Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is facing a backlash over his latest comments about no one being above criticism — including Islamic rulers. Rouhani’s claims that even the Prophet Muhammad welcomed criticism by others has raised many objections among Iranian clerics who are now demanding that the president take back his words and not comment on religious matters in the future.

In a speech delivered Jan. 8, following the recent wave of protests in Iran, Rouhani voiced his disapproval over the filtering of social media networks in Iran and said everyone in the Islamic Republic could be criticized, without any exceptions: “All the officials in the country can be criticized. No one in the country is infallible.” Attempting to justify his statement, Rouhani referred to religious figures throughout Islam and added, “If one day the [hidden] 12th Imam [Mahdi] reappears, then we can criticize [him] too. … Even the Prophet of Islam [Muhammad] allowed [others] to criticize him. … People would ask him if his words were his own or revealed to him by God. If he said my own, they could criticize even his opinion. We don’t have anyone above the prophet in history.”

This statement soon sparked a wave of attacks and condemnations against Rouhani from religious and radical circles. The pivotal point in the objections, however, was perhaps the Jan. 14 statement by the influential Society of Seminary Teachers of Qom, which is headed by Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, a veteran cleric who is viewed as one of not just Rouhani’s but the Reformists’ toughest critics. The statement described the rejection of the Prophet Muhammad and the Shiite imams’ infallibility as an explicit opposition to Islam and the Shiite faith and said, “We strongly recommend that some officials refrain from entering issues related to [people’s] beliefs in their speeches and instead focus on solving issues related to their livelihood.”

In an effort to explain Rouhani’s comment, the president’s office issued a statement one day later on Jan. 15 that said, “Attributing the sentence that ‘even Imam Mahdi can be criticized’ to the president is a complete lie. Such words were never stated by the president nor can such a meaning be inferred from his speech.”