An Iranian regime cleric told his followers that vaccination against COVID-19 turns people into “homosexuals,” who are punished with death in Iran.
Ayatollah Abbas Tabrizian made outrageous claims on the social media platform Telegram on Tuesday, according to the Jerusalem Post.
“Don’t go near those who have had the COVID vaccine,” the radical Islamist wrote to his nearly 210,000 followers. “They’ve become gay.”
Tabrizian, who lives in the religious capital of Qom and whose followers refer to him as an ayatollah, has a history of promoting bigotry and false information about Western medicine.
Last year, the totalitarian burned the “Harrison Handbook of Medicine” in one video-recorded ceremony, claiming that “Islamic medicine” had made these books “irrelevant”, according to Radio Farda, a broadcasting service of Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.
“Like other clerics of the regime, Tabrizian also recounts all the hardships [shortcomings] to sexuality, ”Iranian dissident Sheina Vojoudi told the Jerusalem Post.
“Iran’s clerics suffer from a lack of knowledge and humanity. Actually, their goal is to spread nonsense to try to scare people [out] of getting vaccinated, while the regime leader and other officials got Pfizer, and they don’t provide it to people on the pretext that they don’t trust the West. ”
A prominent gay rights activist told the Israeli newspaper that the fear tactics of many Iranian religious and political leaders often combine ignorance and hatred.
“It’s demonizing both the vaccination program and untested LGBT + people,” Peter Tatchell said.
“By trying to scare the public into not being vaccinated against COVID-19, it is fueling the pandemic and putting lives at risk,” Tatchell added.
Same-sex sexual activity is punishable by execution in Iran and thousands of gays have been killed since the 1979 Iranian Revolution, according to the Israeli newspaper.
In 2019, an Iranian foreign minister defended these atrocities on the German public broadcasting network.
“Our society has moral principles. And we live according to these principles. These are moral principles relating to the behavior of people in general. And that means the law is respected and the law is obeyed, ”Mohammed Javad Zarif told Deutsche Welle.
In 2018 and 2019, Iran executed at least nine children, as the United States increased sanctions after accusing the country of violating a 2015 nuclear deal.