Seminaries have been among the most popular targets for Iranian protesters to set on fire. The Islamic Republic is a clerical regime, and the oppressed target the clergy. Hostility toward the clerical regime now bleeds into animosity towards Islam itself, evident in the street assaults on random clerics and seminary arsons during the current protests.
Iranians have become the third least Islamic society in the Greater Middle East, after India and Israel.
The clergy should nonetheless have reason to support the people. First rule of the jurist (velayat-e faqih) is an obscure Shi’ite doctrine, and most grand ayatollahs historically reject it. Even more obscure is absolute rule by the juris (velayat-e motlaqeh-e faqih), the current form. Before ascending to the leadership, Ali Khamenei was among the opponents of the principle of absolute rule. The regime has invested in promoting the principle in its half-century control of the mosque, promoting clerics who agree with it. That many senior clergy continue to resist the concepts, however, affirms the double obscurity of the absolute rule theory. They reject it on theological principle, even as supporting it would unlock political power given government control over seminaries. Inside Iran, grand ayatollahs such as Javad Alavi-Borujerdi, Assadollah Bayat Zanjani, and Yasubeddin Rastegar Juybari continue to implicitly or explicitly oppose it. Many Shi’ite clergy put faith above power, despite the few who, like Khamenei, justify dictatorship in religion.
Velayat-e faqih’s implementation has been a disaster for Shi’ite Islam. Iranians have become the third least Islamic society in the Greater Middle East, after India and Israel. A 2020 survey found that only one-third of Iranians identify as Shi’ite, with an additional 8 percent as Sunni or Sufi.Underground church membership is growing. Fifty thousand out of 75,000 mosques have closed because of a lack of attendance. Only 13 percent of respondents in a leaked government poll said that they always read the Qur’an. Iranian women’s fertility rate is 1.6, an indicator of the decline of religion.
Ironically, however, the counterrevolution’s success may rest on clergy. The freedom movement’s success depends on the refusal of the oppression apparatus to stand down, if not defect. Fatwas against murdering protestors would help encourage security forces to defect. A challenge to the regime by religious leaders could deliver the coup de grâce to the Islamic Republic.
[Young Iranians] see religion as an impediment to progress, not a necessary component of a healthy society.
Young Iranians fear religion. In conversations, they warn that the next regime should ban religious accommodation in public, fearing infringement on the rights of the non-religious. They believe that the silver lining of the Islamic Republic’s rule is that Iranians have forever shed backward religious beliefs and practices. They see religion as an impediment to progress, not a necessary component of a healthy society.
The clergy should worry about the future. Today, most Iranians are secular. A secular society eventually becomes a nihilistic and finds purpose in national greatness and conquest. Russia is a contemporary example. After forty-seven years of totalitarianism, Iranians have lost their moral base, and they do not have religion to find it.
The next Iranian regime will be secular. The unsettled question is whether it will be the American version with separation of mosque and state, or French-style laïcité.
The clergy must now choose. Reason should point them toward the people, but fear paralyzes them to the detriment of everyone. If they overcome their fears and join their compatriots, they can save themselves, have a place in the future of Iran, and begin the necessary process of repairing the relationship between religion and society. The mosque is worth saving, though, although its custodians are running out of time to do so.
