Iran: Religious ruling class set to blog

Posted by Rory Satran on October 13, 2006 at 12:28 PM

Conservative Islamic clerics in Iran are being trained in blogging techniques, reports the Guardian. 300 ayatollahs, seminary students, and theologians are taking classes in blogging at the brand-new office of religious weblog expansion, located in Qom, Iran’s religious nucleus. Iranian blogs are still sweeping the nation despite extreme censorship on the part of the government.

Iran’s 2001 political reforms barred much of the liberal press, spurring the blogging trend. Since then many of the bloggers that have dared to speak on political matters have been detained, and several sites have been blocked from the Internet. Now, the 75,000-100,000 Iranian bloggers concentrate mostly on every topic except politics.

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad himself started a blog last month. His first post accused the U.S. and Israel of igniting a third world war.

Source: Guardian

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