An Iranian regime cleric in the holy city of Qom on Tuesday issued a homophobic rant against people vaccinated for COVID-19, claiming that they become gay after receiving the vaccine.
Ayatollah Abbas Tabrizian wrote on his Telegram social media platform: “Don’t go near those who have had the COVID vaccine. They have become homosexuals.”
The radical Islamist has nearly 210,000 followers on his Telegram account.
Tabrizian has a history of anti-Western medicine views. Last year, a video showed him burning Harrison’s Manual of Medicine, in which he argued that “Islamic medicine” has made such books “irrelevant,” according to an article on the US government Radio Farda website.
Sheina Vojoudi, an Iranian dissident who fled the Islamic Republic of Iran due to repression, told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday that, “like other clerics in the regime, also Tabrizian relates all the shortages to sexuality. The clerics in Iran are suffering from lack of knowledge and humanity.
“Actually, his goal of spreading nonsense is to try to scare people [out] of getting vaccinated while the leader of the regime and other officials got Pfizer and they don’t provide it for the people with the excuse that they don’t trust the West,” she said.
Peter Tatchell, the LGBTQ+ and human rights campaigner, told the Post that “Ayatollah Tabrizian combines scientific ignorance with a crude appeal to homophobia.
“He’s demonizing both the vaccination program and LGBT+ people, without a shred of evidence,” he said. “By seeking to scare the public into not getting vaccinated against Covid-19, he is fueling the pandemic and putting lives at risk. Typical of many Iranian religious and political leaders, his bizarre, irrational claims scapegoat LGBTs and put theological prejudice before scientific knowledge.”
Iran’s regime has executed 4,000-6,000 gays and lesbians since its 1979 Islamic revolution, according to a 2008 British WikiLeaks cable.
The foreign minister of the Islamic Republic, Mohammed Javid Zarif, justified his regime’s executions of gays in 2019. When questioned why it does this, Zarif said, “Our society has moral principles, and according to these principles we live,” adding that “these are moral principles regarding the behavior of people in general. And that’s because the law is upheld and you abide by laws.”
In 2019, the Post reported that Iran’s rulers publicly hanged a 31-year-old after being found guilty of violating the country’s anti-gay laws.
Source » jpost