INSULTING ANY PROPHET, ANY RELIGION WRONG: CLERIC
By Ashwin Honawar

Peninsula On-line, Qatar
April 27 2006

Photo: Archbishop Sebouh Sarkissian

DOHA: Christians have also been victims of blasphemous caricatures
long before their Muslim brethren: A leading Iranian daily published
caricatures insulting Jesus Christ and the 12 Apostles about a
year and half before cartoons blaspheming Prophet Mohammad (PBUH)
appeared in a Danish daily, Archbishop Sebouh Sarkissian, Primate of
the Armenian Prelacy of Tehran, said here yesterday.

In an interview with The Peninsula yesterday, Archbishop Sarkissian who
heads the 150,000-strong Armenian Christian community of Iran, said,
a Tehran-based Farsi-language daily, Hamshami, had published about a
year-and-half before the Danish daily, a caricature of Jesus Christ
and the 12 apostles. The caricature showed Jesus and the apostles at
the Last Supper, feasting on pizzas and Pepsi. It showed Jesus Christ
passing a hamburger sandwich to one of the apostles,” he said.

The Christian community in Iran, he said was deeply saddened by this
blasphemous act but the reaction was peaceful. “We did not take it
as seriously. I personally told the government that what was done
by that daily was wrong. I pointed out, how can there be amity among
Iranian citizens of different faith if their prophets were blasphemed
by the media. I declined to participate in a dialogue of religions
and refused an interview on the state-run TV to vent the feelings of
the community,” he disclosed. “In so many Islamic countries, Jesus
Christ has been blasphemed. Why Christians do not demonstrate? In the
Christian world, there is no media censorship while there are a few
Muslim countries that do not have press censorship,” he added. When
told that Islam strictly forbids any form of imagery, Archbishop
Sarkissian pointed out, Muslims also indulge in photography.

He said, there was an urgent need to educate the media against
insulting holy icons of all faiths since they only tend to create
animosity among the public while dealing serious setbacks to the
dialogue of religions, which was crucial. The media should be made
fully aware of the consequences that result from such blaspheming of
any community’s holy figures and prophets. Sarkissian, at the Doha
4th Conference for Religious Dialogue yesterday gave a presentation
on the problems faced by religious leaders in approaching the media
to respect prophets held sacred by believers of different religions.

The outcry and violent reaction in some countries caused by the
publication of cartoons by a section of the Danish press, he said,
were the fallout of exaggeration of the issue by the media in the
Muslim world.

Despite such incidences, the archbishop said, the Armenian Christian
community lives in amity with people of other faiths in Iran, a
majority of whom are Muslims, about 20,000 Jew and another 20,000,
followers of the Zoroastrian faith, among others. ” Before the Islamic
revolution in Iran, there were no religious restrictions.

After the revolution too, there are no restrictions and the right to
religious freedom was added to the constitution,” he said.

Asked about Iran’s nuclear controversy, the religious head, said, all
Iranian citizens were worried about the propaganda that the programme
was to build weapons, being churned by some segments of the Western
press. ” We usually do not include political and other issues in our
sermons at the mass but due to the seriousness of the issue, we did
speak about it a couple of times,” he added. The negative propaganda,
he noted, affects all Iranians, regardless of their faith.

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