Posted on 09/03/2006 11:29:12 AM PDT by freedom44
Top News Story
Xinhua
TEHRAN, Iran — Iranian cleric Mohammad Ali Abtahi has an impeccable résumé. He was a top adviser to the former president, and his father is a grand ayatollah, the highest religious honor a Shiite Muslim can attain. While Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's doctrine is still supported by some, including Mohsen Gharavian, above, a midlevel cleric and editor of the magazine Ma'rafaat, clerics such as the Grand Ayatollah Ali Saanei, below, who was Iran's general prosecutor in the first years after the revolution, now oppose the government. Yet despite his establishment credentials, he has a political vision that threatens the pillars of Iranian society.
"I believe that the only way to save Iran is to bring about reforms that would fully democratize society," Abtahi writes in his widely viewed Persian-language Web log. While his statement might sound positively bland in the English-language blogosphere, it is cause for great ferment in Iran, placing Abtahi in the vanguard of religious dissent that challenges the very foundations of Iran's government. Since Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his followers overthrew the U.S.-backed shah in 1979, American policymakers have been trying to undermine the cleric-dominated government that he installed. Now, independent of U.S. desires, influential members of Iran's religious elite are clamoring to achieve the same goal. They believe that the system's theological underpinnings are no longer valid.
"In Iran, you see two different understandings of Islam, one that masks democracy, human rights and tolerance, another that wants to foster them," said Abtahi, speaking about the theological rift that exists between Iranian clerics who run the government and those who have been relegated to the margins of power. "We are trying to get the balance back (because) those in power have become blind to justice."
A Daily Briefing of Major News Stories on Iran:
hmmm...sounds like more of a reformist than anti-regimist
Somebody clone this guy.
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That's what is called Heresy 101.
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