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Seyyed Hashem Aghajari (, 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 procecution 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.
At least prior to his speech controversy he was a history professor at Tarbiat Modares University, Juan Cole, Informed Comment, Amnesty International Appeal for Dr. Aghajari a teacher-training college in Tehran.
As of November 2002 he belonged to the Islamic Revolutionary Mujahidin Organisation ("a left-wing" reformist political group).
This prompted an "immediate outcry" from hardline clerics, who claimed that he was attacking "the Prophet of Islam and fundamental Shiite Islamic traditions", despite the fact that Dr. Aghajari has repeatedly denied that his speech was intended as an attack on Islam or the Prophet.
Although other controversial death sentences have been reduced on appeal, Aghajari refused to appeal the ruling, announcing through his lawyer that "those who have issued this verdict have to implement it if they think it is right or else the judiciary has to handle it." While in prison his family reported that Aghajari's amputated leg stub was bruised and infected and that he was "unable to stand up, walk or use the prison's hygiene facilities." The human rights group, Amnesty International, campaigned against the sentence. 2 December, 2002, Iranian academic facing death
The death sentence was denounced by many, including the Iranian parliament, President Mohammad Khatami, and Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri. Demonstrations against the sentence began the day after it was made public on November 6. They are thought to have attracted no more than 5000 participants but nonetheless were "the most serious protests in Iran since 1999". As demonstrations grew, they are believed to have provoked Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to order a review of the verdict but also a threat to use "popular forces" (Basij) against the demonstrators.Christopher de Bellaigue, The Struggle for Iran, New York Review of Books, 2007, p.39"Iran/Iraq" Nizar Wattad, Paola Rizzuto. The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. Washington: October 2003. Vol. 22, Iss. 8; pg. 39
According to The Economist magazine, Supreme leader Khamenei ordered the judiciary to review Aghajari's death sentence, but "hardliners in the judiciary" (prosecutor general Abdolnabi Namazi)Christopher de Bellaigue, The Struggle for Iran, New York Review of Books, 2007, p.47) "at first ignored" his order "then assigned their least lenient judges to the review.""International: Hard centres; Iranian conservatives", The Economist. London: December 21, 2002. Vol. 365, Iss. 8304; pg. 72
He was later convicted on lesser charges of "insulting sacred Islamic tenets" and sentenced to three years in jail, two years in probation, and five years' suspension of his social rights by the Supreme Court of Iran. In May 2004 the original regional court reinstated the death sentence, but the next month Iran's Supreme Court again reduced it."Iranian Professor Freed From Prison," RICHARD MONASTERSKY, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Washington: August 13, 2004. Vol. 50, Iss. 49; pg. A.40
He was released from prison July 31, 2004 after paying a bail of $122,500, according to the Associated Press.
According to Mashallah Shamsolvaezin, a "leading Iranian newspaper editor and confidant of Iranian President Mohammad Khatami" interviewed by Newsweek magazine, the arrest and stiff sentence were an attempt to distract attention from two bills to increase the power of president and curb the hard-liner conservatives' supervisory power which reformist President Khatami had introduced into Parliament."'There Is No Other Way'; The Last Word"; Atlantic Maziar Bahari. Newsweek. (International ed.). New York: November 25, 2002. pg. 70
The failure of Iran's Hezbollah paramilitaries to make "a serious attempt to break up" the peaceful reformist student protests over the sentence was thought to be associated with Supreme Leader Khamenei's implicit criticism of the sentence and the "impartiality" of his failing to side with conservative hardliners."International: Khatami's last stand, perhaps; Iran's struggle for reform", The Economist. London: November 16, 2002. Vol. 365, Iss. 8299; pg. 64
In an article in the July 2019 edition of the pro-reform magazine Iran-e Farda (Iran of Tomorrow), Aghajari argued that the political system of the Islamic Republic cannot be reformed and that "the relatively open" political climate of the late 1990s and early 2000s marked not the beginning of democratic reform but its limit under the Islamic regime.
In April 2023 Aghajari was a speaker at the "Dialogue to save Iran" conference, and was considered close to leader of the Green Movement Mir-Hossein Mousavi. Shortly after regime agents ransacked his home, seized his electronic devices including his laptop, and told him to appear at the Islamic Revolutionary Court on May 24.
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