Iranian academic Hashem Aghajari, charged with blasphemy for calling on Muslims not to blindly follow clerical leaders like "monkeys," has been sentenced to five years in prison. This is actually an improvement for him - he was originally sentenced to death - but it still demonstrates that Iran has a long way to go before being free.

World Wide Religious News reports:

The death sentence, issued by a provincial court in western Iran, sparked some of the largest student protests for years and fueled international concern about restrictions on free speech in the Islamic state. The blasphemy verdict was finally overturned by the Supreme Court in June after many senior clerics said it was too harsh. A re-trial was held in Tehran earlier this month.

``The Tehran court sentenced him to five years in prison for insulting Islamic values,'' Aghajari's lawyer Saleh Nikbakht told Reuters. ... `As the ruling is not compatible with the comments my client made in court in denying any insult to religion I will appeal in the next 20 days and I'm sure the Supreme Court will revoke the ruling,'' he said. In his final oral defense to the court earlier this month Aghajari spoke out strongly in favor of democratic reforms and criticized those who put the clergy on a pedestal.

``Some think that touching a clergyman's robes will cure people or is a blessing ... (But) clerics are not sacred,'' he said. Aghajari, who lost a leg fighting in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, said he supported ``an Islam that brings about freedom and is compatible with democracy and human rights.''

I don’t know all of Aghajari‘s views, but from what I have read he sounds like just the sort of person a progressive Iran and a progressive Islam really needs for the future. People like this can help bring the actual practice of Islam more in line with how the West treats things like human rights, free speech, etc., and that could allow the West and Islam to work together much more closely rather than remain entangled in conflict.

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