Iranian Reformist Speaks Out Against Sectarian Violence

Gareth Smyth in Tehran, The Financial Times:

Mehdi Karrubi, Iran’s former parliamentary speaker and a veteran of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, has criticised Shia Muslim radicals who last week destroyed a religious building belonging to Islamic mystics in the holy city of Qom.

His comments – prominent in reformist newspapers – reflect concern about Shia militants stirring conflict as Iran’s fundamentalist president, Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, tries to radicalise Islam at home and abroad, and as Sunni militants provoke sectarian violence in neighbouring Iraq with attacks like Wednesday’s on the Askariyeh holy Shia shrine in Samarra.

Mr Karrubi was responding to violence in Qom last week when radicals destroyed a meeting house used by Sufis, an Islamic order viewed with suspicion by some Shia.

The clashes – which led to hundreds of arrests and the use of tear gas by police – arose from a four-year dispute over ownership of the building, where Sufis practised religious rites.

The governor-general of Qom told Jomhuri-ye Eslami, a conservative newspaper, the Sufis were part of a “foreign plot …[by] arrogant powers exploiting every opportunity to create insecurity.”

Some conservative ayatollahs have in recent months criticised the growth of Sufism, which sometimes involves music and dance, as a threat to Islam.

But Mr Karrubi argued the authorities should “find ways to criticise schools of thought … without violating human rights”.

He argued that “real Islam is powerful and broadminded enough to be capable of resolving sectarian disputes”. Mr Karrubi has written to the “sources of emulation” – the most senior Shia clergy – in Qom asking them to “show the reality of religious freedom”.

Like many reformists, Mr Karrubi, has in recent months kept a low profile, reluctant to criticise Mr Ahmadi-Nejad’s government at a sensitive time in Iran’s relations with outside powers over its nuclear programme.

But reformists, pragmatic conservatives and many senior clerics are nervous at Mr Ahmadi-Nejad’s radicalism, particularly over international Islamic causes and in his strong emphasis on the Mahdi, the historic leader Shia believe will one day return to rule justly on earth before the Day of Judgement.

Khedmatnews.com, a website close to Mr Ahmadi-Nejad, reported the Sufis’ building had contained a sound system, satellite communications systems, 2,000 litres of petrol, open and unopened bottles of alcohol, and drugs. READ MORE

The site also suggested the Sufis had recently prayed in the street without first washing, as required in Islam, and implied senior ayatollahs had sanctioned action against the Sufis.

Rooz Online contradicted the Khedmatnews.com website saying the mosque had in fact been taken over by followers of Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi had occupied the Sufi temple and had turned it into a surveillance station to spy and eavesdrop on the grand ayatollahs of Qom.