What Iraq can teach Iran
Ayatollah Sistani in Iraq shows religion can play an influential, but background, role in a secular democracy.
By the Monitor's Editorial BoardAlthough Iran's postelection protests appeared crushed for now by brutal violence, a giant theological chasm has opened among Iran's Shiite clerics – one that also gives President Obama a safe opportunity to influence Iran's course.
Ever since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the weakest reed in Iran's complex system of government has been the claim of a supreme leader with absolute political authority based on his Islamic credentials. It is an idea not accepted by the 90 percent of the world's Muslims who are Sunni. And it is rejected outside Iran in other Shiite strongholds, such as in Hezbollah-controlled areas of Lebanon and in Iraq.
Known in Arabic as velayat-e motlaqeh-ye faqih (guardian or the jurist), this concocted religious doctrine, enshrined in Iran's Constitution, was recently rejected by a leading Iranian cleric, Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeric, who was once the designated successor to the founder of the Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
"Even the prophet did not have absolute velayat-e faqih," Mr. Montazeric stated earlier this year in open defiance of Iran's current supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. (Montazeric fell out of favor with Khomeini just before his death in 1989, but is still influential.)
This challenge to one-man rule is also championed by Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, a powerful former president and the head of the 86-member Assembly of Experts which, in theory, oversees the office of the supreme leader. He reportedly has sought recently to form an alternative political rule in Iran to be run by a collective religious leadership making day-to-day decisions.
That concept of a committee of clerics ruling Iran instead of a supreme leader may not be much of a step toward fuller democracy with a separation of religion and state. And it won't resolve the theological dispute over a supreme political leader among Shiites.
But at the least, it is a small step toward the common Shiite notion of a small number of grand ayatollahs in the faith sticking to their role as simply givers of religious rulings and as models of good behavior.
With his rule as Iran's ultimate arbiter under threat, Mr. Khamenei moved swiftly last week to try to consolidate his support among Iran's clerical bodies. The Assembly of Experts, for instance, signaled its confidence last Thursday for his "sagacious directions."
But the debate over a supreme leader may not fade. There are signs in Iran of increasing popularity for Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the leading Shiite figure in Iraq. Since the 2003 US invasion, he has supported a democracy that is run by secular leaders and inclusive of all faiths. (The Shiite spiritual leader in Lebanon, Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, also does not see himself as a political leader.)
An Iranian by birth, Mr. Sistani holds much sway over the clerical establishment in Iran's most religious city, Qom. And he lives in the Iraqi city of Najaf, the most holy of Shiite sites and a popular pilgrimage for Iranians.
If he wants to send a subtle signal to Iranian dissidents, Mr. Obama could simply praise Sistani's calming, background role as the top ayatollah in helping Iraq's secular democracy.
He could also point out, as many Shiite leaders have warned, that Islam's best protection is not to run a government for fear it would harm the religion.
Iran's clerical rule and its support of terrorism have certainly harmed Islam over the past three decades. Perhaps that is one reason why so many Iranians took to the streets in opposition to an election that they suspect did not reflect their will.
Obama has a chance to side with them now by siding with Sistani and the mainstream in Shiite Islam.
The New Race for the Moon
A lot of nations are looking to repeat Apollo's feat.
MICHIO KAKU
Last Thursday, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) sent two probes to the moon in search of a possible site for a manned lunar station. Both China and the U.S. have announced that they plan to send manned missions to the moon around 2020. India and Japan are not far behind, launching their own unmanned probes to the moon and laying out their timetables for sending men there.
Will we see a pileup on the moon around 2020? The idea of a traffic jam on the moon would have seemed preposterous to President John Kennedy when he announced the United States' goal of "landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth" by the end of the 1960s. Back then, the moon seemed impossibly distant. But with the Cold War, superpower rivalry moved a lunar mission to the top of the national security agenda. Today there's been a rekindling of some of that old fervor.
The most methodical strategy to put men on the moon comes from China, with its three-stage plan. First, the Chinese placed astronauts into orbit aboard their Long March rocket in 2003. Then, in 2008 with the Shenzhou 7 mission, they began mastering spacewalks. Next, they plan to master docking maneuvers with Shenzhou 10, eventually leading to the building of a space station. This will culminate in sending Chinese to the moon by 2020. That will also come in three stages: first orbiting the moon, then landing, and finally bringing back samples.
The U.S. is not far behind. The U.S. plans to mothball the aging Space Shuttle next year. After a controversial five-year hiatus, NASA will then deploy the new Constellation program, consisting of the Ares booster rocket and the Orion spacecraft. It looks like an Apollo mission on steroids. The Constellation is designed to replace the Shuttle and then blast off to the moon and maybe even to Mars.
Global rivalries have probably stoked the lunar ambitions of India and Japan as well. India, to much domestic fanfare, sent an orbiter around the moon in November 2008 -- the Chandrayaan-1. India plans to send astronauts into orbit by 2014-15, making it the fourth nation to carry out manned space missions. The Indian Space Research Organization said it plans to send a man to the moon by 2020.
Not to be outdone, Japan sent its first probe to the moon in 1990 and a second in 2007. It plans another probe by 2012-13. The Japanese are also planning a manned mission to the moon by 2020 and a manned lunar base by 2030.
The European Space Agency and the Russians, seeing all this activity culminate around the moon, will be under pressure to accelerate their own programs as well. At present, the agency has no official manned mission to the moon, but plans a manned mission to Mars, called the Aurora Program, by 2030.
So, around 2020, we could get a bottleneck on the moon, with manned and unmanned probes from several countries whizzing around it from different directions. Various nations could even begin planting flags into its lunar soil. Let's hope they don't bump into each other, creating the first global conflict in space.
To be sure, going to the moon is largely symbolic, rather than strategic. Since it takes several days to reach the moon, while a nuclear war on Earth would be waged in a matter of hours, the moon gives no cosmic military advantage. And the moon has no air or water. The moon does have minerals, but mining the Earth is infinitely cheaper than mining the moon.
This raises another question: Can any nation plant its flag on lunar soil, claiming the moon as its own?
The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 forbade nuclear weapons in space and prohibited countries from claiming territory on the moon or any other celestial body. But the treaty is vague and out of date. Perhaps now is the best time to strengthen and rethink this old treaty before national rivalries and tensions heat up as we approach 2020.
Mr. Kaku is the author of "Physics of the Impossible: a Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel" (Doubleday, 2008).
Robert Fisk: Symbols are not enough to win this battle
It is indeed an 'intifada' that has broken out in Iran, however hopeless its aims
You don't overthrow Islamic revolutions with car headlights. And definitely not with candles. Peaceful protest might have served Gandhi well, but the Supreme Leader's Iran is not going to worry about a few thousand demonstrators on the streets, even if they do cry "Allahu Akbar" from their rooftops every night.
This chorus to God emanated from the rooftops of Kandahar every night after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 – I heard it myself in Kandahar and I heard it last week over the rooftops of Tehran – but it no more stopped the Russians in their tracks than it is going to stop the Basiji or Revolutionary Guards. Symbols are not enough.
Yesterday, the Revolutionary Guards – as unelected as they are unrepresentative of today's massed youth of Iran – uttered their disgraceful threat to deal with "rioters" in "a revolutionary way".
Everyone in Iran, even those too young to remember the 1988 slaughter of the regime's opponents – when tens of thousands were hanged like thrushes on mass gallows – knows what this means.
Unleashing a rabble of armed government forces on to the streets and claiming that all whom they shoot are "terrorists" is an almost copy-cat perfect version of the Israeli army's public reaction to the Palestinian intifada. If stone-throwing demonstrators are shot dead, then it is their own fault, they are breaking the law and they are working for foreign powers.
When this happens in the Israeli-occupied territories, the Israelis claim that the foreign powers of Iran and Syria are behind the violence. When this happens on the streets of Iranian cities, the Iranian regime claims that the foreign powers of the United States, Israel and Britain are behind the violence.
And it is indeed an intifada that has broken out in Iran, however hopeless its aims. Millions of Iranians simply no longer accept the rule of law because they believe that the law has been corrupted by a fraudulent election. The dangerous decision by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to throw his entire prestige behind Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has erased any chance that he could emerge above the battle as a neutral arbiter.
Relatives of Mirhossein Mousavi's powerful ally Ali Akbar Rafsanjani are arrested then released; Mousavi is threatened with arrest by the Speaker of parliament; yet one of the most socially popular clerics and an ally of Mousavi, Mohamed Khatami, remains untouched.
Mousavi may have been a prime minister, but Khatami was a president. To touch Khatami would take away the future protection of Ahmadinejad. And the latter's powerful political friend Ayatollah Yazdi, who would like to be the next Supreme Leader, is a threat to Khamenei. And while every bloodied body on the streets of Iran's cities will now be declared a "terrorist'" by Ahmadinejad's friends, it will be honoured by his enemies as a martyr.
Mousavi, to win, needs to organise his protest in a more coherent way, not make it up on the hoof. But does Khamenei have a longer-term plan than mere survival?
No comments:
Post a Comment