached 11.7 trillion rials. Many other large and small institutions have also been allocated huge increases of up to 124%.

The budget allocated to Al-Mustafa International University of Qom, the Islamic Propaganda Bureau of the Qom Seminary, and the Artistic School of the Islamic Propaganda Organization have not been announced this year.

The Al-Mustafa International University, a state-funded university-style Shiite seminary with branches in many countries, received a budget nearly 5 trillion rials last year, or around $100 million based on the official exchange rate that was applicable at the time. This is higher than the budget of any university in Iran.

The Al-Mustafa University pays for hundreds of foreign students from China to Africa and Latin America who come to study and then return to spread Iranian Shiite teachings in their countries.

Hassan Marashi, the secretary general of the centrist Executives of Construction Party told the economic website Eghtesad News on Tuesday that Rouhani should have resigned as his government was formed based on the idea of holding a dialogue with the United States, but Iran's foreign policy needed to change track in 2018 after Donald Trump left the JCPOA.

"When diplomacy failed, there was no reason for Iran continuing diplomacy," Marashi said. Meanwhile,Marashi acknowledged that the pull-out by Trump was a hard blow to the Rouhani administration. It also emboldened Rouhani's political rivals to start attacking him.

"I told the Supreme Leader that we needed to change course after Trump's pull-out, and then I heard that Rouhani had suggested that he should resign, but the leader did not deem the decision fit for the situation," Marashi added.

In another development, while Rouhani's hardliners have been demanding to put him on trial for his failure to sort out the country's economic and foreign relations problems during his presidency, another reformist figure has suggested that he should welcome a trial.

"I would have welcomed the trial if I were him, " said Mohammad Ali Abtahi the chief of staff of former President Mohammad Khatami in an interview with the Iranian Labour News Agency ILNA on Tuesday, adding that the call for Rouhani's trial is a blame game to divert attention from the new government's failure in solving the country's economic problems.

Abtahi added that the lawmakers who found their way to the parliament with revolutionary slogans have not been able to bring about any positive change and the economic crisis has been deepening on daily basis during the past six months.

"They have also not managed to solve the problem the issue of nuclear negotiations and the markets are still waiting for a positive sign from Vienna, and this is against the Majles and the administration's claims about separating the fate of the country's economy from what happens in the course of the negotiations,” Abtahi argued.

Speaking of responsibility about the current situation addressed both to President Rouhani and former Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani, former government spokesman Ali Rabiei, who is a swell informed veteran intelligence ministry official, summarized what Iran's hardliners call "the current situation"in his Telegram Channel and on the proreform Fararu news website.

Rabiei highlighted Iran's current situation as "the undesirable situation of economic hardships that make life difficult for decent Iranians, an unprecedented inflation worsened by the instability of Iran’s currency and other markets since 2018, widespread poverty that defies all the revolutionary slogans, the social fatigue and insecurity felt by various walks of life in Iran, a rise in emigration by elite Iranians, as well as a decline in respect for revolutionary values."

Rabiei also pointed out that decline in political participation is so bad “that in a city such as Tehran only around 7 percent of eligible voters went to the polls in the 2020 parliamentary election and in some cities the number of votes cast for the winner was barely higher than the number of those who worked at the polling station."

"Add to that the loss of Iran's geopolitical advantage, having no place in the international economy and depriving the nation of the opportunities international economy and modern technology can offer," Rabiei stressed.