Iranian Sunni scholars in the field of "religious sciences" may be exempted from obligatory military service, an official said Friday.
President Mohammad Khatami's advisor on Sunni affairs, Mowlavi Mohammad Eshaq, told the official Iranian news agency, IRNA, that a draft law on the exemption of Sunni scholars had been submitted to Parliament.
He said that the relative commission at Parliament was currently studying the law.
The Mowlavi (Sunni title for high clerics) said that according to the Iranian Constitution, the sources of Islamic jurisprudence, or scholars who were studying "religious sciences," were exempted from military recruitment.
The Sunni high cleric said that since the Sunni scholars' religious courses were relatively short, and because they could not continue acquire their jurisprudence degree in Iran alone, they had so far not been able to benefit from this constitutional right.
"The weak points of the relative legal proposal have been eliminated now and we hope the Sunni clerics' recruitment problem will be eliminated once Parliament passes the relative law," he hoped.
The Mowlavi added that all Iranians should contribute what they could to the prosperity of Iran, while the government, too, should never discriminate against different parts of society – Albawaba.com
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