Tabriz,South Azerbaijan,Nov 13
AbdolHamid Ismail Zahi, better known as Molavi AbdolHamid, the Friday prayer leader in Zahedan and perhaps Iran’s most prominent Sunni leader gave a reportage to a state news agency on Sunday 12th of Nov.
He strongly warned government about ethnic disputes and stated:” Iran has neither a nation, nor a religion and language, but also Iran is for all.”
He heavily criticized illiterate and constraint people who exist in the system for making a split between ethnics and religions.
He has sent many official letters to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei about the religious discrimination.
The letter addressed the issue of discrimination and hiring of individuals across the country. In Iran, while many Sunnis are elected in local city council elections in Sunni majority cities, all provincial appointments come through the central government in Tehran. The second issue addressed in the letter by AbdolHamid was mosques in major cities in Iran, such as Tehran. While Sunnis have mosques in Tehran, the mosques — some refer to them as simply houses of worship rather than mosques — do not compare in size or stature to the mosques in Sunni majority areas in the border provinces.
Molavi AbdolHamid referring to the existence of discrimination and inequality in employment and Preventing government positions to Sunnis and also unofficial restrictions on his travels to the other cities of Iran.
According to Gunaz Tv (the official media of South Azerbaijan), the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran has announced a few days ago that Molavi AbdolHamid has no opportunity to travel to other Iranian cities except to travel to Tehran.
The Friday Imam of Sunni’s Zahedan said in this interview about his letter to the Supreme Leader that the “most important problem” of the Iran’s Sunni is “discrimination and inequality”.
He also announced that Sunnis have difficulty in organizing prayer in some Iranian cities.
