Iran is caught between science, the global realities of the coronavirus outbreak, and its backward mullahs, who are determined to maintain the status quo:
Radical Shiite clerics in Iran have escalated their pressure on Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to keep the nation’s largest holy shrines open – where kissing and touching the shrines is common – putting the Islamic regime in a precarious situation after one of its most prominent doctors warned on Tuesday that millions could die of Chinese coronavirus infection.
To such clerics, to die of coronavirus while worshiping means martyrdom:
Some prominent clerics there are reminding Muslims that the Quran promises a martyr’s reward for the faithful who trust in Allah despite pestilence like Covid-19. Some are sharing a Kurdish poem that reads, “You youths take the mosque’s path / do not care about what is on your way / our mosque’s congregation is far away from epidemics.”
Yet, “Iranian state media issued a dire warning to its citizens on Tuesday about the severity of the ongoing Chinese coronavirus pandemic, suggesting ‘millions’ could die across the country if people keep ignoring medical advice.”
An update on this story. “Iran Struggles with ‘Social Distancing’ as Radical Clerics Prompt Mobs at Islamic Shrines,” by Frances Martel, Breitbart, March 18, 2020:
Radical Shiite clerics in Iran have escalated their pressure on Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to keep the nation’s largest holy shrines open – where kissing and touching the shrines is common – putting the Islamic regime in a precarious situation after one of its most prominent doctors warned on Tuesday that millions could die of Chinese coronavirus infection.
Khamenei himself has repeatedly downplayed the threat of the outbreak in the country, which is part of a global pandemic that began in Wuhan, central China, in November, but the Chinese Communist Party hid from the public until late January. In early March, Khamenei said in public remarks that the virus was “not such a big tragedy and this country has surmounted graver ones.”
Khamenei also said that a national “jihad” against the virus could stop it quickly.
The Islamic regime has also repeatedly accused the United States of inventing the virus and using it in a biological attack against Iran, a line that Beijing has also taken up despite no evidence linking the virus to America in any way, other than U.S. cases brought to the country by travelers from China and countries with ties to China.
Presumably responding to Khamenei’s lack of concern, devout Shiite Muslims enthusiastically shared videos of themselves kissing and licking shrines two weeks ago, insisting that they felt safe from the outbreak due to their faith.
At that point, the Iranian government maintained that the number of deaths caused by the virus was still in the hundreds, though dissident groups like the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) put the real death toll at over 5,000. Clandestinely recorded videos from within mortuaries showed growing piles of bodies that officials did not know how to handle; satellite footage revealed giant mass graves being dug to hide the true number of dead.
Iran has denied the existence of mass graves, despite the satellite image evidence.
The World Health Organization (WHO) verified that the true death toll in Iran may be five times higher than official statistics show on Tuesday. Currently, Iran claims to have documented 1,135 deaths caused by Chinese coronavirus and 17,361 cases total. It claims over 5,000 of those diagnosed have since recovered, but doctors have no concrete proof that recovery grants immunity and many cases have arisen nationwide of people suddenly becoming sick again and dying following their release from the hospital.
Tehran attempted to end the dangerous shrine visits on Monday, announcing that the three holiest sites for Shiite Muslims in Iran would be off-limits, including those in Qom, considered a holy city and the epicenter of the Iranian coronavirus outbreak. The provisions resulted in two separate mob scenes at two of the three shrines, where agitated groups of devotees pushed through the government barriers to continue kissing and licking the shrines…..