Islamic religious leaders

Since March, funding for Bulgaria's Islamic schools, previously provided by the Turkish Presidency of Religious Affairs, or Diyanet, has been blocked, forcing the Bulgarian Grand Mufti's office to freeze the salaries of hundreds of imams, Grand Mufti spokesperson Jelal Faik told BIRN on Thursday.

Authority to register civil marriages should not be given to imams, Family and Social Policies Minister Fatma Betül Sayan Kaya has said, commenting on a recent draft law allowing "muftis," religious civil servants within Turkey's Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), to register marriages. 

Main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) lawmaker Sezgin Tanrıkulu has criticized a photo showing people spelling out the word "yes" while in a mosque to support the April 16 constitutional referendum.

Tanrıkulu reacted to the photo on his official Twitter account, saying, "No to politics in the mosque."

Religious Affairs Directorate (Diyanet) head Mehmet Görmez has warned imams "not to engage in politics in mosques," as an investigation was launched on Feb. 7 into an imam who called for a "yes" vote in the constitutional referendum.

A sacked imam faces charges of inciting ethnic hatred over a controversial sermon delivered in 2013 in defence of the Ottoman Turkish invasion, entitled "How to increase [God's] blessings", still available on YouTube.

The top Shiite cleric in Iraq on, al-Sistani, calls for the release of 18 Turkish workers kidnapped in Baghdad last week The top Shiite cleric in Iraq on Sept.

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said July 27 that he had presented a report on this month's landmark deal on Iran's nuclear energy program to Iranian-born Shiite leader Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in southern Iraq.