Shiism's two faces

There is a pamphlet that was published by Iran's Ministry of Education. Condemning the secular and materialist enemies of Islam, not least those filling "the private sphere of Tehran", its author denounced them bitterly as "traitors".

They are sentiments that could have come out of the mouth of Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei or any of their hardline clerical supporters, confronted by the pro-democracy demonstrators.

The thing, however, is that the treatise in question was written almost a century ago by Ayatollah Asad Allah Kharaqani in the aftermath of another political crisis, one that both mirrors and informs current events in Iran in crucial ways, most importantly in the divisions among the country's senior clerics.

It is not simply a point of academic interest. Instead, the reality is that the core issues at the centre of the present debate in Iran today remain largely similar to those confronted by the secularists and clerics who led or opposed Iran's constitutional reform movement at the beginning of the 20th century.

They are issues that, while they have been reimagined endlessly over the decades, remain key to understanding the complexities of Iran's political settlement, and the opposing forces operating within it.

And at the very centre of those religious-political debates, which have continued through the fall and re-instatement of absolute monarchy, through coup, Islamic Revolution, attempts at reform and mass demonstration, has been the vexing question of authority and governance and the competing roles of clergy and secular politics.

The question is not a uniquely political one. Rather, in a largely conservative Shiite country, it is located in the midst of the multiple and overlapping concerns of religion, culture, politics and tradition that frame the ideas of how an Islamic state should function.

They are arguments informed most powerfully in the religious sphere by the Shiite interpretation of the Authority Verse (4:59) in the Quran that sets out the hierarchy of responsibilities that each individual owes to Allah, to the Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him) and to the temporal powers. Separations only vaguely demarcated by the invocation to "Obey Allah! Obey the Prophet! And obey those in power among you!"

If the verse itself is unhelpful in describing the divisions between clerical and secular authority, in Shiite Islam it is doubly complicated by the overlaying of the tradition of the beliefs of the dominant "Twelver" tradition. It is a school of belief that forsees a return to a period of perfect Islamic government with the messianic reappearance of the hidden, 12th Imam.

In the period of the imamate, which ended 1,100 years ago with the disappearance (or occultation) of the 12th Imam, the problem of authority was bridged by the presence of the imam who represented Allah's prophetic presence on earth.

But the fact of the occultation created a theological conundrum: how precisely to interpret issues of law and authority in a world in a lesser state of grace, in the absence of the last imam.

The answer, as it emerged out of the theology schools over the centuries after the occultation, was that the clerical authorities the ulema would have to act as conduits for juristic authority, basing its rights on its derivation from the imamate, and also through being a receptacle of "ilm" knowledge.

Cementing that position, the most senior and learned among the clerics would be designated as sources of "emulation" marja for ordinary Shiite, leaders by virtue of their holiness and wisdom.

All those ideas, however, would be challenged by a new notion that would become critical at the end of the 19th century: that the ulema should be the bulwark against the threat of western ideas that threatened Shiite Islam represented in the early 1900s by westward-looking absolutist monarchy.

To this end the ulema would ally itself with the Constitutional Revolution that sought to create a parliament or majlis.

In the process the lines of confrontation were drawn that remain visible today in the competing views among Iran's theological leaders (not least in the city of Qom and the Assembly of Experts).

For while the majority of the ulema backed the constitutional reform movement as Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini later would ally himself with the wider anti-Shah opposition and senior ayatollahs split into two main camps, whose arguments still resonate today.

On one side was the figure of Ayatollah Nouri the traditionalist leader of the anti-constitutionalist camp, later hanged for his activities. Nouri, still regarded by hardline conservatives as a hero, argued forcefully that the coexistence between parliamentary democracy and Shiite religious law was not possible.

Opposing him was the figure of Ayatollah Na'ini. Like Nouri, Na'ini believed perfect Islamic government was impossible until the Hidden Imam's revelation. Na'ini believed, however, that in an imperfect time another form of government was necessary. This, Na'ini believed, should take the form of a constitutional democracy in which the ayatollahs performed an advisory - not directorial - role to ensure the legislation passed was in accordance with Sharia law.

The consequence of this debate was two broad schools of thought that have continued to influence Iranian Shiite clerical politics, and the wider politics of Iran. Na'ini's interpretation of the Quran and the tradition of the Shiite imamate would inspire both political thinkers and religious reformers including figures who would attempt to synthesise Shiite and Marxist thought. Nouri's arguments would ultimately inform Ayatollah Khomeini's concept of velayat-e-faqih - the guardianship of Islamic jurists that, as it developed, would be transformed into the concept of a general right to rule of the clerics, subordinating Iran's parliamentary democracy under a supreme leader.

As Abbas Milani argues in the New Republic, on the two schools of thought and their influence on contemporary Iranian political thought, the issue would be further complicated as Ayatollah Khomeini deliberately "muddled" the Na'ini and Nouri traditions.

"Aware that people wanted democracy in 1979, he pretended to be in the Na'ini camp. He even promised that he wouldn't allow a single cleric to hold a position of executive authority. After taking office, however, he would use an iron fist to implement the Nouri vision. Confronted with this, Milani argues, "reformers in the Na'ini tradition did not give up. Betrayed by Khomeini they became as interested in political strategy as in theological innovation."

It was precisely this political strategy, emphasising democracy, that would be at the heart of the reformist former president Mohammad Khatami's 2nd Khordad Movement when it came to power in 1997.

The same ideas too that would inspire hundreds of thousands of supporters of the reformist movement onto the streets last month to protest a stolen election.

After the violent crushing of the demonstrations, after the killing and imprisonment of protestors, it is now here, perhaps, that hope for a more democratic Iran resides on one side of an esoteric, century-old debate; in the possibility proposed by an Iranian solution to an Iranian problem.

Peter Beaumont is the foreign affairs editor at the Observer.