September 21, 2018
The prosecutor general has ordered the closure of a Reformist newspaper on charges of insulting the Shiite faith.
Sedayeh Eslahat, which is not a major daily, was ordered shut down September 15 for publishing an article on female-to-male gender reassignment surgery. Prosecutor General Mo-hammad Jafar-Montazeri ordered the editor punished, too.
A headline on the news-paper’s front page read: “Ruqayyah became Mahdi after 22 years.”
Ruqayyah was the daughter of Imam Hussein and the article was published during the month of Moharram, mourning the death of Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Mohammad.
The Mahdi is the 12th Shiite Imam who has lived in occultation since the 9th century. The 12 Imams were all male descendents of the Prophet.