A photo of Iranian President Ahmadinejad hugging Hugo Chavez\u2019s mother at the late Venezuelan leader\u2019s funeral has sparked controversy among conservative Muslim clerics.<\/p>\nA photo of Iranian President Ahmadinejad hugging Hugo Chavez\u2019s mother at the late Venezuelan leader\u2019s funeral has sparked controversy among conservative Muslim clerics.<\/p>\n
The image shows Ahmadinejad and Elena Frias de Chavez touching cheeks during a moment of shared grief.<\/p>\n
But religious conservatives say his actions are \u2018sinful\u2019 under Islamic doctrine which forbids Muslim men from touching women outside their immediate family.<\/p>\n
They claim the act insulted Iran\u2019s religious dignity and amounted to \u2018haram\u2019 \u2013 a term used to describe a religiously forbidden act under Islamic rules.<\/p>\n
Mohammad Taghi Rahbar, the Friday prayer leader of Iran\u2019s second city, Isfahan, told Mehr news agency that Mr Ahmadinejad had \u2018lost control\u2019.<\/p>\n
He added: \u2018Shaking hands with a non-mahram (unrelated by family) woman, under any circumstances, whether young or old, is not allowed. <\/p>\n
Hugging or expressing emotions is improper for the dignity of the president of a country like the Islamic Republic of Iran.\u2019<\/p>\n
President Ahmadinejad has already come under fire from conservatives loyal to Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran\u2019s supreme religious leader, for posting a blog last week in tribute to Hugo Chavez which predicted he would return with Jesus Christ \u2018on resurrection day\u2019.<\/p>\n
Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, a senior Iranian cleric, said: \u2018I say directly that he went too far with what he mentioned in his tribute.\u2019 <\/p>\n
\u2018The president is well aware that such a tribute will provoke reactions in our religious institutes. He could have sent a diplomatic message with no religious connotations.\u2019<\/p>\n
The controversy surrounding the photograph became even more confused when one of Iran\u2019s newspapers accused the Daily Telegraph newspaper of having photoshopped the image \u2018amateurishly\u2019.<\/p>\n
Another photo claiming to be the original was circulated which showed Ahmadinejad embracing one of Chavez\u2019s uncles.<\/p>\n
But it was soon established that in fact this was a fake and the Entekhab news website apologised, blaming a rogue reporter for the error.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A photo of Iranian President Ahmadinejad hugging Hugo Chavez\u2019s mother at the late Venezuelan leader\u2019s funeral has sparked controversy among conservative Muslim clerics. The image shows Ahmadinejad and Elena Frias de Chavez touching cheeks during a moment of shared grief. But religious conservatives say his actions are \u2018sinful\u2019 under Islamic doctrine which forbids Muslim men […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[688],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-infotainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87793\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}