Iran chief rabbi said to condemn Muhammad cartoons
Jewish leader allegedly says Charlie Hebdo publishers deserve death sentence; says 'insulting religion is insulting God'
The religious leader of the Iranian Jewish community harshly condemned the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo for publishing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, and said that mocking the Muslim prophet warranted a death sentence under Jewish law, Iranian media reported Wednesday.
Rabbi Mashallah Golestani-Nejad, who took over as chief rabbi in 2007, told the Iranian government news agency Tasnim that “insulting religion is insulting God.”
Iranian media outlets quoted the rabbi as saying that anyone who harms sacred institutions “must die one of four court deaths: burning, stoning, strangulation, and decapitation,” the Israeli news site Walla reported.
The rabbi quickly qualified this statement about the various forms of capital punishment, saying these were Jewish laws that “of course have no connection to modern Zionism.”
He also reportedly claimed the publication should have been punished when it first printed cartoons of the Muslim prophet, but the French government did nothing.
The rabbi’s comments appeared to refer to the weekly’s latest cover, its first since Islamist gunmen killed 12 people in an attack on its offices on January 7. The cover featured a weeping Muhammad holding up a “Je suis Charlie” (“I am Charlie”) sign, under the headline “All is forgiven.” Three million copies of the special edition were sold out instantly, and another five million copies were later printed.
Meanwhile, Iranian daily Tehran Times reported that thousands of students gathered Monday to express their outrage over the Charlie Hebdo cover, demonstrating outside the French embassy in Tehran and demanding the expulsion of the French ambassador.
Iran, a home for Jews for more than 3,000 years, has the Middle East’s largest Jewish population outside of Israel, an estimated 20,000.
Last November, the Associated Press published a report indicating that while the community was continually criticized by the country’s previous governments, Iranian Jews have found new acceptance under that ostensibly moderate President Hassan Rouhani. An AFP report earlier this week echoed the earlier report.
Last month, Iran unveiled a monument to honor Jewish-Iranian soldiers who fell during the eight-year Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. In a ceremony in Tehran, a senior Iranian parliament member praised the Iranian Jewish community’s ties to the state and its “obedience” to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Ruhollah Khomeini before him.