September 12-14
The door to the Iranian cultural center in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, was padlocked and closed up tight Sunday. But some in Sudan are calling for much more to be done to stop Shiites from proselytizing.
Officials in Tehran told the Iranian public the reports of Sudan closing its cultural centers and kicking all their Iranian employees out of the country was false. (See last week’s Iran Times, page one.) But an Agence France Presse reporter went to the Khartoum cultural center and found it padlocked.
Sudanese officials also began talking animatedly about the threat to Sudan from Iranian efforts to promote Shiism through the cultural centers.
In Tehran, Hossain Amir Abdollahian, the deputy foreign minister for Arab and African affairs, told the Fars news agency that Iran’s embassy and cultural and economic missions in Sudan “continue their normal operation.”
Sudanese Foreign Minister Ali Karti said Iran had appealed to President Omar Hassan al-Bashir to reverse the closure order, but that Bashir had rejected the Iranian overture.
Karti said Sudan had learned of the cultural centers’ efforts at “Shiite proselytizing” some time ago and had monitored the activities long enough to prove proselytizing was going on.
He said the Foreign Ministry had several times summoned the leadership of the cultural offices and urged them to stop such activity, but they did not do so, resulting in the order to close the three cultural centers and to expel all their Iranian staff within 72 hours.
He said, “Unfortunately, the Iranians behind these exploitative activities were trying to spread Shiism by offering financial gain, as well as other unacceptable means.”
He said the cultural centers worked mainly in poor areas and on university campuses across Sudan.
The anti-Shia initiative may not end with the closure. The deputy chairman of Sudan’s General Sufi Academy, Abdel-Salam al-Kasanzani, called on the government to close all Shiite schools in Sudan for spreading “aberrance” in society.
In sermons at Friday prayers last week, Sunni prayer leaders praised the government for shutting down the Iranian cultural centers. And many prayer leaders called for further anti-Shia action.
The Sudan Tribune quoted Esam Ahmed al-Bashir as saying in his sermon at al-Nur mosque that Shiites try to discredit parts of the Qoran and insult the Prophet’s companions, a reference to Shiite rejection of three successors to Mohammad chosen instead of his son-in-law, Ali.
Bashir complained that the Iranian centers sought to spread these ideas in Sudan.
He called for additional steps to include the confiscation of books and publications that promote the Shiite doctrine, whether in public libraries or in private homes.
He called on the authorities to review the conduct of Shiite-oriented private schools such as the Fatima al-Zahra School and the Institute of Imam Jafar al-Sadiq.
“All private schools that do not adhere to the approach adopted by the state must be closed,” Bashir said.
He added that he will draft a letter to judicial bodies proposing a law that criminalizes and punishes anyone who insults the Prophet Mohammad’s companions or his wives.