Apr 27, 2015

Conservative clerics and media have criticized Iranian President Hassan Rouhani for saying that police should focus on enforcing the law rather than Islam.

At a gathering of Iranian police commanders April 25, Rouhani said: “Police do not have a duty to enforce Islam. No police officer can do something and say he did it because God commanded it, or the prophet had said so. It has nothing to do with the police.”

He continued, “The police only have one duty: to implement the law. That’s it.” He explained, “Some religious commandants are in the law, identically. And some are laws that parliament has approved that are not opposed to religious law. This is enough.”

As an example, Rouhani said that in Islam there is no commandment on whether someone should pray slow or fast. He said: “Can police interfere in this? Can he come into a bank and tell the bank’s president, ‘Close your doors, it’s noon and it’s the call to prayer.’ If someone is praying, can they go to him and say ‘Why did you pray fast?’ This has nothing to do with the police.”

In discussing wider societal and security issues, Rouhani asked, “How do we create security? First we have to recognize what are the roots of security. How is instability created? The first factor of instability is poverty. The first factor of instability is unemployment. When we say ‘forbidding wrong’ this is the wrong.”