Beirut, Lebanon ? Shiite Muslim clerics in Lebanon and Iran have reacted with rage at the Rev. Jerry Falwell for calling Islam’s prophet a terrorist, and an envoy of Iran’s supreme leader reportedly called for his death.

Iranian cleric Mohsen Mojtahed Shabestari, addressing weekly Friday prayers in the northwestern town of Tabriz, said Falwell was a “mercenary and must be killed,” the Farsi-language daily Abrar reported Saturday.

“The death of that man is a religious duty, but his case should not be tied to the Christian community,” Shabestari, a representative of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was quoted as saying.

In an interview broadcast last week on the CBS program “60 Minutes,” Falwell said: “I think (Prophet) Mohammed was a terrorist”.

The conservative Baptist minister said he has concluded from reading Muslim and non-Muslim writers that Islam’s prophet “was a violent man, a man of war.”

Saturday in Lebanon, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah called on Muslim countries to respond to Falwell who, he said, had “infringed on the prophet (Mohammed’s) dignity.”

Fadlallah, however, cautioned against resorting to “physical violence” against Falwell, saying Islam is “a religion of mercy and love.”

In a statement issued in Beirut, Fadlallah also urged Muslims worldwide to counter what he called “a cultural war” launched against Islam following the Sept. 11 terror attacks in New York and Washington.

Falwell

Fadlallah, 67, has condemned the Sept. 11 attacks. He is a senior Shiite religious authority and a harsh critic of U.S. policies in the Middle East, a region where Arabs view America as being biased toward Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians.

Earlier last week, another Shiite cleric in Iran, Ayatollah Hussein Nouri Hamedani, called on Muslims to cut relations with America. He accused Falwell of implementing “a Zionist plan” to cause a clash between Islam and Christianity.

But other Muslim clerics held different opinion.

“Although (Falwell’s) opinion is insulting, he can be answered through dialogue so that all ambiguities in his mind are cleared,” Iranian Ayatollah Hussein Mousavi Tabrizi said