Hat tip: Pastorius
Showing posts with label Friday prayers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Friday prayers. Show all posts
Friday, July 17, 2009
TIMES ONLINE: Iranian police fired tear gas and used batons to disperse thousands of demonstrators outside Tehran University today as a former president who is backing the opposition movement led Friday prayers for the first time since the disputed election.
Hojatoleslam Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the influential head of the Assembly of Experts and key supporter of the opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, called for prisoners to be released as he preached inside the campus that Iran was in crisis.
Demonstrators gathered at the university, which has been a regular focus of the protests, despite a violent crackdown by the authorities, only to be met by a wall of officers who have made at least 15 arrests according to a witness.
The former president’s sermon, broadcast live on state radio, was at one stage interrupted by slogans chanted by Mousavi supporters.
“I will talk about a solution for today’s situation, so that a way can be found to go ahead in the future with the same greatness, unity and consensus which we had in the beginning,” he said.
“Our key issue is to return the trust which the people had and now to some extent is broken ... It is not necessary that in this situation people be jailed. Let them join their families. We should not allow enemies to rebuke and ridicule us because of detentions. We should tolerate each other."
The opposition is seeking to show that their movement remains vibrant even after the repression that followed Iran’s discredited June 12 presidential election. >>> Nico Hines | Friday, July 17, 2009
Friday, July 10, 2009
TIMES ONLINE: Padlocks secured the iron grill gates to mosques across the city of Urumqi this morning as Muslim Uighurs were told to stay home and pray.
Officials have notified all mosques in the city, where 156 people were killed and more than 1,000 injured when minority Muslim Uighurs rampaged through the streets baying for the blood of Han Chinese last weekend, that today's noon prayers must be cancelled.
At the Say Bag District Mosque, security officials sat in the shaded entrance behind the locked gates, some had electric truncheons on the table in front of them in case of renewed violence. A notice on an entrance pillar asked people to worship at home today and to stay away.
Prayers were cancelled, it said: “Because of the complicated situation at the moment and to safeguard the security of the Muslim masses and to protect the property of the mosque and so as to give no opportunity to violent terrorists.”
It concluded: “We hope the Muslim masses will understand this and will notify each other.” >>> Jane Macartney in Urumqi | Friday, July 10, 2009
Saturday, June 27, 2009
TIMES ONLINE: A hardline cleric close to the Iranian regime demanded the execution of leading demonstrators yesterday as the opposition ended the week in disarray.
In a televised sermon at Friday prayers in Tehran, Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami called on the judiciary to “punish leading rioters firmly and without showing any mercy to teach everyone a lesson”. He said that those leaders were backed by the United States and Israel. They should be treated as mohareb — people who wage war against God — and deserved execution.
In a clear warning to all other dissenters, he declared: “Anybody who fights against the Islamic system or the leader of Islamic society, fight him until complete destruction.” Leading demonstrators must be executed, Ayatollah Khatami demands >>> Martin Fletcher | Saturday, June 27, 2009
Friday, June 26, 2009
TIMES ONLINE: A hardline cleric seen as a mouthpiece of the Iranian regime today demanded that opposition demonstrators be punished “without mercy”.
Even as Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami delivered his uncompromising message at Tehran’s Friday prayers, foreign ministers of the world’s leading industrialised nations issued a statement deploring the regime’s violent crackdown on the protestors and demanded it “stop immediately”.
Mr Khatami’s televised sermon came at the end of a week in which the regime has brutally suppressed all streets protests and rounded up hundreds of opponents for daring to question President Ahmadinejad’s re-election. It conveyed the unmistakable message that no dissent would be tolerated, and that the crackdown would, if anything, intensify.
“I want the judiciary to ... punish leading rioters firmly and without showing any mercy to teach everyone a lesson,” Mr Khatami told worshippers at Tehran university.
He said the judiciary should treat the leading “rioters” as “mohareb” - people who wage war against God. “Based on Islamic law, whoever confronts the Islamic state ... should be convicted as mohareb,” he said. “They should be punished ruthlessly and savagely" to deter others. Hardliner says Iran protesters should be punished 'without mercy' >>> Martin Fletcher | Friday, June 26, 2009
Friday, June 19, 2009
BBC: The Foreign Office is in talks with the Iranian ambassador in London after his country's supreme leader called the UK government "evil".
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei made the comments as he appealed for an end to protests about election results.
He said Western nations were showing "their enmity against the Islamic Republic system and the most evil of them is the British government".
Ambassador Rasul Movaheddian is meeting officials at the Foreign Office now.
Officials want to register their displeasure at Ayatollah Khamenei's comments and find out why he made them.
BBC News website world affairs correspondent, Paul Reynolds, says that the summoning of the Iranian ambassador represents a shift of position by the British government which up until now had wanted to avoid getting involved in public arguments with Iran.
He added: "The line had been that it wanted to avoid giving the Iranians any reason to blame Britain for interfering. The US government has taken a similar view.
"However, Ayatollah Khamenei's description of Britain as the most 'evil' of foreign governments was a step too far."
British diplomats are thought to believe Britain is being used as "proxy" for the United States, because Iran does not want to endanger its improving relations with America.
In his first public remarks after days of demonstrations, Ayatollah Khamenei issued a stern warning that protests against the country's disputed presidential election results must end. >>> | Friday, June 19, 2009
THE GUARDIAN: In his address at Friday prayers in Tehran the Supreme Leader offered no new initiatives and no path through the maze
It was billed as the speech of his life. But in many ways Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's address at Friday prayers in Tehran was disappointingly similar to speeches and sermons he has given in the past: pious, defensive, blinkered and fiercely scathing about real or imagined western "enemies" of the Islamic Republic.
Those hoping the Supreme Leader would produce a plan for a way out of the tumultuous political stand-off that has gripped Iran since last Friday's disputed presidential poll were disappointed. Khamenei offered no new initiatives, no explicit offers of compromise, no path through the maze.
Worse, he appeared to show little understanding of the depth of the crisis that he and his protege, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have helped provoke with what looked to many Iranians like a pre-emptive strike last weekend to claim victory before the votes were fully counted.
It was a five-star performance in the politics of denial. And it's tempting to conclude: Khamenei just doesn't get it.
It could have been worse. Even as he told Iranians that street demonstrations and mass protests could not be allowed to continue, Khamenei conceded that genuine differences of political opinion were "natural". Even as he argued that vote-rigging was unthinkable in Iran, he admitted the country had problems with corruption that must be addressed. In a small way, these were concessions to the popular mood.
Although Khamenei appeared to threaten the reformist leader, Mir Hossein Mousavi, and other aggrieved presidential candidates with punitive action should their "illegal" protests continue, Khamenei did not make any explicit threat. Instead he said it was their responsibility to avoid possibly unpleasant outcomes.
Doubts concerning the election results must be investigated through legal channels, he said. Those who ignored this advice "will be responsible for [the] consequences of any chaos ... Arm wrestling in the street must stop. I want everyone to put an end to this."
Considering that Khamenei is the highest unifying authority in a country divided and badly wounded, his failure to offer an apology, or to commiserate with, the family and friends of the at least eight people killed by security forces and militias in the last week was striking. >>> Simon Tisdall | Friday, June 19, 2009
Friday, June 12, 2009
TIMES ONLINE: A prominent Pakistani Muslim cleric who founded a religious alliance against the Taleban was killed today in a suicide bomb attack on his Islamic college in the eastern city of Lahore.
Sarfraz Ahmed Naeemi appeared to have been the target of the blast in his office at the Jamia Naeemia madrassa, which he headed and where he had just conducted Friday prayers.
Dr Naeemi — whose father founded the madrassa and who was well known and respected in Lahore and across Pakistan — died on the way to hospital, according to his son, Waqar.
“I was still in the mosque when I heard a big bang. We rushed towards the office and there was a smell of explosives in the air. There was blood and several people were crying in pain,” Waqar said.
Geo TV showed Dr Naeemi’s body lying on a stretcher, his beard and hair covered in dust and blood stains around his nostrils. >>> Jeremy Page, South Asia Correspondent | Friday, June 12, 2009
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