It doesn’t look good for students in Iran trying to get a legitimate education:
Ayatollah Khamenei said this week that the study of social sciences “promotes doubts and uncertainty.” He urged “ardent defenders of Islam” to review the human sciences that are taught in Iran’s universities and that he said “promote secularism,” according to Iranian news services.
“Many of the humanities and liberal arts are based on philosophies whose foundations are materialism and disbelief in godly and Islamic teachings,” Ayatollah Khamenei said at a gathering of university students and professors on Sunday, according to IRNA, the state news agency. Teaching those “sciences leads to the loss of belief in godly and Islamic knowledge.”
He’s talking about philosophy and sociology, but the same idea would apply to areas like math and science as well. When you understand reality, you have less of a need for religion-based superstition.
During Mr. Ahmadinejad’s first term in office, his administration forced out many professors and replaced them.
“I think that they don’t like maybe new ideas to get to Iran,” said an Iranian academic now living outside the country. “They don’t like social and cultural figures in the Iranian society to become very popular. That is the aspect which makes problems for them.”
There’s an understatement if ever I heard one.
The entire article is frightening. It explains what can happen when religion trumps democracy and education. That’s the enemy we all need to be fighting against.
(Thanks to mountainhumanist for the link!)