I think people may be using "theocracy" in different ways. Is it 1) a society ruled by a religious council of mullahs, or is it 2) a society ruled according to religious laws or guidelines
You can object to 1 and not object to 2, which I suspect is largely the case.
--- On Thu, 6/25/09, Michael Pollak <mpollak at panix.com> wrote:
> From: Michael Pollak <mpollak at panix.com>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Tell them we are democrats (was: freedom to swim)
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Thursday, June 25, 2009, 11:09 PM
>
> On Thu, 25 Jun 2009, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> >> It would be beyond belief if a large number of
> people raised in an Islamic theocracy were opposed to
> Islam.
> >
> > Maybe they're just opposed to the theocracy
>
> As are most of the senior clerics:
>
> http://www.juancole.com/2009/06/lyons-khameneis-past-power-play-against.html
>
> Friday, June 19, 2009
> Informed Comment
>
> Jonathan Lyons writes in a guest op-ed for IC:
>
> Khamenei's Past Power Play against the Clerics May Weaken
> him Now in Confronting the Reformers
>
> As the latest political drama unfolds in
> Iran, Supreme Leader Ali
> Khamenei may yet come to rue the day, in
> 1999, that he sought to muzzle
> one of the nation's most important
> constituencies - the handful of most
> senior clerics who provide spiritual and
> personal guidance to millions
> of pious Shi'ites. The attention of the
> world is rivetted by events in
> the streets of Tehran, Shiraz, and other
> urban centers, but much of the
> real battle is taking place, unseen and
> unremarked, in the seminaries,
> popular shrines, teaching circles, and
> extended clerical households
> that make up the holy Shi'ite city of
> Qom. Here, some of the Shi'ite
> world's most senior theologians, the
> marja-e taqlid, or sources of
> religious-legal authority for the laity,
> zealously guard their
> independence from a state that claims to
> act in the name of Islam.
>
> These grand ayatollahs and their legions
> of aides collect religious
> taxes from individual believers
> worldwide, and then use these funds to
> run seminaries, carry out good works,
> oversee global media operations,
> propagate their views, and provide their
> networks of followers with
> religious rulings to guide their daily
> lives.
>
> Despite its formal name - the Islamic
> Republic of Iran - the political
> system now overseen by Ali Khamenei has
> few supporters among the
> recognized grand ayatollahs and their
> large circle of clerical
> fellow-travellers. In traditional Shi'ite
> thought, legitimate political
> authority may be exercised only by the
> line of the Holy Imams, the last
> of whom went into hiding to escape the
> agents of the rival Sunni
> caliphs and has not been heard from since
> 941. The return of the Hidden
> Imam, which will usher in an era of
> perfect peace and justice on earth,
> is eagerly awaited by all believers.
> Until then, all political power is
> seen as corrupt and corrupting by its
> very nature, and as such it must
> be avoided whenever possible.
>
> Historically, this has served the Shi'ite
> clergy well, forging a close
> bond with the people, as intercessors
> with the state authorities at
> times of acute crisis, a privileged and
> influential position only
> rarely achieved by their Sunni
> counterparts. Yet, it stands in direct
> opposition to Ayatollah Khomeini's
> radical religious notion of direct
> clerical rule and has been the source of
> underlying tensions within the
> clerical class for three decades. The
> dirty little secret of the
> Islamic Republic is the fact that it is
> seen as illegitimate by huge
> swathes of the traditional Shi'ite
> clergy.
>
> Khomeini's personal charisma and his own
> religious standing, as well as
> the revolutionary exigencies of the early
> days of the Islamic Republic,
> drove much of this religious opposition
> into the background. So did
> harsh repression of the few senior
> religious figures who dared to stand
> up to him, including his one-time
> political heir, Grand Ayatollah
> Hossein Ali Montazeri. What's more, the
> powerful quietist tradition in
> Shi'ism reinforced the tendency of many
> theoligians to withdraw into
> their seminaries and to carry on their
> religious work outside the
> structures of a state system that they
> reject. All that began to change
> with the designation in 1989 of Ali
> Khamenei, a mid-ranking cleric with
> no real religious standing or
> intellectual credentials, to succeed
> Khomeni as supreme leader.
>
> Khamenei's rise also saw the rise of the
> "political mullahs" for whom
> political power easily trumps Shi'ite
> religious thought and practice.
> To strengthen his hand, Khamenei was
> summarily "promoted" to the senior
> rank of ayatollah, competely disregarding
> the traditional system of
> clerical advancement based on learning
> and popular acclaim. Second, the
> constitutional role of supreme leader was
> redefined: he was no longer
> required to be recognized as a marja-e
> taqlid, an honor the plodding
> Khamenei could never hope to achieve.
> Most important of all, other
> constitutional changes further
> centralized executive power in the hands
> of the leader, weakened the role of the
> elected president, and
> eliminated altogether the position of
> prime minister. Thus, the stage
> was set for the clerical dictatorship
> that Khamenei has successfully
> forged for himself and his allies, a
> position now put into play by the
> latest events.
>
> Still, the supreme leader has not always
> had his own way, and the
> traditional clergy remain a potentially
> powerful adversary should they
> sense that the time has come to throw
> their support behind a popular
> movement in its struggles against an
> illegitimate state. Ten years ago,
> Khamenei shocked the clerical
> establishment when he sought to interdict
> the enormous financial flows that sustain
> the independence of the grand
> ayatollahs and demanded the diversion of
> the religious taxes and other
> contributions to a centralized state fund
> under his direct control. The
> proposal was shot down, as was an
> earlier, ham-handed attempt to see
> Khamenei included in this elite circle as
> a recognized marja-e taqlid.
> But the bad blood between the ruling
> political mullahs and the main
> body of clergy in Qom remains, and it is
> this influential constituency,
> not the green-clad demonstrators in the
> streets, that holds the
> long-term danger for Iran's ruling elite.
> In a recent statement on his
> Web site, the highly-respected Montazeri,
> a founding father of the
> Islamic Republic turned leading
> dissident, denounced the election
> results as a sham [for more, see this
> link].
>
> Among Montazeri's long-standing critiques
> of the regime is its use of
> religious authority to enforce its
> political will and secure its own
> political power. This is often seen in
> the regime's use of the
> draconian charge of "fighting against
> God," a religious offense
> punishable in theory by death, brought
> against its political opponents.
> In this way, the revolutionary grand
> ayatollah and the more traditional
> clerics share the same essential view:
> political power has corrupted
> the clergy and destroyed its vital link
> to the people. In Montazeri's
> eyes and those of his numerous allies,
> Khamenei's inability to obtain
> the level of learning, popular acclaim,
> and scholarly recognition
> required of a marja-e taqlid has removed
> any trace of the popular
> legitimacy that lies at the heart of a
> true Islamic democracy. So, too,
> does his direct intervention in the
> political affairs of the nation.
>
> Instead, Montazeri and others have
> argued, the supreme leader should be
> elected from among the grand ayatollas by
> his fellow senior clerics,
> and he should provide moral and spiritual
> leadership to the nation
> rather than exercise executive power.
> This would restore to the Shi'ite
> clergy the respected role it has played
> for centuries.
>
> <end excerpt>
>
> Jonathan Lyons, Reuters Tehran bureau
> chief from 1998-2001, is the
> co-author of Answering Only to God: Faith
> and Freedom in 21st-Century
> Iran. His latest book, The House of
> Wisdom: How the Arabs Transformed
> Western Civilization, was published
> earlier this year by Bloomsbury
> Press.
>
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