Morteza Agha-Tehrani
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Morteza Agha-Tehrani (Morteza Agha Tehrani or Morteza Aga Tehrani, Persian: مرتضی آقا تهرانی) is a hardline Iranian shia cleric and politician who is widely seen as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's moral advisor and the ethics mentor of his cabinet. He has been selected as a member of Iranian Parliament representing Tehran in 2008 legislative election. He is also one of the closest disciples of Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi.
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[edit] Biography
Addressing a congregation in the small town of Zarand, he has famously told about Iranian reform movement: "Like a toilet paper that you wipe a baby's behind then you throw it away, throw these filthies reformists away. And don't get any close to them."[1]
He was the leader of raid on Sufi mosques in Qom.[2] In 2006, authorities in the city of Qom arrested more than 1,000 followers of the mystical Sufi tradition of Islam. Iran's hard-line daily "Kayhan" on 14 February 2006 quoted senior clerics in Qom as saying that Sufism should be eradicated in the city, while the Reuters news agency reported that in September one of Iran's hard-line clerics, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Noori Hamedani, called for a clampdown on Sufis in Qom.[3][4] In 2006, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad launched a plan to suppress what he called "indecent religious associations that work under the cover of spirituality and Sufism".[5]
