This article was first
published in the current print edition of Newsweek.
With Mahmoud Ahmadinejad securely in power, Iranian
reformists have clearly lost the battle for Iran's presidency. Yet they could
yet win the larger battle against Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who may well be the
last all-powerful Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic. A not-so-quiet debate
is now brewing inside the seminaries of Qum,
Iran's
religious capital, over how to abolish the post, which has been controversial
since its creation in 1979.
Critics charge that the position--whose legitimacy is
derived directly from God, rather than the people--is based on a radical
interpretation of Islam, and their voices have grown in the wake of this year's
contested election. Grand Ayatollah Hussein Ali Montazeri, a top Shiite scholar
who has become one of the regime's most vocal opponents, has compared allegiance
to the Supreme Leader to an act of polytheism, while another prominent scholar
wrote in an open letter to Khamenei that "your religious legitimacy has
vanished." This view is shared by the majority of today's seminary
students, according to Mohsen Kadivar, an Islamic scholar at Duke University.
Admittedly, few clerics have yet to openly call for the
abolition of the post, which would be an act of treason. But their intentions
are clear enough that even a supposedly supreme leader now has reason to worry.
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