IRAN: Top cleric reiterates claim that piety prevents earthquakes

Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati might have thought he was clarifying remarks by his colleague, the cleric Kazem Sedighi, who suggested in a Friday prayer sermon a week ago that women who dress immodestly cause earthquakes by angering God. 

Instead Jannati, who delivered the nation's keynote sermon in the Iranian capital this Friday, reiterated the claim that human behavior causes -- and can also prevent -- earthquakes. 

He told worshipers on Friday that while science cannot yet predict earthquakes, they can be spiritually prevented by repentance and prayer.

"We can avoid earthquakes if the faithful and devoted people pray to God," Jannati said during the Friday sermon.

Sedighi spawned headlines worldwide when he preached last week that young women who dress provocatively corrupt men and drive them to adultery, incurring God's wrath in the form of earthquakes.

The story went viral online and Sedighi has since become a subject of international mockery. One U.S.-based blogger is even calling for an organized show of flesh on April 26 in an event that so far has garnered over 70,000 guests on Facebook.

But Sedighi a relative newcomer to the high-profile Friday prayer pulpit.

Jannati, on the other hand, is no newly arrived fringe figure on Iran's political scene. He's the longtime head of the ultra-conservative Guardian Council, which vets all laws and political candidates for office. It was his hard-line panel of jurists and clerics that certified President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's widely disputed reelection last year, triggering months of unrest and political discord. 

Iranian authorities may believe invoking that the fear of earthquakes, such as those that devastated Haiti and Chile in recent months, makes for good politics. For Iranians, earthquakes are more than a disaster in some far-off land. Their country is among the most seismically active in the world. The capital of Tehran, home to 12 million people, lies on a major fault line that could be struck by a huge earthquake at any time, scientists say.

Iranian hard-liners may believe raising the specter of earthquakes might keep people in line. Ahmadinejad himself is using the threat of earthquakes in his drive to push for measures to encourage emigration from the capital to rural areas, an alarming idea that has reminded some of Pol Pot's drive to destroy Cambodian cities in the 1970s. 

Still, Sedighi and Jannati are hardly the first religious figures to blame natural disasters on the sins of man. As the Los Angeles Times pointed out in an editorial Friday, American evangelical Christian Pat Robertson claimed that 2005's Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment for legalizing abortion and that the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake in Haiti was a result of a pact with Satan.

"We regret that clergy are blaming women for natural disasters, as well as for the weaknesses of men so easily led astray," the editorial read. "We believe women should have the right to cover or not to cover their heads as dictated by their faith. In this, as in all their struggles, they should move heaven and earth to get their rights."

While Jannati called for prayer as a way of preventing earthquakes, he didn't rule out using less celestial methods. "Officials precautionary moves to make homes quake-proof are appreciated," he said.

-- Meris Lutz in Beirut and Ramin Mostaghim in Tehran

Photo: Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati at Friday prayers in Tehran. Credit: AFP

Comments

[Cory Albrecht]

Actually, Lluis, if you would use the brains God gave you and think critically for just a moment, you would understand that CERN's Large Hadron Collider has nothing to do with earthquakes. The LHC came on-line last year, but there were more earthquakes in both 2007 and 2008 than in 2009, according to the USGS. http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/year/eqstats.php

Earthquakes aren't on the right, it's just that we get better and better at detecting them. "This is because of the tremendous increase in the number of seismograph stations in the world and the many improvements in global communications. In 1931, there were about 350 stations operating in the world; today, there are more than 8,000 stations and the data now comes in rapidly from these stations by electronic mail, internet and satellite. This increase in the number of stations and the more timely receipt of data has allowed us and other seismological centers to locate earthquakes more rapidly and to locate many small earthquakes which were undetected in earlier years. The NEIC now locates about 20,000 earthquakes each year or approximately 50 per day. Also, because of the improvements in communications and the increased interest in the environment and natural disasters, the public now learns about more earthquakes." (From http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/topics/increase_in_earthquakes.php)

Lluis, you really need to go learn some real science as opposed to the pseudoscience website you gave.

[TL Winslow]

As the world shrinks and Islam, which claims a quarter of the world's pop. makes headlines more often, it would be wise to take a cram course on it and its 1400-year history. Never fear, you can do it online free with the Historyscoper. To get started just find study time and click http://go.to/islamhistory

[Battal Agha]

And you would think that all crazy people are locked up?

[Nathan]

NONSENSE! IRAN NEEDS HELP! IRAN HAVE NO CONTROL IN US AND LADIES SHOWING THEIR HAIRS HAVE DO NOTHING WITH EARTHQUAKES. NONSENSE!

[lluis sancho]

we already warned the creation of the new strongest magnetic field on Earth, at CERN, would cause a surge in earthquakes. This year is the all time record, except for the man-made 43-44 surge during the carpet-bombings on II World War. The Iranian clergy is making a fool of himself introducing religion into a natural phenomena. But the west, which has allowed a machine able to produce earthquakes, black holes and strangelets on Earth, without any safety measure, or serious study of collateral damages shows also an absurd religion that cannot be doubt of: the machine...
www.cerntruth.com