Tehran, Aug 8, IRNA -- Hashem Aghajari, a journalist who stirred up a row after calling for religious restructuring in Iran, was detained in the western city of Hamedan on Thursday on a local judge's order, his colleague said.

Mohsen Armin, a member of the Islamic Revolution's Mujahedin Organization (IRMO), to which Aghajari belongs, said that the journalist was detained after attending a court for interrogation.

The judge set August 31 as the date for the journalist's trial and rejected the defendant's protest to the ruling, which Armin described as "contradicting the normal legal procedure".

"Since the court's investigations (from the journalist) had finished ... there is no need for temporary detention," he said.

Aghajari was summoned before court in Hamedan early last month on repeated charges of insulting religious sanctities' and released on a bail of two billion rials.

Aghajari's remarks triggered an outrage among many, who called on the judiciary to take action against the intellectual journalist who is a war veteran, a university lecturer, as well as a member of the IRMO.

Speaking at a function to commemorate a prominent Iranian intellectual, late Ali Shariati, in Hamedan, the journalist had criticized the Islamic principle of emulation (Taqlid) from religious leaders.

The journalist came under severe criticism, including by President Mohammad Khatami who implicitly upbraided the journalist for 'insulting and weakening' clerics in the name of intellectualism and reform.

"Today, some neither can nor must undermine the clergy and dignified religious leadership of Islam in the name of intellectualism, nor should they misuse this issue for their factional interests in the name of being revolutionary and promoting Islam," the Iranian president said.

Head of Iran's oversight Guardians Council Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati delivered a broadside at Aghajari, describing his remarks as 'naive'.

"This person has talked so naively that seems improbable of a university lecturer, but this is not surprising of a person who is unable to even read the Quran correctly and understand it," Ayatollah Jannati said.