Iranian students protest teacher's death sentence

TEHRAN, Iran -- Thousands of university students and some teachers boycotted classes Monday to protest the death sentence imposed on a prominent professor convicted of insulting Islam and questioning hard-line clerics.

Enraged students at Tarbiat-e-Modarres University, where Hashem Aghajari taught history, took to the streets to denounce what they described as the "medieval" verdict against their professor.

"You can cut our tongues ... you can take us to jail as you have jailed many other students and scholars, but you can't capture our hearts, you can't prevent freedom of expression and thoughts," Saeed Razavi, a student leader, said to applause.

Aghajari, detained in August, was found guilty of insulting the Prophet Muhammad and questioning the hard-line clergy's interpretation of Islam. He was informed of the guilty verdict and death sentence last week.

The court that issued the verdict in the western province of Hamedan said in a statement that the sentence was deserved.

The head of the conservative judiciary, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, dismissed criticism of the verdict as "ignorant," but noted it still could be overturned.

"Like other cases, it will follow its judicial course, and I hope that the State Supreme Court will look at it as soon as possible," state-run Tehran television quoted him as saying.

In a June speech, Aghajari said clerics' teachings on Islam were considered sacred simply because they were part of history and that each new generation should be able to interpret the faith on its own.

The comments enraged hard-liners, who organized street demonstrations in several Iranian cities and urged the courts to prosecute Aghajari, whose party supports President Mohammad Khatami's social and political reforms.