A high-ranking reformist cleric, in an open letter, called on clerics today to break their silence about the house arrest of a dissident who challenged the authority of Iran's supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Internet news site Rouydad reported.
Ayatollah Jalaledin Taheri, the reformist, denounced the action against the dissident, Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, and called on other high-ranking clerics to press for his release. Ayatollah Taheri, who once led the Friday Prayers in Isfahan, resigned last summer to press his support for reforms.
Ayatollah Montazeri has been under house arrest since 1997, when he challenged Ayatollah Khamenei's authority. He has not been allowed to leave his home in Qum in southern Iran. He was expected to succeed Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the godfather of Iran's 1979 revolution. But he was forced to resign before Ayatollah Khomeini's death in 1989 over differences between the men.
This is the first time pro-reform clerics have been pressed publicly to support Ayatollah Montazeri. Last week, about 100 legislators also wrote a letter demanding an end to the house arrest.
In his letter, Ayatollah Taheri said, referring to the silence most clerics have adopted on the house arrest, that it was not acceptable for religious leaders to be cautious and confine their activities to teaching and praying while they ignored what he called their divine and human role.
"How come we could come to peace with Saddam Hussein, but it is impossible to agree with a Muslim source of emulation?" he added, pointing out Ayatollah Montazeri's rank, comparable to that of a bishop in the Roman Catholic Church. Iran fought an eight-year war with Iraq.
The letter appeared on several reformist Internet news sites, which have become substitutes for about 90 publications that have been shut down by opponents of the reformist president, Mohammad Khatami.