Brief yourself on the events in Iran, the people, the issues that will likely effect all of our lives." 
Posted on 10/27/2003 5:26:34 PM PST by Pan_Yans Wife
Will liberal clerics save Iran?
4 July Daily Star
The mullahs who rule Iran are fending off street protests at home and criticism abroad, but the biggest challenge to nearly a quarter century of Islamic rule comes from within their own ranks.
Dissident Shiite clerics are openly challenging the theological bedrock on which Iran’s Islamic Republic stands that in everything from judicial appointments to declaring war, the final say goes to senior clerics unaccountable to public vote. They’re doing so, moreover, in increasingly visible and outspoken ways, through internet websites, media interviews and even the distribution of cassette tape recordings the very technique the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini used to spread his views before the 1979 Iranian revolution.
In Qom, Iran’s theological heart, the tension was plain this past month at an open, empty grave at Hazrat-e- Masumeh, one of the country’s most revered shrines and a place where eminent clerics have traditionally been buried. The grave was intended for Ayatollah Mohammed Sadeq Karbaschi, a leading liberal cleric who died in late May at the age of 90. Government authorities blocked burial at the shrine when they learned that the main speaker would be a cleric who for most Iranians embodies opposition to clerical rule.
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