Shut Down the Seminaries, as They Have Failed to Produce Jurisprudents

The Assembly of Experts will have 88 members in this term, all of whom must be jurists. However, the Guardian Council has only approved the jurisprudence of 165 out of 800 candidates. The jurisprudence of the rest has either not been verified or has been rejected. This is a very important issue. The matter is not just that Ayatollah Khamenei has ensured a 'Sultanic Assembly of Experts' through the Guardian Council, but this approach has many consequences for the religious seminaries of Iran and the jurists. With this action, the exaggerated claims of the jurists and the entire tradition of seminaries have gone up in smoke. This claim is supported by the following evidence: First - Academic and seminary credentials: In terms of academic rank and educational qualifications, universities produce bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees. Students in seminaries go through three levels: 'Preliminary', 'Level', and 'Outside'. The Islamic Republic has evaluated the three levels of seminaries as equivalent to three university degrees for government positions. Second - Absolute and partial jurists: A person who has completed the 'Outside' level gains the ability to derive legal rulings from jurisprudential sources. Such a person is called a jurist. There are two types of jurisprudence: absolute and partial. An absolute jurist, by definition, is capable of deriving rulings in all jurisprudential chapters, while a partial jurist can only derive rulings in certain chapters, such as purity. Third - Transforming the Assembly of Experts into an Assembly of Jurists: Article 108 of the Constitution states: 'The law concerning the number and conditions of the Experts, the manner of their election, and the internal regulations of their sessions for the first term must be prepared by the jurists of the first Guardian Council and approved by the majority of their votes and finally ratified by the Leader of the Revolution. After that, any changes and revisions to this law and the approval of other regulations concerning the duties of the Experts is within their own competence.' The Constitution does not grant membership in the Assembly of Experts as a privilege to a specific group - jurists and scholars - and the selection of leadership with absolute power, under which all powers and institutions are subordinate, cannot solely be entrusted to the discretion of jurists whose only expertise is jurisprudence. However, the jurists of the Assembly of Experts and the Guardian Council decided to monopolize power by requiring that members of the Assembly of Experts must be jurists. However, the jurisprudence is at the level of partial. This means that even if a person is capable of deriving rulings on prayer or impurities, it is sufficient for membership in the Assembly of Experts. Fourth - Jurists before and after the revolution: Among the 165 individuals whose jurisprudence - absolute and partial - has been approved for the Assembly of Experts, many are older and became jurists before the revolution. Thus, the number of jurists after the revolution has significantly decreased. Fifth - Destruction of the independence of seminaries and their government control: Shiite jurists have historically boasted that Sunni clergy are state-affiliated while Shiite clergy are independent. The former depend on governments, while the latter are independent of the state and rely on the people. The Islamic Republic has completely destroyed this claimed independence: a) They have made the religious authorities state-affiliated/courtly/sultanic. As soon as a religious authority shows the slightest difference from the Sultan/Guardian Jurist, they face attacks from military and security forces and their 'authority' is denied through the Society of Teachers of the Qom Seminary, which is completely under the control of the Guardian Jurist. Ayatollah Shariatmadari and Ayatollah Yousef Sanei are two witnesses to this claim. b) The tradition of seminaries has been that the jurisprudence of students was confirmed by religious authorities. The written or verbal confirmation of a religious authority was called 'permission for jurisprudence'. The rejection of the 'permission for jurisprudence' from religious authorities and the assignment of determining the jurisprudence of students to jurists appointed by the Guardian Jurist (Guardian Council) is another pillar of the government control of seminaries and the discrediting of religious authorities. When someone graduates from a reputable university, their bachelor's, master's, or doctoral degree is not re-evaluated elsewhere. Sixth - The failure of seminaries in producing jurists: The elections for the Assembly of Experts are held when the thirty-eighth year of the Islamic Republic begins. If we take the claims of the jurists of the Guardian Council as a basis, seminaries across the country - with Qom being the most important - have failed to produce even partial jurists after the revolution. This claim by the Guardian Council and Khamenei has many unintended consequences: a) Public budget: Jurists have fabricated hadiths to be able to take the fruits of the people's labor under the title of khums and live and study jurisprudence. People worked and gave to them. They consumed and did not study jurisprudence. b) Government budget: After the revolution, it was claimed that seminaries could not be managed with public funds. Over the past 37 years, hundreds of billions of tomans of government budget have been allocated to seminaries and other affiliated organizations. That money has been wasted, and no jurist has been produced for society. c) The seminary as a model for universities: Ayatollah Khomeini criticized universities for not having done anything and claimed that we are dependent on the West in all areas. Since the beginning of the revolution and with the oppressive project of Islamicizing universities, the claim of the jurists has been that the best method of learning is the method of seminaries, which should be the model for universities. Universities have had tens of thousands of graduates since the revolution, and the Guardian Council has accepted and continues to accept their credentials for presidential and parliamentary candidates. However, the seminaries, which were supposed to be the model for universities, do not have their educational credentials accepted by the Guardian Council. This means that the academic credibility of university professors is greater than that of religious authorities. Seventh - The outcome of the work of religious authorities: The most learned jurist is called a religious authority. In the past, the famous jurist of the time - Sheikh Tusi, Sheikh Ansari, Ayatollah Borujerdi, Ayatollah Khoei, Ayatollah Khomeini - was almost considered the most learned jurist. With the presence of Ayatollah Borujerdi, almost no one claimed authority. However, now many jurists have published religious rulings and their claim is that they are the 'most learned jurist'. 'The most complete' is not a multiplicative factor. For this reason, it is not possible to have dozens of absolute most learned jurists. However, there is a more important point that must be considered. Look at the religious rulings of religious authorities, which are the result of their 'sacred power' of jurisprudence. What differences do they have with each other? Almost none. They all state and repeat the same rulings for their followers. This issue led Morteza Motahhari to write in criticism of jurists: 'Only thinking about old and thought-out issues and at most turning 'the most probable' into 'the most cautious' or vice versa is not an art' (Morteza Motahhari, Collected Articles, article 'Jurisprudence in Islam', p. 64). Yes, the difference in the religious rulings of religious authorities is the difference in turning 'the most probable' into 'the most cautious'. Eighth - Jurisprudence from the era of slavery and jurists as archaeologists: Jurisprudential rulings are constructed from the Arabs before Islam or the Jewish religion, which were 'endorsed' by the Prophet of Islam for the lives of people of that time. A jurist is essentially an archaeologist who, after learning the lifestyle of the Arabs before Islam, imposes them on today's people. The question is, first: How much time does it take to learn jurisprudence and become a jurist? Second: What results has this jurisprudence and jurisprudence produced, and what good does it do? Religious authorities still live in the era of slavery and write in their rulings: The discussion of expiation for fasting: free a slave. In 'The freezing of the mind regarding urine and impurities', it is explained what issues occupy the minds of jurists and what value these issues have. Given these points, we have defended the 'intellectual and ethical superiority of being non-jurist'. Ninth - Universities and seminaries: Natural and human experimental sciences have undergone tremendous transformations in recent centuries and are constantly advancing. Students who go to universities learn these theories and solve real theoretical and practical issues. Just look at the various branches of medical science and healing that specialists in these fields provide for people's illnesses. After the revolution, jurists turned political power into a 'special right' of their profession. However, this privilege and discrimination have not produced any scientific achievements for seminaries, and they have not even been able to produce jurists who at least recognize the lifestyle of the pre-Islamic Arabs. The jurisprudential exam of the Guardian Council for the Assembly of Experts was a complete failure of the religious seminaries. They announced that religious seminaries across the country have not been able to train individuals who can derive rulings that violate human rights such as retribution, stoning, cutting off the hands of thieves, fighting, apostasy, etc. In other words, the same rulings that violate human rights - such as flogging - that the people of Iran have experienced with their flesh and blood and know better than the jurists themselves. Tenth - Separation of religion from the state: Separating the institution of religion from the institution of the state is beneficial for both sides and the people. When the state becomes 'religious', democracy, human rights, and freedom are destroyed. However, when religion becomes state-affiliated, not only does religion turn into government decrees, but aversion to religion spreads. The 37-year experience of the Islamic Republic should have led everyone to the conclusion that even for the preservation of religion, the institution of religion must be separated from the institution of the state. However, from another perspective, all democratic governments committed to human rights are secular governments. Thus, the separation of the institution of religion from the institution of the state is a 'necessary condition' for the transition to democracy.