Quote Originally Posted by Steve the Planner View Post
I remain in awe of Grand Ayatollah Sistani's moral conviction not to engage in politics if at all possible.
Steve

This reminded me of something Carl Schmitt said in The Concept of the Political..."To define something as non-political is itself a political act"

Sistani's decision to not engage in or lend his support to the Iraqi Shia insurgency, the Mahdi army and parliament was a political decision. Let's not forget that the overt political participation in political affairs was almost purely due to the innovating ideological acrobatics of Ayatollah Khomeini. When he wrote Kashf Al-Asrar (The Revealling of Secrets) in 47(?) he was still adhering to the traditional Shia' position (for mujtahids that is) of quietism wherein the Ulema did not overtly participate in the political process instead prefering to remain aloof and influence events through the processes of "emulation" and their monopoly on Shaira' law (and the fact the Shah didn't want a head on confrontation). Those Shia that did participate in politics did so by supporting authority to preserve Shi'ism and even, on the rare occassion, threatened revolution (1906 and the Tobbacco Revolution/Constituional Revolution) but always only to protect the status of the cerlicical establishment and the role of Shi'ism and never to further a political/transformational (modernist) project (that right properly belonged only to the Hidden Imam/Imam Mahdi). It was only in the sixties with the rise of the likes of Ali Shariati (especially his Red Shism wherein he castigated collaborationist clerics as traitors to the revolutionary spirit of Ali) that Khomeini's views began to change. By Wilayat-e-Faqih (the rule of the Faqih) he abandoned the traditionalist position (of quietism) in favour of "red shi'ism" (though he himself would have deinied that given Shariati's socialism/marxism). It was Khomeini who broke with tradition and stated that the Shia' had no need to wait for the retrun of Imam Mahdi. Our view of the role claerics have in politics is coloured by the Iranian/Islamic revolution. Nonethless, for a weltanshauung/lebenswelt that defines itself as din-wa-daula (loosely translated as religion and "state"/ or more properly the spiritual and secular authority) the commentators here are correct in that segregating lived experience into phenomenoligically discreet entities is unhelpful at best (although some academics, who make their living by dividing up the world into intellectual categories would disagree).

Have to rush, need to pick up best friend's daughter from nursery...
(apologies for the grammar, slepping, syntax and)