Challenging the status quo can be good, if good things come from it. Iran is now at a cross roads culturally and politically. Once again, the question is "how should religion be interpreted?", and the tricky part of the answer comes from the fact that religion has become the key component of government policy. I thought it interesting that the head of the judiciary committee is a religious figure.
If the sentence stands, then Iran could have its own Steven Biko.
Voice your opinion, good, bad, or indifferent. After all, we live in a free society and you just might be able to get college credit for this.
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Iranian Scholar Refuses to Appeal
Wed Nov 13, 7:13 AM ET
By ALI AKBAR DAREINI, Associated Press Writer
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - A university professor sentenced to death for insulting Islam has refused to appeal the sentence, challenging the hard-line judiciary to carry out the execution, his lawyer said Wednesday.
The verdict against Hashem Aghajari touched off days of demonstrations in Iran. In his first comments on the case, Iran's pro-reform president said Wednesday the verdict against him "never should have been issued at all" and urged that the case be "settled in a favorable manner to avoid any problems in the country."
"Under the current circumstances, no measures should be taken that promote tension," President Mohammad Khatami (news - web sites) said after a Cabinet meeting, according to state-run television.
The death sentence has become a center of contention between hard-liners who control the police, judiciary and other powerful bodies and reformers calling for the loosening of social and political restrictions in Iran's Islamic regime.
Thousands of university students took to the streets to protest the verdict, and demonstrations continued Wednesday at universities in Tehran. Nearly two-thirds of the reformist-dominated parliament called Sunday for the sentence to be overturned.
Aghajari's lawyer, Saleh Nikbakht, said his client "has written to me that he doesn't allow me to appeal the sentence."
In his letter, Aghajari said, "I should have died when I lost my leg defending my country (during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war) but I've lived two decades more ... If the death verdict is true, let them carry it out, and if it is wrong, then judiciary needs to work on its shortcomings," Nikbakht told a news conference in Tehran.
The verdict was issued a week ago after a closed trial without a jury. It will be considered final on Dec. 2 unless Aghajari appeals, the prosecutor general decides that the verdict is against legal procedures, or the judge admits he issued a wrong verdict, Nikbakht said. Once a death sentence is final, it is usually carried out within weeks.
Aghajari, a history professor, was convicted of insulting the Prophet Muhammad and questioning the hard-line clergy's interpretation of Islam.
He was charged after a giving a speech in the western city of Hamedan in June,
saying each new generation should be able to interpret Islam on its own. He criticized the clerical establishment for considering the interpretations of previous clerics as sacred. His comments enraged hard-liners, who organized street demonstrations in several Iranian cities and urged the courts to prosecute Aghajari.
Khatami on Wednesday called Aghajari's conviction "incorrect," saying, "personally I don't accept such decisions."
"When it comes to beliefs, a verdict can't be issued easily, especially about a person with a clean record," he said. The lawyer, Nikbakht, called the verdict
politically motivated. But the head of the conservative judiciary,
Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, has
dismissed criticism of the verdict as "ignorant."
