Qom, Mashhad, and Religious Seminaries Cannot Be Made Revolutionary and Non-Secular

Ayatollah Khamenei, in a meeting with members of the Assembly of Representatives of Students and Scholars of Qom Seminary on March 15, 2016, spoke about the de-revolutionization of the Qom Seminary and all seminaries across the country. The central role of seminaries in the revolution was the subject of his speech. The claim was made that without the Imam, the religious authorities, and the seminaries, the Islamic Revolution of 1979 would not have occurred. He then warned that some are seeking to de-revolutionize the seminaries. He considered the revolutionary nature of the regime to be a result of the revolutionary nature of the seminaries and stated that the Qom Seminary, as the cradle of the revolution, must inject revolutionary energy into the regime like a volcanic furnace. The feeling of danger regarding the de-revolutionization of the Qom Seminary must be accompanied by thoughtful remedies. He mentioned that currently, some in the seminaries explicitly oppose the revolution itself, while others oppose the "foundational beliefs of the revolution." However, we are seeking "political Islam"—meaning the governance and management of society by Islam. But from within the seminaries, there are efforts to destroy this. He warned again: "The issue of revolutionary spirit in Qom Seminary is at risk; this must be noted; it should be among your main concerns. Thinkers must think about this." Over the past 15 years, he has repeatedly spoken about the danger of secularization of the seminaries, especially the Qom Seminary. He emphasized the two-way relationship between the regime and the seminaries. Government financial support for the seminaries is part of this relationship, which, according to him, does not make the seminaries governmental. On the other hand, the seminaries have a duty to provide theoretical and practical support to the Islamic Republic through theorization (refer to articles "Clerical Favoritism and Secularism," "Khamenei and the Issue of the 'Secular' Nature of Hosseini Councils"). Now, nearly three years later, Ayatollah Khamenei warns that the enemy's danger of making the seminaries non-revolutionary is not limited to the Qom Seminary alone, but the entire city of Qom is the enemy's target. On January 8, 2019, in a meeting with a group of people from Qom, he said: "There are motivations to change the revolutionary atmosphere of Qom and to diminish the revolutionary and religious spirit of Qom; there are motivations. We should not be oblivious to the enemy's schemes in all aspects and dimensions: from the economic aspect, where they plot and conspire, we should not neglect their plots and conspiracies in the cultural aspect; they are busy, they have motivations, they send agents; this must be considered. The elders of Qom and the youth of Qom must not allow treacherous hands to remove Qom from the center of the revolution, from being the hub of the revolution, and to diminish these meanings in it. In any case, Qom is the main source, and the Qom Seminary is the spiritual backing for this movement that changed the world, shook the world, and this movement continues, and we are still at the beginning of the path." What is the issue with the seminaries? One day after Ayatollah Khamenei's remarks, Ebrahim Raisi, the Attorney General of the Special Court for Clerics, said on January 10 at the Novab Seminary in Mashhad: "Voluntary and social secularism threatens the seminaries, meaning that society is busy with its own affairs, and we clerics are also busy with our own affairs." However, Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi has explained the point of contention regarding the seminaries better than others. On December 4, 2018, while criticizing the teachers of the seminaries, he told the students: "Unfortunately, sometimes religion is reduced to individual matters. The main part of religion is social issues; but why have we limited ourselves to a few verses of the Quran that address individual matters? Have not other verses of the Quran been revealed to us?! The main discussions in the seminaries today are about purity and prayer; how many verses of the Holy Quran do we have regarding the doubts in prayer and impurities? Why do we behave as if religion is confined to these matters! Did the lives of the prophets and the Imams pass by only with these issues?" Thus, it becomes clear that the religious authorities and teachers of the seminaries focus more on these types of discussions rather than on the level and outside of jurisprudence. During the revolution, revolutionary forces criticized the jurists, saying that they had been stuck in trivial matters for 30 years. This means that the religious authority has been teaching these types of discussions for 30 years and has never finished them. They asked what the connection of ritual purity is to the struggle against oppression and tyranny, which takes so much time. Ali Shariati criticized the non-revolutionary clergy and seminaries the most, mocking them for focusing on such discussions instead of jihad, enjoining good, forbidding wrong, martyrdom, and the prohibition of accumulating wealth and gold. Now, after 40 years of the revolution's victory, Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi criticizes the seminaries for not building forces for the Islamic Republic. On January 1, 2019, he told the ideological-political officials of the IRGC: "Force-building for the future has not been done with a precise and correct program. If we had acted more wisely, today our regime would not be in such a tight spot when it comes to appointing someone for a position! How many ideal candidates for the presidency do you have today? We have no choice but to consider someone who is better than others, not someone who is perfect and ideal. This means we have not thought about building a committed and specialized force. One of our weaknesses is this negligence, and it is necessary to compensate for this negligence while there is still time; of course, if we start today, it will yield results in 20 years." Ayatollah Mesbah further pointed out a key point, stating that the model for this work is the ideological-political institution in the IRGC. In other words, the dominant current in the seminaries is the traditional current, focusing on discussions that are not useful for the regime. More precisely, the seminaries have invalidated the strong claim that "jurisprudence addresses all the issues of the modern world and modern governance" over the past 40 years. The tuition of students Ayatollah Khamenei has made the seminaries governmental. The first need of anyone who goes to the seminary to study there—whether motivated by purely religious or worldly motives (to gain economic and political power)—is financial support for living. Traditionally, the tuition for students is paid by the religious authorities. The tuition that students currently receive from the authorities is as follows: Khamenei 560,000 tomans, Ali Sistani 140,000 tomans, Makarem Shirazi 140,000 tomans, Vahid Khorasani 100,000 tomans, Nouri Hamadani 40,000 tomans, Safi Golpayegani 30,000 tomans, Sadegh Hosseini Shirazi 25,000 tomans, Mohammad Sadegh Rouhani 20,000 tomans, Hossein Mozaffari 20,000 tomans, Yousef Sanei 15,000 tomans, Alavi Gorgani 10,000 tomans, Mohammad Ali Gerami 5,000 tomans. The total is 1,105,000 tomans. This tuition is deposited into the student's account and is communicated to them via mobile phone message. However, in past decades, students had to stand in line to receive it in cash. The issue of students' housing is also resolved through the seminary's chambers. However, medical expenses are now a very important and expensive issue. "The insurance premium for non-working students and clerics" is a chapter in the government budget, which in the government's bill to the parliament for the year 1398 has increased by 16.4% to 345.6 billion tomans. As can be seen, more than half of the students' tuition is paid by Ayatollah Khamenei. Ayatollah Makarem Shirazi, Ayatollah Nouri Hamadani, and Ayatollah Safi Golpayegani are also completely court-affiliated authorities. Students are financially dependent on the government. The only opposing religious authority is Ayatollah Sanei, who, by Khamenei's order, was denied authority by the Society of Teachers of Qom Seminary. The 15,000 tomans Ayatollah Sanei receives from the people is not enough to do anything. Ayatollah Rouhani and Shirazi also have a critical stance towards the regime. The security of the seminaries On one hand, financial dependency, and on the other hand, informational and security control and repression, leave no room for free thinking based on reasoning. Four institutions—the Ministry of Intelligence, the IRGC, the Special Court for Clerics, and the Society of Teachers of Qom Seminary—are responsible for controlling the seminaries. Intelligence and security tasks are handled by the IRGC and the Ministry of Intelligence. However, reports ultimately go to the Special Court for Clerics—headed by Ebrahim Raisi—for punishment. At the same time, the Society of Teachers of Qom Seminary—headed by Mohammad Yazdi—oversees the control of teachers and religious authorities. The confrontations of the Society of Teachers of Qom with Ayatollah Shariati, Ayatollah Montazeri, and Ayatollah Sanei are prominent examples of this claim. Recently, Mohammad Yazdi published a harsh and threatening open letter to Ayatollah Shabiri. The IRGC is currently constructing a seminary in Qom. Graduates of these schools should be called "Guardian Students." The Supreme Leader is waiting for the death of the elderly religious authorities and jurists to fully establish his dominance over the seminaries. In this regard, the age of the religious authorities—and their health and illness—are very important. Look at the ages of the authorities in order of longevity: Safi Golpayegani 100 years, Vahid Khorasani 98 years, Nouri Hamadani 93 years, Sadegh Rouhani 93 years, Makarem Shirazi 92 years, Ali Sistani 88 years, Hossein Mozaffari 85 years, Javadi Amoli 85 years, Yousef Sanei 81 years, Mohammad Ali Gerami 80 years, Alavi Gorgani 79 years, Hosseini Shirazi 77 years. Ayatollah Khamenei will turn 80 on April 18, 2019. Once they die, the Supreme Leader will completely subordinate the seminaries to himself. Religion and jurisprudence are not solutions to problems. Collective life and political governance require goals, planning, management, and law (rights). The seminaries cannot say anything about planning—which is the work of empirical science—and management—which is the product of empirical science and practical skills. Jurisprudential rulings cannot be called law in the modern sense of the word. Jurisprudence was for the simple tribal society of the pre-modern era. For this reason, the authoritative traditional books have remained silent on most of the issues required for collective life and governance. The only existing jurisprudential criminal rulings are those that the Islamic Republic has turned into criminal punishments. However, they are precisely the matters that the world and human rights institutions condemn the Islamic Republic for their systematic violations of human rights. Critics cite them to portray Islam as a religion that is violent, discriminatory, irrational, and unethical. What the seminaries have produced throughout history is being implemented. However, political governance requires thousands of matters that do not exist in religion and jurisprudence, and the seminaries do nothing in this regard. If the secular ruling of "independent rational principles" were truly acted upon, if the claim that "the Sharia supports rationality and rational matters" were understood and practiced, there would be no concern about the secularization of the seminaries and the government. The Islamic Republic wants to take the opposite path. That is, instead of discarding all the constructs of the pre-Islamic Arabs—the confirmed rulings of the Quran and the Prophet, which were only validated for that time—it not only imposes them but also wants the seminaries to discover other rulings from the lifestyle of the pre-Islamic Arabian Peninsula and to implement them so that the government does not become secular. What is the issue with the city of Qom? Many areas of the cities of Qom and Mashhad have turned into Gandhi Street in Tehran. The street where the offices of the religious authorities are located resembles the upper-class streets of Tehran. The clothing of boys and girls is similar to that of Tehran's youth. Their lifestyle has become like that of the people of Tehran. It is now observed in the shops of the upper-class areas of Tehran that female salespeople have thrown a scarf over their shoulders or do not wear it at all. This situation is also very evident in cars. Restaurants, cafes, and coffee shops are places for new lifestyles. Michel Foucault said that the modern era is the era of "self-expression." Charles Taylor also stated that we now live in an era of "self-display" globally. Everyone creates a global "self-display" through fashion, glasses, music, film, sports, beverages, social networks, and more. No one from the outside can dictate to an individual how to express themselves. Even if they dictate, individuals do not submit to them. The Islamic Republic, led by the Supreme Leader and the force of the military, has sought to impose a uniform lifestyle on everyone. However, Qom and Mashhad are the best symbols of the failure of this policy. The people—especially the youth—have chosen alternative lifestyles that conflict with the regime's lifestyle for their self-display. This is public self-display. Do not the clerics and religious authorities do the same? Look at the claimants of mysticism; they are the most self-displaying social class and invite everyone to themselves. In other words, the knowledge and experience that were meant to negate oneself and the world before God have been turned into a realm of self-display. They have utilized all social networks to display themselves and call to themselves. Ali Akbar Mahzoun, the Director General of the Labor Force Population Office of the Statistical Center of Iran, stated on January 12, 2019, that according to statistics, "emerging phenomena such as individualism" are taking shape in Iranian families. According to the latest census, 9 million and 769 thousand people of Iran's population are "of marriageable age" and "have never married," and 1 million and 810 thousand people have passed the marriageable age but have not yet reached the age of "definitive bachelorhood." "Those who have passed the age of definitive bachelorhood are called definitive bachelors, and their number nationwide is 220 thousand. We have 11 million and 800 thousand unmarried individuals who have never married in the country, which, when accounting for individuals without spouses due to death or divorce, brings the total number of unmarried individuals in Iran to 13 million and 32 thousand." 13 million and 32 thousand unmarried individuals directly contradict Ayatollah Khamenei's constant emphasis on the necessity of forming families. "White marriage," which according to the same jurisprudence is considered "fornication" and in some cases, "fornication with a married person," is another example of global self-display. They say this is my body, I own my body, and none of my body parts differ from the others. Just as I arrange to eat with someone, I arrange to cohabit with someone without marriage and live with them for a while.