"How miserable is a society that knows no better means of defence than the executioner!" thus was Marx quoted by Albert Camus in L'homune Révolité

( The Rebel — An Essay on Man in Revolt ).

But when his vision of the classless society found expression decades later, it was ironically the very society that had to rely a great deal on the services of the executioner. The show trials, executions, political assassinations, forced transfers of populations and gulag represented humanity's worst nightmare in the twentieth century. Camus was quick to comment that in Marx's day the executioner had not yet become a philosopher and at least made no pretense of universal philanthropy.

But for all the suffering and tragedy that that vision had wrought on a big chunk of humanity, the truth of Marx's wisdom resonates still today. But in our age, it is Muslims who have habitually been grabbing the headlines when they demanded death penalties or harsh punishments on individuals accused of insulting the religion and its prophet, or heresy in the exercise of their freedom of expression.

Granted that the line between freedom of expression and freedom to abuse can sometimes be very blur, and insults to the prophet of Islam cause incomparable hurt to ordinary Muslims, it is perhaps more disturbing to note that all too often the baying for blood far outweighed the perceived offence, in complete defiance of accepted human rights standards and the rule of law.

Come to think of it, such emotional overreaction is hardly worth the opprobrium that certainly would follow. Islam as a world religion embraced by a fifth of humanity surely cannot be shaken by the devious insults of a handful in search of notoriety.

While Muslim anger and hurt are understandable in cases where the prophet of Islam has been insulted as in the Rushdie and Taslima affairs, even more distressing is when the executioner is invoked against a person who genuinely attempts to introduce a fresh intellectual debate, whatever merits his/her ideas may have, in the hope of stimulating Muslim societies to respond to the challenges of modernity.

Persecution of fresh ideas is carried out in the name of protecting the sanctity of Islam, though it might be the case that it is merely an act of self preservation of the religious elite whose power and authority are being put into question.

Pivotal struggle

The trial and death sentence handed out to Hashem Aghajari, a reformist Iranian academic is the latest, and arguably the most controversial in a series of persecutions in the form of politically motivated trials, imprisonment, harassment and forced closures of publications of dissidents and opponents to the conservative clergy who control influential institutions of the Iranian state.

Many of the victims are reformist Muslim writers, intellectuals, political activists, even progressive clergy who began to voice their disillusionment with the Islamic state in the early 1990s.

The death sentence meted out to Hashem for a speech that he gave on the commemoration of Dr Ali Shariati's death, on a scale of outrageousness perhaps surpasses that of the Rushdie affair, yet it had generated only a modest world-wide media interest.

But this somewhat muted and belated international attention belies a pivotal struggle between two currents of political Islam, not only within Iran, but in the rest of the Muslim world — that of conservative fundamentalism advocating a theocratic Islamic state on the one hand, and on the other, the force of moderation that seeks to situate within Islamic traditions the notions of democracy, human rights and good governance as the basis of modern Muslim societies. Compared to other Muslim nations, the force the moderation is perhaps most vibrant and its popular appeal most keenly palpable in Iran as indicated by the results of the last two presidential elections.

Islamic Protestantism

Within Iran, the controversial affair seems to be bringing the two forces to a head, with student demonstrations, resignations of Hashem's university colleagues and MP's from the Hamedan constituency, the city where the trial took place. The trial coincided with attempts by the moderate president Mohamad Khatami to curb the excesses of a judiciary controlled by conservative clerics opposed to reform.

The controversy arose in June, when the religious intellectual from Teheran's Modarres University who lost a leg during the Iran-Iraq war, gave a speech on 'Islamic Protestantism' on the 24th anniversary of Ali Shariati's death (a review of Ali Shariati's biography appeared in this column before). He based his controversial speech on the thoughts of the late Iranian intellectual and philosopher, where he drew comparisons between the authoritarian clerical establishment ruling modern-day Iran with the Catholic church headed by powerful popes in Medieval Europe. He argued that the clergy itself was not intrinsic to Islam and they have no divine right to rule.

This was in essence the real crime of Hashem in the eyes of the conservative clerics which threatened to strike at the very foundations of Islamic theocracy. However, in order to paint a picture of Hashem as an apostate and rally the people to their side, the judiciary had distorted his words to bring charges of insulting the Prophet — a familiar tactic that exploits Muslim religious sentiments.

Ali Shariati

The verdict has been roundly condemned by reformists as politically motivated, provoking student protests in major cities across Iran though nothing at all like those during the Shah's last days. In standing his ground, Hashem himself refused to appeal the verdict and it looked like the contestation between the conservative clergy and reformists may degenerate into a major crisis, leading Iran's Supreme Guide Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to order a revision.

In another era, Hashem's speech would not have led him into this kind of mess. In his writings and speeches to educated Iranian youths, one of Ali Shariati's major themes was the need to reform Shia Islam, criticising its rituals and practices and questioned the role of the traditional clergy. He was a symbol of protest, some went as far as saying that Ali Shariati introduced 'Islamic Protestantism', but he was spared persecution by the traditional clergy at that time because they did not wield any political power. Furthermore he was instrumental in weaning the educated Iranian youth away from Marxism, infusing them with Islamic, albeit modernist perspectives in their political struggle, enabling them to align themselves with the religious movement led by Ayatollah Khomeini.

Obviously, despite his immense contribution in imparting Islamic consciousness to the younger generation of Iranians, Ali Shariati had bitter enemies from within the ranks of the conservative clergy. Had he not died two years before the overthrow of the Shah and the establishment of the Islamic Republic, where for the first time in Muslim history the traditional ulama would wield direct political power and control key institutions of the state, we could only speculate how his relationship with the conservative clergy would have been.

Calls for reform

But by the 1990s the Islamic state was not the utopia that Iranians and well-wishers in the Muslim world dreamed of when the conservative ulama swept to power in 1979. Corruption became rampant, the economy stagnated leading to high level of unemployment and impoverishment of the middle class, and state institutions became ossified as the conservative clergy tightened its tyrannical grip on Iranian society.

Opposition to this religious tyranny however did not come from Marxists or remnants of monarchists for they had been decimated in the early years of the republic, but from intellectuals, writers and progressive clerics who wish to transform Iran's state structure from conservative theocracy into one that is based on moderate Islam, embracing modern notions of democracy and the language of rights, and breaking out of self-imposed isolation to earn a respectful place in a community of nations. The clamour for reform especially among Iran's younger generation was such that progressive cleric Mohamad Khatami won the presidential elections in 1997 and 2001 with impressive margins.

But as the calls for reforms mounted, so too the backlash by the conservative clerics. Reformers closely allied to President Khatami like Karbaschi, Teheran's reformist mayor and Abdullah Nouri, former interior minister, were convicted and jailed in politically motivated trials. Others were beaten by hired thugs and religious militias and independent newspapers were ordered closed.

Experiment done

But none had gone so far as Hashem. In questioning the conservative clergy's divine right to rule, an idea that found resonance with Ali Shariati, and to a lesser extent Abdul Karim Shoroush in 1990s, he had struck on dagger into the heart the theocratic Islamic state. The death penalty handed out to him for merely expressing an opinion was certainly surprising in its harshness but not entirely unexpected. It is interesting to observe developments in Iran in the battle between the two currents of political Islam in the coming weeks.

With the Hashem case, the notion of the Islamic state led by religious elite as a late 20th century phenomenon seemed to have come full circle in a very short space of two decades (the short reign of Afghanistan's Taliban perhaps does not make a good case-study given the circumstances in which they rose to and fell from power). It is not based on abstract theory that moderate Muslims feel that a rigid theocratic state, a government of God led by a religious elite would not meet expectations of a modern society on issues like individual liberty, minority rights, universal suffrage and participatory democracy, but rather on the concrete experience of recent history as exemplified by contemporary Iran.

Nobody can say now that we have not performed the experiment. Muslims have long felt the sense of being failed by post colonial secular governments, be they socialist, monarchist or pro-west pseudodemocracies, united only by a common feature of totalitarianism and brutality to their own citizens.

In late 20th century the emergence of the Islamic state whose major institutions are controlled by conservative religious elite kindled the hopes of Muslims that an earthly paradise is possible, but only attainable by putting the complex affairs of a modern state into the hands of the religious elite whose wisdom was supposed to be all-encompassing, a sort of Islamic philosopher-kings.

But it did not take long for all that fanciful, simplistic hopes to turn to disillusionment when a new, religious totalitarianism took over from the old.

Iran's adventure with leadership of the ulama has inspired Muslim societies far beyond its borders. But unlike Iran, they unfortunately lack the vibrant force of moderate Islam among its intelligentsia and receive little popular support among the younger generation.

PAS' failure

There's no better example than Malaysia. The cover story of this month's Aliran Monthly entitled 'An Opposition or No Opposition?' warns of the threat of religious authoritarianism in an unqualified support of the Islamist opposition. The writer was concerned that PAS could possibly transform the political landscape and how the effects would be on democracy, universal suffrage and equal citizenship.

Paraphrasing 'Village Idiot', the self-deprecating writer of the Aliran piece, PAS has time and again showed its commitment to the democratic process as far as participation in elections are concerned, and that the party has been unfairly demonised by the captive mainstream media.

But on the other hand pronouncements by some PAS leaders on issues of the Islamic state, its policies in states under its control and lately the controversy surrounding the hudud enactment gave some validity to the fears many have been harbouring that PAS is more concerned with establishment of a sort of theocratic state rather than championing common issues of good governance, democracy and justice.

This fear is reinforced by its failure to present its version of the Islamic state despite many promises and even a challenge to do so from the Prime Minister.

Will the state envisioned by PAS be thoroughly democratic in essence though Islamic in character, or will it have institutions along the lines of Iran's Council of Guardians, the Assembly of Experts or even Supreme Leader through which the religious elite wield great power?

BN hegemony

These ambiguities have greatly weakened and broken up what was once a viable opposition coalition, where a healthy two-party system was felt to be taking shape in Malaysia's political landscape. Without such a pact, the hegemonic Barisan Nasional can continue with corrupt practices, abuse of power, subjugation of state institutions and usurpation of democratic rights of citizens with impunity, and yet get voted in with handsome majority at every election.

This unbroken hegemony is not only undermining democracy and continually dividing Malaysians along racial and religious lines, but it is also exacting a heavy cost on Islam itself where the religion has become an object of political contestation between the two dominant parties fighting for the Malay votes.

Events in Iran in the last few years, and especially the present case of a reformist scholar sentenced to death for questioning the right of the religious elite to rule, should lead us to re-examine the Islamic state project. Maybe it's time to restore the notion of leadership of the ulama to its traditional role of moral and spiritual leadership, earning the learned scholars respect and reverence from the community. Political leadership by the religious elite is perhaps a late 20th century aberration that will sooner or later run its course.

Note: For background reading on contemporary Iran, please see The Last Great Revolution — Turmoil and Transformation in Iran by Robin Wright, Vintage Books, 2000, and on Ali Shariati, The Islamic Utopian — A Political Biography of Ali Shariati by Ali Rahnema, IB Tauris and Co Ltd 1998.