Fears grow over Iran's disgruntled Sunni Muslims

For Hassan Amini, Friday prayers are a weekly reminder of the "humiliation" faced by Iranian Sunni.

The dissident Sunni cleric, who lives in Iran's Kurdistan province, notes that Sunni worshippers must listen to sermons by imams appointed by Shia rulers in faraway Tehran, a reminder that they cannot choose their own religious leaders or run their own religious schools.

Although Iran's constitution guarantees equal job opportunities and freedom of (recognised) religion for all Iranians, the country's Sunni say they are deprived of their rights because they are unable to choose their own clerics, have no mosque for the hundreds of thousands of Sunni in the capital and are obliged to follow the Shia religious calendar, which differs from the Sunni calendar and makes it difficult to hold some religious ceremonies.

Although Iran's Sunni, estimated to number about 10m, follow a moderate school of Islam, religious discrimination is fuelling discontent, adding to fears that the minority could become prey to the extremism espoused by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis), which has swept through neighbouring Iraq.

The group has attracted Sunni extremists from around the globe and Iran has been gripped by unsubstantiated rumours that Isis members have infiltrated over the Iraqi border and that the group has lured Iranian Sunni to kill Shia, whom they consider infidels. There are also suggestions that Isis followers have been arrested or even hanged after being detained in Iran.

Mr Amini, a 68-year-old white-bearded cleric, who spent more than three years in jail in the 1980s for rebelling against Shia politicians, shrugs off the allegations. "Isis does not have a popular base in Iran," he says.

He insists that even in Kurdistan province, Isis has no following even though about 90 per cent of the population is Sunni and many feel discriminated against for both their religion and their Kurdish ethnicity in a country dominated by Shia Persians.

Sitting cross-legged on a carpet surrounded by shelves of books, he denies rumours that Isis followers gather in a mosque in Sanandaj, the provincial capital.

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But he warns: "Isis is the result of injustice [against Sunni]. When there is injustice, there is uprising."

Ali Shamkhani, Iran's top security official, confirmed to the Financial Times in a recent interview that 22 Iranian Sunni were arrested before crossing the border to join Isis and that Sunni extremists had raised the Isis flag in a village in western Iran.

But he insisted "there are no relations" between Isis and Iranian Sunni and added that the extremist group was unable to recruit forces from Iran.

Analysts say Isis is unlikely to make inroads with Iran's Sunni because they follow a moderate interpretation of Islam, although there are communities in Sistan-Baluchestan that follow a more conservative branch of Sunnism akin to the conservative Salafist Islam of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and UAE.

The province is a base for Sunni rebels who have in recent years carried out ambushes and kidnappings and have killed civilians and security agents. Three members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards were killed in the province over the weekend in an attack the Fars news agency blamed on "armed bandits".

"Sunni extremists cannot really influence Iran's society but they are a danger in a sense that even if they have only 50 loyalists and only two of them embark on suicide attacks in Sanandaj, it will make the city insecure," Ejlal Ghavami, a human-rights activist says.

The Islamic regime in Tehran has little tolerance of Sunni campaigns for more rights. An estimated 100 Sunni are in jail for protesting and about half face the death penalty.

Even moderate politicians have been unable to change this policy. The centrist government of Hassan Rouhani, who enjoyed large support from Sunni areas in the 2013 election, was unable to appoint a Sunni governor in Kurdistan despite promising in his election campaign to do so.

When Bijan Namdar Zanganeh, the oil minister, a Shia Kurd, appointed Emad Hosseini, a Sunni Kurd, as his deputy for engineering, eyebrows were raised in the holy city of Qom where the senior Shia clergy live.

The appointment is seen as too little by many Sunni Kurds who believe the Islamic regime mistrusts them more for their religion than their ethnicity.

"Even if the existing law, despite its flaws, is applied, we would be happy," says Mr Amini. "We don't have enmity with anybody but will not stay quiet in face of injustice."

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