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https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...5856ba-8898-11ea-80df-d24b35a568ae_story.html
ISTANBUL — The Iranian cartoon shows two traditional healers, including a turbaned cleric, preparing to treat a coronavirus patient on all fours with beakers of camel urine and violet leaf oil, remedies hailed by some clergymen as surefire cures for covid-19.
On the wall hangs a picture of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, donning a nurse's cap and putting a finger to his lips, signaling critics to remain silent.
The sketch was posted last month on the Telegram channel of a mainstream news outlet, the Iranian Labor News Agency, before being swiftly taken down.
Its appearance, however brief, represented a rare criticism of Iran’s ruling religious establishment by the media and came amid a wider outcry among Iranians over the role played by the Shiite Muslim clergy during the pandemic.
Since Iran’s outbreak first erupted in the holy city of Qom, religious leaders have resisted calls for quarantines, protested orders to close shrines, cast the coronavirus as an American conspiracy, and promoted traditional or Islamic medicine as a panacea for covid-19, the disease it causes. Their actions have angered senior health officials and stoked long-existing doubts within the Iranian population about whether the clergy are fit to rule.
In Iran, a Shiite theocracy, clerics preside over and participate in all matters of the state. But their botched response to the pandemic may be weakening the clergy’s political stature, at a time when its influence was already under pressure, political analysts say.
As the religious elite fumbled and deaths from the virus mounted — Iran has now reported nearly 7,000 deaths and more than 118,000 infections — the country’s powerful security services have stepped in to conduct disease surveillance, disinfect public spaces and even oversee victims’ burials, a role long reserved for civilian authorities and Shiite clerics.
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Conservative theocracies like Iran will always collide with reality.
ISTANBUL — The Iranian cartoon shows two traditional healers, including a turbaned cleric, preparing to treat a coronavirus patient on all fours with beakers of camel urine and violet leaf oil, remedies hailed by some clergymen as surefire cures for covid-19.
On the wall hangs a picture of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, donning a nurse's cap and putting a finger to his lips, signaling critics to remain silent.
The sketch was posted last month on the Telegram channel of a mainstream news outlet, the Iranian Labor News Agency, before being swiftly taken down.
Its appearance, however brief, represented a rare criticism of Iran’s ruling religious establishment by the media and came amid a wider outcry among Iranians over the role played by the Shiite Muslim clergy during the pandemic.
Since Iran’s outbreak first erupted in the holy city of Qom, religious leaders have resisted calls for quarantines, protested orders to close shrines, cast the coronavirus as an American conspiracy, and promoted traditional or Islamic medicine as a panacea for covid-19, the disease it causes. Their actions have angered senior health officials and stoked long-existing doubts within the Iranian population about whether the clergy are fit to rule.
In Iran, a Shiite theocracy, clerics preside over and participate in all matters of the state. But their botched response to the pandemic may be weakening the clergy’s political stature, at a time when its influence was already under pressure, political analysts say.
As the religious elite fumbled and deaths from the virus mounted — Iran has now reported nearly 7,000 deaths and more than 118,000 infections — the country’s powerful security services have stepped in to conduct disease surveillance, disinfect public spaces and even oversee victims’ burials, a role long reserved for civilian authorities and Shiite clerics.
=============================================================
Conservative theocracies like Iran will always collide with reality.
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