Militarization of the Iranian Judiciary

Iran: Green Movement ^ | 9/6/09 | Iran: Green Movement

[freedom44]

Sadeq Larijani, a young and inexperienced cleric with close ties to Iran's military and intelligence agencies, has replaced Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi as head of the Iranian judiciary. This appointment is particularly significant, since the judiciary in Iran wields considerable power -- albeit through the approval of Iran's top leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei -- and has a great deal of latitude to make decisions without reference to law or Islamic concepts, especially when "safeguarding the interests of the regime" is deemed necessary.

Sadeq justifies his lack of political experience in a short autobiography on his website. Because he "felt that the West's cultural invasion was no less important than a military invasion," he decided to prepare himself for "confronting the cultural invasion," in part by learning English. He used his new language skills to translate several philosophical works, such as an article by Karl Popper on the philosophy of science and G. J. Warnock's Contemporary Moral Philosophy, the latter of which he annotated and critiqued from the Islamic point of view. Sadeq first made a name for himself by criticizing religious intellectuals such as Abdulkarim Soroush and eventually became one of the main voices of the Islamic Republic. Larijani taught courses on Islamic ideology, both at the seminary in Qom and at various IRGC bases around the country