Clerical Control of the State: The Council of Guardians

Abstract

In the material world, the science of physics and one of its cornerstones, the law of conservation, tell us that no energy ever disappears, and that any movement, or kinetic energy produced, inevitably produces another movement or a different form of energy altogether. In the social world, the science of sociology helps us understand an equivalent relationship. In 1907, and upon the triumph of the Constitutional Revolution in Iran, when the predominantly liberal-minded members of the very first parliament were faced with the commencement of a constitutional crisis, namely the reconciliation of Islam with the newly built constitutional state, they took the easy way out. They unwisely ratified an Article that could never be put into practice even under the best of circumstances in order to dodge the reconciliation crisis. They did this simply because they could, enabling them to get away with it, or so they thought. Consequently, the modern Constitution was incapacitated from infancy, with subsequent misuses, and diversions from rational-legal rule, all culminating in the Islamic Revolution of 1979.