Iran clerics object to women ministers: report

Hiedeh Farmani

Several Iranian conservative clerics have raised objections to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's decision to include three women in his new cabinet, the daily Tehran Emrouz reported on Saturday.

Ahmadinejad named Sousan Keshvaraz, Marzieh Vahid Dastjerdi and Fatemeh Ajorlou as his ministers respectively of education, health and welfare, and social security in his 21-member cabinet line-up.

"Although it is a new idea to choose women as ministers, there are religious doubts over the abilities of women when it comes to management. This should be considered by the government," said Mohammad Taghi Rahbar, the head of the clerics' faction in the 290-member conservative-dominated Iranian parliament.

He said the faction, whose view has yet to be officially declared, will seek the opinion of the country's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on the issue.

Rahbar said that if Khamenei remains "silent" on the issue, parliament "will note the clerics' view during the vote of confidence."

Ahmadinejad's proposed cabinet line-up, which boasts 11 new names including the three women, will face a vote of confidence on August 30.

Rahbar said leading Iranian clerics such as Grand Ayatollah Nasser Makarem Shirazi and Grand Ayatollah Lotfollah Safi Golpayghani were of the same opinion and wanted Ahmadinejad to reconsider his decision.

The nomination of three women to the cabinet is a first in the 30-year history of the Islamic republic, although in 1997 then reformist president Mohammad Khatami appointed two women among his vice presidents.

Defending his decision in a television address on Thursday, Ahmadinejad said "the three women were chosen after close examination. I am against belittling women. We have to carve out the way."

The conservative Tehran Emrouz said that Ayatollah Yousef Tabatabai, the Friday prayer leader of the central city of Isfahan, was also opposed to the decision.

"We hope what the president said about the women ministers is not recognised by parliament," the paper reported him as saying.

But cleric Hossein Mousavi Tabrizi, who heads a reformist group of Qom seminary scholars, backed the nomination of women ministers, reformist daily Aftab-e Yazd reported.

"Women have the capability to execute different social activities, including as ministers and in my opinion if women are wise and learned, they can become judges, and even sources of emulation," Tabrizi said.

Ahmadinejad is expected to face an uphill battle to win the assembly's approval for all the names on his cabinet list.

The president has already been shaken by the massive street protests against his June re-election, which the opposition claims was rigged. A dispute with some hardliners over his political choices has exposed rifts among the ruling elite of Iran.