Rasool Nafisi

WASHINGTON–The rushed support of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the disputed June election, and the announcement of his reelection the day after polls closed, has damaged the credibility of the velayat faghih (the rule of qualified jurist) beyond repair. The legitimacy of the regime, already in question by modern urbanites, now has become the target of daily attacks by the people who once were its ardent supporters.

The most dramatic fissure over Khamenei’s actions took place within the ranks of the Iranian clergy. The June presidential elections and its aftermath divided the clergy into three camps: those who kept their distance with the events; a few clergy who supported the election results, albeit indirectly; and those who openly rejected it as rigged elections.

Opposition to the election results has turned into a full- fledged rejection of Khamenei’s role as the qualified jurist. Ayatollah Ali Hussein Montazeri, one of Iran’s most influential clerics who help found the Islamic Republic in 1979, took the lead. In a series of fatwas, he denounced Khamenei without mentioning his name. Responding to a written question from another notable clergy, Mohsen Kadivar, Montazeri called the Iranian leaders “usurpers and transgressors” because of the way they treated the demonstrators.

These terms have deep meanings in Shi’ite jurisprudence. Such rulers are automatically disqualified to rule the community of Shiite Muslim believers. Describing the regime after what happened in June, Montazeri wrote: “This regime is neither Islamic nor a republic; it is a mere dictatorship.” Then he concluded: “This is no longer the ‘rule of the qualified jurist.’ Rather, it is the ‘rule of the generals.’”

Finally, in an open letter to the clerical body in Qom, Montazeri called unequivocally for them to take action against the present regime that has tarnished the name of Islam and discredited the clergy. He warned that the Shiite clergy has been on the side of the people throughout history, and it should not abandon them now, when they are in turmoil. Such inaction will destroy the historical reputation of the clergy as the people’s advocate.

Notably, he repented for his role in establishing such a regime and asked God for forgiveness. Montazeri, however, stopped short of rejecting the whole notion of the rule of qualified jurist, which is the founding theory of the Islamic republic. He was the main theorist of regime, and was assigned by the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini to write the theological justification for velayat faghih, which he did in earnest, and published a book in four volumes on the subject. He seems to still believe that such an idea can be implemented if the right jurist (faghih) were found.

Stinging criticism of Khamenei also came from Abdolkarim Soroush, one of the main intellectuals assigned by the late Ayatollah Khomeini to Islamize the culture. A British-educated pharmacist turned philosopher, Soroush wrote a series of books advocating a less rigid and more intellectual interpretation of the jurisprudence. He shortly became dubbed the “Luther of Islam” because of his innovative ideas in adopting modernity. Soroush, who presently lives in the United States, wrote one of the most poignant letters directly to Khamenei after the June election.

Soroush expressed joy in the demise of the religious state. Repenting like Ayatollah Montazeri for “whatever assistance that I might have given to the tyrants” and describing the Islamic Republic in the harshest terms, he said the people’s revolt against the regime was the result of over two decades of enlightening works against it. He said to hear from the mouth of Khamenei that those demonstrations have “discredited” the regime filled him with joy.

It is quite significant that two important figures from the Islamic regime—one in charge of theorizing and justifying the velayat faghih, and the other in charge of reinventing Iranian culture in Islamic ways—should repudiate the regime so brazenly. They represent a whole host of other clerics, such as Ayatollah Yousef Sanei and a number of so called “Islamic intellectuals,” most of whom are languishing in jail.

The events of June also forced even some pro-regime clerics to show their disapproval. Fearful of losing all of their credibility, even hard-line Ayatollah Nasser Makarem-Shirazi preferred to distance himself from the government. The memorable statement by Ayatollah Ali-Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, the quintessential deal-maker and the king-maker who brought Khamenei to power is: “Today no clear conscience can accept what is going on in the country.”

Iran is among the very few nations in modern times that have experimented with religious revivalism at the state level, and succeeded in implementing an enduring form of militarized theocracy. While the nations of the world in general have been trying to adjust their traditions with modernity, Iranian clerical rulers have tried the opposite through an effort to adjust modernity to long-forgotten forms of religious ritualism.

In gradual steps, the insurgent clerical hierarchy tried and mostly managed to reject most achievements in socio-cultural modernity of the twentieth century. On the other hand, those outside the clerical establishment who aided and abetted the clergy, hoping for a form government closer to their ideals—democratic or proletarian—ended up in disbelief and dismay. Ever since, the tensions between these two contradictory forces that once managed in unity to topple the Shah’s modernizing state in 1979 have remained in conflict.

However, the recent events have added another dimension to that conflict: an inner conflict within the clerical establishment that may lead to the complete demise of the velayat faghih. The clergy has been divided from the very early days of the republic. The late Ayatollah Mohammed Kazem Shariatmadari was the first victim of opposition to the newly rising Islamic regime. But as the years passed, majority of the clergy was co-opted, or was silenced. Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, the deposed heir apparent of the late Ayatollah Khomeini, was under house arrest for five years for calling his successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, unfit for the job.

The schism among clerics and the clear separation of the Islamic intellectuals from the regime are significant in terms of what is in store for the future of the Islamic Republic. The legitimacy of the state is now doubted and even repudiated by many of its founders and ideologues. Ideas like those of Mohammad-Taghi Mesbah-Yazdi who supports the use of sheer terror to rule the society are now firmly in place.

The regime seems to make no more pretense of using its theocratic legitimacy to glue the different factions together and justify its existence in the eyes of the people. Instead of the clerical veneer, it is the omnipresent members of the Islamic Republic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the basij who are the guarantors of the regime’s survival. In fact, it was the late Ayatollah Khomeini who advocated the use of brute force, when people are not convinced by the “logic.” By “logic” he meant the vision offered by the Islamic Republic. Ayatollah Khamenei also claims that Imam Ali, the most veneered Shi’ite Imam, dealt pitilessly with the members of the Islamic ummah whenever they went astray. Adhering to sheer force to rule is becoming more and more acceptable to the regime as the remainders of its fledgling legitimacy vanishes.

Rasool Nafisi is an academic and Iran expert living in Virginia.