Montazeri

Reprinted from Weekly Standard) Reuel Marc Gerecht is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When I first encountered the Persian word mofangi, I struggled to grasp its meaning. It implies a certain timidity, physical weakness, and awkwardness. Seeking to put some flesh on that definition, my language tutor told me to envision Grand Ayatollah Hosein Ali Montazeri. "He's more than a little mofangi," remarked the tutor, expressing the condescension that well-educated, leftwing Iranians often have for the clergy who stole their revolution.

That was in the mid 1980s, and Montazeri was the number two cleric in Iran, a mullah who once passionately believed in exporting Iran's revolutionary tumult and was instrumental in building the institutions of Islam's first theocracy. Yet, unlike his former teacher and friend, the formidable Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Montazeri didn't scare anyone. With his big owlish glasses, squeaky voice, and sartorial dishevelment, Montazeri was clearly a man of the people--to the extent that any accomplished Shiite jurist can be an ordinary man.

Yet in the end Montazeri, who died last week at 87, caused, and will continue to cause, untold trouble for the regime. By the end of his life, he had come to represent the fusion of three unstoppable ideas: that the Islamic Republic as built by Khomeini and led by Khamenei is illegitimate; that only democracy can redeem the republic and save Islam as a vibrant faith capable of shaping society's mores; and that clerics who support Khamenei are intellectual dullards and moral reprobates. It was Montazeri's religious passion, his argumentative rigor, his common-man roots, and his courage that drove the regime nuts. His disciples are everywhere.

No outsider can precisely date an inner change of such consequence, but it appears that Montazeri began to lose his faith in what he'd built when the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88) started consuming tens of thousands of young men--the faithful for whom Khomeini never once wept. After Iran's defeat, Khomeini "defrocked" Montazeri for having the temerity to question his execution of thousands of jailed Iranians. Under house arrest, Montazeri became the leader of the dissident clergy.

Fallen from power, Montazeri wrote a six-volume critique of the velayat-e faqih, the "regency of the jurisconsult," or "office of supreme leader," which allowed first Khomeini, then Khamenei, dictatorial control of the state. Although Montazeri never took issue with the idea that clerics should have an important role in government, he relentlessly pursued Khamenei for his lack of religious qualifications and for the very idea that the supreme leader is unelected and not subject to law and tradition.

For Montazeri, the Islamic Republic was born in sin because the velayat e faqih was not prescribed by Shiite tradition. Montazeri put forth the notion, later refined and lethally sharpened by Mohsen Kadivar, a dissident cleric and probably the greatest orator of the opposition, that only religious leaders who are elected possess legitimacy. Iran's religious political system, accordingly, must be transformed into a velayat-e entekhabi e moqayyadeh, an "elected, limited regency of jurists," where ultimate political power rests with the people and their parliament, and not with mullahs. Montazeri is best seen as an iron prow, crashing into and splintering Khomeini's state. And in Montazeri's wake, democratic dissidents of all stripes--from the religiously inclined to the religion-hostile--have grown strong.

Montazeri's most lasting achievement may prove to be the deepening marriage between religious -democrats and increasingly nonreligious, Western-style democrats. He didn't intend this when he first started challenging the regime's legitimacy. But Montazeri evolved, as has the entire Iranian democracy movement--now easily the dominant intellectual force in the country. Indeed, this rapid evolution is perhaps what is most striking about Iran's leading religious democrats--Montazeri, Kadivar, former president Mohammad Khatami (in office 1997-2005), and the lay philosopher/sociologist Abdul Karim Soroush. They have become much more explicitly democratic as they have reflected on the revolution. And they have become more tolerant of dissident ideas and people. On his deathbed, Montazeri remained deeply traditional, yet he was not the man he had been even in 1988 when he expressed his outrage at the casual killing of Iranian "political" prisoners. He had become, in his own very clerical way, a progressive.

And those to the left of Montazeri, which includes almost everyone in Iran's
democratic movement, have in turn moved farther left. ("Left" and "right" are tricky terms to apply to the Islamic Republic, but their Western meaning is increasingly apt.) What Khomeini feared most--the satanic whispering of Western ideas that transforms good Holy Law-abiding Muslims into inquisitive, disrespectful devils--is happening. Thirty years of theocracy has been a powerful teacher.

It was just six months ago--on June 11, 2009, the day before the Iranian presidential election--that American officials, government analysts, and a good slice of the journalistic and academic community downplayed the idea of a powerful anti-regime democratic movement in Iran. For these folks, Montazeri was a has-been, if not something of a crank. They saw an Iran where opposing regime loyalists argued essentially about little pieces of the pie, and the population went along for the ride, accepting the regime's inadequacies as it had the failure of Khatami to change the system.

But this analysis was ten years out of date. Behind the scenes, among intellectuals, academics, and an ever-larger slice of the educated youth, the advocates of democracy actually grew stronger as President Khatami got politically stuffed. Montazeri knew this and played on the growing dissatisfaction--which is why he became even more influential in the second decade of his opposition than he had been in the first.

Iran is an odd place, where old men can become beloved by the young, where youths who don't have a religious bone in their bodies and wouldn't give clerics the time of day, can nevertheless be deeply respectful, even impassioned about, a grand ayatollah who fought the good fight against tyranny.

Montazeri's humanity and religion came together to create in him a profound respect for popular government, with all its enormous flaws (which Montazeri himself bitingly enumerated). What the regime perhaps detested most about Montazeri is that he made arguments and emotional appeals aimed directly at well-educated clerics and peasant believers alike, encouraging their spiritual migration away from Khomeini's state to an imagined new Shiite republic where basic decency could be seen in the conduct of officials.

Inspired by experience, inspired by Montazeri, millions of faithful Iranians have put their affections and hopes beyond the reach of the regime.
The massive turnout for Montazeri's funeral, and the palpable nationwide sense of loss, are likely to be just the first tributes that a democratizing Iran will pay to Khomeini's most beloved student. In Iran the dead live on through their disciples, through the honor and duty that the young owe to the old, that the untested owe to the fearless. Once provoked and outraged, Iranians, who often dismissively refer to themselves as sheep, can turn into lions.

Montazeri was one of the lions of modern Iranian history. With his writing and his oratory, he unrelentingly challenged what he'd once held holy. His disciples--the army of Iranian intellectuals who've been for twenty years quietly obliterating the legitimacy of Khomeini's state--and the democratic dissidents who've poured into the streets since June 11, now command the high ground. Though the regime continues to rule because the Revolutionary Guard Corps hasn't (yet) cracked, Khamenei and his office have permanently lost their religious credentials.

With his unrivalled stubbornness and scholarly reach, Montazeri deserves much of the credit for the regime's predicament. Americans, who generally don't have an acute appreciation for Islam's religious authorities or the tumultuous debates about popular sovereignty inside Iran's clergy, owe Montazeri a great debt. Not a lover of the United States, its all-consuming popular culture, or its indefatigable ally in the region (Israel), he would not expect a word of thanks. Nevertheless, we should pay homage where homage is due. He earned it.

Revolutionary Guards?

Thse who lead

Their military role was established in the course of the Iran-Iraq War when the Revolutionary Guards—originally a ragtag collection of earnest but untrained volunteers—gradually shouldered aside the professional military. Unlike the professional military, which had always abjured a political role in Iran, the Revolutionary Guards were recognized from the start as the protectors of the Islamic republic. They have gone on to acquire an active and pervasive presence at all levels of the political structure, particularly under President Ahmadinejad, who has appointed his fellow guardsmen to positions throughout the bureaucracy.

The economic role of the Revolutionary Guards has been much remarked on in recent years. The Guards themselves and companies run by the Guards have won major contracts in every corner of the economy, from airport construction to telecommunications to auto manufacturing. They have also allied themselves with some of the most conservative clerics, who view the revolutionary government not as an alliance of Islam and the people but as divinely ordained rule by a philosopher king who is to be regarded as absolute in his judgments—political as well as theological.

These elements combine to form an impenetrable core that arrogates to itself all authority in the Islamic republic. Needless to say, it also provides tangible benefits to very specific groups: the leader himself, who is thus promoted to a position not simply as first among equals but as the equivalent of an absolute monarch; the top leadership of the Revolutionary Guards, whose profitable dominance of all aspects of the government’s operations is guaranteed; and the conservative, politically minded clergy, who want a true theocracy with no meddling by those who are not properly anointed. The objective, quite simply, was to remove the “republic” from the Islamic republic.

This is a formula for the kind of militarized and nationalist corporate state under a single controlling ideology that is not dissimilar to fascist rule in an earlier day. Like fascism, it defines itself not only in terms of its own objectives but even moreso by what it opposes: liberalism, individualism, unfettered capitalism, etc. There is no need to push the definition too far, since fascism tended to be specific to a particular time and set of historical circumstances. But the resemblance in nature and practice seems to justify use of the term

A Great Question

One of the important problem that i am reminded of for an Islamic rule is posed by current Iranian crisis. Even though situation is very specific to Iran and Twelver Shi'ism the lesson can be passed on any theocratic government. At the heart of the conflict in Iran lies quite an important ideological question, a question which has split the clergy and the faithful.

The question is thus - is ultimate authority over affairs of the state lies with God or with Ummah (The people). And if we believe it is with God, will that state need a religious ruler. And if God is to give guidance through a spiritual ruler, who will make sure the ruler is just and not a tyrant.

Now, Twelver Shi'ism differs from the Sunni tradition in a handful of important ways — not only in its belief in who was the legitimate heir to the Prophet Muhammad's leadership of the community of the faithful after his death, but also in its attitudes toward political authority and devotion. But one of the most important differences is the Shi'ite tradition's unique practice of ijtihad — the use of independent reasoning to pass new religious rulings. This is absent in Sunni tradition which limits possibility of political adaptability of Islamism to politics.

That much is clear is the very history of the Islamic Republic. In the early 1970s, Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini deviced a new model for Shia government. Khomeini was a marja al-taqlid (a model of emulation), and he interpreted the Koran and Hadith to conclude that God had decreed for Islamic government — in the absence of the Twelfth Imam, who would return one day in the messianic tradition and launch his own reign of justice. Khomeini called this vision of the clergy being given authority over governance "velayat-e faqih", or guardianship of the jurist. This religious ruling is frowned upon by "traditional" ayatollahs, who advocated withdrawal of clergy from politics - so called quetism; to this school Grand Ayatollah Sistani of Iraq belongs. Because of its position of non-interference most of the queitist clergy was sidelined during the time of Islamic revolution, and was of no importance to ideological machine of Iranian Khomeinist state. However a more politically active "liberal" clergy also existed in Iran - from the time of 1906 revolution, clergy that empowered women, - to this school Grand Ayatollah Montazeri belongs.

How to deal with Iran

Iran as a state always confounds observation - a modern state, religious theocracy with popular yet limited democracy; a state of multiple identities or no identity at all. Islamic Republic of Iran. It is Islamic yet Republic, and Aryan and Persian speaking too. Ultimately it is a state and society which has always frustrated others. Ottomans first, then Russians, French and British - and now the West in general - they were all frustrated in their plans to subjugate the peoples of Persia. Yet Iran, soaked in Shia religion and Persian culture is not a monolith; the gaps between many Irans show well during the times like these.

Old Persian strenght lay in ability to frustrate plans, complicate, scheme and plot against others. Persian state's survival against odds and bravery is admirable. I will not mention democracy, Israeli and Western fears of today, for this is irrelevant to this profoundly un-Europoean state.

Right now, as Aryanist and Shia clergy hybrid Iran stands against a great aspiration of Eurasian political and economic continuum. This aspiration is for Turkish domination in Eurasian space in a distant yet achievable future; it is not a dream of Pan-Turkist nutter. The duel between Russia, Turkey and the West will need to be mediated by peoples of Iran and ultimately will decide the fate of all Muslims.

Iran is a dual state of Turkish and Persian identity. Turkish nation of Iran are not a minority like Kurds or Lurs but coeval founder of Iranian selfhood. Evolution of political and religious thinking in this direction will accomodate varios strands of Iranian society and integrate it back into Turkic-Persian Muslim cultural space. Seljuk Empire of Modernity could be born.

It also needs to be tanglibly demonstrated that Shia religion and Iranian state are not identical twins, as is shown now within the political system of Iran. The falsehood of clerical order build after the Revolution is a mockery of all Shia aspirations to free will, since the times of Imams. Once both Turkish and Persian strands of Islam are integrated, the divide of Islam, which Arabs are unable to cure will be healed over.

Iran needs to end its isolation from the Muslim and Western world and Turks of Iran are instrument to achieve it. Without necessary destruction of geographical space of Iran, the meaning of "Iran" may be profoundly changed.

The most exciting election in Middle East is...

Iran! Here is from New Your Times, and worth a read for Islamophobes amongst you. Not that i like Iran as a country and a government, but some things are worth emulating for us, secular but unfree.

Iran Awakens Yet Again

Published: June 10, 2009

TEHRAN — They’re calling it the “green tsunami,” a transformative wave unfurling down the broad avenues of the Iranian capital. Call it what you will, but the city is agog at the campaign of Mir Hussein Moussavi, the reformist candidate seeking to unseat President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the 10th post-revolution election.

Iran, its internal fissures exposed as never before, is teetering again on the brink of change. For months now, I’ve been urging another look at Iran, beyond dangerous demonization of it as a totalitarian state. Seldom has the country looked less like one than in these giddy June days.

I wandered in a sea of green ribbons, hats, banners and bandannas to a rally at which Ahmadinejad was mocked as “a midget” and Moussavi’s wife, Zahra Rahnavard, sporting a floral hijab that taunted grey-black officialdom, warned the president that: “If there is vote rigging, Iran will rise up.”

A Moussavi kite hovered; a shout went up that “It’s even written in the sky.” I don’t know about that, but something is stirring again in the Islamic Republic, a nation attached to both words in its self-description.

That stirring has deep roots. The last century taught that Iran’s democratic impulse is denied only at peril. Ever since the Constitutional Revolution of 1906, the quest for representative government has flared. Moussavi is dour but seen as a man of integrity, the anti-Ahmadinejad who can usher back the 1979 revolution’s promise rather than incarnate its repressive turn.

Rahnavard, a professor of political science, is not dour. She has emerged as a core figure in Friday’s vote through her vigorous call for women’s rights and the way she goaded Ahmadinejad into a rash attack on her academic credentials during his no-holds-barred televised debate last week with Moussavi.

“Make up your files,” Rahnavard declared at the rally, in a derisive allusion to Ahmadinejad’s Stasi-like brandishing of a document about her before some 40 million TV viewers of the debate. “But the file-makers will be defeated!”

Iran’s democracy is incomplete (a Guardian Council representing the Islamic hierarchy vets candidates) but vigorous to the point of unpredictability. Nobody knows who will triumph in an election that chooses the second most powerful figure in Iran under the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but some things are already clear.

The first is that the frank ferocity of politics here in recent weeks would be unthinkable among U.S. allies from Cairo to Riyadh, a fact no less true for being discomfiting. The problem with Iran caricatures, like Benjamin Netanyahu’s absurd recent description of the regime as a “messianic, apocalyptic cult,” is that reality — not least this campaign’s — defies them.

The second is that while Ahmadinejad still marshals potentially victorious forces, including the Revolutionary Guards and the Basij militia, he now faces a daunting array of opposition ranging across the political spectrum.

If his attack on Rahnavard was rash, his broadside in the same debate against Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the regime’s éminence grise, looks like recklessness. It has ushered this election into the inner sanctum of authority. That’s a transgression Ahmadinejad may not survive.

Rafsanjani, a former president, was so incensed by Ahmadinejad’s accusations of Mafia-like corruption that he responded with a blistering letter to Khamenei, who’s supposed to sit above the fray. The president’s suggestion that corruption was endemic to the revolution also angered the Qom clerical establishment, which responded with its own dissenting letter: How dare Ahmadinejad defile the very system?

“Ahmadinejad has exposed rifts and spread distrust vis-à-vis the whole regime,” said Kavous Seyed-Emami, a university professor. “That’s groundbreaking.”

The Rafsanjani letter, alluding to “volcanoes of anger” among Iranians, including at the alleged disappearance of $1 billion from state coffers, will belong in any history of Iran’s revolution. It says tens of millions watched as Ahmadinejad “lied and violated laws against religion, morality and fairness, and as he targeted the achievements of our Islamic system.” It insists that Khamenei now ensure free and fair elections.

Khamenei has leaned toward Ahmadinejad, but much less so of late. He cannot be impervious to the rage of Rafsanjani, who is chairman of the powerful Expediency Council, which mediates disputes, and the Assembly of Experts, which oversees the supreme leader’s office. Ahmadinejad now confronts surging forces from without (the street) and within (the clerical hierarchy).

Why the sudden turbulence? Here we come to the third critical characteristic of this campaign. Radicalism in the Bush White House bred radicalism in Iran, making life easy for Ahmadinejad. President Obama’s outreach, by contrast, has unsettled the regime.

With Lebanon denying an electoral victory to Hezbollah, the oil-driven Iranian economy in a slump, and America seeking reconciliation with Muslims, the world now looks a little different.

Moussavi’s attacks on the “exhibitionism, extremism and superficiality” of Ahmadinejad’s foreign policy resonate.

Rafsanjani believes in a China option for Iran: a historic rapprochement with the United States that will at the same time preserve a modified regime. I also think that’s possible — and desirable — and that Khamenei’s margin for resisting it has just narrowed. So, too, has the margin for the foolishness of anti-Iran hawks

Shah Abbas

I have attended an exhibition in British Museum - another one in series devoted to great rulers of the past.

This major exhibition explores seventeenth-century Iran through the reign and legacy of one of its most influential rulers, Shah 'Abbas I (reigned AD 1587–1629).

Abbas reign, with its military successes and efficient administrative system, raised Iran again to the status of a great power. 'Abbās was a skilled diplomat, tolerant of his Christian subjects in Armenia and Georgia when it suited him. He sent many embassies to Italy, Spain and England in order to create a pact against the Sunni Ottomans, of which the author of the book on Abbas i am reading at the moment delights in telling.

His power was more absolute than that of the sultan of Turkey. While the sultan was limited by the dictates of Sharia law as interpreted by the chief ulama, the Shia Safavids were not so limited. Theirs was a theocracy in which the shah, as representative of the hidden imam, had absolute temporal and spiritual powers. He was called the Morshed-e Kamel ("most perfect leader") and as such could not do wrong. Ismail I, the founder of the dynasty, used this power to his advantage claiming divinity as "incarnation" of the Hidden Imam. Abbas was more moderate in his demands on Islam but being the arbiter of the spiritual law put him in a position when his very real piety (he walked barefoot for 2 months to a place of pilgrimage) was hard to distinguish from his also real zest for sex with boys and wine drinking.

I mainly blame Abbas for wholly Persianizing the state of Iran, for from then on Turkish identity of Iran as a Qizilbash state was finally forsaken. History could have had a different turn, and Iran could have been Turkicized (or as Azeris may say - Azerisized). I also blame ShahnAbbas for finally weakening Ottoman Turkey and saving Christian Europe from her mortal foe. Europe never returned the favour, of which Iranians - who have great sense of history - are quite aware.

Curious Case of Novruz

Novruz is a holiday celebrating the arrival of sping. Nowruz marks the first day of spring and the beginning of the year in Iranian (Muslim Solar) calendar. It is celebrated on the day of the astronomical vernal equinox, which usually occurs on March 21 or the previous/following day depending on where it is observed. It is believed to be Zoroastrian holiday of most significance amongst the Zoroastrian ancestors of modern Iranians.

A Turkic purist, upset by such Iranian-centric interpretations will tell you that Ulugh-Kun (or "Great Day" in Old and Middle Turkic) was the spring festival of Turkic shamanism. It was celebrated on or about March 22, and marked the first day of the Turkic month of Oshlaq-ay. The name of the holiday appears in the medieval dictionary Divan-i Lughat-it-Turk by Mahmud Kashgari, written in the 1070s.

It is widely celebrated in Iran, Azerbaijan and Central Asia, who fight over its significance. I will not get into details of this great war of words between a Turk and Persian.

But the fact that Novruz transcends nationalities, cultures and religions is most remarkable. For, while in Iran, where the Zoroastrian heritage is well forgotten it is believed to be a Muslim holiday (and even educated folks belive firmly it while jumping through fires and dancing around green wheat). This is perhabs is not so remarkable coming from a rustic folk. But Novruz is so much wider than the village ritual, and it is a soul of every nation that celebrates it. The fact that Shia Islam had adopted, nurtured and saved this great day, with all its traditions intact is most amazing. While Christianity had changed pagan holidays and made them their own, like Christmas or Easter, Islam could not and would not do that. When Shia - eternally vilifed and forgotten by the Arab - made Iran their spiritual refuge the marriage of help and support was born. And now it is that despite Salafi shrill cries, one can proudly proclaim oneselef a pious - or even most radical - Muslim and celebrate most Novruz rites is a great achievement.

Khomeini - the unorthodox

Many of Khomeini's political and religious ideas were considered to be progressive and reformist by leftist intellectuals and activists prior to the Revolution. However, once in power his ideas often clashed with those of modernist or secular Iranian intellectuals. This conflict came to a head during the writing of the Islamic constitution when many newspapers were closed by the government. Khomeini angrily told the intellectuals:
Yes, we are reactionaries, and you are enlightened intellectuals: You intellectuals do not want us to go back 1400 years. You, who want freedom, freedom for everything, the freedom of parties, you who want all the freedoms, you intellectuals: freedom that will corrupt our youth, freedom that will pave the way for the oppressor, freedom that will drag our nation to the bottom. [159]
In contrast to his alienation from Iranian intellectuals, and "in an utter departure from all other Islamist movements," Khomeini embraced international revolution and Third World solidarity, giving it "precedence over Muslim fraternity. From the time Khomeini's supporters gained control of the media until his death, the Iranian media "devoted extensive coverage to non-Muslim revolutionary movements (from the Sandinistas to the African National Congress and the Irish Republican Army) and downplayed the role of the Islamic movements considered conservative, such as the Afghan mujahidin."[160]

Oxford-degree for Ahmadinejad!

Iran minister sacked over forgery. It looks like Iranians like studying in Britain, even Ahmadinejad has fake MBA from London School of Business.

Iran's parliament has voted to sack Interior Minister Ali Kordan after he admitted a degree he said he obtained from Oxford University was a forgery. Mr Kordan said he had received the doctoral certificate in good faith, but it was later revealed as a crude fake. The BBC's Jon Leyne in Tehran says the row could have serious implications for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. MPs have accused the president of grave naivety for having been taken in by the lies of his minister. Parliament speaker Ali Larijani said 188 MPs from a total of 247 had voted for a motion to impeach Mr Kordan. Forty-five voted against the motion and 14 abstained. It was the 10th change in Mr Ahmadinejad's cabinet of 21 ministers; under Iran's constitution the entire cabinet has to be submitted to a new vote of confidence if half its members change

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Total flees Iran

Iran has the world's second-largest gas reserves at a time of rising prices and fears of a supply crunch. Now we all need gas - but for some reason this Iranian gas will stay in the ground.

The country's billions of dollars of gas reserves should have it laughing all the way to the bank.
But finding firms with the expertise and steely nerves needed to do business with a country whose alleged nuclear ambitions rankle the US isn't easy. This much gas can not stay under the ground forever. Is the war to liberate Iran from oppression looming large in the mind of US?

Non-American oil firms are fleeing from Iran, loathe to invest. Technology challenges prevent Indian and Chinese to develop complicated gas fields, or at least prevented so far. Iranian gas reserves are staying under the ground. For now.

As Promised - about Parthians

I don't know I want to write about Parthians. Perhabs because they were rulers of the long forgotten Empire. A country which history is still eclipsed by other ancient empires, like those of Sassanids after them. Parthians were great multiculturalists of their day, integrating Hellenistic and Central Asian culture into one unique culture. Most of all I write about Parthian Empire because i had visited its capital Nisa, whose ruins are located in Turkmenistan desert.

At the height of its power, the Parthian Empire covered all of Iran proper, as well as regions of the modern countries of Armenia, Iraq, Georgia, eastern Turkey, eastern Syria, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan, Kuwait, the Persian Gulf, the coast of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine and the UAE[3]. The Parthian empire was led by the Arsacid dynasty, which reunited and ruled over the Iranian plateau, after defeating and disposing the Hellenistic Seleucid Empire, beginning in the late 3rd century BC, and intermittently controlled Mesopotamia between 150 BC and 224 AD. It was the third native dynasty of ancient Iran (after the Median and the Achaemenid dynasties). Parthia had many wars with the Roman Empire.

To Women of Iran

This one is from Parvin Etesami - one of the great Persian poets of early 20c century.

A home without a woman lacks amity and affection.
When one's heart is cold, the soul is dead in fear.

Providence nowhere has decreed in any holy book or in discourse
that excellence is man's, impurity is woman's share.

Simplicity, and purity, and being chaste are gems.
Mined gems are not the only brilliant jewels here

What is the use of golden cage if one inside is ignorant and weak?
Gold and jewels will not cover up this faulty atmosphere

Only the robe of abstinence can mask shortcomings of the heart
The robe of passion and conceit is worse than one you have in here

A woman who is pure will never be humiliated, even once
That which is pure crystal will rebuke all hate and fear

Chastity is a treasure, a woman its guard, against the wolf of lust.
Woe if she knows not rules, nor measure of the wolf to fear.

The Devil never will attend the table of your Piety as guest.
He knows that that is no place of feasting. and he will steer clear

Walk on the straight path, since on the alleys crooked
you'll find no provision or a guidance, only remorse, my dear.

Your Hearts and eyes - they need a veil, the veil of chastity.
Worn out Hijab is not the basis of faith in Islam, I am saying clear.

Compare the two

In our discussions on the subject of governance I have touched upon the Iranian regime being the most obvious example of divinely guided theocratic regime and its adherence values of democracy (the rule of the people) of whatever definition. All parties - except a rabid anti-Iranian fringe - agree that Iranian civic society is more developed, more open and also less religious and more nationalistic than other neighbours; this is after all a country where even inward looking (if still millenarian in parts) Shia culture serves as a cornerstone of a national identity. All of it is quite a difference to Iran’s pro-western Arabic neighbours ( and we will not discuss reasons for which these countries have not developed such a system).

But what – given that the Western standards are not applicable to the Middle East - is a benchmark we can measure Iran’s performance after the Islamic Revolution. How can we judge whether it has delivered to peoples needs and is therefore in need of praise and not of scorn. It is difficult to judge. We can, however try to comparatively analyze two systems of governance operating in Iran and in Turkey - remnants of empires sharing a tumultuous recent past, and see whether these also had led to a better economic governance.

Both countries operate in such regimes where, in essence, democracy is only a controlled exercise. In Iran, no part of democracy can operate outside a theocratic frame of reference. The parliament and president exercise power in all other aspects, but their potential moves to liberalize regime or change the frame of reference will be cut short by self appointed bodies.

In Iran all the laws are divinely approved in the sense that they are vetted by a council of religious leaders, exercising ijtihad or Qu’ranic interpretation. (It may not appear to be so to the rabid Taleban supporter, but the law of the land proclaims that aspects of life in Iran are Sharia-controlled). Therefore, In the Western context Iran is not liberal and not a democracy.

In Turkey situation is – or at least was - broadly similar. It is a country where no part of people’s democracy is defined by religion. Religious institutions in Turkey (so called vakfs) are in the service and pay of the secular State. The Kemalist State in Turkey is represented by the Army (first and foremost), the judiciary, the police and other bureaucracy. These organs used to exercise control over Turkish democracy, and pronounced judgments which were most of the time against the will of the people. Therefore, in the Western context again, Turkey was liberal – as it allowed its people rights in their Western sense of the word – but not a democracy. Situation appears to have changed now, mainly because Turkey has moved towards joining Europe and introduced sweeping reforms, undermining the power of the secular state. Thus Kemalists, who started the process in 1960s, now have became most vocal opponents of Turkey’s EU drive. Both of these two systems in Turkey and in Iran had not been created by outside colonial European and American forces, were not shaped by outside pressure and therefore had a legitimacy that allowed them to perate in the country.

But what have two systems delivered towards the prosperity of two equally strongly religious nations? And on this account my opinion is unequivocal.

Iranian revolution introduced sweeping reforms in education and allowed many of the poor - including many women - to receive education unavailable to them during Shah’s rule. Result now that the “mullah” regime unwittingly created an upwardly mobile middle class, and many educated young looking for jobs. They however, have nowhere to go, for moribund state sector has not delivered on the most basic promise of the jobs. While Iranian industries are diversified and strong, they are match for Turkish ones and Iranian potential remains sadly unfulfilled, while its leaders engage in yet another futile duel with the West and Israel.

Of course many of these economic woes of Iran are due to sanctions and limitations put on Iranian businesses by Americans. However, most of the economic mismanagement is self-inflicted. Mullahs and ayatollahs participate in many businesses, their basij militiamen buddies monopolize industries and choke other competition with punitive taxes, engaging in spheres of life that go far beyond spiritual. Their economic doctrine is simple– the one that leads to oh so unislamic prosperity, sometimes ostentatious display of wealth. What is this behaviour but not a corruption of the mind? As Persian mystic Nizami said – “I will fly far from the palace of the ruler, for not tainted with money I will be”. Not so our religious ministers in Iran.


Turkey is sophisticated modern economy with a strong service and financial sector that is – in its make – essentially Western oriented. It is the only Middle Eastern country that does not rely on the natural resources for its economy and is still successful. The success of its diversified economy is due to the right fiscal and business friendly policies of the recent government – Islamic oriented one, but build on the background of many an institutions build by a state free from limits put on economy by an essentially unqualified class of leeches, sucking wealth off the nation (like in Iran).

There is – despite the hype – no restriction in place to pressure people’s beliefs, for there are more functioning mosques in Istanbul than in the whole of Europe. Most Turks are practicing and religious Muslims willingly living in secular state. The last atavism of the militant secular era – ban on hijabs in state schools - has been removed this year. Now it is all in the hands of the Army and the Turkish Nation together, to determine which path they are willing to plod in the future and if principles of Ataturk still hold.

As for Iran, if it wants to remain a stable country it should abandon the self-defeating rhetoric and start building a prosperous future for its people, the future they deserve and the future they elect governments to deliver.