The head of Tehran’s subway system has announced that 50 female seminarians will be placed in various subway stations to respond to religious questions and commuter needs.
The Mehr News Agency reports that AliMohammad Gholiha said: “From now on, female commuters can address their religious concerns to female seminarians stationed in subway stations.”
He said this new program follows the success of an earlier one that saw male seminarians take to the Tehran subway stations to deal with travellers’ religious needs.
Gholiha reports that 80 male seminarians were assigned to 30 subway stations during the month of Ramadan in a plan referred to as a “spiritual breeze.”
Hojattoleslam Mehdi Mousavi, an aide to Iran’s Supreme Leader, announced that he had organized the plan to address Ayatollah Khamenei’s long-neglected recommendation that clergy be given a greater presence in Iranian life to protect a vulnerable society.
He added that the Spiritual Breeze was aimed at the “soft war being waged by foreign media through satellite programming, the internet and other channels.”