More on the Aghajari Case
The case of the history professor at Tarbiat-Modarres University in Tehran who was sentenced to death for a talk he gave continues to roil Iran. There are daily substantial student demonstrations in support of him, and boycotts of class. He is scheduled to be executed (I would say judicially murdered) on Dec. 2, and has refused to appeal the sentence. Over the weekend 20 professors at his university tendered their resignations in support of him.
In his talk of last June, he just called for a more Protestant sort of Islam where the non-clerics did not have to give blind obedience to the clerics.
Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran’s supreme jurisprudent, wrote a letter to the Hamedan court that issued the ruling, appearing to chastise them for forgetting the value of human life, and some take this as a sign he will intervene to stop the execution. Aghajari lost a leg fighting in Iraq, though, and it has become infected in prison, so he is not well and unless released is in danger of his life anyway.
The students are calling the death sentence for the expression of individual conscience “barbaric” and “medieval.” From the mouths of babes.
(For information on how to protest the sentence to the Iranian authorities, see below.)