If the protests fail, this guy’s on the short list for a bullet in the head if he ever goes back:

“The principle of Velayat e-Faqih is neither intuitively obvious nor rationally necessary,” Mr. Kadivar wrote. “It is neither a requirement of religion nor a necessity for denomination. It is neither a part of Shiite general principles nor a component of detailed observances. It is, by near consensus of the Shiite Ulama, nothing more than a jurisprudential minor hypothesis.”

The Velâyat-e Faqîh, the State of the Jurisprudent, is the raison d’état of the Islamic Republic. It’s the idea that Shî‘ite clergy have a special, divinely ordained role to play in government. Under the influence of 20th-century authoritarianism, Khomeini used it to justify the dictatorship he erected in its name. A lot of Shî‘ite clerics have criticized the Islamic republic—Ayatollah Sistânî (a Persian) in Iraq being the most prominent—with a powerful quietist critique arguing that the clergy are actually enjoined to stay out of political life. This guy is a protégé of the Grand Ayatollah Montaẓerî who is probably the single most prominent and presigious anti-régime cleric in Iran (with impeccable Revolutionary and theological credentials, which have probably kept him out of jail—though not house arrest for five or six years).

Confucius, Œc. Vol.

Don’t ask impertinent questions like that jackass Adept Lu.