Last week after the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly issued its resolution on human rights violations in Iran, the head of Iran’s judiciary branch of government ayatollah Sadegh Larijani said during a speech, “One of the roots of the assertions made regarding human rights is related to the difference in principles between the West and the Islamic world. For example, parts of the recent UN resolution reject the execution of (the Islamic law of) ghesas (eye-for-an-eye retribution) whereas this is directly mentioned in the Quran and so it is unacceptable that we withhold implementation of this because of a resolution.” He also said that the articles of the resolution indicated lack of knowledge of the foundations of figh (Islamic jurisprudence).
Speaking on a different occasion, Larijani made the same point. “As we had announced earlier many of the issues that are raised on the grounds of human rights violations, such as the death penalty, are in fact in contradiction with the laws of Islam because ghesas is expressly mentioned in the Quran,” he proclaimed.
Larijani went further and said that “intellectualism” and the “spread of relativism” were methods of cultural invasion. “When the principles of Islam are mentioned to these pseudo intellectuals, they respond by asking which Islam because they contend that there are various interpretations of Islam. The reality is that true Islam is nothing other than what ayatollah Khomeini mentioned when he talked of ‘pure Islam’. This is the Islam in which strong conviction, unity, respect, jihad and defense are present and the specialists in the clerical seminaries and the mujtahid (sources of emulation) are the real specialists on these”, he continued.
Larijani’s remarks brought forth responses from Iran’s intellectual community. Dr Mohammad Mojtahed Shabastari, who is a prominent contemporary religious modernist responded by saying that “the chief judge occasionally attacks modern religious thinkers and those who support human rights.”
Shabastari continued, “They say that because ghesas (here the death penalty) is mentioned in the Quran, Muslims of this era too must execute this punishment. But this is wrong because one cannot extend a principle that exists in the Quran to say that it must be actually implemented at any historic period. The “must” be executed cannot be extracted from the “presence” of the principle. The essence of the differences between Iranian modern religious thinkers and people like the chief judge over religious rules begin from this very basic issue.” He then asked, “The serious question that religious modernists ask is by what logic must they set aside their interpretations and follow the views of the clerics.”
“Had Mr. Larijani said that we have not allowed and will not allow a new interpretation of Islam to take shape, then he would have been one hundred percent correct. But he diverges and says there are no different interpretations of Islam,” he said.
Kianoosh Razaghi, a critical writer, goes even a step further and argues that not only does Islam not make it obligatory to have the death penalty but that its suspension has wide supporters among the mujtahids. He argues that criticism of the death penalty is not necessarily criticism of ghesas because ghesas is not the only basis on which the death penalty is implemented in Iran. So criticism of the death penalty is not necessarily criticism of ghesas.
A few days after his defense of ghesas was criticized, Larijani returned with his response. “My words have been misinterpreted, particularly by the Western media who are searching for excuses. Some domestic media too have attributed to me the notion that opposing the death penalty means opposing Islam,” he said. But the fact is that the text of his remarks was the official text provided by the judiciary and even Fars news agency which affiliated to the Revolutionary Guards and supportive of his views carried his remarks under the heading of “Opposition to the death penalty is opposition to Islam.”
Larijani references various religious texts to support his argument that senior clerics concur with the death penalty and rejects the notion that some mujtahids believe that ghesas is not timeless and may be suspended at certain historic periods or eras. He specifically disagrees with those who say that in the absence of the twelfth imam (who is said to be in occultation) ghesas cannot and should not be implemented.
But Larijani’s critics point out that his arguments even negate what is being taught at clerical seminaries (hoze elmie). They point to the writings of ayatollah seyed Mostafa Mohaghegh Damad who in 1999 argued in an article in Majale Tahghighate Hoghooghi (Journal of Legal Research) that the issue of which Quranic laws were valid today is a hot topic among senior clerics. “The issue is so controversial that it divides the mujtahids into two distinct opposing groups, each of whom presents a completely different point of view compared to the other group,” he wrote. Damad presents historic evidence to show that if capital punishment, which carries serious consequences, is suspended, justice for crimes and violations can still be implemented with less severe forms of punishments.
Roozonline