There are only about thirty living marja taqlid (or Grand Ayatollahs) in the world today. Almost all of them are either Iranian or Iraqi, and all of them have been educated in Iran (mainly in Qom), Iraq (mainly in Najaf), or both. A Grand Ayatollah is distinct from an Ayatollah. Ayatollahs are normally specialists in one area of Islamic studies, like law, philosophy, or ethics. But Grand Ayatollahs demonstrate a comprehensive knowledge by publishing a resalah amaliyah (or book) detailing the answers to a broad array of religious and legal matters.
It’s hard to rank the Grand Ayatollahs in terms of their influence. All of them have significant followings. However, Grand Ayatollahs that reside in Najaf and Qom have extra prestige. In Najaf, the Americans quickly discovered that Grand Ayatollah Ali Husaini Sistani had tremendous clout and could not be ignored. In Iran, things are a bit more complicated by the history of the current Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, Ali Hosseini Khamenei. Khamenei was hand selected to succeed the founder of the Republic, Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. But Khamenei was technically unqualified for the position because he was not a Grand Ayatollah at the time of his selection for the succession. His technical title was Hojatoleslam wal-muslemin.
Hojatoleslam (from Arabic: حجة الإسلام ḥujjatu l-Islām) is an honorific title meaning “authority on Islam” or “proof of Islam”, given to Twelver Shī‘ah clerics. It was originally applied only to leading mujtahids, but from about the start of the 19th century came to be used by all clerics following the creation of the title Ayatollah for top Twelver mujtahids.
The title Hujjatu l-Islām wa l-Muslimīn (Authority on Islam and Muslims) is given to middle-ranking clerics.
What happened is that Ruhollah Khomeini had a falling out with his original designated successor, Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri. Montazeri was critical of the mass killing of political prisoners in 1988 and the fatwa issued against British author Salman Rushdie. Instead of taking over for Khomeini, he was stripped of his title of Grand Ayatollah and eventually found himself under prolonged house arrest (1997-2003).
Because of this history, Ali Khameini’s credentials to be Supreme Leader have always been suspect. Meanwhile, Montazeri’s claim to be the leading Grand Ayatollah in Qom (and therefore in Iran) is strong. But Montazari is controversial. He is definitely revered by almost everyone for his religious knowledge, but he has also aligned himself more with the Reformist camp. He has been openly critical of President Ahmedinejad, for example. Had he remained impartial, the following might be more powerful.
Supporters of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his main rival in the disputed presidential election, Mir Hossein Mousavi, massed in competing rallies Tuesday as the country’s most senior Islamic cleric threw his weight behind opposition charges that Ahmadinejad’s re-election was rigged.
“No one in their right mind can believe” the official results from Friday’s contest, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri said of the landslide victory claimed by Ahmadinejad. Montazeri accused the regime of handling Mousavi’s charges of fraud and the massive protests of his backers “in the worst way possible.”
“A government not respecting people’s vote has no religious or political legitimacy,” he declared in comments on his official Web site. “I ask the police and army personals (personnel) not to ‘sell their religion,’ and beware that receiving orders will not excuse them before God.”
Now, McClatchy is going a bit out on a limb in calling Montazeri Iran’s most senior cleric. That case can certainly be made, but it would just as certainly be disputed by the Supreme Leader. Moreover, Montazeri’s impartiality is more than just a little open to question. Yet, in any case, Montazeri’s pronouncement carries enormous weight and makes Bill Keller look like even more of a fool for writing yesterday:
Whether his 63 percent victory is truly the will of the people or the result of fraud, it demonstrated that Mr. Ahmadinejad is the shrewd and ruthless front man for a clerical, military and political elite that is more unified and emboldened than at any time since the 1979 revolution.
It’s one thing to be wrong. It’s another to be 180˚ wrong. The clerical elite in Iran has never been more split. They’ve never seen Ali Khameini as the rightful successor to Khomeini, and now they smell blood. One of the ironies of the Islamic Revolution is that is based on the principle of Velayat-e faqih (Guardianship of the Islamic Jurists), which is an innovation of Khomeini’s. In effect, the Velayat-e faqih states that the most accomplished religious scholars should rule in order to assure that Islamic principles are adhered to by legislatures and judges. Very few Grand Ayatollahs subscribe to the theory and most of them see it as a heresy. Of course, things have been complicated on that score after thirty years of guardianship in Iran, where more than half of the Grand Ayatollahs reside. Nonetheless, the very principle that justifies the Supreme Leader has always rode on a thin reed. It could come crashing down quite quickly.
You might think the Grand Ayatollahs would like the power and not want to give it up. The truth is, they love their religion more.
Nice job, BooMan!
Small correction. Ali Khomeini in the penultimate paragraph should be Ali Khamenei.
Same misspelling towards the end of the second paragraph.
I’ve read the second paragraph numerous times and I am sure that I have my Khomeinis and Khameinis in the correct places.
Yes, the second paragraph is fine.
“But Khameini was technically unqualified for the position because he was not a Grand Ayatollah at the time of his selection for the succession.”
that sentence is correct. He was given that title after he was selected by Khomeini and before he took over for him.
Khomeini was a Grand Ayotallah for decades before the revolution. He had been a huge part of the debate over the White Revolution.
Ask is right. Khamenei, not Khameini.
ah, I wasn’t looking for typos but identities.
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The Supreme Leader of the Revolution is the `ruling jurist’, or vali-e faqih , of the Islamic Republic, and his office is by far the most powerful institution in Iran. It was established by the pro-Khomeini Shiite clerics, who dominated the Assembly of Experts at the time of the revolution, and who drafted the new constitution, which was endorsed by a popular referendum in November 1979.
However, while the Supreme Leader still wields extraordinary power as a virtual dictator, the present incumbent of 17 years, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei does not have the same authority as his predecessor Khomeini. Nobody could challenge Khomeini’s leadership between 1979 and 1989. Khamenei, on the other hand, lacks personal clout and does not have the religious credentials to neutralise the rival camps among the mullahs. As a result, he has to work much more actively to maintain a conservative coalition that supports his overarching role in Iranian society.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Being someone who enjoys alternate history I wonder what the world would by like if instead of Emulation, it had been decided that the super-high clerics were people who Inspiration (by their behavior).
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In an exclusive interview with Radio Farda, Iranian reformist cleric Hassan Yusefi Eshkevari has spoken out following the government’s announcement of President Mahmud Ahmadinejad’s election victory. He was interviewed by telephone from his home in Tehran by Elaheh Ravanshad.
Radio Farda: What is your reaction to the official election result?
Hassan Yusefi Eshkevari: It seems that what has happened in Iran is a punishment for the people. People, including young Iranians, took to the streets and showed their maturity and their wish for peace and goodwill. That’s one issue. The other issue is that the establishment seems to fear democracy, and because of that it held an election coup d’etat to take its revenge on the people, especially on the youth.
Radio Farda: What surprised you most about the official result?
Yusefi Eshkevari: The election result is not understandable by any logic because if Ahmadinejad was supposed to have 62 percent of the vote, there would have not been so many protests and so many efforts to replace him. Especially in the past month, all of Iran was calling in a united voice: We want to change [him] and we don’t want him [as president].
…
The majority of people didn’t want Ahmadinejad to win, but it wasn’t only that. In recent days it became clear that Ahmadinejad had serious opponents even inside the leadership, among his fellow traditionalists. The damage of what has happened here, will be more apparent and more severe in future; it has caused more damage to Iran’s political system than Musavi’s victory would have.
[The high level of protests on the streets in a number of cities has surpassed this cleric’s expectations – Oui]
We’ve then got the Presidential Office’s eligible voters by region data so we can work out what the turnout as in each case. Whether you believe over 99% turnouts anywhere is one thing, but this data is only the beginning.
There are other versions of this stuff out there – Fivethirtyeight.com has visualised these figures as a map, while Iran Tracker has another set.
Polling Data Before Iranian Election
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.".
(The Independent/ABC News) By Robert Fisk – There were about 10,000 Mousavi men and women on the streets, with approximately 500 Iranian special forces, trying to keep them apart.
It was interesting that the special forces – who normally take the side of Ahmadinejad’s Basij militia – were there with clubs and sticks in their camouflage trousers and their purity white shirts and on this occasion the Iranian military kept them away from Mousavi’s men and women.
In fact at one point, Mousavi’s supporters were shouting ‘thank you, thank you’ to the soldiers.
One woman went up to the special forces men, who normally are very brutal with Mr Mousavi’s supporters, and said ‘can you protect us from the Basij?’ He said ‘with God’s help’.
[Also the battle cry of the Mousavi supporters – Oui]
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."My God, what were the Iranians thinking? If you are going to steal an election, you have to do it with a little more craft and skill. For example, you don’t have a candidate get clobbered on his own home court or native city. You don’t have your own guy roll up majorities that are way out of sight. 62% or whatever seems to be a bit much. And, when masses of the defeated party protest in the streets, you don’t beat them up with the religious militia.
Iran is providing a wonderful demonstration of the political wisdom of separating church and state. Grand Ayatollahs with all that power and, apparently, few checks and balances other than other Grand Ayatollahs. Seems like a recipe for religious warfare. Happy I am that Iran has no nuclear weapons; no telling what the zealots might do convert their enemies to the true faith.
If you are going to steal an election, you have to do it with a little more craft and skill. For example, you don’t have a candidate get clobbered on his own home court or native city.
they were trying to do it fast, which means doing it sloppy.
You don’t have your own guy roll up majorities that are way out of sight. 62% or whatever seems to be a bit much.
actually, it makes perfect sense. 62% is pretty close to ahmedinejad’s % in the last election.
I have no way of knowing the real answer, but here’s what I think. The current regime had good reason to fear that Ahmadinejad might not win. They couldn’t take the risk, so they decided to fake it. But that wasn’t enough. As long as they were at it, he had to win BIG, to thoroughly discredit his adversaries and appear to have a strong mandate. That’s why they went out of their way to make his opponents lose in their home towns, for example. In order to do this, they would already be beyond the bounds if plausibility, so why even bother to make it look “realistic.” A mere fraud was not enough: as the opposition are all agreed, this was no mere fraud but a coup. Turning a supposed election into a coup, it’s no longer a question of being plausible, it’s a question of pointing to “official results” that are supposed to utterly vanquish and discredit the opposition when (as tey inevitably would) they raise a protest.
To me the most amazing thing is to see how not only the official Iranian news media, but also many of our western pundits (especially neocons) and news media (most egregiously the New York Times) went right along with this farce. It is truly amazing to see the beleaguered NY Times, criticized again and again for printing “perception management” instead of news, once more prove itself so unworthy of respect, with Bill Keller at the head. Damn it, I and many others WANT to respect the Times, but how can we when it continues to prove its worthlessness on matters at this level of importance?
That’s as good a theory as I’ve seen on why they’d be so obvious.
Plus, of course, openly throwing an election is as good a way as any to both have a claim to legitimacy and at the same time say, “Watch your ass — we can do whatever the hell we want.” Kinda the Bush scenario, when you think about it.
Well, now there is some evidence as to what happened, assuming it’s genuine:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeremy-j-stone/how-the-iranian-election_b_216882.html
You’ll notice the article calls Yazdi the most influential cleric in Qom, and I have stated in another comment that Montazeri — whose views are diametrically the opposite to Yazdi’s — is probably the most influential cleric in Qom. I think I can explain the contradiction. Yazdi is the most influential only in the sense that he happens to be the spiritual advisor of Ahmedinajad, who is the president.
As of the last few days, I don’t think Yazdi’s going to be so influential any more.
It’s a little like Rev. James Dobson/Bush vs Rev. Rick Warren/Obama
Thanks, BooMan. I haven’t until now been able to understand how Montazeri fits in. He’s been floating around for a very long time. There are/were rumors that Khamenei was not definiely chosen by Khomeini. The thrust is that he (or someone near him) invented the story of Khomeini’s choice and he more or less appointed himself (with a little help from his friends, of course). It doesn’t sound so farfetched. Power and money on the streets of Tehran, Isfahan and all over the place. P.S. Washington, D.C., too.
I’m not disputing your analysis, but I think this is too trite to be true. If many of the Grand Ayatollahs don’t subscribe to the theory of Guardianship (and I’ve read enough articles to lead me to believe that not all of them do and that it’s very controversial), then there has to be a real reason for it, not just because they “love their religion more than power”. I could buy that if the objections came from a handful of very “holy” people who don’t try to exercise secular power. But it seems much more widespread than that, and it seems to be a viewpoint that even the Ayatollahs who enjoy secular power and influence seem to be capable of making.
I think it’s more likely that the Grand Ayatollahs who object see what the end result of such a Guardianship is – a religious dictatorship where they are no longer free to interpret Islam in a way that deviates from the Guardians’ interpretation. You only have to look at how Montazeri was treated when he decided to speak out against Khomeni’s monstrous actions in the 80s to see why the other Grand Ayatollahs wouldn’t want to concentrate power into the hands of a few other clerics. Better for them to have a system where all of the Ayatollahs are treated as equals than a system where one gets to set the agenda and the rest risk being thrown in prison or worse for dissenting.
In short, it turns Islam into something resembling Roman Catholicism, where technically all of the bishops are equal to the Pope but in actuality the guy sitting in the Papal Seat has a lot of ability to fuck with you if you get on his bad side. Which was the standard operating procedure for the RCC back when the Pope was the de facto leader of Europe and to some extent still is today, though the Pope’s influence is much more limited than, say, the Supreme Leader of Iran’s. So I can see why a group who sees themselves as a “community of scholars” would chafe at the idea of Guardianship taken to the level professed by Khomeni.
Thanks for the helpful details, but in the end I don’t think this makes Booman’s statement either trivial or untrue. Pithy and eloquent is more like it.
The BBC was doing street interviews in Iran a few days ago. One of the respondents talked about the protests as a reaction against the stifling, claustrophobic feeling in the country. Your explanation of the structures and factions makes that feeling vivid.
I realize we’re supposed to be all PC and pretend every culture is equal, but Europe did one thing that Iran and the rest of the region fucked up: they took away the political power of the damned old priests. I hope Iran and the region get their Luthers, and then somebody shoots their Luther down. That’s the step the West neglected to accomplish.
You are simply imposing your own set of prejudices to interpet what’s going on, and the result is that you do not understand what’s going on. The villains of the piece (some of them at least) are clerics, true. But many of the good guys are also clerics; in fact, many of of the most learned clerics (in Qom, for example). It is all too easy to draw superficial parallels between Iran and 16th-century Europe, especially because you don’t have to know anything about Iran. It reminds of me of Friedman’s latest piece of crap (today) in which Twitter has somehow become the new Mosque. Twitter’s playing a crucial role, yes, but this has nothing to with replacing mosques.
that’s the least of the problems with that TF piece.
Yeah, I have my prejudices just like you and everybody else. One of them is that theocracy stinks. I hope Iranians find a way to get rid of theocracy, no matter how much of a “human face” it might put on. I’ve paid some attention and have seen nothing from any cleric in Iran agitating to end theocracy. So to me they’re good guys only in the sense that Luther was a good guy while he was being a bad guy. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” is idiot bullshit.
Theocracy stinks, yeah. Maybe you prefer military dictatorship? Because that’s what this is about.
From what I understand, Montazeri, one of the architects of the revolution, and the most respected religious authority in Iran, was againt the idea of theocracy from the beginning. That’s why he was suppressed, and they put this Khamenei in instead. It was supposed to be a democracy. Not an American democracy, however, an Iranian democracy.