Tehran, Iran - Mehdi Karoubi, the reformist Iranian leader and candidate in the June 12 presidential election, has protested against the recent destruction of a Sufi religious site, a newspaper reported on Sunday.
The moderate Sarmayeh paper said that on February 19 around 40 members of the Gonabadi Dervishes order from the Sufi sect of Islam gathered in Isfahan but were arrested and taken away by security forces.
Their place of worship was later destroyed by bulldozers, the report said, adding that the arrested sect members were freed several days later. It was the third Sufi place of worship to be razed in recent years, the report said.
Three years ago, a similar site was destroyed in the holy city of Qom during conflict between Sufi members and the police, when 1,200 Sufis were arrested.
"Under what right was the place of worship destroyed? The Dervishes are Shiite Muslims and they are under pressure and restrictions," Karoubi wrote in a letter to Information Minister Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejeie, the report said.
Sufis are active in Iran, Turkey and Syria. The sect is not illegal in Iran but the practice is frowned upon by many conservative clerics who regard it as an affront to Islam.
The form of mysticism followed by Sufi orders since the early centuries of Islam often arouses suspicion among orthodox Muslims, both Shiite and Sunni.
In Shiite Islam, some Sufi orders have been accused of heresy because of their association with the unorthodox Alevi faith practised in parts of Syria and Turkey.