21 April 2010:
Superstition and magic in devotional behavior degrades religion to a childish and even dangerous status. The article below gives us an example of fundamentalism gone crazy. The cleric commits a fatal error with his belief in the sympathetic magic of provocatively dressed women causing earthquakes. Unfortunately, the cleric represents more the norm than the exception throughout the religious world. To some degree, most believers in great and minor faiths incline to similar ideas. Prayer becomes a form of useless magic, witchcraft, or sorcery when invoked to heal others or to prevent or cause misfortune.
Prayer and ritual, in my view, should never cross the line from communion with the sacred or divine to a human attempt to manipulate events through psychic power. The latter is wrong because it does not work, for one thing, and it sets up a false or overvalued belief when coincidence seems to support magical prayer. It is an attempt at "sorcery" in the crudest sense of the word. Another way to put this is: How stupid or weak does this cleric think 'God' is to think for even a second that sexy or scantily clad women have more power than God to cause or prevent earthquakes?
Promiscuous women cause earthquakes, Iran cleric says
(CNN) -- Women who dress provocatively and tempt people into promiscuity are to blame for earthquakes, a leading Iranian hard-line cleric has apparently said.
The prayer leader, Hojatoleslam Kazim Sadeghi, says women and girls who "don't dress appropriately" spread "promiscuity in society."
"When promiscuity spreads, earthquakes increase," he says in a video posted Monday on YouTube, apparently of him leading Friday prayers in Tehran, Iran, last week.
"There is no way other than taking refuge in religion and adapting ourselves to Islamic behavior," he adds in the video.
The video was posted by YouTube user "electionlies," who appears to be anti-regime. The account features wallpaper of a blindfolded woman apparently weeping blood and the slogan, "The green movement is alive."
Green was the color of anti-regime protesters in last year's demonstrations in several cities across Iran. The protesters were marching against the country's election results, which gave President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a second term in office.
Sadeghi is a senior cleric who was appointed last year by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei as a substitute Friday prayer leader in Tehran, an extremely influential position.
Khamenei himself is Tehran's official Friday prayer leader.
Iran suffers regular earthquakes, including a devastating one that destroyed the ancient city of Bam in 2003, killing tens of thousands.
Sadeghi is not the only religious leader to have linked earthquakes with human behavior this year.
American televangelist Pat Robertson suggested that January's devastating earthquake in Haiti was because of a pact Haitians made with the devil in order to throw off French rule in the 18th century.
A spokesman for Robertson said he was referring to a widely discussed Haitian legend, but University of Miami researcher Kate Ramsey said the legend was "utterly a fabrication, and it's an extremely offensive one."
CNN's Reza Sayah contributed to this report.
