Sufi site attacked in Iran
The government crackdown came after the sect clashed with Sunnis.
TEHRAN, Iran - Police and paramilitary officers traded fire with followers of the mystical Sufi branch of Islam who had clashed over religious differences with Shiite Muslims in southwestern Iran, authorities and witnesses said yesterday.
Dozens of people were reportedly injured and arrested when the police, paramilitaries and special forces stormed the lodge of the Sufis, who had fought members of a nearby Shiite mosque in the city of Borujerd, witnesses said.
Both sides shot at each other before authorities seized the lodge and set fire to Sufis' belongings, according to a student who said he witnessed the clash, and spoke on condition of anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity.
Sufi orders form a branch of Islam that emphasizes direct mystical experience over mainstream religious practice. Sufis have had increasingly uneasy relations with Iran's Shiite clerical regime, and authorities closed down a Sufi lodge in the holy Shiite city of Qom last year.
Local journalist Morteza Bourbour said the violence in Borujerd began Saturday morning, when Sufis attacked a nearby mosque, injuring several Shiite Muslim clerics who had urged their followers to shut down the Sufi lodge because it was "illegitimate."
The semiofficial Mehr news agency quoted Hossein Saberi, governor general of Loristan province, as saying that police had been ordered to take control in case of any clash between members of the Sufi lodge and the mosque, which are in the same neighborhood.
The student, who is not a Sufi, said Iranian special forces were involved in the fighting along with police and the paramilitary unit, known as the Basij.
"Sufis resisted and pelted Basij members with bricks and stones," injuring about 50 members of the paramilitary group after they tried to enter the lodge along with police, Bourbour said.
"Some 80 people were injured and a part of the Sufis' lodge was destroyed during the clashes," town governor Mohammad Ali Tohidi said by telephone from Borujerd. He said 180 Sufis were arrested.
The independent news Web site Advarnews said about 100 Sufis were injured and 500 others arrested "after an unidentified group captured the lodge, setting fire to it and flattening it by bulldozer."
Borujerd is a city of 230,000 people about 300 miles southwest of the capital, Tehran.