Gharaati: Family Planning was Western Ploy

Cleric Mohsen Gharaati, the head of Iran’s Friday Prayer board has rejected education as a requirement for marriage, citing the wide education gap between senior clerics and their wives. In his most recent remarks he also said that family planning was a ploy by the West to make Iran an old age population.

Gharaati is a strongly pro-regime cleric who has been widely known in Iran because of his weekly television programs on religion. One of his popular subjects of discussion has been the family and off springs.

He recently travelled to a medical college in the city of Zanjan in south eastern Iran where he said, “The United States and the West have bought off all Islamic countries and control them. Through 18 pronounced principles for family planning, the West wanted to eradicate Iranian generations and turn its population into old age. He claimed that he had protested to the family planning programs when they were launched and supported and that he had never accepted them and “never gave a speech in its support.”

Family planning programs and policies were launched and implemented on orders of ayatollah Khomeini, the founding ayatollah of the Islamic republic, after they had been suspended following the 1979 revolution.  It was argued that a rise in population means more “Islamic warriors” and such encouragement was heard at mosques and in schools.

But as the 8-year war with Iraq came to its end and the economic situation in the country deteriorated, population growth had reached levels of 3.9 percent. The then minister of health Alireza Marandi convinced the government to launch family planning programs. The government feared a backlash from senior clerics and thus implemented the policy in secret. But believing that a secret directive would not do the job, Marandi wrote letters to each head of the government branch and asked for them to provide “guidance” to the public. These messages ultimately reach ayatollah Khamenei who then says, family planning was important that needed to be discussed in the media and public forums. Even ayatollah Khamenei supported family planning until about 2010.

Another theme that Gharaati has been spreading is the idea of simple weddings. Weddings to Iranian families are very special occasions where members of both families and beyond engage in massive celebrations and expenses. He specifically calls on the youth not to set hard conditions on their future spouses. According to him, differences in age, differences in social class, levels of education and wealth are not important for marriage. What matters is faith and commitment to the future spouse. “Most senior clerics have a big education difference with their spouses but live together in happiness for 80 years,” he has said.

For years officials of the Islamic republic have been spreading the word for more weddings as a way to address social ills while Shiite clerics have complained about drops in marriages and rise in the marriage age. Ahmadinejad’s administration for example made much effort in encouraging marriage and even provided monetary incentives for more children which because a directive after the supreme leader of Iran stressed the same. Hassan Rouhani’s administration too has followed the same path.

Gharaati has also made some bombastic proposals. A few months ago he suggested that “temporary marriages” should be launched for university students since ethical problems had increased at universities, otherwise there would be more “sin committed at universities.”

But these remarks were rejected and protested, including those by the minister of science whose department oversees all universities.

Gharaati responded by saying there were probably about a million widow women who would either sin or remain unmarried. “What must these women do, remain as they are or commit sin,” he asked. He then reiterated his position that temporary marriages were the only way for widows and for young men not to commit sin. Gharaati has also sanctioned men taking multiple wives and has criticized those women who are against this. Preventing “sin,” which translates into unmarried sexual relations, appears to be paramount to him which is why he supports the notion of multiple wives.