A cleric who promotes Islamic medicine and campaigns against Western medicine has claimed that a court sentenced three doctors to lashing, after he complained about them.

The cleric, Abbas Tabrizian who created outrage in January after publicly burning Harrison’s Manual of Medicine, wrote on his social media account that he lodged a complaint of being insulted by the three doctors and a court in Mashhad agreed with him, sentencing each doctor to sixty lashes. He added the sentences were suspended for one year.

Apparently, both the complaint and the court’s decision predate the book-burning by the cleric. Even before his action Tabrizian was a controversial figure.

Tabrizian’s action led to almost universal condemnation in Iran. The Management Center of Iranian Seminaries and many politicians and public figures criticized his action. Some of his critics say that Islamic “medicine men” are charlatans who misuse the religious beliefs of pious victims to enrich themselves.

Iran’s Minister of Health called the burning of the medical textbook a “crude, Taliban-like” act by a member of the clergy.

Iran’s judicial authorities have not commented about the alleged sentencing of the doctors, but a deputy to the health minister said he has no information to confirm the news.