 For instance in 2006, authorities in the city of Qom arrested more than 1,000 followers of the mystical Sufi tradition of Islam.Iran's hard-line daily "Kayhan" on 14 February 2006 quoted senior clerics in Qom as saying that Sufism should be eradicated in the city, while the Reuters news agency reported that in September one of Iran's hard-line clerics, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Noori Hamedani, called for a clampdown on Sufis in Qom.In 2006, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad launched a plan to suppress what he called "indecent religious associations that work under the cover of spirituality and Sufism".