In his Friday Sermon, the Ayatollah Khameini probably used the word “Establishment” 200 times. Did the New York Times catch on? Nope. Ayatollah Khameini’s Friday Prayer of 6/19/09 was probably his most watched speech, worldwide, since his ascension to the role of Guardian of the Jurist. The Ayatollah constantly referred to his regime as the “Islamic Establishment” while solidifying his support of the “landslide” of Ahmadinejad’s victory and taking the opportunity to indirectly threaten Moussavi’s protesting supporters with bloodshed if they continue their agitations. Khameini noted that all 4 presidential candidates were from within the Islamic Establishment, and went on to chide Western and Zionist attempts to frame the flap on Tehran’s streets as a fight between the Mullocracy and “outside forces” as a ludicrous stab. Whatsmore – He is right! The idea that Moussavi is a reformer is absurd, considering that when interviewed by Western reporters Moussavi claimed that he would not end the Iranian drive to Nuclear Power if he were elected. The concept of Democracy and Dictatorship as on the table, in what Walid Phares has referred to as the Iranian “show”, according to Western idealists and even many of the youth agitating and aligning themselves against the current regime in the strikingly silent street marches which have already led to death and bloodshed on a small scale, is a false premise. Western thinkers are comparing the situation on today’s Persian Streets to that faced by Reagan in which he sided with the Polish Street against the tyranny of its leadership decades ago. This false comparison is striking. Fox News’ conservo-catholics and pluralist advocates in the West like Ralph Peters are serving up President Obama’s silence on the issue as a tacit complicity and acceptance of Tyranny. Sadly, the Western Pundits are far out of their depths in their reaction to the Iranian election and in their positions of solidarity with the anti-Ahmadenijad alliance. In all reality, hope has clouded the minds of Reason in the West, who are observing the ruccus and grasping at any perceived signs of revolutionary regime shift in the despotic police state. A letter from a Ministry within the Islamic Establishment that recently surfaced and claimed that Ahmadinejad came in 3rd in the election was waved off by the State Department as “too good to be true” as it began to focus on Twitter.com as an outlet for the cyber-guerillas itching for a world without Ahmadinejad. The fact that journalists were rounded up and jailed in some quarters while free press visas were not renewed in others and landlines were blocked and the media was sidelined immediately placed the Western Journalistic world in a frame of reference to the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen Square, when considering the appearance of revolutionary student resolve in the streets of Tehran.
The ironic thing about the Khameini speech; however, when considering these votaries of Chinese exemplars of a closed system, is the Ayatollah’s constant use of the word “Establishment” to refer to the Islamic government of the Wilayat al Faqih. The Western refusal to accept that Democracy played no part in this “Vote” which may or may not have expressed “the will of the people” is the ultimate in delusion. A similar irony exists in the June 7th parliamentary elections in Lebanon in which the Western and Arab worlds dodged the bullet of Hezbollah taking a majority akin to the “democratic” victory of Hamas in Gaza back in 2006. In neither case was democracy in play. In Lebanon, the current confessional system of “democracy” focuses the vote on a system structured around the politicization of Religious entitlement in which party lines and alliances are drawn on Religious affiliation. In Iran, the Ayatollah handpicked the contenders for the office of the President. In neither case did the will of the people factor into the final equation. In Lebanon, the majority of the people are Shia, and the triumph of the March 14 “Arab” Alliance over the encroachment of the March 8 opposition forces of the Shia-Syrian-Iranian coalition was a case of bated breath in a land in which the last census took place 77 years ago. What would the US federalist districts and representative realities look like if the US had not taken a Census since the Great Depression? What opportunity did Iranians outside of the Religious Establishment of the Shia paradigm have in running for the office of the Presidency? Zero! So, in retrospect, both the Lebanese and Iranian models of the election system are frought with the Establishment of Religion as the guiding light of the consent of the governed.
It is striking that the United States republic of individual liberty has, in its Constitution, an “Establishment Clause” which does not allow for Religious affiliation to influence the reins of Power at the legal level as a defense against the Tyranny of dogmatic justice creeds such as Shariah Law; yet, no Western intellectuals have deemed it worth while to note that the Iranian Religious Leader’s Friday rallying call against the protestors focused on the “Islamic Establishment” as the legal framework for the consent of the governed in the Persian power. In all reality, the Western Intellectual world is so drunk with the ideals of equality, pluralism and democracy to the point that the best and brightest are no longer able to differentiate the writ of Democracy and Populist balderdash.
Laughably, the situation in both Lebanon and Iran is akin to the staggering and drunk, broken down Lee Marvin, literally falling off the wagon and drawing down on and almost impossibly missing the barn in the Western classic “Cat Ballou”. The idealized dime store novel depictions of Kid Shaleen didn’t muster with the real thing at first blush in the romantic depiction of a gun slinger in the street.
Democracy, drunk with the Establishment of Religion, misses the barn of individual liberty every time. The straight shot of Justice in the world of democratic elections and political power has nothing to do with Religious Righteousness; to base the consent of the governed on the Islamic Establishment in the Middle East is an exercise in justifying religious populism. The tyranny of Allah, the tyranny of Hezbollah, the tyranny of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the tyranny of kings and dictators in the Muslim World do not provide any measure of justice; rather, they guarantee the imposition of Shariah Law and the rise of extremist fringe elements, supremacist mass murderers and the slavery of women. Life, liberty, happiness, property, and justice do not, cannot, and will never, reasonably exist in the Middle East so long as the constitutions of the Arabic, Persian, and Muslim majority nations do not harbor the same establishment clause found in the US Constitution as a check on the Tyranny of Shariah Law…as a proclamation of Religious and Political Freedom. In any governance beyond the mosque anywhere in the world, the Islamic Establishment of economic and ethical power is based on the collective rights of the Umma as the source of Justice – the possibilities of reason, innovation, and individual liberty as the hallmarks of power were destroyed 1100 years ago when the gates of ijtihad closed. Justice is a house built upon individual liberty. Justification is a house built upon the will of the collective. Until this reality is recognized, democracy advocates will drunkenly miss the barn.
Gary H. Johnson, Jr. (6/19/09, 4:20pmEST)
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/20/world/middleeast/20iran.html?ref=middleeast
Iran’s Ruling Cleric Warns of Bloodshed if Protests Persist
By NAZILA FATHI and ALAN COWELL
Published: June 19, 2009
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