Thousands of students in Iran have been protesting for more than a week after a university professor was sentenced to death for insulting Islam. The demonstrations, on university campuses across the country, are exposing political faultlines between Iran’s hardline judiciary and more moderate politicians and reform leaders.
Professor Hashem Aghajari, who was arrested in August, was sentenced to death on Nov. 6 for the crime of blasphemy. Aghajari said in a speech in June that Muslims should not “blindly follow the teachings of senior clerics.” Iran’s strongly conservative judiciary is faced with a dilemma: to proceed with its highly unpopular judgment, or to give in to the demands of students and academics across the country. The decision they make will have strong political implications for the future of Iran’s government, consequences which reach far further than Aghajari’s sentence.
Siavash Bolourani, the president of U of T’s Iranian Students’ Union, said this is a watershed event for Iran’s students.
“This is a really good thing—this is the first time the radical voice has been heard,” said Bolourani, adding the professor “went against Iran’s leaders, but no one wants this guy executed. The students aren’t going to their classes, they just protest.”
The disruptions caused by the student demonstrations have affected universities across the country, prompting shutdowns and resignations of high-ranking officials at Iranian institutions. Tehran University, where Aghajari was a history professor before his arrest, has pushed its exams back one week while students demonstrate. Twenty department heads at Tehran University resigned in protest last week, adding fuel to the fire.
The protests are exposing cracks in the nation’s government as well. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini, supports the conservative judges, while the president, Mohammad Khatami, is pro-reform.
Khameini said in a statement last week that if the three branches of the government—parliament, executive, and judiciary—cannot reach an agreement soon, the supreme leadership would “use the popular forces to intervene.” That intervention would almost certainly mean violent clashes between students and police.
Bolourani said the political situation is dangerous, but stressed that Iran must deal with these issues on its own. “No one wants the United States involved,” he said.
He also stressed that the danger Iranian students are facing demonstrates how much they want change.“You don’t expect people to go against the leader unless they’re really trapped,” he said. “They’re willing to do it because this is the last hope they’ve got.”
