Asghar Against Spenta; A Game Outside the Elections

The membership of Spenta Niknam, a Zoroastrian member of the Yazd City Council, has been suspended. This decision was made by the Administrative Justice Court, which operates under the authority of Sadegh Larijani, the head of the judiciary, and was communicated by the Yazd governor, appointed by Hassan Rouhani's government. The main complainant against Spenta Niknam in this case is Ali Asghar Bagheri, known as Asghar Bagheri, a fellow townsman and comrade of Major General Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in the 1980s. Asghar Bagheri, known for distributing pamphlets called 'Jom'e Nameh' during Friday prayers in Yazd, was defeated in the elections this spring where Spenta won with 22,000 votes, while he only received 7,707 votes, placing him in the forty-fifth position. This is the second time that a candidate who lost to Spenta in the council elections has attempted to remove him from the city council due to his Zoroastrian faith. Four years ago, in 2013, Spenta won 20,000 votes and became a council member, but a cleric named Mohammad Mahdi Harzadeh, who lost to him, tried to raise the issue of his Zoroastrianism to prevent his membership in the Yazd City Council. Harzadeh, a young conservative cleric and teacher of classes like 'Guidance' for youth, argued that according to Islamic jurisprudence and the fatwas of Shia authorities, the leadership of a non-Muslim over a Muslim is not permissible, and Spenta could not be a member of a city council that makes decisions for Muslims, especially in a city known among clerics as Dar al-Abadah. This Yazdi cleric even attempted to obtain a fatwa from some Shia authorities in Qom stating that voting by Muslims for a non-Muslim is forbidden; however, his efforts did not succeed, and the voters who supported Spenta were mostly Muslims. In that election, twenty thousand people voted for Spenta, while the Zoroastrian population of Yazd is estimated to be around five thousand according to unofficial statistics, and not all of them are eligible to vote. As a result, Mohammad Mahdi Harzadeh's efforts failed, and Spenta remained a council member for four years. Harzadeh, however, also rose to a higher position. After losing in the council elections in March 2015, he was appointed as the representative of Ayatollah Khamenei at Yazd Azad University. Four years later, in the 2017 council elections, Ali Asghar Bagheri attempted to complete Harzadeh's unfinished work and prevent Spenta's membership in the city council. While on a pilgrimage in Karbala, Bagheri returned to Isfahan by plane to register for the elections on the last day of registration and then returned to continue his pilgrimage, but on election day, he barely placed forty-fifth in a council that requires eleven members. Efforts by candidates like Ali Asghar Bagheri to prevent Spenta's election even backfired. Not only was Spenta elected for another four years, but despite the campaigns against him by clerics like Mohammad Mahdi Harzadeh, he received two thousand more votes than in the previous election. In the new elections, he garnered 22,000 votes and ranked fifth among approximately 150 candidates. After failing to defeat Spenta in the elections and facing the confirmation of the elections by the supervisory board, Bagheri sought to take the matter outside the realm of the people's vote. Since the supervisory board was under the parliament's authority and not the Guardian Council, he could not directly approach the Guardian Council for assistance. Ahmad Jannati, the Secretary of the Guardian Council, had previously attempted to issue a directive to prevent the qualification of non-Muslim candidates like Spenta. At that stage, Ali Larijani, the Speaker of the Parliament, intervened to stop the implementation of Jannati's opinion, instructing the supervisory boards to act solely according to the law regarding non-Muslim candidates. The closure of the direct route to the Guardian Council prompted Ali Asghar Bagheri to open a case against Spenta in the Administrative Justice Court. The case proceeded, and the court ruled, based on the opinions of the Guardian Council's jurists, that Spenta's membership in the city council should be suspended. The court stated that its ruling was based on the jurists' view that part of the city council election law was contrary to Islamic law. The ruling was communicated to the Yazd governor, who informed the city council, but Gholamali Safid, the head of the city council and a former Yazd governor, stated that he does not consider such a ruling to be religious or ethical and will not implement it. Now, some representatives from Yazd in the parliament have also called for Ali Larijani to intervene and defend Spenta's rights, but it seems that so far, what Mohammad Mahdi Harzadeh could not achieve in 2013, Ali Asghar Bagheri has succeeded in 2017, and Spenta's membership in the council has been suspended. Asghar, who lost the election to Spenta, appears to have won the game outside the elections for now.