President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Wednesday plans to segregate male and female students at Iranian universities must be halted, drawing another battle line in his ongoing tussle with traditionalist rivals. As part of a wider drive to assert Islamic values at Iran’s colleges, the minister in charge of higher education has said male and female students must be taught separately when classes begin again in September.
But in a message on his website, Ahmadinejad said the policy must be stopped. “It has been heard that in some universities, classes and disciplines are being segregated without considering the coincidences,” he said on the website dolat.ir. “Urgent action is required to prevent these superficial and non-scholarly actions.”
Ahmadinejad’s opposition to sex segregation will further alienate his conservative and religious critics who have becoming increasingly outspoken against him and his circle of advisers they say belong to a “deviant current” that puts secular nationalism ahead of Islam, posing a potential threat to Iran’s clerical rule.
