Arash Honarvar Shojaei has been tried on a number of charges, including attempting to Europeanize Islam, forgery and propaganda against the regime, a charge that was brought against him after he took part in the “No to Forced Hejab” campaign. He was also charged with insulting the founder of the Islam Republic, Ayatollah Khomeini, by referring to his behavior during the 1953 coup as “populist.” He has been given a lifelong ban on being a cleric.
Name: Arash Honarvar Shojaei
Occupation: Cleric and blogger
Charges: Propaganda against the regime, activities against national security, showing a lack of respect to the clergy, insulting Ayatollah Khomeini, spreading lies, cooperating with hostile governments, attempting to Europeanize Islam, forgery and blasphemy.
Cleric Arash Honarvar Shojaei, 34, was arrested on October 28, 2010 after security agents raided his father’s house and broke the door down. His father died while Shojaei was in solitary confinement.
While in confinement, Shojaei was abused and harshly interrogated, and consequently developed epilepsy and suffered a stroke. He told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, “Despite the Medical Examiner confirming my inability to remain in prison [due to health conditions], they kept me in jail and refused to review the medical report.”
In protest of repeated refusals to grant him medical leave, he went on several hunger strikes.
Shojaei went on trial for two cases. In the first, he was tried on charges of spying, propaganda against the regime, activities against national security and showing a lack of respect for the clergy, which meant he was sentenced to four years in prison, 50 lashes, a $800 cash fine and a lifelong ban on being a cleric.
His second case was tried at the Special Clergy Court for charges of propaganda against the regime in connection with his participation in the campaign “No to Forced Hejab,” for insulting Ayatollah Khomeini in an interview with clerical website Rasam and for ignoring his defrocking conviction. For this he was sentenced to a year and three months in prison.
During an interview in 2013 with religion-focused websites Nationalist-Religious and Rasam, Shojaei spoke about the 1953 coup, which overthrew the nationalist Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. “They asked me about Ayatollah Khomeini’s behavior during that time, and I gave my opinion, which was that Ayatollah Khomeini acted in a populist fashion — and that offended them. They thought ‘populist’ was a foreign profanity. Of course, others had made the argument previously... but I guess they didn’t expect as a cleric that I would say such things, and they took it as an insult. The Intelligence Ministry wrote a very disorganized report on this that included several different points. In a part of the report, they wrote that because I had gone on a few furloughs, I had become emboldened and established questionable relations with certain religious leaders and jurists, and that in the end I had insulted Ayatollah Khomeini.”
“The Special Clerics Court had previously sentenced me to a lifelong defrocking,” he told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. “I told them that I was given the clerical robe by religious leaders and not by the regime. Therefore, if the religious leaders asked me to, I would defrock but they couldn’t take it away. When I was granted a furlough last year, I went to Qom wearing the clerical robe and religious leaders didn’t have a problem with it but the court sentenced me to an additional three months in prison for violating my defrocking sentence.”
Shojaei is currently being held at the Special Clerics Ward (Ward 325) at Evin Prison. According to recent reports, he is in poor physical health and on hunger strike. A Special Clergy court representative visited him at the prison clinic and recommended he serve the rest of his sentence under house arrest rather than in prison. This recommendation has been supported by the official Medical Examiner’s report.
For more information, visit Journalism is Not a Crime, documenting cases of jailed journalists in Iran.
This is part of IranWire’s series Crime: Journalism, a portfolio on the legal and political persecution of Iranian journalists and bloggers, published in both Persian and English.
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