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Current Trends in Islamist Ideology $12.95 C u r r e n t Current Trends T r e n d s i in Islamist Ideology n I s l a m i s t I d VOLUME 10 e o l o g y I THE IRANIAN REVOLUTION IN THE NEW ERA / Saïd Amir Arjomand V o I l WHY IRAN’S ISLAMIC GOVERNMENT IS UNRAVELING / Jamsheed K. Choksy u m I THE IRANIAN CLERGY’S SILENCE / Mehdi Khalaji e 1 0 I REFORM VERSUSRADICALISM IN THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC / David Menashri I THE SHIITES OF SAUDI ARABIA / Joshua Teitelbaum I IRAN’S CENTRAL ASIA TEMPTATIONS / Sébastien Peyrouse & Sadykzhan Ibraimov I JORDAN’S ENCOUNTER WITH SHIISM / Khalid Sindawi I THE CHRISTMAS DAY BOMBER / Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens & Jacob Amis I PROFILE: HIZB UT-TAHRIR IN THE UK / Houriya Ahmed & Hannah Stuart I GENDER IDEOLOGY AND THE JAMAAT-E-ISLAMI / Niloufer Siddiqui H I THE PRIMACY OF VALUES / A Conversation with Ibrahim al-Houdaiby u d s o n CENTER ON ISLAM, DEMOCRACY, AND I n THE FUTURE OF THE MUSLIM WORLD s HUDSON INSTITUTE t HUDSON i t www.CurrentTrends.org IN S T I T U T E u Center on Islam, Democracy, and t e the Future of the Muslim World Current Trends in Islamist Ideology volume 10 Edited by Hillel Fradkin, Husain Haqqani (on leave), Eric Brown, and Hassan Mneimneh hudson institute Center on Islam, Democracy, and the Future of the Muslim World ©2010 Hudson Institute, Inc. All rights reserved. ISSN: 1940-834X For more information about obtaining additional copies of this or other Hudson Institute publica- tions, please visit Hudson’s website at www.hudson.org/bookstore or call toll free: 1-888-554-1325. ABOUT HUDSON INSTITUTE Hudson Institute is a nonpartisan, independent policy research organization dedicated to innovative research and analysis that promotes global security, prosperity, and freedom. Founded in 1961 by strategist Herman Kahn, Hudson Institute challenges conventional thinking and helps manage strate- gic transitions to the future through interdisciplinary studies in defense, international relations, eco- nomics, health care, technology, culture, and law. With offices in Washington and New York, Hud son seeks to guide public policymakers and global leaders in government and business through a vigorous program of publications, conferences, policy briefings, and recommendations. Hudson Institute is a 501(c)(3) organization financed by tax-deductible contributions from private individuals, corporations, foundations, and by government grants. Visit www.hudson.org for more information. ABOUT THE CENTER ON ISLAM, DEMOCRACY, AND THE FUTURE OF THE MUSLIM WORLD Hudson Institute’s Center on Islam conducts a wide-ranging program of research and analysis ad- dressed to the political, religious, social, and other dynamics within majority Muslim countries and Muslim populations around the world. A principal focus of the Center’s work is the ideological dy- namic within Islam and the connected issue of how this political and religious debate impacts both Islamic radicalism and the Muslim search for moderate and democratic alternatives. Through its re- search, which includes collaboration with partners throughout the Muslim world and elsewhere, the Center aims to contribute to the development of effective policy options and strategies to win the worldwide struggle against radical Islam. For more information, visit www.CurrentTrends.org Contents 5 / The Iranian Revolution in the New Era Saïd Amir Arjomand 21 / Why Iran’s Islamic Government is Unraveling Jamsheed K. Choksy 42 / The Iranian Clergy’s Silence Mehdi Khalaji 56 / Reform Versus Radicalism in the Islamic Republic David Menashri 72 / The Shiites of Saudi Arabia Joshua Teitelbaum 87 / Iran’s Central Asia Temptations Sébastien Peyrouse and Sadykzhan Ibraimov 102 / Jordan’s Encounter with Shiism Khalid Sindawi 116 / The Making of the Christmas Day Bomber Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens and Jacob Amis 143 / Profile: Hizb ut-Tahrir in the UK Houriya Ahmed and Hannah Stuart 173 / Gender Ideology and the Jamaat-e-Islami Niloufer Siddiqui 194 / The Primacy of Values A Conversation with Ibrahim al-Houdaiby The Iranian Revolution in the New Era By Saïd Amir Arjomand he june 2009 electoral putsch in iran ushered in a new phase in the Islamic Republic’s now thirty-one year long history. With the apparent backing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the hard- line incumbent presidential candidate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the election’s winner—a result that seemed impossible to Tmany, and that immediately provoked a massive wave of protests in Tehran and other urban areas throughout the country. While several well-documented allega- tions of fraud were made public, these were summarily dismissed by the Guardian Council, the Islamic regime’s most powerful organ of clerical rule. And then the regime’s security services, again with the backing of the supreme leader, were un- leashed to systematically and violently suppress the protest movements. In August 2009, Ahmadinejad was officially sworn in as president by Supreme Leader Khamenei. This took place amidst a series of show trials featuring forced confessions by protestors, as well as rumors of systematic rape and torture at the make shift Kahrizak prison, where scores of demonstrators had been locked up. In the eyes of the Islamic Republic’s defenders in the clerical establishment and elsewhere, the electoral putsch and the subsequent suppression of the protestors repre sented a vitally necessary return to the theocratic regime’s founding revolu- tionary Islamic principles. For example, Ahmadinejad’s mentor, Ayatollah Moham- mad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, declared the Khomeinist principle of the guardianship of the jurist (velayat-e faqih) the true spirit of the Islamic Revolution and the true basis of the Islamic Republic, and alleged that the demonstrators who were fomenting the crisis aimed to eliminate the Islamic Republic altogether. It is because the supreme jurist partakes of the rays of light emanating from the Hidden, Twelfth THE IRANIAN REVOLUTION IN THE NEW ERA ■ 5 Imam, Mesbah-Yazdi asserted, that “the people recognize him as the legitimate lieu- tenant of the Lord of the Age and consider obedience to him likewise incumbent upon themselves.” Therefore, he added, “when the president is appointed and con- firmed by leadership, he becomes the supreme leader’s agent and the rays of light emanating from the Lord of the Age are shed on him as well.”1 Other clerics rallied to provide their unflinching support for the Islamic regime and the principles upon which it was established. In his Friday sermon on January 1, 2010, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, the Secretary of the Guardian Council, called the opposition protesters “flagrant examples of the corrupt on earth” and urged their ex- ecution, just as the counterrevolutionaries were “in the early days of the revolution.”2 Throughout the post-election crisis, Jannati and others of the Guardian Council provided Supreme Leader Khamenei and President Ahmadinejad (himself a for mer Jannati protégé) with some powerful legal instruments that the regime then used to systematically crush the opposition. Equally important support for the theocra tic regime came from the judiciary, including both the judiciary’s outgoing head, Ayatollah Mahmoud Shahrudi, as well as its incoming head, Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani. While the events of the summer of 2009 helped to revitalize the revolutionary spirit among some in the clerical establishment, they also made clear that the Islamic Revolution within Iran had entered an entirely new era. In this new era, the clerical estab lishment’s political dominance, rather than being reinvigorated, has actually been declining relative to a newly ascendant political class of hardliners supported by commanders in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. This has dramatically trans- formed the regime’s internal power structure, with far-reaching consequences for the very constitutional principle on which the Islamic Republic was founded—that the supreme jurist should exercise absolute sovereignty over the country. It has also given rise to a wide-ranging political clash among the Islamic Republic’s aging lay revolutionaries and clerics over the true legacy and future direction of the revolution and the republic it created. Perhaps most decisively, the electoral putsch provoked an unexpectedly vigorous and astonishingly persistent wave of popular protest, which has come to be known as the “Green Movement,” and which has been swelling up from a new generation whose political sensibilities and aspirations are post-Islamist and post-revolutionary. All of these developments among others will have dramatic consequences for Iran and for the region as a whole in the decades ahead. hile the islamic republic was established on the khomeinist revolutionary principle that Shiite clerics should rule, the 2009 electoral W putsch brought about a major transformation in the mosque-state rela- tionship. In fact, some of the most scathing criticism of the supreme jurist and the 6 ■ CURRENT TRENDS IN ISLAMIST IDEOLOGY / VOL. 10 regime as a whole came from high-ranking members of the clerical establishment itself. The late Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri—a scholar of great prestige and influence, who had also been designated by Khomeini to succeed him as supreme leader—fiercely condemned the electoral fraud and declared Ahmadine- jad’s government illegitimate. Montazeri’s condemnations were subsequently en- dorsed by Ayatollah Yusof Sanei, another scholar who had been close to Khomeini. The radical cleric, Hojjat al-Islam Hadi Ghaffari, who had been the founder of the Iranian Hezbollah in 1979, unleashed an especially vehement attack against Khamenei, and accused the supreme leader and his henchmen of “turning religion into lying.”3 To understand the extent to which the relationship between the Iranian govern- ment and the Shiite clerical hierarchy has changed over the past year, it is useful to look back in history—in fact, to far beyond the founding of the Islamic Republic thirty years ago. Shiism was established as Iran’s state religion through a Mahdist revolution in 1501, which was led by Shah Ismail the Safavid.
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