The Real Power Structure of Iran | Deep Dive: Iran Ep. 1 | Focal Point with Imam Tom Facchine

The Real Power Structure of Iran

Is Iran really an Islamic republic? And how did insurgent political, theological ideology come to govern territory and head a state? Today, we're looking at Iran from the lens of political theory. But first, we need to understand the anatomy of political authority within Shiism.

Political Authority in Sunni vs. Shia Islam

Who should be in authority? As we said, that with the Shia system, it's based off of lineage. If you look at how Abu Bakr was appointed, and then Umar, and then Uthman, and then Ali, each of them came to power in a different way. This is what distinguishes the Khilafah, which is the Sunni terminology, from the Imamah, which is the Shia terminology.

The sense of political authority in Twelver Shiism is very, very different from Sunni Islam. When we think about what force is like a safeguard or a mechanism from the community going astray, that force within Sunni Islam is the community itself, the جماعة (jama'ah). We believe in the Sunnah of the Prophet, and we also follow the jama'ah, the concept of إجماع (ijma'ah), that there is consensus, and the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم saying that his community or his ummah would not agree on a mistake.

The Political Crisis of Twelver Shiism

But today, we're talking about the political crisis of Twelver Shiism, that is, the political restoration that is associated with the hidden imam. And just like we mentioned before, in the previous episode about al-Mukhtar and al-Mukhtar al-Thaqafi's rebellion, and how he used the figure of Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyya as the real authority, whereas Mukhtar was just the lieutenant, he's just the representative, that was the main mechanism by which Shia would launch political rebellions and uprisings and even justify political rule. That even if the imam is in hiding, that there can be the representative of the hidden imam or the representative of the Mahdi.

The Fatimids employed this as well. And this is a very similar thing to what Ruhullah Khomeini also instituted.

Wilayat al-Faqih: The Rule of the Jurist

That his main intervention within the Shia Twelver tradition was this idea of ولاية الفقيه (Wilayat al-Faqih), right? It is the guardianship of the just jurist or the rule of the jurist.

So it's different, it's unprecedented in a way because he's setting up a particular jurist, spoiler alert, it's gonna be him, that is representing the hidden imam and preparing the way for the return of the hidden imam and the Mahdi. But in another way, even though it's a novel innovation, it's also something that is on this earlier pattern of someone setting themselves up as a representative for the hidden imam. And this very thing is actually enshrined in the Iranian constitution.

If you go to the constitution of the so-called Islamic Republic, you go to Article Five. Article Five, it says, during the occultation of the ولي العصر (Wali al-Asr), may Allah hasten his reappearance, the ولاية (Wilayah) and leadership of the Ummah devolve upon the just and pious فقيه (Faqih), the عادل متقي فقيه (Adil Muttaqi Faqih), who is fully aware of the circumstances of his age, courageous, resourceful, and possessed of administrative ability, he will assume the responsibilities of this office in accordance with Article 107. So there it is right in the Iranian constitution.

The Inversion of Authority: State Over Sharia

Now, Khomeini didn't just stop there. So he declared in some of his works and writings that law is a tool of justice in society. And so there's a really interesting thing that's happening here, where the idea of what law is comes to take a new meaning than maybe what it would traditionally seem to be within the Sharia, both Sunni and Shia, rather the Sharia as this overarching thing and law is underneath the Sharia because any law or any government that any human being could lead is eventually accountable to the Sharia.

Whereas Khomeini is putting forth something a little bit different. Yes, the constitution is inspired by the Sharia and there's Sharia elements that are part of the constitution and the government and the way that things are run. But at the same time, it's a nation state and this is a state that is able to establish law that it might be seen to be actually over the Sharia and its dictates.

So this is his approach that replaces the Islamic government above the Sharia and there's no law higher than the state's law. This is Hallaq's point. If you haven't read Hallaq at this point, Impossible State, Restating Orientalism, Radical Separation of Powers, his latest book.

This is Hallaq's whole point in Impossible State that he then expands upon in later works that what makes an Islamic nation state impossible is simply the fact that you're inverting what is the ultimate authority. That in Khomeini's formulation, the ultimate authority is the republic, is the state and the law of the state. Whereas the Sharia is something that it informs, it's a source, it's an inspiration, it's there, but it's not over top, it's not in control.

That when you mix the state apparatus with the ulama apparatus and you gather the ulama apparatus under the state apparatus, you lose that independence.

Clarification: Islam and Politics Are Not Separable

Now, I wanna be absolutely clear, this is not saying that Islam and politics don't mix and this is one of the unfortunate and really strange misreadings of Hallaq's work. This is not saying, and many people have come to say, reformists and secularists and modernists have tried to say that, oh, the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم's mission was just spiritual, all the politics and stuff like that, that's just a human matter.

There's this concept in this strain of thought of the second message of Islam. So the first message is the Meccan verses that are universal for everybody, whereas the Medinan verses are context-bound and they're really not for everybody and it was just kind of responding to circumstances as opposed to giving timeless political guidance. There are even some traditionalists who employ the idea of the constitution of Medina to effectively make a similar argument that the constitution represents the pluralism of the message, the original message of the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم, whereas the rest of Medina unfolds in a response to contingent circumstances that nobody's really obliged to follow or find as instructive.

And if you want more on that, I strongly recommend Dr. Wael Hallaq's article, Conjuring Sovereignty, to go through the history of that. So these opinions that I'm talking about right now are ones that justify complete secularism and liberalism, that it basically secularizes Islam into it's just your personal belief, it's ethics, it's these dangling principles that don't really, the politics stuff is not essential. Of course, that is highly disputed and problematic that many, many scholars, whether it's Maududi or Israr Ahmed from the subcontinent or others from across the Muslim world have argued that Islam and politics are not separable.

And non-Muslim scholars have argued this too when it comes to religion in general and Islam in particular. If you take William T. Cavanaugh's The Myth of Religious Violence, there was no concept of even separating, there was no definition of religion and politics whereupon you could separate them up until very, very recently. So of course they were not separable.

Of course, Islam is a political religion and it has things to say about politics and governance and how things should be run. So all of that to say that the real critique here is not saying that Islam and politics shouldn't mix or that government shouldn't be informed by the Sharia or Islam at all, that that shouldn't happen.

The State of Exception and Ultimate Authority

No, what Hallaq's critique is, is that when you get a nation-state, the way that a nation-state is built, it amalgamates power, it gathers power in a very unique way, in a very absolute way, in a way that allocates sovereignty for itself, that dominates any other thing that it controls.

If you want to go to Carl Schmitt's work, this is what he calls the state of exception. So think about military martial law. Think about suspending habeas corpus. Think about dissolving parliament. You can have your little parliament, you can have this, you can have that, but at the end of the day, who gets to impose the state of exception? Who gets to suspend the rules? Whoever gets to suspend the rules has the ultimate power.

And so if you look at the Islamic, quote unquote, Islamic Republic of Iran, where's the ultimate power? Who gets to impose the state of exception? Is the sharia something that is autonomous, such that it can bring into line the republic if it goes astray? Or is the republic kind of the last source and the last authority? And it gets to dictate what is valid interpretation of the sharia, and it gets to dictate how the sharia is supposed to work and how scholars are supposed to opine and things of this nature.

By the way, I mentioned Hallaq has a new book, Radical Separation of Powers, that I highly recommend. His whole point with the fact that he was saying that Islam and the nation state don't go together because the nation state is always going to completely dominate Islam, and it's going to dominate and lord over the sharia, and it's going to instrumentally use Islam in a way that's going to justify national security or whatever, whatever the nation wants to do, it will find a justification for, basically led to his latest book, which is talking about how you can't actually have Islamic governance without a very radical separation of powers, a type of separation of powers that doesn't actually exist in nation states, that you have to have, if the sharia is legislative, then that has to be autonomous and separate. And if the ulama are the ones who get to interpret the sharia, then that has to be, to a large degree, autonomous and separate.

Once it becomes under the shadow of the state, then there's a conflict of interest, and it's only a matter of time until things go awry. And certainly, when it comes to the behavior of the Iranian Republic in general, if you look at things such as censorship, if you look at things such as suppression, these are real things. Is this what the sharia calls for? Now you're making a bad name for Islam. Or is this the work of a nation state?

Foreign Meddling and Totalitarian Tendencies

Even if we wanted to grant that there's foreign meddling, and that foreign meddling actually is very intentional and meant to produce paranoia, and meant to provoke totalitarian tendencies. So this is actually a very, very deliberate tactic that's used by the United States and other governments. If you want to look at Cuba, for example, the United States attempted to assassinate Castro dozens of times, maybe over 100 times.

And that type of really intense atmosphere creates paranoia, and the paranoia brings out totalitarian tendencies, and then that creates more justification for more regime change and things of that nature. So these types of policies are very, very much intentionally pursued by certain powers. But when nation states react in that way, and they become more totalitarian, and they suppress dissent, and they homogenize internally, and we'll talk about that even more in just a second.

Is that Islam? Is that the sharia? No, it's not. That's a nation state acting. That's a nation state that is acting within its own interests or the interests of its leaders. That's not necessarily what the sharia calls for.

The Push Toward Homogenization

Speaking of homogenization, many, many scholars have pointed out that nation states have a natural impetus to homogenize because there's foreign meddling, because nation states are usually ethno-nation states, they're usually set up upon a certain, at least privileged ethnicity. Then all of the ethnic minorities or religious minorities are potentially treasonous factions. And sure enough, you're going to have foreign powers that are going to try to leverage those minority populations against you.

As we see now, Trump is talking about arming the Kurds and trying to have the Kurds come in and mess with the current Iranian regime. It's funny that the Kurds have, I think, wised up, and they're probably not going to get sucked into that because they realized that the U.S. abandoned them in Syria. The important point is that those differences are always leveraged and always exploited by enemies.

So there creates a push towards homogenization. Turkey is a classic example. The policies against Armenians, the policies against Kurds, the policies against other types of non-standard citizens, meaning non-Turks, because those other populations are seen as a threat.

America and the United States are exactly like this. Like when people saying, oh, we speak English in this country. You know how much of the country speaks Spanish? Like Spanish should be an official language because, first of all, most, a good chunk of this country used to be Mexico before the United States stole it. And then even throughout the country, like this is part of the Americas. The language of the hemisphere is Spanish, to be frank. But there's a feeling a certain way because there's a certain normative expected citizen that's English speaking, that's white Anglo-Saxon Protestant probably. And if you don't adhere to that, then there's almost like this suspicion and panic.

This is all to say that nation states tend to homogenize, or they tend to try to homogenize because they see that as a security risk. They see that the non-standard citizens within their territory are potential threats.

Personal Experience with Iranian Discrimination

And I actually have direct experience with this. When I was in Medina, I actually had a very good friend who was studying there with me who was from Iran. Actually, he was from the border of Iran and Afghanistan. He was from a Sunni village. And when he came to Medina, he couldn't go back until he was done his studies entirely. So he was separated from his family for years and years and years.

And they would write letters back and forth. And if his uncle and his father made Umrah, they would meet up and he would get pistachios from his family's farm and saffron. And we'd sit on the floor of his dorm and drink saffron tea together.

But he couldn't return to his homeland until he was finished studying in Medina, because if he tried to go back, they would seize his passport and remove his freedom of movement and stop him from going anywhere because he's a Sunni. So these are things, and there's other things that are well known that happened inside Iran that are discriminatory practices towards ethnic minorities and towards also religious minorities as well.

The Iranian Constitution: Pan-Islamic Aspirations

So that being said, what about, there's other articles of the Iranian constitution that are of interest? And that indicate something else. Our original question that we wanted to ask, what about how Islamic is the Islamic, quote unquote, Republic of Iran? If you have access to this online, look up article 11. Article 11 is fascinating.

Within the constitution, it says, in accordance with the sacred verse of the Quran, your community is a single community, all Muslims form a single nation, and the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran has the duty of formulating its general policies with a view to cultivate the friendship and unity of all Muslim peoples. And it must constantly strive to bring about the political, economic, and cultural unity of the Islamic world. That is very, very interesting.

And if you go to the next article, article 12, it gets a little bit more into the details. The official religion of Iran is Islam and the 12 جعفري (Ja'fari) school in أصول الدين (Usul al-Din) and فقه (Fiqh), and this principle will remain eternally immutable. Other Islamic schools, including Hanafi, Shafi'i, Maliki, Hanbali, Zaydi, are to be accorded full respect and their followers are free to act in accordance with their own jurisprudence in performing their religious rites.

Inshallah, inshallah. That's not what I hear from the Iranians that I know, but it's a nice sentiment. It's there in the constitution.

And one of the things that we will explore throughout the rest of this series, did Iran make good on its promise? You find there's a pan-Islamic sentiment in the constitution of Iran. It had high hopes. You read Article 11 or Article 12, and it's like, wow, this is hopeful. But then when you go down the history and you see what has happened, another story can be told.

Final Verdict: How Islamic Is Iran?

So if we're looking at what's our verdict, is Iran really an Islamic republic or how Islamic of a republic is Iran? The answer is sort of, not really. I mean, if you take Hallaq's argument seriously, any government that exerts for itself sovereignty and complete authority over the religion itself and its interpretation and its scholarship, Islam becomes a tool. Islam becomes a tool of that government. And there's no situation in which Islam or the Sharia or the ulama have the right to impose the state of exception. Rather, the ones that are imposing the state of exception are those in the government.

We're also going to see how the sectarian content of Twelver Shiism that we covered in episode one ends up being the limit to the stated pan-Islamic goals and identity that's laid out in the constitution. So next episode, we're going to cover Iran from a historical lens, the history of the ummah, the history of the ummah trying to set itself free and live in dignity and autonomy from all of its external and internal enemies. Where does Iran fit into that? We'll explore it next time.