by Amir Taheri
There were some Greek concepts that Muslim scholars simply did not understand. Averroës (Ibn Rushd) was caught in an endless muddle because he could not imagine what tragedy and comedy meant. Another such concept was equality, the basis for democracy. Isos, the Greek word for “equal,” is used in more than two hundred compound nouns, including isoteos (equality), isologia (equal or free speech), and isonomia (equal treatment). Again, we find no equivalents in any of the Muslim languages—aside from words such as barabari in Persian and sawiyah in Arabic, which mean juxtaposition or leveling.
The idea of equality is unacceptable to Islam, for the nonbeliever cannot be the equal of the believer. Even among believers, only those who subscribe to the three so-called Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—known as the People of the Book (Ahl el-Kitab), are regarded as fully human. (Under Iranian influence, some Muslim scholars also include Zoroastrians among the People of the Book.) Here is the hierarchy of human worth in Islam: At the summit are free male Muslims. next come Muslim male slaves. Then come free Muslim women, followed by Muslim slave women, then free Jewish and/or Christian men, then slave Jewish and/or Christian men, then slave Jewish and/or Christian women. (There is even a hierarchy for animals and plants. Seven animals and seven plants will assuredly go to heaven, while seven others of each will end up in hell.)9
Each category has specific rights to be respected, but not equal rights with others. For example, non-Muslims have the right to produce and consume alcoholic drinks, something forbidden to believers. non-Muslim men also have the privilege of deciding whether or not to grow a beard, a freedom denied to their Muslim counterparts. However, non-Muslim men are not allowed to have more than one wife, and certainly no concubines and/or temporary wives, a privilege granted to their Muslim counterparts. The People of the Book have always been protected and relatively well treated by Muslim rulers, but often under a form of apartheid known as dhimmitude, in which non-Muslims pay a poll tax called the jeziyah. The status of the rest of humanity, those whose faiths are not recognized by Islam or who have no faith, has never been spelled out, although wherever Muslim rulers faced such communities they often treated them with a measure of tolerance and respect (as in the case of Hindus under most Muslim dynasties of India). In the early 1990s, a heated debate took place in the seminaries of Qom, the “holy” city south of Tehran, on whether the Japanese, not being among the People of the Book, had a soul. The majority opinion seemed to suggest they did not.
In Islam, there cannot be democracy, rule of the people, because power belongs only to God: al-hukm l’illah. The man who exercises that power on earth is known as Khalifat al-Allah, the regent of Allah. The Khalifah or caliph, however, cannot act as legislator, since the law has already been spelled out and fixed forever by Allah; it only remains to be interpreted and applied. Islam divides human activities into five categories from the permitted to the sinful, leaving little room for ethical innovations.10 There is some space in which different styles of rule could develop, but no Islamic government can be democratic in the sense of allowing common people equal shares in legislation as citizens.
To say that Islam is incompatible with democracy should not be seen as a disparagement of Islam; in fact, some Muslims would see it as a compliment because they sincerely believe that their idea of rule by God is superior to rule by men. Islam has its own vision of the world and man’s place in it. Islamic tradition holds that Allah has always intervened in the affairs of men, notably by dispatching 124,000 prophets or emissaries to inform the mortals of his wishes and warnings. The great Persian poet Farid ud-Din Attar says:
I have learned of Divine Rule in Yathrib [Medinah].
What need do I have of the wisdom of the Greeks?
A later poet, nasser Bokharai, insists that Islam can never be compatible with “Greek Reason”:
All science of Greece was pushed to one side
When [Muhammad] presented his absolute theory of existence.
Hafez, another medieval Persian poet, blames man’s hobut or Fall on the use of his own judgment against that of God:
I was an angel and my abode was eternal paradise
Adam [i.e. man] brought me to this place of desolation.
The eminent Persian poet Rumi mocks those who claim that men can rule themselves:
You do not reign even over your own beard,
Which grows without your permission.
Therefore, how could you pretend,
To rule on right and wrong?
In Muslim literature, the worst that can happen to man is being forsaken by God. Thus Rumi pleads:
Oh, God, do not leave our affairs to us—For if you do, woe is us.
The expression “abandoned by God” sends shivers down Muslim spines, for it spells the doom not only of individuals but also of entire civilizations. The Koran tells stories of tribes and nations that perished when God left them to their own devices.
Just as Islam brands philosophy as Yunani (Greek), thus alien and dangerous, some Muslims couple the word “democracy” with the adjective gharbi (Western), a foreign import if not an imposition. Most Islamist thinkers regard democracy with horror. Khomeini called it “a form of prostitution” because he who gets the most votes wins the power that properly belongs to Allah. Ali Shariati, a popular Islamist pamphleteer, called democracy “a veil of chastity worn by a whore.” Sayyed Qutb, the Egyptian who became the ideological mentor of al-Qaeda, spent a year in the United States in the 1950s. There he found “a nation that has forgotten God and been forsaken by Him; an arrogant nation that wants to rule itself.” In 2003, Yussuf al-Ayyeri, one of the leading theoreticians of today’s Islamist movement, published a book in which he warned that the real danger to Islam did not come from American tanks and helicopter gunships in Iraq but from the idea of democracy and rule by the people.
The Pakistani preacher Abul-Ala Maudoodi, another of the Islamist theoreticians now fashionable, dreamed of a political system in which human beings would act as automatons in accordance with rules set by Allah. He said that Allah has arranged man’s biological functions in such a way that their operation is beyond human control. For our non-biological functions, notably our politics, Allah has also set rules that we have to discover and apply once and for all so that our societies can be on autopilot, so to speak. Sheikh Muhammad bin Ibrahim al-Jubair, a Saudi theologian, claimed that the root cause of all contemporary ills was the spread of democracy. “Only one ambition is worthy of Islam,” he liked to say, “the ambition to save the world from the curse of democracy and to teach men that they cannot rule themselves by manmade laws. Mankind has strayed from the path of God; we must return to that path or face certain annihilation.” The Indian Sunni leader Enayatallah Mashreqi, influenced by Leninism in the 1930s, created the Khaksar (Down to Earth) movement to seize political power and save the subcontinent from “contamination” by the “Western disease of democracy” in which Hindus and Muslims would be treated as citizens with equal rights. He could not understand a system in which “a cow-worshipping Hindu” would have the same rights as “a proper Musulman.”
Those who claim that Islam is compatible with democracy should know that they are not flattering Muslims; many would feel insulted by such an assertion. How, they would ask, could a manmade form of government, invented by the heathen Greeks, be compared to Islam, God’s final word to man, the only true faith?
Islam rejects the idea of granting “the common folk” a decisive say in the affairs of the ummah. On at least twenty occasions, the Koran describes the majority of people as “ignorant and uninformed” (aktharhum layaalamun). On almost as many occasions, it describes them as “unwise,” “lacking the power of discernment,” “ungrateful,” “corrupt,” “misguided,” and “deniers of the Truth.” In at least seven suras of the Koran, Allah advises his Prophet not to take the views of the majority into account: “For if you follow the majority, they shall lead you away from the path of Allah.”
In t
he past fourteen centuries, Muslims on occasion have created successful societies without democracy. Conversely, there is no guarantee that democracy will not produce disastrous results. (Hitler was democratically elected.) Democracy has always had numerous critics and enemies, even among its own citizens.
In ancient Athens, the birthplace of democracy, Plato viewed the concept of rule by the people with skepticism. The Protagoras has Socrates ridiculing the title character’s claim that democracy is the best form of government. Socrates points out that men always call on experts to deal with specific tasks, but when it comes to the more important matters concerning the city, they allow every citizen an equal say.
In response, Protagoras relates the founding myth of democracy: When man was created, he lived a solitary existence and was unable to protect himself and his kin against more powerful beasts. Consequently, men came together to secure their lives by establishing cities; but the cities were torn by strife. Zeus realized that things were going badly because men did not have the art of managing a city (politike techne). Without this art, man was heading for destruction. So Zeus called in his messenger, Hermes, and asked him to deliver two gifts to mankind: aidos and dike. Aidos is a sense of shame and a concern for the good opinion of others. Dike is respect for the rights of others and implies a sense of justice that seeks civil peace through adjudication. Before setting off, Hermes asked a decisive question: Should I deliver this new art to a select few, as was the case with all other arts, or give it to everyone? Zeus replied with no hesitation: To everyone. Let all have their share! “Hence it comes about, Socrates,” concludes Protagoras, “that people in the cities, and especially in Athens, listen only to experts in matters of expertise, but when they meet for consultation on the political art, i.e. on the general question of government, everybody participates.”
Traditional Islamic political thought is closer to Socrates than to Protagoras. The common folk, al-awam, are regarded as “animals” (al-awam kal anaam), so the interpretation of the divine law is reserved only for experts. In the Islamic Republic of Iran, there is even a body called the Assembly of Experts (Majlis Khobreghan). Political power, like many other domains, is reserved for the Select, or khawas, who in some Sufi traditions are even exempt from the ritual rules of the faith. The “common folk” must do as they are told either by the text and tradition or by fatwas issued by religious experts. Khomeini referred to the common folk as mustazafeen (the feeble ones), thus putting a majority of Iranians in the same category as orphans, vulnerable widows, and the mentally handicapped.
In the Greek tradition, once Zeus has taught men the art of politics, he does not attempt to rule them. They are largely on their own. Zeus and other gods do intervene in earthly matters, but always episodically and mostly in pursuit of pleasures and childish pranks. Polytheism by its nature is pluralistic and tolerant, open to new gods and to new views of old gods. One could mock Zeus as a promiscuous old rake henpecked and cuckolded by Juno, or worship him as justice deified—in the same city and at the same time. This would not be possible in monotheism, especially Islam, the most militantly monotheistic of the three Abrahamic faiths. The God of monotheism does not discuss matters or negotiate with mortals. He decrees—the Ten Commandments on stone tablets, or the Koran that was already composed and completed before Allah sent his Hermes, Archangel Gabriel, to dictate it to Muhammad. The Koran starts with a command: Read! In the name of Thy God the Most High!
Islam is about certainty, while democracy is about doubt. In democracy there is changing minds and sides, but there is no changing of one’s mind in faith. To use a more technical terminology: democracy creates a series, faith builds a nexus. Democracy is like people waiting for a bus. They are of different backgrounds and have different interests. We do not care what their religion is or how they vote. All they have in common is their desire to get on that bus. And they get off at whatever stop they wish. Faith, however, is internalized, turned into a nexus. It controls man’s every thought and move, even in his deepest privacy. Democracy is serial and polytheistic. People are free to believe whatever they like and engage in whatever religious rituals they wish, provided they do not infringe on others’ freedoms in the public domain. Islam cannot allow people to do as they think best, even in the privacy of their bedrooms, because God is always present, everywhere, all-hearing and all-seeing (Sam’ee wa Baseer).
Khomeini’s magnum opus, Hal al-Masa’el (“Solution to Problems”), suggests “the right way of doing things” for every imaginable human activity, from cutting one’s nails to copulating, belching and farting, and going to war. The ayatollah tells us that when entering a lavatory, we have to put our left foot first. And when caught in a “swarm of locusts,” we must not try to eat the locust that has once managed to escape from our hand. If we have had sex with our donkey, we have to take the beast to another village and sell it to an individual we do not know. If a man is sleeping in a room above his aunt’s room, he must be careful that if there is an earthquake and he falls through the ceiling on top of his aunt, he does not copulate with her in the confusion; and if he nevertheless does copulate with her and a female child ensues, he does not take her as a concubine. The ayatollah’s advice is: do nothing on your own; when faced with any problem, ask the experts. Allah has provided answers for all questions ever asked or to be asked until the end of time.
There is consultation in Islam, as the Koran stipulates: Wa shawerhum fil amr. (And consult them in matters.) But the consultation thus recommended is about specifics only, never about the overall design of society. At the same time, Islamic consultation cannot be institutionalized. The individual believer asks questions from the “expert” and receives answers, but then it is up to him whether or not to do as the “expert” suggests. The ruler consults anyone he likes, but in the end, the decision is his and his alone.
In democracy, there is a constitution that could be changed or amended. In Islam there is the Koran, the immutable word of God, beyond change or amendment. Islam means surrendering oneself to the will of Allah in exchange for the safety and security he offers. The typical Muslim dreams of ‘afiyah, which, roughly translated, means “exemption from divine punishment.” To achieve ‘afiyah you have to do exactly as told, at every moment of your life. That means constant awareness of God throughout one’s waking hours. The Persian poet Rashid Vatvat (twelfth century) put it this way: “Remember God, so that He forgets you!”
In the Koran, the word for belief is iman (security) and for the believer mu’min (one who is secure). The ultimate promise of Islam is to lead men back to the security of the unborn fetus in its mother’s womb. The fetus has no cares; it is cared for by forces it does not know or understand. It is no accident that the two adjectives used most to describe Allah, al-Rahman (Master of the Wombs) and al-Rahim (the Wombster), both come from the same stem, raham (the womb). Only by implication have these terms, invoked at the start of all but one of the Koran’s 114 suras, come to mean also “the merciful and the compassionate.” (The name of Abraham, common grandfather of monotheism, means “Father of the Wombs” in Hebrew and Arabic.)
Mehdi Bazargan, the man who became prime minister in the first government set up by Khomeini, described the system created by the ayatollah in these terms:
His Holiness the Imam [Khomeini] has described Islamic government as one in which the Supreme Guide acts as the immovable guardian of immature people. The source of this guardian-ship is the same Divine Mandate that has come to him from the Twelve Pure Imams. Therefore, just as an immature child has no right to dismiss his guardian, people, too, have no right to raise questions about the decisions of the Supreme Guide.11
To his credit, Khomeini had never tried to hide his contempt for “the common folk.” In his book Walayat Faqih (“Custodianship of the Theologian”) he wrote: “People are ignorant, incomplete, imperfect and in need of perfection. . . . There is no difference between the Custodian of the community and the guardian of children.”12 Khomeinist th
eoreticians have always dismissed elections as a trick invented by the West to give people the illusion of sharing power. Ali Shariati devoted a good part of his voluminous output to denouncing the idea of democracy as anti-Islamic. “What is the value of the votes of people who sell it for a ride or a bellyful of soup? And that is without mentioning the votes of the enslaved sheep, the votes of the donkeys and cows,” he wrote in his book Umma and Imamate. “Leadership cannot be born from the votes of the common folk, a common choice that emerges from the misguided masses. The imam chooses his goals based on the Truth. Which Truth? The Truth revealed by Islamic ideology.”13
The idea of separating right and morality is alien to religious thought. It started making inroads in the West from the seventeenth century onwards, first thanks to Hobbes, and later, to Spinoza, Thomasius, and Goethe (in his Sayings and Truth). In Islam, however, that separation has not taken place; and because of Islam’s nature as an all-encompassing doctrine, it may never take place.
6
Iran and Anti-Iran
The regime that Khomeini invented is called the Islamic Republic of Iran. It would be more accurate, however, to say the Islamic Republic in Iran. Khomeini and his associates regarded Iran as just a part of the broader Islamic ummah. They had no particular feeling for Iran as a land and a civilization, let alone an ideal. The late writer Reza Mazluman, murdered in France by hit men from Tehran, quipped that the Islamic Republic of Iran was not an official political designation but “the name of the disease that has afflicted our nation.”