Iran International
Referring to large budget increases next year for Shiite seminaries in Iran, a prominent cleric has criticized dependence of religious centers on state money.
"Seminaries must use the money coming from people who pay willingly. Seminaries must be independent [from the government]," Ayatollah Mostafa Mohaghegh-Damad, a professor of Islamic law at Shahid Beheshti University of Tehran, said in a speech on a book dedicated to the Centenary of the Qom Seminary. "Today one of the problems of the seminary is its dependence on the government."
The Qom Seminary, established by Sheikh Abdul-Karim Haeri-Yazdi in 1922, is the largest Shiite seminary (hawza) in Iran with over 75,000 students. Seminaries were self-funded before the Islamic Revolution but like many other religious institutions, they now receive huge sums annually from the government.
In his speech, Mohaghegh-Damad, a moderate religious figure and a member of Iran's Science Academy, cited examples of prominent Shiite religious leaders who have emphasized the importance of separating religion from politics.
The budget allocated to religious institutions in the first budget bill presented to Parliament by President Ebrahim Raisi recently is noticeably higher in comparison with the previous year's budget – at least on those instances where clear figures have been noted.
For instance, the budget proposed for the Seminaries Services Center has doubled. The Seminaries Services Center is to receive 2.8 trillion rials which is higher than the 2,157 trillion rials allocated to the Department of Environment and many other government bodies including the Crisis Management Headquarters. The Center also receives funding from the Supreme Leader's office.
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei ordered the Seminaries Services Center to be established in 1991 to provide housing assistance, health insurance, and similar services to seminary students, who are the future clerics and whose loyalty is important for the regime.
Critics say that in some cases the budgets proposed for government bodies and state entities is difficult to calculate from what is discernible in the budget bill, which does not provide sufficient details.
The government says its budget bill is based on restrictive monetary policies.
Based on the details provided in the bill, the budget of the Islamic Propaganda Organization itself has increased by 43% in comparison with the previous year and reached 11.7 trillion rials. Many other large and small institutions have also been allocated huge increases of up to 124%.
The budget allocated to Al-Mustafa International University of Qom, the Islamic Propaganda Bureau of the Qom Seminary, and the Artistic School of the Islamic Propaganda Organization have not been announced this year.
The Al-Mustafa International University, a state-funded university-style Shiite seminary with branches in many countries, received a budget nearly 5 trillion rials last year, or around $100 million based on the official exchange rate that was applicable at the time. This is higher than the budget of any university in Iran.
The Al-Mustafa University pays for hundreds of foreign students from China to Africa and Latin America who come to study and then return to spread Iranian Shiite teachings in their countries.
Hassan Marashi, the secretary general of the centrist Executives of Construction Party told the economic website Eghtesad News on Tuesday that Rouhani should have resigned as his government was formed based on the idea of holding a dialogue with the United States, but Iran's foreign policy needed to change track in 2018 after Donald Trump left the JCPOA.
"When diplomacy failed, there was no reason for Iran continuing diplomacy," Marashi said. Meanwhile,Marashi acknowledged that the pull-out by Trump was a hard blow to the Rouhani administration. It also emboldened Rouhani's political rivals to start attacking him.
"I told the Supreme Leader that we needed to change course after Trump's pull-out, and then I heard that Rouhani had suggested that he should resign, but the leader did not deem the decision fit for the situation," Marashi added.
In another development, while Rouhani's hardliners have been demanding to put him on trial for his failure to sort out the country's economic and foreign relations problems during his presidency, another reformist figure has suggested that he should welcome a trial.
"I would have welcomed the trial if I were him, " said Mohammad Ali Abtahi the chief of staff of former President Mohammad Khatami in an interview with the Iranian Labour News Agency ILNA on Tuesday, adding that the call for Rouhani's trial is a blame game to divert attention from the new government's failure in solving the country's economic problems.
Abtahi added that the lawmakers who found their way to the parliament with revolutionary slogans have not been able to bring about any positive change and the economic crisis has been deepening on daily basis during the past six months.
"They have also not managed to solve the problem the issue of nuclear negotiations and the markets are still waiting for a positive sign from Vienna, and this is against the Majles and the administration's claims about separating the fate of the country's economy from what happens in the course of the negotiations,” Abtahi argued.
Speaking of responsibility about the current situation addressed both to President Rouhani and former Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani, former government spokesman Ali Rabiei, who is a swell informed veteran intelligence ministry official, summarized what Iran's hardliners call "the current situation"in his Telegram Channel and on the proreform Fararu news website.
Rabiei highlighted Iran's current situation as "the undesirable situation of economic hardships that make life difficult for decent Iranians, an unprecedented inflation worsened by the instability of Iran’s currency and other markets since 2018, widespread poverty that defies all the revolutionary slogans, the social fatigue and insecurity felt by various walks of life in Iran, a rise in emigration by elite Iranians, as well as a decline in respect for revolutionary values."
Rabiei also pointed out that decline in political participation is so bad “that in a city such as Tehran only around 7 percent of eligible voters went to the polls in the 2020 parliamentary election and in some cities the number of votes cast for the winner was barely higher than the number of those who worked at the polling station."
"Add to that the loss of Iran's geopolitical advantage, having no place in the international economy and depriving the nation of the opportunities international economy and modern technology can offer," Rabiei stressed.