Finally, A Fatwa Worthy Of Respect

One of Iran's most senior clerics, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, has issued a fatwa which, in essence, declares the current government of Iran to be illegal. The religious finding, a reply to a series of questions posed by Mohsen Kadivar, an intellectual and cleric, was posted on the website maintained by Kadivar. For the Farsi challenged, a translation is available at MEMRI.

While the fatwa does not name Supreme Leader Khamenei in specific, there is no doubt it constitutes a full scale attack on the current regime of Khamenei and his stooge, Ahmedinejad. It denounces the actions of the Iranian government including its clerical component as violating the basic precepts of Islam and the requirements of Islamic jurisprudence.

Being illegal, the government is liable to removal by the people. Montazeri wrote:

As I said, both religious law and common sense [dictate that] position holders who have lost the right to administer social affairs automatically lose their posts, and their rule is no longer legitimate in any way. If they remain in their position by means of force, fraud, or forgery, then the people must express their opinion regarding the illegitimacy and unpopularity [of these position holders], and remove them from their posts in the least harmful way...

That is very strong language! It is nothing less than the authorisation of revolution, a greenlight for the overthrow of the present Iranian regime, clerics not excepted.

Montazeri argues that the clerics carry the greater responsibility for tossing the illegal, non-Islamic rascals out. Consider his wording carefully:

Obviously, this is a duty incumbent upon all [and not only upon specific individuals]... and none may evade it under any pretext. The elite [i.e. the clerics] have a special obligation [to carry out this task], since they are knowledgeable in religious and civil law, and have greater ability than [the rest of the people]. Their statements have greater influence and carry greater force; therefore, they bear a greater responsibility. They must present [the people]... with an alternative [option], while [preserving the people's] unity and ideological harmony, and establishing parties as well as public and private organizations.

Well, bucko, what does that read like to you? To the Geek it comes very close to the tocsin of rebellion.

While the NYT is probably accurate in its assessment that this fatwa will not have any immediate dramatic effect on the internal dynamic in Iran, the longer term impact of this bold, bald denunciation should not be underrated. Previous clerical statements including those by Montazeri have been cautious, ambiguous, and hesitant.

With this fatwa, Montazeri, who is an old Revolutionary and long-standing power in the Revolutionary government, has challenged his one time, more-or-less colleague, Khamenei. The challenge cannot be ignored without great risk to the status quo. Neither can the Montazeri position be overlooked by the clerical establishment generally.

Montazeri was once considered the most probable successor to Ayatollah Khomenei, but parted company with the founder of the revolution ostensibly over the killing of prisoners which was opposed by Montazeri but actually because of Montazeri's opposition to the idea of clerical rule. This opposition has assured the split between Montazeri and Khamenei deepened and widened over the past twenty years.

Montazeri's implacable resistence to the concept of clerical rule, to theocracy per se means that there is no room for compromise with Khamenei. Khamenei is more of a champion of theocracy naked, pure, and simple than was Khomenei. The esposal of theocracy coupled with Khamenei's apparent ambition of seeing his number two son, Mojtaba, succeed him as Supreme Leader provided even more motivation to Montazeri's opposition.

The eighty-seven year old Montazeri has seized the moment, realistically his last moment, to put the division in views of Iran's governmental nature and collective future into the most clear public view. The dynamics of today with no real weakening in either the willingness of the opposition to continue their campaign of dissent being matched by the total refusal of Khamenei to seek any sort of accommodation with the dissidents gives Montazeri his last, best opportunity to push Iran's internal trajectory in a way he finds acceptable to his view of Islam.

It is necessary to watch closely for signs of how the legion of clerics littering the Iranian landscape react to the Montazeri fatwa. The influence of the clerics cannot and must not be undervalued. In a very real and direct sense, the way in which the clerical establishment splits into pro- and anti-Montazeri camps will determine what sort of Iran the rest of the world will have to deal with in the months and years to come.

As Allah wills---

Anger And Hate Versus Trust And Image

The buzz phrases du jour radiating from the Obama Administration currently are "trust," and "improving the US image." The target audience for trust rehab is in Afghanistan. The ambitions for the Make-the-US-Look-And-Smell-Better campaign are far more grandiose. The intention as adumbrated by President Obama and SecState Clinton is to add luster and polish to Uncle Sam in the eyes of Muslims everywhere.

Right. Fer Sure.

A little of the old Mad Ave presto-chango action and the mullahs will love us, the imams will trust us, the sheiks will slaver after us and Muslims of the world will unite in an outpouring of affection for Truth, Justice and the American Way. (This includes, democracy, secular government, separation of institutions of faith and government, free and open speech, gender equality and interest bearing loans.)

It takes, as history shows again and again, a lot more than hype and High Mindedness to achieve peace and the even more elusive intangible of good will.

Before blazing a new and fearless trail in image building and trust inculcation, there is a ground truth which demands a firm grip be taken. This basement reality has two parts. Anger is the first. Time is the second.

It is fashionable to be opposed to anger. Anger can and often does produce interpersonal violence. It is unseemly to say the least.

But anger is more than an unseemly potentially violent outburst of energy. Look at anger's good side. It is a powerful motivator. It is a sovereign remedy for fear. It transmutes frustration into accomplishment.

Anger has a real deficiency. It is a short-term affect. It is the line squall of behavior. Quick to come. Terrible and terrifying while present. Fast to leave.

This is where time comes in.

Anger extended over time becomes hatred. Anger restoked, reawakened, renewed, will inevitably become hatred whether on the part of an individual or a people. This reality is at work not only in Palestine, not simply in Afghanistan, not just in Iran--and not merely among Muslims.

This reality of human personality, nature and history also renders nugatory the chicken-and-egg debate over the roots of Islamist fury against the US and the West generally. Hatred of the US and other countries arises not from policy alone. Neither does it emanate solely from the precepts and dictates of Islam's doctrine.

American (or Israeli, or British or just fill in the blank) policies and actions may bring anger to some people, somewhere for some reason. If the actions based in those policies affect the same targets repeatedly--such as air strikes or house bulldozing--the anger is restoked and restored. It grows insensibly into the permanent condition of hatred.

It must be underscored that policies and actions are not the only way to transmogrify anger into perpetual, self-sustaining hatred. The strictures and requirements of an ideology can be used to the same end.

The nationalistic and communist ideology of the Vietminh and their successor entities propelled many Vietnamese to prodigious efforts and unbelievable sacrifices to attain the goal of independence and "socialism." The racist ideology coupled with nationalism impelled the Germans during World War II to prolong the war long after even stalemate was a military impossibility.

So it is with Islam and Muslims.

Being a warrior religion, Islam is perfectly suited to encourage hatred of the other. It is perfectly suited to propel one into battle, to face death and embrace it.

A valuable insight into the many ways in which the doctrines of Islam can be used to extend anger over time, to assure that hatred prevails can be gained from the translations provided on line by the Mideast Media Research Institute (MEMRI.) The televised and other messages of a multitude of clerics, politicians, journalists and academics are both universally rooted in the Quran and Hadith. They are also universally directed against three targets: Israel, the US and the West.

For years these messages of hatred have gone unchallenged. Also, for many, many years the actions taken by Israel and more recently the US have (perhaps inadvertently) served to refresh the feedstock of hatred--anger.

Genuine, pervasive hatred takes a great deal of time to develop in a society. It takes effort on the part of ideologically committed leaders. It takes real world provocations of policy and actions on the part of the target of hatred.

This implies that hatred is not easily overcome. It is not susceptible to facile exercises in public relations. It is immune in large measure even to changes in policy, or the cessation of anger producing actions.

Hatred is not even reduced by efforts at placation through sensitivity based appeasement as events in the UK have shown. Arguably, these efforts have served only to embolden the ideologues and ratchet up their demands.

At some crossover point the combination of actions and ideological driven agendas produces a hatred which is totally self-sustaining. It is the human equivalent of the fission chain reaction. The critical mass once reached needs nothing more, the reaction continues until the fuel is exhausted.

The crossover point, the self-sustaining chain reaction, was reached long ago in the minds of Palestinians. It is approaching rapidly (if it has not yet actually been achieved) in Afghanistan. In Pakistan the critical mass exists and perhaps the fatal reaction has already been initiated. The data are fuzzy on that question.

In Iraq the chain reaction was damped by the intersection of two factors. The sectarian violence became too bloody, lasted too long and served to alienate not unite under the banner of hatred. Then the Maliki administration has been able to enlist the ideology of nationalism successful. For the moment at least the historical accident of Baathist promoted nationalism was used to trump the Islamist manufactured hatred.

These facts of life suggest several things. They indicate that glad-handing public diplomacy will be of little use in suppressing Muslim hatred of us. Well intentioned efforts at addressing so-called "sensitivities" presumably dear to the hearts and identities of Muslims are more often counterproductive than not.

Finally the lessons of history seem to demonstrate that the only effective counter to the hatred of a people is patience. Patience and persistence.

Patiently and persistently stating what is being done and why. Patiently and persistently holding forth the ideals and worldview which are central to our collective identity.

At the same time our actions should be undertaken with a view to reducing anger. Anger is the plutonium without which the hatred chain reaction cannot be started. The single greatest reason to eschew air strikes or area denial munitions is not some abstract principle of proportionality or humanitarian concerns. Air strikes, artillery fire missions, overly exuberant door kicking must be avoided for a simple pragmatic reason. They all provoke anger.

Then, advantage might be taken of hatred. The Iraqi experience hints that hatred can and will become internally directed. It will lead to one group of haters attacking another. In the search for a soft enough target on which to expend hatred, the outsider may be replaced as a target by another: opposing groups of "insiders."

William T. Sherman was a great believer in the notion that people exposed to the realities of war, the scent of perpetual fear, will both abandon war and repent of it for generations. While Billy T. might have been a bit hyperbolic in this, the experience in Iraq shows that there is more than a slight grain of truth in his position. Iraqis, particularly young ones, turned their backs on the hatred of the sectarians and decided to give peace a chance.

Hatred is not easily defeated. It requires a commitment to the long term. It requires Americans to think beyond the next election cycle.

Most of all it requires an understanding of who and what we are and for what do we stand. That is hard enough in the best of conditions. And, right now conditions of life are far from the best.

Yet, reality gives us no choice. Without understanding the nature of hatred, its power and persistence, its origins and strengths, we have no chance of exploiting its weaknesses. We have no chance of "winning the hearts and minds" or "trust" of the Afghans or other Muslims.

Since all hands acknowledge that it is impossible to kill our way to victory in Afghanistan--let alone the wider conflict with Islamism--reality gives us a stark choice. Surrender to those who hate us or outlast and undercut their hatred.