AN EXCELLENT EXAMPLE FOR THEM NOT TO FOLLOW:

Who Speaks for Iraqi Shiites? Not Iran's ayatollahs. (Nathaniel Rabkin, 12/17/2007, Weekly Standard)

The independence of the four great Shiite ayatollahs of Najaf--the city 100 miles south of Baghdad that is a holy site for Shia Islam--can be easily ascertained from their public statements. Each of these ayatollahs maintains an extensive website, usually in Arabic and Persian, although some maintain sites in English, Urdu, and other languages as well. (The content appearing in one language does not always appear in another. All quotations in this article come from the Arabic websites, unless otherwise noted.) Each website has an extensive question and answer section, dealing with all kinds of religious questions, including those with political implications. Each ayatollah, responding to his followers' questions in carefully couched and diplomatic language, rejects or casts severe doubts on the religious authority of Ali Khamenei.

The ayatollah most open about his rejection of Khamenei is Ishaq al-Fayadh, who writes at www.alfayadh.com, in response to a question about the relationship between religion and politics, that no true Islamic government "exists today on any part of the earth." He adds that the policies pursued by the existing governments of the world "have no connection to religion." Elsewhere, he recommends elections as the best way of selecting good rulers.

On the website of Ayatollah Said al-Hakim (istefta.alhakeem.com), readers pose a number of questions about Wilayat al-Faqih (literally, rule of the jurist). This is the doctrine, favored by Khomeini, according to which a Shiite religious scholar should exercise supreme political power, under the title of Wali al-Faqih. Hakim explains that the concept is "subject to disputes among scholars." One reader asks: "If I follow a religious authority who does not believe in Wilayat al-Faqih, must I still obey the Wali al-Faqih?" Hakim responds: "Wilayat al-Faqih is a technical issue, and, as in all technical issues, each individual should follow the fatwas of his own legitimate jurist." On Hakim's English website (english.alhakeem.com), this ruling ends with the additional clause, "whether this jurist believes in the issue of Wilayat al-Faqih or does not." In Iran, denying the doctrine of Wilayat al-Faqih can result in a jail sentence or worse.

Ayatollah Bashir al-Najafy accepts Wilayat al-Faqih, but has a different version of it than the Iranians. According to Najafy (www.alnajafy.com), Khamenei can claim political authority only over territory he actually controls, and "his hand is extended only over Iran. .  .  . I don't think anyone believes that his dominion covers the entire earth." Asked explicitly whether he considers himself subordinate to Khamenei's religious authority, Ayatollah Najafy writes: "the rulings of one scholar cannot bind another."

The most cautious of Iraq's ayatollahs in dealing with this question is also the greatest: Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. He has good reason to be cautious in his political statements: His agents collect millions of dollars in donations from believers in Iran, and his institutions spend millions on charitable and educational projects in that country. Asked on his website (www.sistani.org), "What is your opinion about Wilayat al-Faqih?" Sistani writes that a legal scholar may exercise political power under certain "circumstances," but that he "must meet a number of conditions, including being generally acceptable to the mass of believers." It is left up to the reader to decide whether Ali Khamenei, famous for barring opposition election candidates and imprisoning critics, is "generally acceptable" to Iran's Shiite believers.

Khomeneism violates the Kerbala paradigm, though it is perhaps an understandable temporary aberration after twelve centuries in the wilderness.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 10, 2007 9:15 PM