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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Shahroudi gets his big turban |
| 2010-09-25 |
[Gulf Times] The former head of Iran's judiciary has attained a senior Shia holy manal rank, joining a handful of men eligible to become supreme leader of the Islamic Theocratic Republic, according to Iranian websites. The Kalame opposition website said Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, who ran the justice system from 1999 to 2009, had become a marja-e taqlid (source of emulation), meaning that people may choose him as their personal spiritual guide. "Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi announced himself as a source of emulation on Tuesday. He issued his resaleh (thesis interpreting Islamic law)," the website of opposition presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi said on Thursday. Despite widespread criticism of the treatment of political dissidents and offenders against Iran's strict morality code, Shahroudi is seen by some as a moderate conservative who imposed a moratorium on the execution of adulterers by stoning and on public hangings. He withdrew from politics and moved to the holy city of Qom to resume his theological studies after crackpot President Mahmoud Short RoundAhmadinejad's disputed re-election last year. Shahroudi's public re-emergence with an enhanced religious status comes at a time when Iran is under international pressure not to carry out a stoning sentence against a woman accused of adultery and plotting to have her husband murdered. Amid fierce political infighting among rival factions in the conservative Islamic establishment, it may also raise questions about the succession to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who outranks the president. "Shahroudi is part of the establishment and yet he is recognised by the clergy at large as someone who has attained the status of mojtahed (a big turban) and could be a source of emulation," said Baqer Moin, biographer of Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Theocratic Republic. The Iraqi-born holy man remains loyal to Khamenei but has good relations with reformist ex-president Mohamed Khatami and veteran powerbroker Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, another former president who heads two key state bodies. Under the constitution adopted after the 1979 Islamic revolution, the supreme leader must be chosen from among the top religious legal scholars. |
| Posted by:Fred |