Hashem Aghajari
Hashem Aghajari | |
|---|---|
Aghajari in 2019 | |
| Born | Seyyed Hashem Aghajari 1957 (age 68–69) Abadan, Iran |
| Political party | Mojahedin of the Islamic Revolution of Iran Organization |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | |
| Thesis | Clergy and Sultanate in Safavid Persia (1995) |
| Doctoral advisor | Ehsan Eshraghi |
| Influences | Ali Shariati |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | History |
| Institutions | Tarbiat Modares University |
| Main interests | Safavid Iran |
| Notable works | "Shariati and Islamic Protestanism" |
Seyyed Hashem Aghajari (Persian: سیدهاشم آقاجری, born 1957) is an Iranian historian, university professor and a critic of the government of the Islamic Republic who was sentenced to death in 2002 for apostasy for a speech he gave on Islam urging Iranians to "not blindly follow" Islamic clerics. In 2004, after domestic Iranian and international outcry, his sentence was reduced to five years in prison.
His prosecution generated large protest crowds and was seen as a "test case" in the struggle between Iranian reformists and hard-liners over the future of the Islamic Republic, with liberal reformists seeking greater freedom and hardliners defending the orthodoxy of the Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist.