Iranian president in hot water for saying police not there to enforce Islam

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani has come under fire by three senior clerics for saying in a speech that police are not on the streets to enforce Islam, but to enforce the law.

“Our leaders should be more careful and not say things that would upset our faithful people,” Ayatollah Safi Golpayegani, a senior cleric, said Monday in response to Rouhani’s comments.

In a speech to police and security officials on Saturday the Iranian president said: “The police are not tasked to enforce Islam but their duty is to enforce the law.” He said all police actions should be taken “according to the law and the law must be clear and transparent.”

Another one of Rouhani’s critics, the powerful Ayatollah Makarim Shirazi, said that the president’s speech contradicted Iran’s Islamic laws.

“This kind of speech means that our laws are anything but Islamic,” Shirazi said in a statement published in Iranian media. “But in reality everything is taken from Islam and our police forces are obliged to enforce these Islamic laws,” he added.

Rouhani stirred a similar controversy among Iran’s conservative leaders last year when he said, “You can’t take people to heaven by force and whips.”

Another influential cleric, Ayatollah Nuri Hamadani, said that the president’s comments stood against one of the main principles of Islam that calls on Muslims “to promote virtue and prevent vice.”