Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

154 t CHAPTER SIX
The Islamic Republic of Iran
Ayatollah Khomeini, the prominent Shiite mullah instrumental in
overthrowing the shah of Iran in January 1979, returned home in
triumph from his Paris exile in February of that year to begin the
momentous task not merely of putting in place a new government
but of constructing a new state. What sort of state he preferred
Khomeini had already made clear in his Governance of the Cleric
(Velayat-e Faqih), which had appeared in 1970. In a referendum of
30–31 March 1979, the people were given the stark choice: an
Islamic Republic, yes or no? The answer was an overwhelming
“yes” and the Ayatollah proclaimed its establishment on 1 April of
that year. At the end of the summer an Assembly of Experts, most
of them from Khomeini’s Islamic Republic Party, started work on a
draft constitution, which was submitted to a popular referendum,
again with a simple yes or no choice and again overwhelmingly
approved by the electorate. The Islamic Republic was a reality.
Iran had had a constitution and some form of republican government
since the Constitutional Revolution of 1906–1911, but
this latest version, though it preserved some of the republican
structure, was radically different. It was wrought to ensure that the
rule of law would be the rule of the sharia (as understood by the
Imami Shiites) and that governance would in fact be “governance
of the cleric.” The first principle is asserted in the preamble of
the Constitution and often thereafter. “Legislation, which forms
guidelines for the direction of society” must, the preamble dictates,
“be based on the Quran and the sunna,” and thus the Constitution
is founded on “the fundaments of Islamic principles and guidelines.”
Article 2 ties state legislation to the sharia by describing
legislation as a power reserved to God and acknowledging that
revelation has a fundamental role in the promulgation of laws.
Article 4 states that “all laws and regulations . . . must be based on
Islamic principles.” Article 72 forbids the parliament to pass laws
that “contradict the principles and ordinances of the state religion
and the land.” The same restriction is imposed on local councils,
whose resolutions must agree with “Islamic principles. ” Article
170 makes it incumbent on judges to refuse to implement govern-