| Iran says Saudis can curb divisive religious statements Tehran : Iran announced on Sunday that the Saudi Arabian government has the ability to counter those deviant Salafi and Wahabbi clerics who have called for the demolition of Shia shrines. Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad-Ali Hosseini said such statements will cause a "schism in the Islamic world."[1] Such statements are far from the declared position of Saudi officials, and Iran is certain that Saudi officials have the power to prevent such statements from being disseminated, Hosseini told reporters at his weekly press briefing. Some Saudi Wahabbi clerics have stated that the Shia shrines in Iraq are a manifestation of polytheism and should be destroyed. Ayatollah Mohammad-Ali Taskhiri, the secretary general of the World Forum for the Proximity of Islamic Schools of Thought, said such fatwas, issued by errant Wahabbi clerics, will allow the global arrogance (imperialist powers) to take advantage of the situation to sow discord among Muslims.[2] And this is not the first time that these aberrant clerics have made such statements, Taskhiri told the Mehr News Agency on Sunday. "This group consists of takfiri people who reject anything which doesn"t correspond to their views," he added. "Wahabbis think that holy sites are a manifestation of polytheism," Taskhiri said. "They deem anyone who opposes them to be polytheist. They believe Shias, Sunnis, and the Islamic world are polytheist." Takfiris are people who believe they are the only true Muslims. Ayatollah Taskhiri went on to say that nobody pays attention to what they say.[3] "They have sold themselves to the enemies of the Islamic world." [4] Tehran Friday prayer leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ahmad Khatami, who is also a member of the Assembly of Experts, said here on Sunday that Muslims are expected to protest against these "mercenaries". The Foreign Ministry should inform the Saudi Arabian ambassador to Tehran that Iran regards the Saudi government as an accomplice in this case, Khatami added. |
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[1] Will cause?
[2] It's a little sad, but thoroughly typical of peccatum originale, that the first time one runs into a grandiosity like "the World Forum for the Proximity of Islamic Schools of Thought," it should be trying to put somebody at a distance, maybe even positively excommunicate her. (Perhaps, though, what the wahhábiyya do shouldn't be accounted "thought," nor the covens and conventicles where the deluded assemble to do their thing dignified with the name of "schools"?)
[3] Mohammed-‘Alí Cardinal Taskhírí doesn't exactly logically contradict himself, I suppose, but still, something odd is going on when an orator assures his audience that nobody does exactly what he is doing when he says nobody does it. Only Captain Nemo could pull that trick off with proper éclat.
To be sure, "Takfír? What's that? Never heard of it!" might not make effective agitprop either.
[4] His Eminence skates on thin ice at this point, if one may venture so outlandishly boreal a flower of rhetoric. Are not the salaries of [these people that nobody pays any attention to] paid by Messrs. Les Altesses Royales du Ryad?
The difficulty is not so much that Cardinal Taskhírí should consider Their Bedouin Majesties to be "enemies of the Islamic World." That's more or less par for the course, I'm afraid. But here His Eminence is quoted as good as uttering the insult flat-out in the course of an article that solicits a favour from the Great Cardboard Kingdom, asking it to please call off its theological attack dogs. It's just as well that whatever scribbler at the Tehran Times put this little confection together did not care to sign his name to it.
[5] It looks as if ’Ahmad Cardinal Khatamí was not cut out for a diplomatic career. Presumably nobody at the Islamic Republic's foreign ministry has to do thus-and-such simply because that one particular Most Rev. says it is a thing that should be done. However given the peculiar political structures of the evil Qommies, one may worry that this presumption is rebuttable.
It would be interesting to learn what His Eminence says when sticking more closely to his own appointed last. What is this "case" that he speaks of? What have these enemies of the Islamic world done that is forbidden by the Divine Law, or failed to do that the DL makes obligatory? The facts of the case appear to be that the Great Cardboard Kingdom has allowed certain of its court preachers to state "that the Shia shrines in Iraq are a manifestation of polytheism and should be destroyed." Such a human event is so very plausible that one feels scarcely tempted to dispute that it actually happened.
But what is the law applicable to the case? Exactly what are the ’adilla, "arguments," that Cardinal Khatamí deployed to derive the Divine Law ruling, ’an yastanbita l-hukma sh-shar‘iyya, that les altesses du Ryad stand in violation of?
It is no good dragging in westoxicated notions such as that even the mercenary court preachers of Sa‘údiyya are entitled to the protections of Amendment I, or self-evidently endowed with a "conscience," or with the Natural Right of Personal Judgment. That sort of thing would be meaningless to all parties involved in His Eminence's "case," with the possible exception of some Foreign Office officials at both Tehran and Riyádh, and even they would only be aware that what is left of Western Enlightenment will probably view the matter through some such alien spectacles, should we ever view it at all. Under Ja‘farí jurisprudence, though, such awareness might conceivably claim some standing at Qom, though not at Riyádh. That is to say, the principal of taqiyya, "dissimulation" or the like, might come into play, allowing His Eminence's derivation of the Divine Law ruling to be (not, of course, in any sense reversed or annulled, but only) hushed up if public or diplomatic proclamation of it would lead to grave damage or danger to the (alone true) Muslims. Cardinal Khatamí would have to recognize that as a move permitted by the rules of his own game, although he might well think it a bad move. Indeed, it probably would in fact be a bad move, insofar as the wicked West, at least, is likely to think better of those who want to leave other folks' shrines undemolished than of those who bark and bellow for demolition.
As to danger and damage potentially emanating from the Great Cardboard Kingdom itself, those who profess themselves boldly unterrorized of the militant GOP are not likely to be afraid of lesser opponents. "Nobody pays attention to what they say" sufficiently indicates the general contempt in which most evil Qommies hold the royal moderationites of Sa‘údiyya. There is no call to invoke taqiyya on that account, surely! The move would be perfectly regular, but it makes no practical sense in the present circumstances. Still, if it did make sense, exactly who inside the Islamic Republic's constitutional framework would have the last word about making it is not clear to this outsider.
One keeps thinking of things that are immaterial as regards Divine Law rulings. What is material? What is the law of His Eminence's case? Are the Cardboard Kings conceived of as masters to be held responsible for all the misdoings of their slaves? Or at any rate for those slave misdoings that "are far from the declared position of Saudi officials"? That would make sense, but how would the istinbát of it go? Suppose an ordinary private-sector master with a literal slave, where would a parallel "declared position" come in? Perhaps when the slave's misdoings constitute a breach of some definite contract entered into by his owner? No, that can't be right, because a "declared position" is clearly not a contract, the act of declaration being unilateral and not negotiated or contractual. If the wicked Qommies were to send a note to Riyádh pointing out to the Cardboard Kings a certain discrepancy between their "declared position" and their slaves' behavior, what would the Divine Law status of such a note be? "You really ought to do what you said you were going to do" sounds a very plausible maxim, yet has it anything at all to do with the Divine Law of ’Islám? The theological attack dogs would almost certainly point out to their owners in a flash that no humanly declared position can ever alter the fact "that the Shia shrines in Iraq are a manifestation of polytheism and should be destroyed."
Since the Great Cardboard Kingdom does not encumber itself with a constitution, there is no obscurity at all about who decides whether or not State action should be taken on the basis of Divine Law facts. Les altesses royales du Ryad will decide, and nobody else. This arrangement is far simpler than having a system with elaborate epicycles involving "Expediency Councils" and the like. It can also claim to be more traditional inside ’Islám than the elaborate machineries that the former Safavids have evolved for themselves since the year 1323/1906, not to mention the legal and constitutional complications borrowed straight from Europe by most other current régimes of the Greater Levant. Yet here again, what do either simplicity or tradition count for in the Divine Law derivations of the wahhábiyya?
Or of the hanbaliyya, if that traditional school be in fact adhered to by the theological attack dogs at Riyádh. It's rather typical of the GCK that exactly where its Divine Law jurisprudence comes from is a question shrouded in mist. The evil Qommies no doubt suppose that in Sa‘údiyya a mercenary ‘ulamá’ simply write fatáwá to gratify the latest whims of their sham-royal masters. The actual situation must be at least a bit different from that, however, unless we speculate that the Cardboard Kings are Machiavellian enough to dictate one thing to their theological attack dogs and quite a different "declared position" to their diplomats. According to our own received principle, such a speculation is to be rejected, and even les altesses royales du Ryad taken to say more or less what they mean, and more or less mean what they say, except when obviously lying to their subjects in dynastic self-defense. Like the GOP geniuses, whom they resemble in a number of other interesting ways, the Cardboard Kings scarcely seem intelligent enough to be cynics.
It would be easy to impute cynicism to the evil Qommies, and a dogma like that of taqiyya may seem to invite some such imputation. Nevertheless it is clear enough that the Twelvers are not in fact cynics, for it is inconceivable, to any sane adult, that all those ten thousands of mullahs could be acting together in a conspiracy. That is a thousand times less likely than that the Cardboard Kings simply hire mercenaries to make up Divine Law derivations for them ad hoc. Since the latter view is to be rejected, the former must be rejected a fortiori. BGKB.
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