Iran is a constitutional, Islamic theocracy. Its official religion is the doctrine of the Twelver Jaafari School. [1] Iran's law against blasphemy derives from Sharia. Blasphemers are usually charged with "spreading corruption on earth", or mofsed-e-filarz, which can also be applied to criminal or political crimes. The law against blasphemy complements laws against criticizing the Islamic regime, insulting Islam, and publishing materials that deviate from Islamic standards. [1]
According to Article 24 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, "Publications and the press have freedom of expression except when it is detrimental to the fundamental principles of Islam ..." [2]
On 24 September 2014, a former psychologist Mohsen Amir Aslani was hanged in a prison near the city of Karaj, west of Tehran, where he had been in detention for eight years, for "corruption on earth and heresy in religion". Aslani had taught religious classes; according to authorities, his teachings on the Koran diverged from established interpretations. He was also accused of insulting the Prophet Jonah: he is alleged to have stated that Jonah could not have emerged from the whale. [3]
On 9 June 2009, the singer Mohsen Namjoo was sentenced in absentia to a five-year jail term for ridiculing the Quran in a song. In 2008, Namjoo had apologized for the song, which he claimed was never meant for public release. [4]
In March 2009, Iranian blogger Omid Mirsayafi died in prison while serving a 30-month sentence for propaganda against the state and criticism of religious leaders. The authorities said Mirsayafi committed suicide. [1]
In February 2009, the Iranian government launched a campaign against Mohammad Mojtehed Shabestari, a Shia Muslim cleric, for blasphemy. Shabestari's blasphemy was to say in a speech: "If in a society the three concepts of God, power, and authority are mixed up, a political-religious despotism will find strong roots ... and the people will suffer greatly." [5]
In May 2007, authorities arrested eight students at Tehran's Amir Kabir University. The students were associated with a newspaper which had published articles suggesting that no humans were infallible, including the Prophet Muhammad. [6]
In October 2006, Ayatollah Hossein Kazemeyni Boroujerdi, a senior Shia cleric who advocates the separation of religion and state, and a number of his followers were arrested and imprisoned after clashes with riot police. He and seventeen of his followers were initially sentenced to death, but the death sentences were later withdrawn. In August 2007, he was sentenced to one year in prison in Tehran followed by another ten years in prison in another part of the country. [1]
In 2002, Hashem Aghajari, a member of the Shia majority, a history professor, and a veteran who lost a leg in 1980-88 war against Iraq, gave a speech in which he called for political reforms. The authorities arrested Aghajari, charged him with blasphemy, and jailed him. A court convicted Aghajari, and made death the penalty. In June 2004, the Supreme Court substituted a charge of "insulting religious values" for the blasphemy charge, and imposed a jail term of three years among other penalties. Aghajari was released on bail on 31 July 2004. [7] [8]
In 1999, Iran put on trial for “insulting the Prophet, his descendants, and the Ayatollah Khomeini,” and for other charges, Abdollah Nouri, the former Minister of the Interior in the Rafsanjani and Khatami cabinets. In 1999, Nouri was the publisher of a daily newspaper that discussed the limits on the Supreme Leader's powers, the rights of unorthodox clerics and groups to air their views, the right of women to divorce, and whether laughing and clapping were un-Islamic. On 27 November 1999, the Special Court for the Clergy found Nouri guilty, and sentenced him to five years' imprisonment and a fine. Nouri was released on 5 November 2002. [9] [10]
In 1988, in the United Kingdom, Salman Rushdie published The Satanic Verses , a novel. Muslims in the United Kingdom accused Rushdie of blasphemy. Some Muslims called upon the Crown to prosecute Rushdie but it did not. On 14 February 1989, the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwa which called for Muslims to kill Rushdie and all publishers of The Satanic Verses. In 1991, Hitoshi Igarashi, the novel's Japanese translator was stabbed to death. Shortly afterward, the Italian translator was stabbed but survived. In 1993, the Norwegian publisher of the book was injured in a gun attack. [11]
Iranian journalist Mohammad Mosaed, who "reported extensively on government corruption, embezzlement, economic sanctions, labour and popular protests", was sentenced to four years and nine months in prison in 2021. [12]
In 2023, two men in Iran were executed for blasphemy. The two men, Yousef Mehrad and Sadrollah Fazeli-Zare reportedly ran several online accounts dedicated to spreading atheism. The pair were first arrested in 2020 for running an account on Telegram. The two were then convicted in 2021 on multiple charges of blasphemy and sentenced to death. [13]
Aseman ('Sky'), a reformist newspaper was shut after just one week of publication. The closure was done after a professor, Davoud Hermidas-Bavand, described eye-for-an-eye punishment as "inhumane." [14] Aseman was aligned with the country's new president Hassan Rouhani. Former reformist president, Mohammad Khatami, had endorsed the paper in a letter published in its first edition, saying, "Whenever the space for life tightens; whenever the land dries up and is deprived of water", people "lift their eyes to the sky to keep hope alive." [15]
According to the prosecutor's office, "The newspaper was banned for spreading lies and insulting Islam." [16]
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was an Iranian Islamic revolutionary, politician and religious leader who served as the first supreme leader of Iran from 1979 until his death. He was the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the leader of the Iranian Revolution, which overthrew Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and ended the Iranian monarchy.
The constitution of Iran states that the country is an Islamic republic; it specifies Twelver Ja’afari Shia Islam as the official state religion.
Seyyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei, mostly known as Ali Khamenei, is a Twelver Shia marja' and the second and current supreme leader of Iran, in office since 1989. Previously, he served as the third president of Iran from 1981 to 1989. Khamenei is the longest serving head of state in the Middle East, as well as the second-longest serving Iranian leader of the last century, after Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Fazel Lankarani was an Iranian Twelver Shia Marja'. He was student of Grand Ayatollah Borujerdi. He was a child of a Persian mother and an Azerbaijani father.
Abdollah Noori is an Iranian cleric and reformist politician. Despite his "long history of service to the Islamic Republic," he became the most senior Islamic politician to be sentenced to prison since the Iranian Revolution, when he was sentenced to five years in prison for political and religious dissent in 1999. He has been called the "bête noire" of Islamic conservatives in Iran.
Special Clerical Court, or Special Court for Clerics is a special Iranian judicial system for prosecuting crimes, both ordinary and political, committed by Islamic clerics and scholars. The Special Clerical Court can defrock and disbar Islamic jurists, give sentences of imprisonment, corporal punishment, execution, etc. The court functions independently of the regular Iranian judicial framework, with its own security and prison systems, "generally secret and confidential" cases, proceedings and procedures, and is accountable only to the Supreme Leader of Iran,. The most senior Islamic politician to be prosecuted and sentenced to prison since the Iranian Revolution was Abdollah Nouri who was sentenced to five years in prison for political and religious dissent by the court in 1999.
Mohsen Kadivar is a mujtahid, Islamic theologian, philosopher, writer, leading intellectual reformist, and research professor of Islamic Studies at Duke University. A political Iranian dissident, Kadivar has been a vocal critic of the doctrine of clerical rule, also known as Velayat-e Faqih, and a strong advocate of democratic and liberal reforms in Iran as well as constructional reform in understanding of shari'a and Shi'a theology. Kadivar has served time in prison in Iran for his political activism and beliefs.
Seyyed Hashem Aghajari is an Iranian historian, university professor and a critic of the Islamic Republic's government who was sentenced to death in 2002 for apostasy for a speech he gave on Islam urging Iranians to "not blindly follow" Islamic clerics. In 2004, after domestic Iranian and international outcry, his sentence was reduced to five years in prison.
The state of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran has been criticized by Iranians and international human rights activists, by writers, and NGOs. The United Nations General Assembly and the Human Rights Commission have condemned prior and ongoing abuses in Iran in published critiques and several resolutions. The government is criticized both for restrictions and punishments that follow the Islamic Republic's constitution and law, and for "extrajudicial" actions by state actors, such as the torture, rape, and killing of political prisoners, and the beatings and killings of dissidents and other civilians. Capital punishment in Iran remains a matter of international concern.
Grand Ayatollah Hossein Noori-Hamedani is an Iranian Twelver Shi'a Marja known for his conservative views.
In Islam, blasphemy is impious utterance or action concerning God, but is broader than in normal English usage, including not only the mocking or vilifying of attributes of Islam but denying any of the fundamental beliefs of the religion. Examples include denying that the Quran was divinely revealed, the Prophethood of one of the Islamic prophets, insulting an angel, or maintaining God had a son.
The Satanic Verses controversy, also known as the Rushdie Affair, was a controversy sparked by the 1988 publication of Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses. It centered on the novel's references to the Satanic Verses of the Quran, and came to include a larger debate about censorship and religious violence. It included numerous killings, attempted killings, and bombings by perpetrators who supported Islam.
Khomeinism refers to the religious and political ideas of the leader of the 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution, Ruhollah Khomeini. Khomeinism may also refer to the ideology of the clerical class which has ruled Islamic Republic of Iran founded by Khomeini, after his death. It can also be used to refer to the radicalization of segments of the Twelver Shia populations of Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon, and the Iranian government's recruitment of Shia minorities in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Africa. The word Khomeinist and Khomeinists, derived from Khomeinism, are also used to describe members of Iran's clerical rulers and differentiate them from regular Shia Muslim clerics.
Iran After the Parliamentary Elections: The Dynamic of Reforms in the Islamic Republic was a three-day conference about future of Iran after landslide victory of the reformists in 2000 legislative election, organized by the Heinrich Böll Foundation and held in Berlin in April 2000. The conference was less notable for its proceedings than for its disruption by anti-regime Iranian exiles, and for the long prison sentences given to several participants upon their return to Iran.
From the Imperial Pahlavi dynasty, through the Islamic Revolution (1979), to the era of the Islamic Republic of Iran, government treatment of Iranian citizens' rights has been criticized by Iranians, international human rights activists, writers, and NGOs. While the monarchy under the rule of the shahs was widely attacked by most Western watchdog organizations for having an abysmal human rights record, the government of the Islamic Republic which succeeded it is considered still worse by many.
Saudi Arabia's laws are an amalgam of rules from Sharia, royal decrees, royal ordinances, other royal codes and bylaws, fatwas from the Council of Senior Scholars and custom and practice.
The main blasphemy law in Egypt is Article 98(f) of the Egyptian Penal Code. It penalizes: "whoever exploits and uses the religion in advocating and propagating by talk or in writing, or by any other method, extremist thoughts with the aim of instigating sedition and division or disdaining and contempting any of the heavenly religions or the sects belonging thereto, or prejudicing national unity or social peace."
The Federal Republic of Nigeria operates two court systems. Both systems can punish blasphemy. The Constitution provides a customary (secular) system and a system that incorporates Sharia. The customary system prohibits blasphemy by section 204 of Nigeria's Criminal Code.
Capital punishment for offenses is allowed by law in some countries. Such offenses include adultery, apostasy, blasphemy, corruption, drug trafficking, espionage, fraud, homosexuality and sodomy, perjury, prostitution, sorcery and witchcraft, theft, and treason.
The situation for apostates from Islam varies markedly between Muslim-minority and Muslim-majority regions. In Muslim-minority countries, "any violence against those who abandon Islam is already illegal". But in some Muslim-majority countries, religious violence is "institutionalised", and "hundreds and thousands of closet apostates" live in fear of violence and are compelled to live lives of "extreme duplicity and mental stress."