I’m pre-occupied at the moment on two legacy projects, including an essay on former Iranian President Khatami. Nearly a year ago here at Monticello’s International Center for Jefferson studies, Khatami’s comments on the compatibility of Islam with Democracy included the assertion that even Iran’s supreme “Leader,” currently Ayatollah Ali Khamenehi, is subject to popular will.
While his extended comments deserve more careful discernment, Khatami and allied Iranian reformers have continued to advance what some observers will deem a “revolutionary” suggestion. Yet it’s also a view that Iran’s naysayers and those itching for a confrontation will be loathe to concede.
Khatami will contend that what he has in mind isn’t “revolutionary” at all, as it’s already in Iran’s constitution, in the form of Iran’s Assembly of Experts – (Majlis-e Kobragan), a body whose 86 members must be elected. The Experts Assembly in turn has responsibility for selecting and monitoring the performance of Iran’s Leader — even removing the Leader, as they might see fit.
Last fall, the doubters emphasized variations on a theme – that the Experts Assembly, Iran’s presumed “College of Cardinals,” was either irrelevant, ignored, captive to hardline clerics, or unrepresentative of popular sentiment due to vetting of candidates, etc., etc. In any case, “the system,” we were knowingly instructed, would never permit popular sentiment to play a real role over the Leader.
Last December 14th, on the eve of Iran’s fifth elections for this assembly, the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute hosted a forum where the main “theme” offered by distinguished observers was that the Experts Assembly was a “disabled body” – one that would remain controlled by hardliners.
Funny thing, somebody forgot to tell Iran’s moderate conservatives and reformists that the elections were meaningless and a foregone conclusion. They coalesced around former Presidents Khatami and Rafsanjani – to hand key hardline figures a startling defeat on Dec. 15th. Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, the presumed mentor to Iran’s current firebrand President Ahmadinejad, tellingly placed a distant 7th in Tehran voting, far behind front runner Rafsanjani. Turn out was higher than past Assembly elections, in part because voters perceived real choices and stakes at hand.
Undaunted, the Iran doubters were out yet again before yesterday’s internal elections at the Experts Assembly to select a new chairman to replace a deceased former chair. Israeli analyst Meir Javedanfar confidently predicted that
“In all likelihood, the right wing conservatives, headed by Ayatollah Yazdi, will beat moderate conservatives because they seem more united and organized. The infighting between moderate conservatives will most probably mean that Ayatollah Rafsanjani, their best known candidate, will be unable to pull off a ‘Shimon Peres,’ and suddenly emerge as a winner after a string of losses. Unfortunately for the West, this means that the chances for a compromise in the nuclear talks will be less likely, as this group is the one most likely to back such an option.”
Javendar, like the AEI forum, got it rather backwards.
Rafsanjani, already head of Iran’s powerful Expediency Council, has been elected Chair of the Assembly of Experts. Echoing Khatami’s views, one Reuters report cited analysts who
“…said the election showed that more moderate conservatives like Rafsanjani were gaining ground in Iran, where there is increasing discontent with the ruling hard-liners over rising tensions with the West, a worsening economy and price hikes in basic commodities and housing….
Rafsanjani’s election is yet another no to the fossilized extremists
While extremists… propo[und] the theory that the legitimacy of Iran’s clerics to rule the country is derived from God, Rafsanjani is believed to side with pro-democracy reformers who believe the government’s authority is derived from popular elections.”
The doubters though are already explaining it away, beginning with Michael Slackman who opines in today’s New York Times,
“Theoretically, Mr. Rafsanjani should be a powerful force…. But Ayatollah Khamenei has the final say on all matters of state. He has shown no interest in restoring Mr. Rafsanjani’s influence and has long viewed him as a challenge to his own authority, many political analysts said.”
Never mind that the Assembly ostensibly has the final say over Khamenehi. For Slackman to be more optimistic would undercut his own lead story, also in today’s NYTimes, on how “hard times and isolation” are actually helping hardliners maintain their power.
I’ve never quite accepted the all-too-easy view that Rafsanjani and Khamenehi are necessarily at loggerheads; sometimes they’re on what R.K. Ramazani once referred to as the same “tandem bicycle.”
Flatly at odds with Slackman, consider Barbara Slavin’s USA Today report: “Iranian Shakeup a Setback for Hardliners.” Note she has quotes supporting this interpretation from two of the speakers (Khalaji & Sammii) at last December’s AEI forum (the very one that didn’t see change coming to the Experts Assembly…)
Alas, Slavin closes her story with a quote from CRS Iran-watcher Kenneth Katzman who attributes potentially encouraging signs of change in Iran to US pressure. If only it was that simple.
The skeptics will have it both ways, as usual. The prospects for Iranian reforms are either a. rendered less likely while Iran is under siege and/or b. somehow attributable to external pressures when they do materialize.
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Footnote: I am particularly struck that Mehdi Khalaji (of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy) has apparently changed his tune to now lend support to Slavin’s report theme that Rafsanjani’s new position and the recent change at the top of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards are both challenges to hardliners around President Ahmadinejad.
Contrast this view with the breathless reporting in Murdoch Media on Sunday, specifically the London Times, by disinformation specialist Uzi Mahnaimi. (the one whom Jonathan Edelstein noted here at jwn last Jan. 8th “seems to make a career of revealing that Israel is about to attack Iran.”) Now he spins one about the Guard leader change being a victory for hardliners, and his only mentioned source is the notoriously unreliable “National Council of Resistance of Iran” – (aka PMOI, MEK, etc. — a group which ironically has been on the US State Department’s terrorist list for the past decade.)
Last December 14th, on the eve of Iran’s fifth elections for this assembly, the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute hosted a forum where the main “wisdom” offered was to remind us that the Experts Assembly was a “disabled body” – one that nonetheless would remain controlled by hardliners.
Really? I don’t doubt you, but this would have been a remarkably stupid thing to say, because the outcome of the Experts election was already a foregone conclusion by then. During the pre-election screening process in November, the Council of Guardians disqualified about two thirds of the candidates and were especially ruthless at pruning the hard-liners, with pro-Rafsanjani candidates unopposed in several districts and only a couple of hard-liners in some others. The process was well covered in the Iranian media and even the American media. For anyone to predict a Mesbah-Yazdi victory on December 14 would require total ignorance of what the Guardians’ role is and who they answer to.
I’m not sure where Javedanfar was coming from either, given that Rafsanjani’s faction holds such a commanding (albeit engineered) majority in the Experts that “infighting between moderate conservatives” can safely be ignored. And the “Shimon Peres” crack, while funny, isn’t really accurate given that Rafsanjani already made his comeback last December. I don’t know if I’d call him a closet democrat – I’d go more with David’s characterization of him as “Don Corleone” in last year’s comments – but this point he’s the heir apparent, not a serial loser.
Thanks for the input Jonathan. You rightly highlight a key issue, the vetting process, that in the past has kept interest and participation in the Assembly elections very low in Iran. Yet despite that key problem (one Khatami addresses directly), the outcome was not a foregone conclusion — and the results were “surprising” to those, like AEI’s Michael Rubin, who give no credence whatever to the Assembly.
By way of clarification, in the text above, I did insert a link to the AEI conference summary. Here’s a link to the full transcript:
http://www.aei.org/events/filter.all,eventID.1435/transcript.asp
In fairness to Bill Samii, he indeed was trying to make a nuanced case (before a tough crowd) that the Assembly of Experts is indeed an important body – and not just in theory.
Yet Samii too focused squarely on the vetting process, noting that both hardliners and reformists had been excluded.
Nobody on the AEI transcript anticipated the poor showing by Mesbah-Yazdi (nor the rather strong showing by the reformists who managed to run in the local council elections — determined on the same ballot)
The “disabled body” characterization of the Assembly of Experts comes from WINEP’s Khaliji. (and from a paper issued the previous day – which Rubin obviously liked — about how irrelevant the whole Assembly was — and the election even more so)
BTW, while I agree that the AEI spin is off-base, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that “Iran’s supreme ‘Leader’ … is subject to popular will.” That statement also discounts the Guardians’ role in national elections. It’s true that the Experts are elected and that the voting is partially competitive, but the Guardians are the arbiters of political space in Iran, the checks on their power demonstrably don’t work (viz. the appointment crisis of 2001 and the 2004 parliamentary election standoff) and their overriding purpose is to protect the leader’s power. It wasn’t really Rafsanjani and Khatami who won last year’s Experts election: it was Khamenei who arranged for the Mesbah-Yazdi/Ahmadinejad faction to lose.
Ah, comments crossing in the mail. I have to run, will respond later.
Indeed, there’s a yawning gap between what Khatami & others suggest as Iran’s Constitutional ideal vs. past practice. Yet this indeed was Khatami’s contention here at Jefferson’s house last Sept. 11th…. (I’ll spell this out in the pending essay — and will appreciate further comments here.)
I just came across Farideh Farhi’s helpful commentary on the matter. “Rafsanjani is back” — nice title, but did he ever leave? :-}
http://icga.blogspot.com/2007/09/hashemi-rafsanjani-is-back.html
Let me emphasize these passages:
(Rafsanjani’s) election is also significant in so far as it should yet again remind everyone that the Iranian system is truly a contested one, admittedly contested among a limited number of people and groups but nevertheless a contested one. Reports of political demise of individuals or political groups should rarely be taken seriously. What should be taken seriously is the competition that exists among relevant political players, making the political game in Iran intense, uncertain in terms of outcome, and open to political comebacks.”
Farhi closes with a note about the “utter strangeness” of Iranian politics. I prefer the label, “paradoxical” — two things being true at the same time that seem quite in tension – to a western mind. (a key lesson re. Iran)
Farhi notes:
“Hashemi Rafsanjani is now the head of both the Expediency Council and the Assembly of Experts. He is appointed to the former position by Ayatollah Khamenei but as the elected head of the Assembly of Expert he is constitutionally empowered to begin the process of dismissing Ayatollah Khamenei if the latter is deemed unfit to be the leader!!
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So they need each other’s cooperation to function more effectively eh? “Tandem bicycle” anyone?
Or how about, checks & balances?
:-}
All right, I’m back. Thanks for the links.
First, a factual nitpick: unless I’m missing something, the AEI panelist who predicted a hard-line victory for last December 15 wasn’t talking about the Experts election. Instead, he was talking about the local elections that were held on the same day, particularly the Teheran city council. He was wrong about the country as a whole – contrary to his prediction, reformists did well in the municipal voting. Depending on who you ask, though, he may have been right about Teheran – the Ahmedinejad faction lost, but a majority of those elected supported Mayor Mohammed Baqer Ghalibaf, a technocratic conservative who has become much less hard-line than the president but whose roots are with the “right.”
In any event, local elections in Iran are a very different animal from national elections. Local candidates are vetted bureaucratically (mostly by the Interior Ministry) rather than by the Guardians, and the sheer number of candidates limits the amount of scrutiny that can be applied. Only about 5 percent of the municipal candidates were disqualified, leading to elections that were much more genuinely competitive than those for national bodies like the Experts or even the Majlis. I wouldn’t hesitate to call Iran a democracy at the local level.
National elections, though, are controlled by the Guardians, and that’s where I think Khatami is spinning things a bit when he characterizes the Supreme Leader as subject to the public will. The elected bodies that can supervise or depose the leader are vetted by the Guardians – and of the Guardians themselves, six are directly appointed by the leader while six are proposed by the judiciary (which also answers to the leadership) and accepted or rejected by the Majlis. In theory, an opposition-controlled parliament could deprive the leader of a majority in the Guardians by rejecting the judiciary’s nominees until they get the names they want. The one time the Majlis actually tried this, though, Khamenei forced them to back down by ruling that President Khatami couldn’t be inaugurated for his second term until a full Council of Guardians was in place. Thus, in practice, the Guardians answer to the leader, and although he doesn’t have complete control over who wins elections, he can determine the boundaries of acceptable political space.
This is particularly true of Experts elections, precisely because the Assembly of Experts can potentially challenge the leader’s position. Candidates for the Experts are vetted even more thoroughly than those for the presidency – I can’t think of any other Iranian election where the disqualification rate was as high as two thirds. The most recent Experts election was a foregone conclusion: of the 163 approved candidates, more than 90 were either reformists or allies of Rafsanjani, thus rendering it mathematically impossible for the Mesbah-Yazdi faction to win a majority. Under these circumstances, the statement that “both hardliners and reformists were excluded” is technically accurate but IMO somewhat misleading: the hard-liners felt the ax much harder, because the reformists had been recruited as part of the “stop Ahmedinejad” alliance. The reformists had been the primary victims in the past, but now it was the Mesbah-Yazdi faction that was actually talking about replacing the supreme leader, so it was the hard-liners who were treated as the main threat.
This is not to say, of course, that Iran is a totalitarian system. It isn’t. I agree that there are checks and balances, although, to paraphrase Farhi, the checks and balances exist “among a limited number of people and groups.” Khamenei and Rafsanjani are a case in point. It isn’t possible to win an election simply by disqualifying the opposition – you also need candidates of your own – and since Khamenei doesn’t have a big personal faction, he was forced to turn to Rafsanjani and even Khatami in order to turn back the Mesbah-Yazdi threat. The result is that Rafsanjani now has, at least to a limited degree, a hold over the leader. There’s also, as Samii points out, an unwritten tradition of consensual decision-making, so the leader can’t ignore the opinions of powerful faction leaders. The thing is that these checks and balances aren’t based on the rule of law and are only based on the constitution up to a point: instead, their primary basis is personal power. This isn’t an ideal foundation for democratic self-rule, and I suspect that neither Khamenei nor Rafsanjani is particularly worried by that fact.
Interestingly enough, BTW, attitudes toward democracy among Iranian politicians don’t necessarily correlate to “reformist” or “hard-line” ideology. Khatami is a democrat, but if reports are to be credited, so is Mesbah-Yazdi, who reportedly believes that the supreme leader should take a ceremonial and conflict-resolving role and let elected officials actually run the country. I don’t particularly favor the kind of policies that Ahmedinejad and Mesbah-Yazdi would practice, but the fact remains that one of the strongest challenges to the clerical political-economic establishment is coming from them. All of which goes to prove that terms like “right-wing” make even less sense in Iran than in Israel, but I digress.
Khatami is a democrat,
Is he? May be needed to examine his time when he is president and how he behaved.
to Scott, he proudly discovery Islam and democracy in Iran, you need to go to the root of Islam and read more, or refer to Islamic history and what’s those great early Islamic leaders ruled the Islamic society and how they rises the justices in their society according to Islamic law, its better than taken the deformed version of Islam and marking to us here as anew discovery!! Coming here and prices Mullah for his “invention” of democracy and Islam is just short sites view and misleading statement.
BTW, if Khatami and those 33,000 mullah in Iran believes in democracy , do you see or can you tell us how many oppositions party or panels in Iran and how these Mullah reacts to those oppose their stand and their behaviour which the stick it to Islam.?
Also what about Iranians citizens are they living in flourishing democracy during Khatami time and after?
There’s always something new to be learned here…the Supreme Mullah in Iran is a “democrat”…Nasrallah won a “great victory” for the Lebanese people last summer.
the Supreme Mullah in Iran is a “democrat”
I said “Khatami,” not “Khamenei.”
you haven’t been paying attention…they got rid of Khatami.
you haven’t been paying attention…they got rid of Khatami.
For certain values of “got rid of,” anyway. He isn’t president any more and his power base is diminished, but he still has a political presence and (as the 2006 Experts election showed) is sometimes valuable enough to be courted as an ally.
In any event, whether or not Khatami is in power at the moment has nothing to do with his attitude toward democracy and constitutional rule. Opposition politicians also get to have opinions.
Don’t want to sound hyterical, but this may all be irrelevant. Apparently, five or six missiles with nuclear warheads have been transported to a base in Barksdale, LA, and that base is supposedly a staging base for the Middle East. The military is claiming that it was a “mistake” that the nukes were included, but lots and lots of former military who handled nuclear weapons say that a mistake is completely out of the question.
Even if this is just a propaganda ploy, something has to be done to stop these lunatics. They appear absolutely determined to start WW III.
This isn’t an ideal foundation for democratic self-rule, and I suspect that neither Khamenei nor Rafsanjani is particularly worried by that fact.
Oh yah isn’t?
“A key concern by company investigators was that the contract was with Mehdi Hashemi Rafsanjani, the son of former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani, even though his name did not appear in the paperwork. That led to fears that Statoil’s money might be used to improperly influence public officials.”
http://www.aftenposten.no/english/business/article812642.ece
I don’t know how much truth in, There where stories from Iraq when Rafsanjani was in Iraq/Najaf he was working as Bread Bakery!! (Iranians Brad sold in Najaf) so years after he is on the top list of richest Iranians Mullah and he and his son mad deals with Saddam’s Son Udday for smuggling oil and sale it on behalf of them which obviously broken the UN sanction and international laws by doing that.
Very moderates and democratic Mullah!!and are very compatibility of Islam with Democracy!! God forgive me if I am doing wrong in this…
Salah, my apologies again, but I’m not at all clear on what you said, so I won’t guess and mis-respond. (If it helps, I am aware that scholars and politicians throughout the region, sunni & Shia alike, have been following Khatami’s recent arguments on the compatibility between Islam & Democracy…. Of course, critics, especially in Iran, will point to the many failings during his time as President – which he’d concede – even as he remains one to argue that the question is not whether democracy is appropriate for Islamic societies, but how to build genuine “Islamic Democracy”…. (a monster subject to be sure….)
Jonathan, thanks for your comments. Our posts have telegraphed into some splendidly important, yet nuanced areas. (indeed, re. “hardline,” “conservative,” and “reformist” are highly “fungible” in the Iranian context, and depending on the issue area…. Rafsanjani’s career is a case in point, as you know, as at different times he’s been pegged/villified/relied upon in all three realms, depending on when, and what one’s own vantage point might be…. )
If we were at a conference trading formal papers, no doubt there’s much we’d agree on – I suspect.
Re. Khatami, I again regret I don’t have time here to spell out his more complex argument. (that’s forthcoming) Khatami would surely agree that presently, the Assembly hasn’t functioned as a “popular” democratic input/check on the Leader — but he has been suggesting that it nonetheless should so function. (and others have followed him in this controversial argument)
You caught my attention with the reference to Mesbah-Yazdi. I will be grateful if you can refer me to something you’ve read on his (changed?) view that you mention towards the Leader’s role?
I have been learning more about Mesbah – including via the Mennonite scholars who “dialogued” extensively with him and his Khomeini Institute in Qom in recent years. (recall my post on the “Waterloo” flap)
As for the AEI conference, yes, I caught that the fBIS/OSC speaker (Ahdiyyih) focused on the local elections (a new phenom in itself)…. Not a good presentation….
I think I see your “nitpick” — so let’s try a flip-side – none of AEI participants were anticipating a “victory” of any significance for those deemed more “reformist” or “moderate” (w/ same caveat on the terms)
The AEI summary surely was downplaying the importance of the then pending elections (even as Bill Samii made a generic case of the potential import of it) As such, the participants weren’t anticipating such an arguably embarrassing result for AN & friends. (even as they of course focused on the “victory for the system” in so many people “voting.”)
As for Mr. Khaliji, I am a bit shy here of even touching his comments…. given the rather nasty legal maneuvers by his WINEP/AIPAC sponsors at bloggers who criticize him…. (as you may know – re. “Hoder”)
http://hoder.com/weblog/archives/016399.shtml
Sensitive “stuff.”
Yet sticking to the content of Khaliji’s Dec. 11th WINEP policy watch (the one AEI’s Rubin cited), he begins by pointedly knocking down any expectation of a return by “reformists” — and generally characterized the elections to the “disabled body” as “incapable” of producing any meaningful change.
http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC05.php?CID=2542
It’s a plausible argument – even if something other than prescient…. (I’ll be curious to read more of his views going forward, given the quotes in USA Today.)
Might the “disabled body” have a shot at serious “rehab?”
It may turn out that Khatami was the more “prescient” in his prescription for what the Assembly might yet be. We shall see.
Hi again Jonathan, I just visited your web site and I learned of your own recent loss “in the family” – in the passing of your mentor, friend, and law partner.
We’re all the more grateful you could take the time amid your own uncertain transitions to intervene here – and sharpen our thinking.
I can perhaps empathize a bit too, in that my mentor of over 20 years is soon facing a serious heart valve surgery — and at the moment, I can’t envision working without him.
Peace & blessings be with you….
Scott
Scott, if some one spent his life in Islamic studies and schools, teaching lecturing Islamic law, who had his history in his own country, now trying to tell us a bout “democracy is appropriate for Islamic societies,” do you give him a credit for that?
In Iran or in any places where Mullah or others who think they ruling under Islamic law, we all know they are NOT, we seeing the violations of Islamic law either in Iran or Saudi or other country whom they stick their names with Islam.
The question is who much these Scholars minds believes in democracy under Islamic law Islamic and Islamic societies?
One of the main problems of election procedure among reformists and conservatives is that the parties and the chiefs of parties who themselves or their friends are willing to become candidates gather in a traditional way and choose candidates from among themselves. This is while many of those interested in reformism and care about the fate of country and are not satisfied with present ways have different criteria and do not know many parties and their chiefs.
http://webneveshteha.com/en/weblog/?id=2146308946
Still not sure of your meaning Salah — are you in agreement with the argument that no Islamist or cleric can truly support democratic forms — because Islam per se is incompatible with democratic forms? Maybe that’s not what you’re saying. (I hope not.)
Re. Khatami, my present purpose isn’t so much to give him credit myself, but to document what he’s been saying in these realms – and yes, observe that he indeed has been pushing the discussion in Iran, within Iran’s own terms & experience — and that indeed is a profound “legacy” (even granting all the failings during his time in office)
Salah, I hasten to add a big thank you for the quote from former Iranian Vice President Abtahi. You might not have realized it, but he’s long been a strong reformist within Iran (and yes, a cleric) and a close supporter of…
former President Khatami. (and was one of his VP’s)
The Abtahi quote well illustrates the perils of having the appearance of elections, without permitting the formal development of political parties, by which the various “chiefs” and “personalities” can refine their positions and “vet” their own best candidates – w/o the intervention of a third party.
(Ironically today, we can make perhaps similar complaints here in the USA about how our two major political parties are increasingly functioning like “Councils of Guardians” — and how they prevent serious new ideas and candidates from rising to the top….)
For a different set of views from the French paper Le Figaro on the “return of Rafsanjani,” see Truthout’s helpful translation here:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/090607G.shtml
I’m more impressed by this one passage in the second item: (note esp. the last sentence)
“In the long run, this will certainly allow him to influence the choice of the future religious guide as well as the country’s major policy orientations,” analyzes jurist Michel Podocki, a French specialist on Iran. For the moment, his victory also symbolizes the innermost circle’s desire to return to more moderate values, as opposed to the “hard” tendency embodied by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government. Two years after his bitter defeat in the presidential election against Ahmadinejad, Rafsanjani is returning to the stage, embodying a relatively pragmatic policy as opposed to the president’s more radical orientations. Some even see it as an indirect means for the Supreme Guide’s entourage to contain the positions taken by the president.
——————-
(e.g., “tandem bicycle” again at work, with K & R again in the saddles, much as they were in the mid 1980’s — and soon after Khomeini’s passing. )
All right, so maybe I don’t disagree with Khatami after all. If all he did was argue that the Assembly of Experts should function as a check on the supreme leader, then he’s arguably correct. Although the relevant constitutional provision doesn’t give the Experts explicit authority to supervise the leader on a day-to-day basis, their broad discretion to dismiss him means that a truly independent council would have a great deal of force behind its advice. From what I understand, the Experts were originally envisioned as a “council of elders” that would mostly stay on the sidelines but whose guidance would be listened to in times of crisis.
Mesbah-Yazdi: unfortunately I forget where I read about his views on clerical government, so I’ll have to find the article again and get back to you. In any event, the views of those ayatollahs who oppose the velayat-i-faghih system go to prove that fundamentalists aren’t necessarily theocrats.
I’d disagree with Podocki only to the extent of saying that Rafsanjani’s comeback is a direct means to control the activities of the president.
Thanks for the kind words, and I hope your friend comes through safe.
Islamist or cleric can truly support democratic forms — because Islam per se is incompatible with democratic forms?
It’s the other way Scott,
There is no conflict between Islamic laws and democracy the problem is with those Mullah/Sayed/Imam who had their mind and eyes blind for what Islam done to the society and how Islamic society was elevated to high level of justice and respect of rights and how the Islamic law was applied that those societies lived in flourishing life and wealth at that time.
However Concerning the question of the compatibility of Islam and democracy, it is essential to understand that both are ideas that emerged in different societies with different socio-economic arrangements and also in different historical periods. They are bound to be different.
Islamic Law “Sharia’a” was 1400 years started the Quran and the Hadith. applied and developed but democracy its a new western form developed recently in western world help the western societies to elevated to the level ultimately higher level of respect and justice and rights, so as for Islam the problem is the bottle nick which is here represented by Mullah/Sayed/Imam whom they try to hold back for their personal benefits or simply they have no idea about the real Islam values and they keep closing their mind for the new societies and its needs, which every Muslim knows that Islam for anytime and for anywhere to be a system of life, and also instead of discussing the compatibility between Islam and democracy, it is much more instructive to discuss whether or not the existing social formations in the Middle East, and the ideologies that they bring to the surface, allow for pluralism and power sharing.
ranian Vice President Abtahi. You might not have realized it,
No Scott I knew him very well, who is and what his political life, what his stand and what he writes and so on and so forth
I just came across this informed editorial in India’s “The Hindu” newspaper:
http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/thscrip/print.pl?file=2007091253471200.htm&date=2007/09/12/&prd=th&
Note the suggestion that Rafsanjani might yet push for a collective leadership in the future, rather than just one “Leader.” (This in part harkens to the Constitutional Revolution debates of 100 years ago) Intriguing possibility.