Making War on God in Iran

Regular readers may be familiar with an argument I've frequently raised about theocracy: one of the chief problems with any degree of theocracy in a government is how dissent against the government can easily be translated into dissent against God. Thus political disagreements become apostasy and political protesters become sinners. It's not often that apologists for theocracy admit to this, but the Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami in Iran has.

"I want the judiciary to . . . punish leading rioters firmly and without showing any mercy to teach everyone a lesson," said Khatami, an influential cleric close to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. "Based on Islamic law, whoever confronts the Islamic state . . . should be convicted as mohareb [those who wage war on God]. . . . They should be punished ruthlessly and savagely."

Iran's judiciary said Tuesday that a special court would be set up to make an example out of "rioters" arrested during the demonstrations. Source: Denver Post

In no way are the Iranian protesters less religious or theistic than the rest of Iranian society. The accusation that protesters are "waging war on God" is thus not an objective description, but rather a pronouncement designed to achieve particular political goals. First and foremost, the statement places people outside the religious community. Rebelling against God is a serious violation in any religion, but it's especially significant in Islam.

This drives an even deeper wedge between the protesters and other Iranians. People who might have argued over politics but worshiped side-by-side on Fridays are now told that they have no values in common — they are, instead, bitter enemies who are locked in a cosmic struggle. Executing the protesters would simply become the final step in a process of separating the protesters from the community. This is necessary to deny that they have any legitimate political, social, complaints. Communal and social unity are to be preserved at the cost of destroying the principles of free speech and free assembly, not to mention the destruction of many lives.

There were similar reactions from hard-liners during reformist protests in 2003:

...the unrest has also been openly incited by TV and radio stations and websites run largely from the US by Iranian exiles bitterly opposed to the Islamic regime.

The stations broadcast their message in Farsi directly into Iran, and are widely followed.

This, and encouragement for the protesters voiced by American officials from President Bush down, has allowed the regime's hard-liners to dismiss the demonstrators as hooligans and traitors dancing to Washington's tune.

The extreme hard-line former head of the judiciary, Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, called on the courts to treat those arrested as moharebs, people making war on God - a charge carrying an automatic death penalty.

The Public Prosecutor, Ayatollah Abd an-Nabi Namazi, said that "those who spread insecurity in society" would be handled "with repressive force".

Source: BBC

It's so interesting that neoconservatives did then what they are calling for now and it turned out then just how their critics today insist it would turn out if it happened again. Didn't they learn from their own history and the consequence of their past actions? Well, no. Neoconservatives don't merely fail to learn from history, but they actively deny that there is any need to learn from history. They believe that force of will is sufficient to overcome any opposition and reshape reality in any manner they wish. Thus failure is merely a sign that one didn't act with enough force and will, not that one picked an idiotic course of action.