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Failure Of Political Islam in Iran

Feb 9, 2004
Iranian.ws

The political crisis in Iran grows more complicated by the day. With the resignation Sunday of more than a third of the country's parliament, Iran is in such turmoil now that the possibility of another major upheaval in the Middle East cannot be ruled out.

National legislative elections are scheduled for Feb. 20. But the unelected religious extremists who control much of the Iranian government have used an agency called the Guardian Council to disqualify more than a third of the 8,200 candidates running. Nearly all of those disqualified are reformers — including more than 80 current members of the Majlis, or parliament.

Iran's president, Mohammad Khatami, leads the reformers but has disappointed much of the electorate by his inability to institute change. He threatened to quit if the Guardian Council, guided by Iran's "supreme leader," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, refused to reverse itself on the political candidates it has disqualified.

Since then hundreds of candidates have been reinstated, but that hasn't been enough to satisfy most of the nation — nor should it.

On Tuesday, Khameini was insisting the elections be held as scheduled.

Any vote taken in these circumstances will lack legitimacy. Iran's leaders should understand that their actions are further isolating their country, which already is viewed as a pariah by the international community.

http://www.iranian.ws

A failed regime

February 10, 2004
San Diego Union Tribune

Iran celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Islamic Republic by demonstrating its government has become nonfunctional.

The power struggle between reformers and Islamists that has marked the republic since its inception has become no contest. Asserting their power, the clerics have decided that they – not the people – will determine who sits in parliament, the body that putatively makes laws.

The decision by the so-called Guardian Council to ban some 4,000 people from standing for Feb. 20 elections – including more than 80 reformist incumbents – makes the elections a farce. Recognizing this, 125 parliamentarians resigned, urged that elections be postponed and appealed to President Mohammad Khatami to seek a compromise with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Khatami, popularly elected twice by overwhelming margins, urged Khamenei, Iran's "supreme leader," to intervene with the council to reinstate the banned candidates. Khatami failed.

If ever there were an example of why Islam and democracy have problems, it is Iran. For years, experts on Iran have predicted that reformers in parliament plus a growing student democracy movement would tip the balance toward reform. Modern Iran demanded it.

Instead, the balance has tipped the other way. As reformers have gained in popular strength, the clerics have slammed the door.

The Guardian Council gives fiction to Iranian democracy. Composed of appointed clerics and Islamic lawyers, set up originally to supervise elections, it has turned into a kind of Islamic politburo, deciding who is and is not faithful enough to stand for election.

Reformers have finally recognized that the council makes voting meaningless. In resigning and boycotting elections, they are raising the stakes. They are refusing to give the council and Khamenei more democratic cover. Elections should be called off.

Iranians need to work out these differences before the reform pressures explode. They need to work them out before the lesson that democracy and Islam are incompatible spreads next door to Iraq, which hopes soon to have elections of its own.

It doesn't have to be this way. Turkey's new president is proof that a Muslim can be a democrat. The hybrid that Iran has created is a democratic monster.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/op-ed/editorial2/20040209-9999_mz1ed9bottom.html