A well-known Iranian cleric has talked about the growing hatred and grudge towards the clergy in Iran, warning of a crisis unfolding in society.

In an Instagram post on Friday, Mohammad-Reza Zaeri said that a taxi driver refused to pick him up and told him “I will not give rides to mullahs.”

Zaeri, who often appears on state-controlled television programs, added that he had been spat on and sworn at a few times only in the last 10 days.

He said that those officials who have chauffeurs and bodyguards should be aware of this level of hatred and grudge that is creating a social crisis, stressing that “we had warned about this for years.”

The cleric, who is a former editor of the popular Hamshahri daily and head of the House of Young Journalists, has sometimes talked against compulsory hijab. During a lecture in Qom seminary in 2015, he described the policy of enforcing hijab as a failure.

Earlier in the week, Mohammad Taghi Fazel Meybodi, a member of the Assembly of the Qom Seminary Scholars and Researchers, said that clerics and seminary students are avoiding their usual garb for fear of being insulted in public.

Last week, a woman in the religious city of Qom was arrested for arguing with a clericand trampling on his turban after he and another cleric warned her over her hijab.