‘Charity and prayer stop quakes’

TEHRAN: A leading Iranian cleric has told the faithful they must pray and give to the poor to avoid the earthquakes that have often ravaged the country, a Tehran daily reported on Saturday.

The comments by hardliner Ayatollah Ahmad Janati in his sermon at the main weekly Muslim prayers in Tehran on Friday came a week after a fellow cleric warned that immodestly dressed women were causing quakes. “No one can predict earthquakes with certainty, except those who are pious,” the reformist Aftab e-Yazd newspaper quoted Janati as saying.

“But with prayers... and alms-giving... it can be prevented,” said Janati, who is also politically influential as the chairman of the constitutional watchdog, the Guardians Council. “According to some revelations, continuous prayer and alms-giving keeps away such calamities. So, we should give alms and sleep peacefully,” he said.