Twenty five  years after the Revolution in Iran: Islam, Revolution and Reforms

A seminar organized by the: The Gulf Cultural Club

and Abrar Islamic Foundation On Friday 5th February 2004

Introduction: Dr Saeed Al Shehabi:

I would like to welcome you to this seminar organised jointly by the Gulf Culture Club and Abrar Islamic Foundation. Last summer we also had a seminar on Iran and somebody said to me this is very topical. The seminar on Iran was topical at that time. I think today it is even more topical. Every time we have a seminar on Iran it has always been topical. What does this mean. Definitely it shows the importance and significance of the Iranian question.

            Iran is significant  to the world, to its people, to the Muslim world, to the Middle East and to Central Asia and that is why any development in that country is bound to be considered topical. It is a very lucid country in which there are always events and happenings, there are always developments. Today the world is watching what is going on in Iran with regard to the forthcoming elections on 20th March. Many people are taking part in those elections – some people may not take part. That happens in most countries who have democracy. Some people at some stage decide to boycott. But rarely do we find such international concern and discussion on why this group is taking part and why that group is not taking part in the elections.

            The 25 years that we have lived so far with the new regime, the new system in Iran has shown that the revolution has survived so far, it is still there. Undoubtedly it as faced with greater challenges. To me as a person, I am worried.  I was speaking to some Iranian friends and they were not worried. They are used to this – the outsiders always look at things in a more sarcastic way or react more strongly than they do to what happens in their country. They say ‘don’t worry things are going to sort themselves out at the end of the day. You should not get worried’. Me, as a person from the region who has followed and written about Iran as a journalist views what is going on with a certain degree of worry and concern.

            At the end of the day in the Gulf region - the Iranians would always like to use Persian Gulf – some Arab countries since Qasim came in 1956 insist that it is the Arabian Gulf although  in the United Nations it is officially described as the Persian Gulf – that region where I come from is significant. It is very important for us to see a degree of stability in the region. The stability of Iran as well as Iraq and all other countries in the region is important for the development of the region.

            Saudi Arabia, the largest country in that region is under the threat of instability. Any instability in the region is bound to reflect itself on the development of the region – its politics and economy and the strategic significance of the region, oil production and so on.

            So the hope is that the Iranians will be able to once again, as they have always been able to in the past, to overcome any difficulties. There is definitely a political problem regardless of what our Iranian brothers and friends say.  It is a domestic problem. It may not undermine the foundations of the system, it may not result in the destruction of the system but it is one of the difficulties. There was a war with Iraq in the 80s, it was a big problem. A few months ago  the problem in Iran was with regard to the nuclear weapons and it showed to us that both factions – conservatives and reformists – agreed on how to react to those challenges in response to the International Atomic Energy Agency. In the end it came to a good conclusion and the file appears to have been closed, at least for the time being.

            Where is the current crisis going to lead to? This has always been a question not only with regard to just this crisis. There have always been questions about what is going  to happen. In the 80s we heard about Ayatollah Montazeri and the problem was perceived as being a threat to the revolution itself and later on we saw quite a few developments: the relations with the USA and.  Arab countries.  The relations with the  Gulf Co-operation Council had always been a problem. Now this is under control. They are enjoying good relations. Still this does not answer the queries of many people who are concerned about  what is going on in Iran.

            I think the question today which will be posed by observers, especially in the West is how democratic is the system? I am sure we will hear a lot of discussion about that and many people will attack Iran for being repressive. They would say that a big section of society has been denied the right to take part in the elections and we will listen to this discussion.

            We are meeting today on this important occasion – twenty five years is a jubilee. It is an important moment to reflect on a quarter of a century of developments in this important country.  It is my great pleasure to now introduce our first speaker, Roger Hardy.

Islamism and Iran: international implications

*Roger Hardy

            I am happy to be  here today very much as a listener and a speaker. When Dr Saeed contacts you weeks and weeks in advance, it is a good trick to think of something very vague which doesn’t  tie you down and leaves you with plenty of room for manoeuvre. Then you can actually think about what you want to say and that is certainly the case with me. I thought I would really speak about two ways in which the Iranian Revolution has had an impact beyond Iran's borders. I think it is obvious that it has impact - many would say a seismic impact beyond Iran's borders. I want to divide what I am going to say into two parts: to look at the impact of the Iranian Revolution in two distinct ways.

            Cast your minds back to 1979.The Islamic Revolution was a tremendous shock, for some a positive shock for some a negative shock and for others a puzzle. They were unable to determine whether it was a positive or a negative phenomenon. They heard plenty from the politicians and the media what they thought it was.

            To narrow the issue down to the big powers at the time- remember that there were two super powers then, it is hard to think of it now but there were. Both the USA and Soviet Union felt threatened and in a way baffled by the Iranian Revolution. This was something unexpectedly new, they did not know what to make of it or where it was going to lead. They, and many people ,including people in the region itself, could sense intuitively that  a new force had been unleashed into the scene. But particularly in Washington and in Moscow they did not know where this force was going to go and where it was going to take them.

            As far as the United States was concerned  with the fall of the Shah, America had in a famous phrase you still hear today 'America had lost Iran'. In loosing the Shah it had lost both an ally, an important player in the oil scene in OPEC and a country which had acted as a pillar of US policy in the Gulf and in the Middle East.

            At the same time this new and unexpected development left America's closest allies in the region being threatened and that meant  Israel and Turkey. It also meant key Arab states, the states that were neighbours of Iran, particularly the oil-rich states of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and a key  American ally, Egypt.

            I am not going to say very much about the Soviet Union. The Russians too were disturbed by the Iranian Revolution in particular fearing that an Islamic Revolution in that part of the world might destablise the Muslim Republics of Central Asia. Today they are independent states, then they were part of the Soviet Union. They are often referred to by Western commentators as the soft under belly of the Soviet Union.

            At the same time as there were these fears in Moscow, and inevitably given the Cold War, there were plenty of people in Moscow who felt in their bones that if they played their cards right they could develop a relationship with this new state. It was physically close to them and they shared with it an anti-Americanism. They could therefore turn America's loss into Russia's gain. They tried several times but until relatively recently after the collapse the Russians did not get very far. They certainly did not get very far while Ayatollah Khoemini was alive. One thinks of Khomeini's famous letter to Gorbachev in 1989 urging him to embrace Islam and read the great Islamic philosophers and telling him in the roundest terms that communism, as indeed it was, destined  for the dustbin of history. Not a great meeting of minds but Gorbachev said he was honoured to be one of the few to have received a personal letter from the Imam. His real thoughts might have been different.

            That was in the early phase. Let me talk about US policy and not say anymore about Russia. I think that for obvious reasons the Americans felt that the Iranian Revolution was an obvious threat and a puzzle in different ways. When Saddam's forces invaded Iran in 1980 they backed him. When I joined the BBC in 1988 we wrote talks. They are not called talks anymore. My first talks were about the Iran-Iraq War. Why did America back Iraq? I think they knew quite well what kind of regime Saddam Hussein presided over. They did so for essentially the same reasons as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and Egypt were also supporting Saddam Hussein at the time. They all felt that somehow Saddam's Iraq would act as a bulwark, a firewall against the spread of Islamic revolution and Islamic radicalism.

            The British queen used that phrase annus horriblus. I sometimes ask myself, and this is very much from a Western  policy point of view, what would have happened if two big things had not occurred in 1979. From the point of view of the average Western policy maker 1979  was an annus horriblus if ever there was one. To name just two of the huge developments of that year, the ripples of which are still with us today. Within the space of two months  America lost Iran and Russia blundered into Afghanistan.

             I don't know what would have happened to our world if either one or both of those things had not happened, but I sometimes ask myself.  One thing we can be sure of is that they were great world events, not entirely not unconnected with one another. They had their own dynamics but they shaped the geo politics of the 1980s. What that principally means is that America and its allies all over place, allies as diverse as Britain, France and Saudi  Arabia, even mildly  Israel, began to encourage an army of young Muslims to go to Afghanistan to fight against the Soviets. It seemed smart to co-opt the Muslims to help the  West to fight the Cold War. Those young men became known in history as the Arab Afghans. Not all of them were Arab, but large numbers of them were. They included Osma bin Laden.

            Incidentally one side effect of this Afghan adventure, or Afghan misadventure, was to create a dichotomy a false dichotomy in the mind of America and its allies, the people who thought it was a smart idea to use the Muslims against the Soviets. Do you remember the slogans : the green against the red. The green flag of Islam versus the red flag of communism.

            One side effect of this in the Western perception of the time was to suggest a dichotomy between the good Sunnis and the bad Shia. To be more precise the good anti- communist Sunnis, the ones who were going to Afghanistan to fight communism and the bad anti-Western Shias like the mullahs in Iran and the people in Beirut who were at one particular point in the 1980s giving America a very hard time.

            I am simplificing but this general idea was floating in the air - good Sunnis if you co-opt and get them to fight the bad guys, the West's enemies. The bad  Shias because they hate the West and in the Beiruti case they kidnap Americans.

            If you at the period from the 1980s until today with regard to US policy you see a series of different slogans which suggest a change. But there is also a thread of continuity running right up until today. I mentioned the Iran-Iraq war. In that war during the 1980s the US and the Western policy was to play off Iraq against Iran. The West was not madly in love with Saddam Hussein but he was a useful weapon because the Iranian Ayatollahs, rightly or wrongly I make no judgement, were perceived as the greater enemy than Saddam appeared to be at that time. So like the policy in Afghanistan, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

            When Bill Clinton came in it no longer seemed like a good idea. It seemed like a bad idea and under Bill Clinton the new slogan was dual containment which could be interpreted as a plague on both their houses. America now saw Iraq and Iran as both being threats to its interests and therefore both had to be contained ,cut down to size.

            That did not last  forever either. And under George Bush the very famous slogan that we are familiar with now that he uttered at the beginning of 2002 was axis of evil. So three distinct  phases: playing Iraq off against Iran, dual containment, they were both a problem we must clobber them both and axis of evil - lumping Saddam's Iraq, the Iran of the ayatollahs together with North Korea. My daughter asked me if they were Muslims in North Korea.

            There was a shift of emphasis and a shift of slogan. It was a new slogan and it took a lot of people by surprise. In terms of its relevance to Iran it looked for a while and I suppose it still looks to some people now, as if this idea of regime change might apply to Tehran as well as to Baghdad, Kabul and Ramallah. Three other places were regime change has been affected - partly in the case of Ramallah and totally in the case of Kabul and Baghdad.

            The policies and slogans changed but the thread, the common denominator was very simply a hostility towards Iran and towards the kind of Islamic radicalism that Iran represented. That was a constant and to my mind the only bizarre exception was the Iran-gate interlude concerning the hostages affair under President  Reagan. If you leave that aside that thread of continuity under the different slogans that I have mentioned was hostility towards Iran a fear of Iran and everything the Iranian ayatollahs represented.

            I don't think that regime change has the same resonance today as it did in 2002 when George Bush came out with the phrase. I think the Iraq adventure (I am using English understatement) has exposed the risks of regime change and the costs of regime change. In addition to that the Bush administration whether it likes it or not and it doesn’t  very much, needs  Iran's help in dealing with American's unfinished business in Afghanistan and Iraq. Of these two,  Iraq is more important. George Bush fears it might affect his re-election chances more than Afghanistan. Nevertheless there is unfinished business with a degree of instability in both those places. Iran is important to both.

            Iran in addition to that - let me remind you of this rather strange dichotomy from the 1980s good Sunnis and bad Shias - has changed. If you think about it now the single iconic symbol for the Americans and I suspect for many people in Europe is no longer the aging bearded Iranian ayatollah but the somewhat younger bearded Sunnis leader of Al Qaeda.

            The hate figure of radical Islam is no longer an Iranian mullah or ayatollah - that place has been taken. To put it rather crudely 9/11 had a Sunni signature. The new perception seems to me just as daft and simplistic as the old one. From Iran's point of view the new reality may work to Iran's advantage.

            I now want to turn to the second half of my remarks. So far I have tried to follow a farily simple theme that the Iranian Revolution was and remains something of a mystery to the big powers, to the West,  principally the USA but also Europe,Russia and Japan - they are all part of the West, it is no longer a geographical entity it is all part of the West.

            My second theme is that the Iranian Revolution was also a challenge to Muslims everywhere. It was very hard for Muslims to be indifferent  to the Iranian Revolution. Some were electrified by it - others were horrified.

             It was very hard to be in an English BBC way neutral and sit quietly and keep ones emotions under control. Why? It seems to me essentially the answer is that the Iranian Revolution introduced a radically new idea.  Before 1979 many Muslims talked about and dreamt to an Islamic state – there is no doubt about that. But Khomeini did more than talk – he created an Islamic state of a very particular kind, in a very particular place with its own history and its own dynamics – but an Islamic state which was among other things the product of a popular revolution, governed by the clergy. Other groups could have taken power but the Iranian state was run the clergy, the mullahs. The idea of modernity was  completely demolished by Ayatollah Khomeini.

            I am not excluding from the picture the fact that other Muslim thinkers had been pioneers and were active around an agenda based on the creation of an Islamic state governed by Islamic law – Al Banna, Mauldedi, Qutub and many others. They were the trail blazers in intellectual ways and in other ways. But it was Khoemini who gave the Islamist project a concrete form. In so doing he united what we can call the broad Islamist movement which got under way in the 19th century and ebbs and flows in its fortunes.

            For Muslims everywhere the Islamic Revolution posed in a new way questions about themselves that were familiar and problematic since at least the 19century. Questions about the relationship between Muslims and the state, questions about the divine law and man-made, the relationship between Islam and democracy, Muslims and modernity.

            The Iranian Revolution posed these questions but it did not resolve them. Iran in the early 1980s Khoemini phase of the revolution (I call it the decade of defiance 1979 – 1989) gave a new momentum to the Islamist project. One might even say a new meaning.

            I believe that Iran has come to epitomise the crisis of Islamism and it seems to me that this crisis is reflected in the struggle between the two camps in Iran which we have come to call the reformists and the conservatives.

            I am not going to say very much about them but I was in Tehran during those extraordinary elections in 1997. It is so easy to remember that the same month the brought us Tony Blair brought the Iranians Mohammed Khatemi. I make no comparison. It is there in the mind. But it was an absolutely extraordinary moment. I will not forget going to the polling stations and watching the young people tugging mum and dad. I will not ever forget one of the woman voters. When you do a vox pop you have to have  a man and a woman, an old person and a young person. I went from the polling stations trying to find someone who was going to vote for the conservatives and in the end I found a woman who told me very strongly ‘I have done my duty to Allah’.

            Another woman was getting into her car. I was a slight distance from her and I just called out not knowing if she spoke English: ‘What does it mean, this election?’ And to my great surprise she replied with one phrase :’This election is between the open mind and the closed mind’. You don’t often get sound bites. But I got a sound bite.

            What is going on in Iran right now shows that the issue about the elections which are to take place in three or weeks time has not been resolved. But  today nearly seven years on from the election that brought President Khatemi to power, the reformist movement clearly is weak and demoralised and whatever happens or does not happen it is clear that their conservative rivals are displaying a very strong sense of self importance. Iran has reached a very  important turning point.

As far as Muslims around the world are concerned, Iran still is a laboratory of Islamic government and politics. Muslims will learn lessons from the  perceived successes and failures of the Iranian revolution.

* Roger Hardy has written and broadcast about the Middle East and the Muslim world for more than twenty years. Educated at Oxford, he worked in book publishing, edited a monthly magazine ("The Middle East") and in 1986 joined the BBC World Service as a regional specialist. His radio series "Waiting for the Dawn", exploring the theme of Islam and modernity, was broadcast in 2002. He is the author of "Arabia after the Storm" (Chatham House, 1992).

Trends of religious leadership in Iran during the last 25 years

Dr Majid Tafreshi

Whether you are religious or not, whether you hate or love the Iranian religious ulema this is an important point in Iranian Islamic history. No one can ignore the importance of the religious leadership in Iran and in the whole region during the last few centuries.

            From the beginning of Shia history the matter of the duty of the religious leadership was to collect the hadiths – not  an institution as we have now. But  in a religion where we say the ulema were the rasoul an anbia sheriff we cannot ignore the role of the ulema.  So although we did not have the modern concept of  religious leadership we had some sort of local ulema and maybe leading ulema.

            When Shiism became the official religion of Iran the importance of merjah al taklid.  That was during the Safavid period. But the importance of the religious leadership has declined gradually till the 19th century and the beginning of the xxxx dynasty. During the xxx dynasty the co-operation of the state and religion became important especially from the middle of the reign of Nasser Edin Shah in the 19th century and the emergence of one of the most important leading ulema in Mesopotamia called Murtazan Seri the institution of merjah al taklid, the institution of religious leadership became very important and it kept its importance, despite some ups and downs, during the last one and a half centuries.

            If you look at the letters of  Sajid Jamal Uddin Afghani he wrote a letter to xxxxxxxxx who was living in Samara at the time. He tried to emphasise the importance of the merjah al taklid and the social and political aspects. So  gradually the merjah al taklid became involved in politics and  social matters. Some researchers believe that this letter of Jamal was one of the motives of the Sherzi to issue a fatwa against the Rajiv company and the tobacco concession. I will talk about this later in another aspect.

            So from that time the question of the importance of leadership existed. You can see even now from the news and information issued from the Shia ulema inside and outside Iran.

            One of the important points which we should mention is the rivalry of the ulema in Najaf and Iran. From the 19th century we can see a new phenomenon of tafshir between the ulema.  They pushed out their rivals from the arena. We had several instances in Najaf , most of them during the 1906 Iranian Revolution. Many ulema tried to ignore each other and push each other out. This caused many difficulties among the followers due to the different views of the ulema.

            During the  1908 coup d’etat of Mohammed Ali Shah and  the closing down of parliament, during the same week one of the leading ulema issued a fatwa and said anyone who is trying to establish a constitutional revolution is an infidel, his property must be confiscated and the people are allowed to kill him. During the same week another  leading mujathid issued a fatwa and said today fighting with autocracy and fighting for  revolution is the same as fighting with imam Mahdi and Imam Zaman and  if that person is killed he will go to paradise.

            These two issues resulted in two conflicting fatwas being issued in one week. In Iran we have many leading muhathids  who were against and pro the revolution. In Najaf there were more.

            When the Bajar dynasty collapsed and Raza Shah came to power  we can divide the relationship with the ulema  into two periods. First of all from the 1920s until the coup d’etat Reza Shah tried to establish a good relationship with the ulema. He had a very good link with the ulema despite some difficulties with Mudarasi he had good relations with high-ranking ulema established the newly established ones. That was until 1927. The year 1927 until 1934 was the year of challenge between the ulema and the state. It ended with the massacre of Boshah in 1934 and later after a few moths in 1935 the unveiling of women. That was the end of the relationship between the state and the government.

            For the next six years the ulema was defeated and isolated and Reza Shah was in power in Iran. But although Reza Shah had many anti religious and anti clerical policies he only had two major incidents with the merjah al taklid. He never clashed directly with them. The first time was in 1934 after the Mashad massacre when xxxxxxxxxx to Tehran to negotiate with Reza Shah after he heard the news about the unveiling of women.Reza Shah put him under house arrest and later forced him to leave Iran for good.

            The second one which is probably more important but there is not much in history about it is the letter of xxxx who wrote to Reza Shah about unveiling and the then Prime Minister wrote a very strong letter and advised him to be quiet and  told him to be quiet and to follow the orders of the government.

            Speaking about Hairi, he established his name in the 1920s in Iran. He was a very conservative man in a way.

            When Reza Shah resigned in 1941 after the occupation of Iran by allied forces the situation changed. The new  government did not want to follow Reza Shah’s hardline policies with the ulema. For the next three years the government tried to have some sort of relationship with the ulema. At that time  the most famous merja in Iran was Isfani who was living in Samarra. For a few years a man from Kerbala became the merjah al taklid.

            During the 1940s there was a unique development in the whole of Shia history. It was the emergence of  Ayatollah Boujeri . I think this was the most important turning point of  Shia leadership during the last three – four centuries. In many ways Boujeri was unique. First of all he was the first and last unique leader of the Shia world.  That means absolute power and lots of money from the religious funds. On the other hand Ayatollah Boujerdi was very careful to be out of the political arena. He did not have any political ambition. He tried to have a good relationship, sometimes in the minimum possible way, sometimes in an average way with the government. From 1953 – 1956 during the second period of the Mosedeq era when Boujerdi thought the communists were too weak to take over Iran he turned to the Shah. The turning point was his letter to the shah when he returned from exile.

            It is easy to sit here and say that he was pro the monarchy. But if you look at the sources at that time you can find the main trend of the ulema’s thought  was that Mosedeq was finished and that the struggle was between communism and the shah. Obviously the ulema at the time could not accept the government of the communists.  No one thinking to help Mosedeq they backed the Shah. No one  was helping Mosedeq because they thought Mosedeq had not chance to remain in power.

            Bourjdei died in 1961. Many things changed between the ulema and the government. The Shah was not very happy about the unique and powerful position of Bourjedi. So when the Shah stopped most his policies. When  Bourjedi died the government’s policy was to change the location of the religious leadership from Iran to Iraq. So many of the politicians including the Shah sent a message to Ayatollah Saeed Muhsin Hakim in Najaf.  The Shah’s policy was to support ayatollah Al Hakim was not became he was alam but because he did not want any leading merjah al taklid in Iran. So they tried to  push the merjah al taklid out of Iran.

            The three leading were:

Between 1961 to1964 obviously there was a struggle between the powerful ulema and the state and later the struggle of Ayatollah Khoemini and the government. One important  point is that many people did not pay  attention to him. We did not have a famous merjah al taklid in the last century. He started his political activities before he became merjah al taklid.

            Almost all the merjah al taklid in Iran started their full time political activities after themselves as merjah al taklid. History shows that if a mujtahid starts political activity  in many cases they lose their chance to become merjah al taklid. The most important example is xxxxxxx  during the constitutional revolution. He was the best student of Khorasani he never became merjah al taklid because he was involved in defending the constitutional values. And even Ayatollah Khomeini started his political activities when he established himself as merjah al taklid.

            After the 1963 incident of sending Khomeini to Turkey and Iraq in 1964 the ulema in Iran some how became apart. Some where in Qom, others in Mashad and Shiraz.  At the time of the revolution they became united under Khoemini’s banner. Some of the ulema did not like Ayatollah Khoemini but the pressure of the revolution was too strong and nobody could resist that, even for example Ayatollah xxxxxxx was in Tehran with his family. He had relations with the Shah’s office but even he himself accept Khoemini’s leadership.

            A few months after the revolution the problems started. First of all in Khozustan one of the Iranian-Arab mushtajids called xxxx became problematic and Medani, the governor of Khozustan forced him to leave and he died in exile two years after that. Then you have xxxx. I am not going to go into detail about that but he was placed under house arrest. Some of his relatives were arrested and there were some problems for his followers.

            But the most important incident which affected the role of the religious leadership in Iran was the incident with xxxxx At the beginning of the revolution the Iranian government let some  leading ulema become the supporters of Ayatollah Khomeini and they needed someone to become his right hand man. Obviously Ayatollah Mutadari was very important in terms of religious studies. He was one of the favourite  students of  Ayatollah Bourjedi, he was allowed to write and compile his teachers views, he was one of the most important ulema of the time. But the Iranian government had to promote him as a merja al takleid and this was unusal Many of the ulema wrote letters to each other to verify him as a merja al takleid, published advertisements in the papers about him, praising him in many ways.  That was the usual way  for someone to become merja al takleid – it was something natural and people did it without the involvement of the government. In Mutadari’s case the government was always involved.

            A few years later when Mutadari was in the deputy of Ayatollah Khomeini the same issue arose. He was removed from his political position. Some incident happened. They tried to write a letter to the ulema and asked them to say something against him and many other things.

            In both incidents they managed to remove Mutadari from his position but his situation affected the importance and the untouchable position of merja al takleid in Iran. Obviously we had the Sherif Medani issue which I do not want to talk about – it is a long story.

            At the assembly called for electing the new leader Mr Rafsanjani stopped at electing any ulema and religious leaders as political leaders. He said he stopped the election of xxxx and others tried to establish him as a leader. He did not want that. For a couple of years there was some ambiguity and misunderstanding about the religious leadership. The government found a short-term solution, they found an Ayatollah called Sheikh Mohammed Ayatollah xxxxxxxxxxxx He was then about 105 years old. He was one of the close friends of Hairi, from the same town. He was very ill and could not talk but he provided the opportunity to buy time until a suitable merga al takleid was found.

            At this time four leading ulema passed away, Ayatollah Khoexxxxxxxxxx and that started the really chaotic situation regarding the merga al takleid in Iran. At this time Ayatollah Khomeini announced that he did not want to be the merga for the  Shias in Iran but outside Iran. Then many Shias outside Iran had their own merga. There was xxxxxxxxx in Lebanon and  gradually the students of Ayatollah Khoei, Ayatollah Burjedi started to publish letters and declared themselves merga. Many of them did this.

            In this situation no one could stop them from publishing their own fatwas. My research at the moment shows that we have 45 merga with followers in Iran. Some of them are more important  others less important.  This is a very chaotic situation of too many chiefs and not enough Indians. This is the situation for many mergas.  Some of them do not have too much money or too many followers. The institution of merga is very important in Iran so they have to ask the government, and the offices of the political leader, the supreme leader, to pay them. They have to follow the orders of the government. So we can see that two or three of the ulema in Qom xxxxxxxxxx are talking  and writing about what the government wants and asks them to say.

            At the moment the Iranian News Agency has a very important role to promote merga. They have some reports every day about the ulema’s teachings, what Ayatollah x said and what Ayatollah a said. They  send it to Tehran and publish it in every newspaper. This is an attempt to promote the establishment of the ulema.

            In the late 19th century when xxxx issued his fatwa against Amalco Tobocco Agreement. We are not even sure now if this fatwa was genuine. There is a difference of opinion among the researchers. But that fatwa, regardless of whether it was true or false, really caused a  revolution in Iran. A few months ago xxxxxx a mujathid from Sheraz issued a fatwa against the smoking of cigarettes. It was in the headlines for a couple of days and disappeared. It does not have a footnote in history. Many people had never heard of it. This was very important. It showed a real change in the situation of the merga al takleid in Iran. The traditional mergas are now trying to find a non-political merga and that occurred before the situation in Iraq with Ayatollah Sistani and Korsani in Qom.

Dr Majid Tafreshi was born in1964. He is Researcher on modern Persian and Shi'i history. Studies: Tehran University & University of London. Thesis title: Religious society and socio-political change in Iran: 1921- 941, the case of Khorasan. He worked at Iranian National Archive, Institute of Contemporary Iranian History, Iranian Islamic Encyclopedia and SOAS. He has published 7 books on Iranian history, politics, historical documents and bibliography and more than 25 articles in academic journals. He attended around 15 academic conferences with delivering papers in the UK, Iran, USA and Italy.

DISCUSSION

Dr Nasser: Has the Iranian Revolution lost its appeal or is it still a model to imitate?

Dr Takin: The West has been baffled by the Iranian Revolution – do you think the British had a better understanding of it than the Americans?

Seminar participant:  Can you comment on the relationship between scholars and those governing the state and elaborate on the concept of wilajat al faqi. Was it Khomeini’s creation?

Dr Najah Kadhim: Can you comment on the concept of  the sovereignty of God?

Dr Bashir: The question of the relationship between divine law and man’s law has not been resolved?

Seminar participant: I want to know what happened in Iran during the past 25 years. The speakers did not provide an insight into this.

Roger Hardy: Thank you for these probing and searching questions. I am not sure I can do justice to them but I will try and answer the ones that were directed to me. You are asking me where no? This is not an easy question and I will offer a scenario. We do  not know what the future will be. The scenario  which I am painting is the one which the conservatives are hoping for and expecting They believe they can recapture the parliament. Next year when President Khatemi steps down as he will at the end of his second term they will end this conflict and consolidate their grip.  The Muslim parliament will be driven out of  institutional politics and will have to play an extra-parliamentary role.

            Is Iran a role model?   Muslims argue a lot about what the Iranian revolution has an has not achieved. I suppose this is an example of BBC neutrality but I happen to think its true. There is one achievement that can never be taken away from Ayatollah Khomeini whatever criticisms one may have about him – he broke Iran’s  dependence on Western powers. In 1979 Iran became an independent state. That is the one remarkable achievement of the Iranian revolution regardless of its other achievements.

            On the question of whether Europe was more surprised than America, I think large numbers of people were surprised. This has nothing to do with bodies of expertise in Washington, London or Paris. A lot of people know about Iran. There is no lack of expertise in America or for that matter in Europe.

The Islamic Revolution of Iran: An African Perspective

Amad Rajab

There is a lot that the African’s can learn from Iran. The resources are limited but there is a lot the African’s can learn in terms of technology and manufacturing. There are industries of Iran in certain parts of Africa.

Ahmed Rajab was born 6 January, 1946,Zanzibar. Obtained his BA (Hons) in Philosophy from the University of London,1971, Postgraduate Diploma in Urbanisation in Developing Countries, University College, London, 1974, MA (Modern African Literature and African Political Economy), University of Sussex 1978. He worked with the BBC African Service (in various capacities from 1964-78,  Editor/Researcher Index-on-Censorship  magazine, 1978-80, Consultant on Communication Development and Planning,UNESCO, Nairobi, 1980—83, Producer,  BBC African Service, 1984, Senior Editor, Africa Events  magazine, 1984-86, Editor/Director, Africa Analysis, 1986 to present His Publication: Poetry included in Longman's anthology ‹ New Voices from Africa. He is also a member of several institutions.

The Revolution and the Middle Eastern Geopolitical map

*Tim Llewellyn

Two events happened in the years overlapping between 1978 and 1979 that  changed the face of the Middle East and perhaps world politics . The first was the peac eagreement forged between Egypt and Israel that came out of the 1973 Middle East war, the spontaneous visit by President Sadat to Jerusalem in late 1977 and the machinations of Henry Kissinger throughout the nineteen seventies. The Camp David agreements and peace treaty of 1978-79 took Egypt effectively out of the confrontation with Israel, leaving sponsor and armourer alone. If it had not been evident before, it became evident in 1979 that the survival and protection, even projection, of Israel in the Middle East by the West was the basis of American foreign policy. The leaders of the Arab world who by commission or omission co-operated in this policy would be smiled on; the others would be punished or ignored whenever and wherever possible.

However, as Camp David unfolded another upheaval was taking place at the edge of the Arab world. In Iran, millions of Iranians, religious, secular, leftists, rightists, nationalists, communists, soldiers, airmen, bazaaris, mullahs, workers, peasants and farmers, were rising up in protest against just exactly one of those manipulated and American-imposed dictators whose policies were engineered and programmed by Washington. The Shah.

To my mind, this was the most important story I covered in more than a quarter-century covering the Middle East, more important than Camp David or the three Iraq wars or the Palestinian issue---or should I say, as each of these other stories were so closely concerned with it, that the Iranian Revolution was the most consequential story. For in my view that revolution and its still not altogether clear outcome has had a far-reaching effect on every aspect of the situation in the Middle East itself and the relations between the nations and peoples of the Middle East with each other and with the West.

I would like to start by saying what I think the revolution meant to the ordinary people and their leaders.

For the first time in the Middle East’s history a country had, through a popular movement and with mainly passive resistance, thrown out a Western-imposed and Western-aligned leader, a man who had seemed so firmly placed on his throne just a few years earlier that he had been able to entertain at vast, golden expense the world’s heads of state at a pageant at Persepolis that we in Britain have not seen since Henry VIII’s Field of the Cloth of Gold in the 15th Century. In the mid-1970s the Shah’s Iran was being talked of as the first developing country in modern history to be making the transition from the third to the first world in one fell swoop, an industrialised, pro-Western, capitalist nation with a modern, massive army, doing the bidding of the West and acting as our and Israel’s major ally at the Eastern gateway to the Middle East. In less than a year, by January 1979, the game was up, the Shah gone and soon dead, and Iran on the way to being an Islamic Republic.

This is not the place for a dissertation on the merits of the Islamic State and the blood-letting and civil strife that marked Iran during the next two or three years. I am looking at the immediate impact of this revolution.

In the Middle East itself, the impact was almost immediate: in Lebanon, the already emergent Shi’ite population who had started to assert themselves as a political and military force towards the end of the first phase of the Lebanese civil war not only took heart from the example set by their religious conferes in Iran, with whom there were of course close connections; they began to receive solid help and assistance, in guns, money and people, to develop themselves in the complicated and violent matrix of Lebanese politics but also to build up resistance against the Israeli incursions into South Lebanon. Amal, more in the Syrian camp, and Hezbollah, more in the Iranian, but both of course indigenous Lebanese groups, built up their militias and their political identities first in the face of other Lebanese factions and the then dominant PLO, then, after the Israeli occupation of South Lebanon was consolidated and enlarged in 1982, in growing opposition to that occupation.

It also has to be remembered that after nearly ten years of Israeli incursions into Lebanon and a wild civil war, and two Israeli invasions of Lebanon, in 1978 and 1982, there had been a massive flight of Shi’ites to Beirut and the southern suburbs, a displacement that caused great hardship and social upheaval, not to mention great deprivation, hunger, unemployment and homelessness. Can anyone in this room dare to imagine that had it not been for the example of Iran, the inspiration emanating from there and the physical help and organisation that came from that source, that the Shi’ites in Lebanon would have been able to organise as well as they did? Clinics, schools, political pressure, the alliance through Syria with Iran, all this made a backbone for Lebanon at a time when the country was under threat and partial occupation.

It has also to be recognised that it was in Lebanon that on the ground the Arabs for the first time since Nasser actually physically challenged the Western presence in Lebanon, evicting the French and American International Force in 1983, humiliating the Americans, and as we know it was largely elements of the Lebanese Shi’ite groups that organised the kidnapping of Western hostages throughout the nineteen-eighties, the message being to the West, stay out of here, let us do it our way. Now as a journalist whose friends and colleagues suffered from the kidnapping and who himself found his ability to report on the Middle East severely restricted by the kidnapping epidemic I have to say I am not condoning the tactic and I think in the long run it probably did a lot to harm the image of Hisbollah in particular and the Arab Muslims of Lebanon in particular. That is all arguable and I see it very much from the standpoint of a humanitarian journalist who hopes that all journalists can operate freely in any environment. But that is not the point. The Arabs of Lebanon found new purpose and political status on the back of the Iranian revolution and although it took twenty years we saw, four years ago, the remarkable sight of the great Israeli Army being forced off occupied Arab lands, its tail between its legs. And since then and even during the Israeli presence in Lebanon we have seen a wise Shi’ite political leadership bringing Hizbollah into play as a Lebanese political force, not to mention conducting diplomacy on the world stage, as with the return to freedom a week or so ago of hundreds of Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners in exchange for three Israeli bodies and one live spy-cum-businessman.

I want to come back to the Syria-Iraq-Iran-Lebanon links at the end of my talk.

So, inspiration from Iran. Much-needed inspiration.

Of course, from the imprisonment of the American Embassy staff in November 1979 to their release on the day of President Reagan’s inauguration in January 1981, the West, namely Washington, was intent on crushing the source of this inspiration, ending the Islamic Republic, and organising war and economic boycott against it.

Within a year of the Revolution Middle Eastern history took another lurch whose consequences we are still reeling from. With the greenest of lights from the West, Saddam Hussein, anxious to right wrongs he perceived Iraq had suffered at the hands of the Persians, saw an opportunity to use Iraq’s wealth and might to teach the Iranians a lesson, but, more importantly, to demonstrate to a nervous set of Arab leaders that he was the Defender of the Faith against the Infidel from the East. Arm and finance me, he said, and I will deal with the Islamists and Persian hordes. Well, the Arab rulers and the West were only too eager to help, the British, for instance, breaking our own laws to help arm Saddam Hussein, the French and Russians competing to arm him with tanks and aeroplanes, the Americans donating financial credits, naval convoys for Arab oil exports and satellite intelligence, the Arabs coughing up inordinate amounts of money that they were never to see again to keep Iraqis fighting in the field at great loss---great loss to each side---over a period of eight years.

Can anyone doubt that today’s crises in Iraq and beyond have not been sparked in large part by the Iranian revolution?

Iraq sort of won that war for the West and the Arabs in that Iran backed down, though there was never any evidence to suggest that Ayatollah Khomeini had lasting territorial ambitions beyond Persia’s borders.

No, it was a false fear of Iran that the West had, based on the humiliation of the Americans and the collapse of their Iranian project, launched as far back as 1953 with the overthrow of Mossadeq; it was a more real fear that the Arab states had, though not of territorial aggression so much as fear of the political reverberations the Iranian Revolution had set in train across the Gulf and beyond. Not just in Lebanon. But in Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, where Shi’ite populations took courage and became the focus of reformist movements; in Iraq, of course, where the Shi’ite population had always had political animus and discipline but had been crushed or dismissed since Ottoman times; even in Egypt, where young men took heart from the example of Iran and saw that dictatorships could be removed if the will and the organisation was there.

I will come back to that. But we must just look at Iraq after the Iran-Iraq war. Saddam, buoyed up by his victory, as he saw it, now saw himself as a law unto himself, a force to be reckoned with in the region. He could not see how after all its assistance to him the West could possibly want to restrain him now; surely he was their man? Was he not owed much by the West and the Arabs alike? Two years after the war, his country broke, and the Kuwaitis he had protected from their Persian neighbours cutting up difficult about repaying their debts, he invaded Kuwait. No Iranian Revolution, No Iran-Iraq war; no Iran-Iraq War, no invasion of Kuwait.

I think we have to admit that the beginning of the 1990s was not a good moment for the leaders of Iranian Revolution or those who thought in the Arab world that they could emulate the Iranian model.

The West defeated Iraq, of course, but left Saddam Hussein in power, weak enough no longer to be a threat to the West, but strong enough to keep order inside Iraq and crush any irredentism, which he did with savage effectiveness as Western troops looked on, indeed even, by default, assisted. The conservative Arab states reasserted themselves over their own populations. The West defused the Palestinian intifada and turned what had looked like rays of hope in 1991, at Madrid, into shafts of gloom, with Oslo and what followed. In the past ten years or so it would be an illusionist who would say that in the Middle East the Iranian Revolution has brought concrete positive results, the fight against it so intense, the Arab world in unique disarray.

There is no question that the example of Iran and its allies in Lebanon success against Israel and actual physical help from Iran and Hizbullah have brought inspiration and expertise to the Palestinians of the Occupied Territories: without that example it is arguable that the two intifadas would never have happened, or at least not been as dramatic as they were. But the Palestinians are really beyond reach, fighting a lone battle, cut off from really effective lines to any friends and allies beyond the Jordan River and largely ignored by the Arab states in any consequential way. I cannot see at the moment how help can be delivered to the Palestinians on any consequential scale, even if the will was there. But there is no doubt that in the resolution and dynamism of groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and even in the secular groups, like the Aqsa Brigades, the example of Hizbullah has been exemplary and massive; it has been a model. Even in the recent pragmatism of ceasefires and political statements from Islamic leaders we can see how Hizbullah’s model has been followed and how groups seen in the West, deliberately, as wild-eyed fanatics can deliver reason, political sophistication and help for their people. The Israelis, equally, dread this side of the Islamic political system being witnessed and understood and work round the clock to undermine it by shattering ceasefires and collapsing the work of reasonable minds.

One thing this struggle is demonstrating to the outside world, though, slowly, is the culpability of Israel and the anomaly of its presence in the area as an alien entity occupying Arab land. I have no doubt that it is the example of the Iranian Revolution and Hizbullah in Lebanon that has helped define Israel in the eyes of Western public opinion; and this must be a step forward if we are ever to see a just solution of this most basic of the Middle East’s problems. 

The Iranian Revolution had its impact to the east as well as to the west. As the revolution unfolded in Iran itself, the Soviet Union intervened in Afghanistan, launching its war against an Islamic country, an intervention at least in part caused by the same panic that was gripping the West. What did this Islamic movement portend? What would it mean for the Soviet Union internally if a broad phalanx of Islamic states were to emerge on its southern flank. Ayatollah Khomeini’s dynamic in Iran had much the same impact on Moscow as it did on Washington and London and Paris and among the Gulf Arab states. In the confusion, however, although the West and the Communists seem basically to have had the same idea---to crush political Islam---their innate rivalries led them in different directions: the West not only helping defeat the Russian effort in Afghanistan but, in the process, creating the very Islamic fervour and arming and encouraging those Islamic warriors that were ultimately to cause so much trouble for America’s allies in the Gulf and, ultimately, for America itself. The US created the Taliban and the Taliban nurtured and maybe still nurtures Usama Bin Laden. Would any of this happened if the Shah and his successors had stayed safely on the Peacock Throne? We cannot know, of course, how the world would have turned: the pressures of Arab state corruption, American-Israeli hegemony, Israeli oppression in Palestine and Lebanon may ultimately have led to similar upheavals in the region, Afghanistan included. But surely the Iranian Revolution was the most enormous catalyst in the political experiments that took place across the region. From Pakistan to Algeria, where again surely Islamists took heart from their confreres’ successes, or perceived successes, in Iran and Lebanon.

Finally, I come to Iraq. As I have said, the Iran-Iraq war grew out of the Iranian Revolution and Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait invasion grew directly out of his soi-disant victory and the massive debts he incurred as a result, not to mention the West’s encouragement of this felonious Arab dictator. The rest of the Iraqi tragedy needs no further elaboration here, but the crushing of the uprising in Iraq in 1991, the continuation of debilitating sanctions and finally the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq 10 months ago have led us to perhaps the biggest impasse the Middle East has faced since the creation of the state of Israel 56 years ago.

Again, though, we look to the Iranian Revolution and the power and control of the Shi’ite political structures inside Iraq. How are they linked, to what extent does Iranian influence play inside Iraq? We know it does, but we also know from our picture of the confusion and opposing trends in Iran today that there are competing strands here. We also know that many Iraqi Shi’ites, perhaps most Iraqi Shi’ites, regard themselves as Iraqis first and Shi’ites second. But can there be any doubt that the self-regard and discipline that we have seen among the Shi’ites of Iraq, despite the scores of years of dismissal under the Ottomans, the British and the various Iraqi systems that emerged over the past seventy years, can there be any doubt that these are not to a large extent encouraged and given resolve by the example the Iraqis have seen to their east?   Perhaps I am exaggerating this, and I would be interested to hear more from all of you here, but look at it another way, more negatively…the West, particularly the Americans and the Arab Kingdoms they favour are certainly nervous about the Iran-Iraq connection and it has to a great degree informed Washington’s attitude towards Iraq: in the refusal to help the uprising against Saddam nearly thirteen years ago and now in the nervousness with which it regards the power and discipline of the Shi’ites in Iraq since the end of the invasion and the beginning of the occupation.

Two final points I would like to make about the Iranian Revolution more generally;

The first is that, however disappointing the situation has turned out to be for the Iranians in the past twenty-five years, Iran has demonstrated one important matter to a sceptical world. That is that, however imperfect and inchoate, an Islamic Republic can operate along democratic and accountable lines and be a state for all its citizens. I have covered two elections in Iran, the last some twelve years ago, and there have been many since, and I can assure my audience that these were encouraging examples of the democratic process at work in the Middle East. We have seen that the reform movement in Iran is not only vast but vastly popular, especially among the many young and the many educated; but we also know that there are those in power who fear these processes and are struggling against them. This struggle is going to be won in the end, I feel sure, but the fact that it is happening in a more or less peaceful way and that the Iranian leader himself is trying to mediate in the crisis rather than back his traditional conservative colleagues must mean that eventually the reformists will succeed. Iran will have its own form of accountable government with an Islamic character, not the Western democracy we hear about, imposed from outside by force, but indigenous democracy evolving from within.

Just imagine what a reversal of the original American plan for the region there would be if a stable Iran and Iraq, both with popular governments, linked to Syria and Lebanon in the west and were able to co-exist with the Arab nations of the Gulf. What a phalanx this would create on Israel’s frontiers. I am too much of a realist to think this will happen, certainly that it can happen soon, and if it has occurred to me then it will most certainly have long ago occurred to the planners in the Pentagon and Tel Aviv and their powerful and diverse friends. But perhaps it will be something the Arabs can strive for. Certainly, the co-operation in such a venture of the Islamic Republic of Iran would be vital. The Syrians have shown since the very beginnings of the Iranian Revolution how seriously they took it and how much, in the wisdom of the father of the present Syrian president, they decided to go against the general Arab grain and co-operate with it. This trend should be enhanced.

One last and wider point. The Iranian Revolution and the Islamist revival it ishered in in different ways across the region has led to a growing awareness of and keen interest in Islam and the Muslim world in the West itself. If Governments, most especially the American, have behaved badly and ignorantly, that can certainly not be said of ordinary people. Curiosity about and interest in Islam and the Middle East in general has burgeoned, especially among the people of the United States, and I would like to think that among the fair-minded people of Britain, of France, of Germany, of the US, an so on, and there are many of us, there has come a much wider understanding and appreciation of what Islam stands for and what the people of the Middle East require in terms of their own ambitions and rights. I am no pollyana. I am no optimist. After thirty years of consuming interest in the Middle East I cannot say that I have seen much political progress; and on Iraq and Palestine it has to be said that the picture is as grim as it has ever been.

What I am encouraged by, though, is that ordinary people and parts, important parts of the media, are becoming enlightened about the world’s fastest growing religion and the people who observe it or are part of its culture. Who could have thought, twenty years ago, that there could be such an informed and intelligent debate about the phenomenon of the hijab in western societies; who could have foreseen the growing importance of the Muslim vote and the organisation of Muslims in Britain? The Iranian Revolution brought with it as first reaction ignorance and horror in the West, and there were lurid concepts abroad, of great John Buchanesque Muslim hordes riding out of the East, an Islamic monolith sweeping known Western civilisation before it. There are those, of course, encouraged by Israel and the Neocons and the plain ignorant and racist who still voice these fears. We have the idiotic and pernicious Kilroy-Silk to remind us of that level of comment. But here I do look on the bright side. Thoughtful and influential people in the West, of all sects and of none, have started to learn the proper lessons of the Middle East; and I think that of all the developments of the past fifty years it was the Iranian Revolution that forced them to begin to do so and began to make what had been a feared and misunderstood mystery to all but a coterie of experts in the West a subject of interest, fascination and engagement.     

*Tim Llewellyn was the BBC's Middle East Correspondent in the 1970s,80s and early 90s, based first in Beirut and later in Nicosia. He covered the Lebanon civil strife, the two Israeli invasions of Lebanon, the Iranian Revolution, the Iran-Iraq war, the Gulf War of 1991 and throughout all those years the continuing crisis of Palestine, as it evolved from the rebirth of the Palestinian nationalism in 1968, through Camp David, Beirut, Tripoli, Tunis, Algiers to Madrid, Oslo and now the so-called Road Map.

The idea of Islamic Government: a critical assessment

Dr Abdul Wahab El Affendi

The concept of an Islamic government is based on some assumptions which I think are not correct. The first assumption is  that the function of the ruler is that of a judge. Government is about judgment and applying the law. That is a mistake. Government is about administering the affairs of the people and it relies a lot on discretion  by the person in power and also a lot of negotiations and give and take between the people who are in power.

            So there can be no really ready-made rules to assist the ruler in all these situations. He has to make up his mind about a lot of things.

            Secondly the idea which has been summarized by the slogan “Islam is the solution”. This slogan is based on the belief that first of all Islam has rules for everything and that these rulers are known to the experts and can be found out an implemented. I do not think this is true either. Islam does not have a rule for every situation.

            In fact there are incidents in the Qur’an and the Hadith when the Prophet discouraged the people from doing that. For example when he was asked about going to hajj. Somebody started asking him ‘shall I go immediately’ and he said ‘if I tell you yes it will become an obligation – do not keep asking every time I tell you something’.

            There is a lot of discussion about rules for everything. There should be no such discussion. If there were rules for everything what would the human being do as a human being? What is moral obligation? What is the moral agency is this regard.

            The Iranian experience has revealed that in the end there is a lot of room for human discretion and that it is better if it is a matter of discretion.  There should be an open debate about issues. In this regard we can conclude by saying that the Iranian Revolution at the beginning, and the point we have reached now offers an inspiration for people who want an Islamic government. The Iranian revolution has covered a time, shortly after the Camp David Accords shortly after South Africa launched its wars against Angola and Mozembique and at a time when the revolutionary tide as at an ebb. So even people like Kohl and left-wing leaders in Europe were pleased that there is here a revolution that people have mentioned  the change their governments. There was a revolutionary inspirational element and the idea that an Islamic government is  feasible.  Twenty-five years on the inspiration from an Islamic model is evident by telling people more what to avoid than what to do.

*Dr Abdelwahab Al-Affendi is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Democracy, University of Westminster and co-ordinator of the Centre's Project on Democracy in the Muslim World. Educated at the Universities of Khartoum, Wales, and Reading, he is author of Turabi's Revolution: Islam and Power in Sudan (1991), Who Needs an Islamic State? (1991), Revolution and Political Reform in Sudan (1995), Rethinking Islam and Modernity (2001) and For a State of Peace: Conflict and the Future of Democracy in Sudan (2002). He has contributed to many leading journals, including African Affairs, Encounter, Journal of International Affairs, Futures, Muslim World, and the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, and to such works as The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (1998), Social Science and Conflict Analysis (1993), Islam and Justice (1997), Islam and Secularism in the Middle East (2000), Islamic Thought in the Twentieth Century (2003) and Understanding Democratic Politics (2003). Dr El-Affendi is a member of the Consultative Council of the Arab Human Rights Organisation in the UK, and a trustee of the International Forum for Islamic Dialogue. He  also contributes regular columns to Al-Quds al-Arabi (London) and the Daily Star (Beirut).  He  is module leader of the CSD MA module Democracy and Islam.

DISCUSSION

(Chairman Shabir Razvi)

Is the concept of Surah compatible with the democratic model?

How do you interpret the concept of the sovereignty of God?

Where do you think we will be 25 years from today? Will the Islamic Republic survive?

What has become of the Iranian people during the past 25 years? What kind of life are they living? Are they happy? Has the Iranian Revolution achieved its objectives or has it become derailed?

Iran will have an influence on events in Iraq? How do you see its role in the light of the conflict between the reformists and the conservatives?

Is it possible for Islam to co-exist with Muslim state?

What about Arab unity? Will Iran have a role to play in the realization of Arab unity?

Tim Llewellyn:This is a real plethora about Iranian influence inside Iraq. I have to say that for the past thirty or forty years, definitely since Saddam Hussein effectively ran Iraq from the late 1960s the contacts between the Iranian and Iraqi Shias were progressively stopped. I think it was only in the last two or three years that some  Iranians had started coming into Iraq. The corpse traffic has continued but effectively any political contact or financial contact had ceased. It was impossible under Saddam’s regime. One of the most important elements in the emergence of a new Iraq is going to be financial. The Iraqi Shias have money, wealth and influence and a lot of that is being taken into Iraq. The Iranians could play a role in this. Ayatollah Sistani seems to be the spiritual inspiration of the Iraqi Shias. He seems to have a hold on them. This man has an enormous amount of respect across political and factional boundaries. He is not a man who believes in the rule of jurisprudence. He would like to see an Islamic government in Iraq but he will not adopt the Iranian model. There  are going to be factional differences but the Iraqis do not want to adopt the Iranian model. Iran is going to play an important role but Iraqis as a whole are not going to be in the grip of the Iranians, whatever faction in Iran takes control – whether the reformists are successful in maintaining their programme in Iran or whether they are swept out of power, I don’t think it matters that much.  From what we can tell from Iraq’s history they are not likely to be influenced in a big way by Iran. There is a lot of  oversimplification about Iraq coming from the Western media when they talk about the Shite majority and the Sunni minority. I find this distasteful and misleading. Of course the Iraqi Shia make up the majority of the Iraqi Arab population. Yet regardless of their organisational ability the Shias are not a unitary force. No one can run Iraq without the consent of the traditional ruling bodies (unless they want to have a civil war), the powerful Sunni tribes, the Kurds and the other minorities all of whom have experience to take part in government. I think it is much more complicated in Iraq. I don’t see there being a kind of parallel between what kind of government emerges in Iraq and what we seen in Iran. We cannot know what is going to happen in Iraq. We are living day by day from hand to mouth. I think it is quite possible that the Americans will leave if the situation deteriorates in Iraq. The Americans are quite irresponsible in that respect. I don’t know how this game is going to be played.

            On the point of Arab unity, because we are always talking in terms of doom and gloom and American dominance I am trying to posit the idea that if the Arabs could get a grip on their own political destiny, if the Iraqis could emerge from this mess stronger and more unified and with an accountable government it is a phenomenal idea that Iran, Iraq and Syria, which have stable governments could co-operate with one another. It would be nightmare for the Americans and the Israelis. If it were to evolve it would not have to be a hostile force. It would be a political force in the Middle East. This has the potential, if you want to be positive, for a northern tier running from the boarder of Afghanistan to the Mediterranean with Syria and Lebanon. This could be a phenomenal political development if you take into account resources like oil and water. I think it is highly unlikely it will happen because the Israelis and the Americans will work to make sure it does not happen. This is something I see as a vision, something to work towards. I am basically a pessimist. I don’t think the Arab states have the imagination, the cohesion or the ability to stand away from the Americans.

            I  really do believe that this idea that the USA is in a strong position in the Middle East now and is able to launch actions against other states is no longer possible. America is now very much on the back  foot – much more able to withdraw from the Middle East because of what happened in Iraq. There is no possibility it will attack Iran and I am sure the Iranians are well aware of this. They are co-operating on the question of nuclear policy with the Europeans. I don’t think the Iranians are afraid of an American attack any longer. The fear that was there a year ago is no longer there, so I am not that gloomy about the American presence in the Middle East. It would not surprise me if the situation in Iraq deteriorates, which it may well do if the various groups there feel they are being cheated or manipulated or not having the sort of government they want, the Americans will pack their bags and leave.

Abdul Wahab Affendi: One  person said ‘when I hear the word shurah, I reach for my gun’. I think the use of the term shurah in modern Islamic political paralance whether by governments like Saudi Arabia or by Islamic movements is used more to disinform  and hide issues rather than to explain issues. The shurah is a very  amorphis term like justice or goodness – it is just an idea about how things should be done. But in Islamic history beyond the state of Media where it was practical for all people to meet together and discuss things there were no workable institutions. Lucky for us the Iranian Revolution has passed beyond this issue because the idea of a republic, a constitution and a majlis (parliament) and other constitutional organs has passed just beyond the issue of speaking about shurah in abstract terms to putting institutions in place. And I think the question is how effective are these institutions in discharging their tasks.  The  parliament was supposed to represent the people and give a voice to various groups and parties and influence the government. But in Iran I think  the problem is the because the unelected or quasi elected bodies, such as the Council of Guardians, the Leader of the Revolution or the Expediency Councils have much more power than the parliament. Also in Iran I think there was another element which has not been tackled properly  - it is devolution, the power of the regions and minorities. For any movement in Islamic political thought the people have just to forget about shurah and talking about shurah incessantly and look at the institutions they have.

            The idea of the sovereignty of God preceded the separation of India and Pakistan  it does not have a direct relationship to that question. There is also a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding about this idea because when you say ‘sovereignty of God’ no one will argue with you that God is  sovereign. But when you interpret the sovereignty of God as meaning that king so and so, or the Leader of the Revolution is sovereign in the end sovereignty of God translates into the sovereignty of so and so. God does not come and sit in the presidential palace, he is not in parliament. When you say sovereignty this is a term which is abused and is not in its place in government. Government is about the relations of people to people – it is not about the relation of God to the people. When I am talking about government I am talking about the powers which the Leader of the Revolution, or the President or the Council of  Guardians has. I am not arguing about what powers God has. So anybody who wants to talk about the sovereignty of God is this regard is trying to take the issues from the discussion. If it is God who is speaking to me I can’t speak back.  I think that people should use terms properly and in their proper context. The idea about governance is about people and people should talk about issues between people – is the parliament sovereign? Are the people sovereign? Is the president sovereign? These are the ideas which have to be discussed.

            Finally the idea of Islam and the modern state.  As I said, government is about people – it is not about religion or God. So as long as there are Muslim people who believe that they should be governed in a certain way, there is going to be an amount of discussion about how people who believe in Islam are going to govern themselves. I think the challenge is for these people to reach an agreement about which way is best for governors and which way would be compatible with Islamic values and has dignity for the people – which is also an Islamic value.

Tim Llewellyn: I don’t think the Iranian Revolution has reached its objective – I don’t know what the objective is. In the twenty-five years since it happened the Iranian people have evolved enormously. I was reading some statistics this week which show that the level of literacy and education in Iran has increased enormously. The birth rate in Iran, an extremely important aspect of Iran’s political and economic development, is dropping. This is a sign of increasing education and sophistication. This has to be taken into account. The people are free. The level of debate in Iran, the level at which people speak to one another, the number of newspapers, the debates in the media are incredible. There is no Arab state, with the possible exception of Lebanon, I have ever been in where the level of debate and open discussion is as great. This may be an aspect of the Iranian character but it certainly wasn’t that way under the Shah. The Iranians have made tremendous progress. One has to hope that in time the Iranians would have worked out this magic formula of an Islamic government which is accountable to its people and benefits the people rather than a group of backward mullahs which is the case at the moment. It is holding up progress.

            I cannot answer questions about where we will be twenty-five years from now. I tried to imagine where we will be in six months time in Iraq and my mind is a complete blank. I think  what happens in the Middle East now very much depends on what happens in Iraq in the next few months. It has become the focus of the Middle Eastern problem at the moment. The Palestinian question is static unfortunately and what happens in Iraq could be of tremendous importance – whether we have a civil war or the emergence of accountable government, elections and handing back to the Iraqis of their own sovereignty. I don’t think we can look beyond what happens in Iraq this year when trying to forecast what happens in the Middle East in general.

Ahmed Rajab: With regard to Iran itself, the revolution is a process. One is hopeful that reason will prevail in the end, in the globalised world as it is. I think we are going to see a unique experiment which will be a model for others. For example in Africa.

Abdul Wahab Al Affendi: I am not qualified to answer the question of whether the Iranian people are happy. I have not been to Iran since the revolution and this is a big omission. It  should be corrected. Just I think that the observer from the outside who looks to Iran will see that the people are gloomier than they were during the time of the Shah because they think of the other life.

            The question about 25 years from today.  Two things are important. The Iranian revolution and its aftermath has influenced not only Iran but the whole Western world. There are many more people in Iran today who are religiously inclined and there has been some kind of marriage between Islamism and modern learning. I saw some ulema were studying in universities and vice versa. The Islamic Republic,  although it has released centrifugal forces and some people are very angry and anti-Islam because of the revolution there are more people who are more Islamic. So I think we can safely say that the republic itself will be here 25 years from now but it will be different in character.

Abdul Malik: I think the Shia in Iraq have made it absolutely clear that they want their rights – they do not want to dominate. None of them has envisaged Shia religious rule. What we should be worried about now is not how the Shias might behave but how others might behave from the Sunni elements, the Kurdish elements and of course Al Qaeda.

Tim Llewellyn:  I think that is absolutely clear on the face of it. The Shia leaders in Iraq have made it clear that they do not see themselves as some kind of extension of Iran.  Obviously among the Shias there are those who want to dominate and after years in the political wilderness as a movement the Shias will demand to play a proper role in the governments of Iraq. They want to assert their quite considerable weight in the government of Iraq. How that will play will other groups, how they share that power remains to be seen. Which is why I am so wishy washy about thinking too far ahead. We just cannot know at the moment how the elections will happen, whether they will happen, what will come out of it.

Chairman: Thank you very much for the three speakers this afternoon and to the other speakers.