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This is a guest post by Haroon Moghul.

Events over the last few days have deeply concerned me.

Watching the Grand Ayatollah at the top of the Islamic Republic deliver a sermon in which he made no meaningful concessions to the opposition (in fact, he made no real concessions whatsoever), I thought about how strange it is the way history works. The thesis eventually produces an antithesis. Sometimes it takes centuries, but it happens. How odd it was to find Khamenei allude to the tragic events at Karbala, where, only a few decades after the birth of Islam, Husayn, may God be pleased with him, the grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him, was cut down (and most of his remaining family as well.) Those events have become a mainstay in much of Muslim popular culture (including throughout the Sunni world), literature and imagination and have done the same for the articulation of an unparalleled protest tradition. Yet I watched and wondered: how does the protest tradition become the state? If the state holds an increasing monopoly on religious interpretation, what happens to the protest tradition?

More meaningfully, considering the structure of Shi'i practice, what happens when the major figures of present scholarship collide, not just on matters of religious practice but politics as well? I honestly don't know, but I feel it's worth considerable reflection and should be of concern. When scholarship worries more about maintaining order than guiding and edifying, that scholarship will eventually fade -- and one wonders what then occurs. If Sistani and Khamenei disagree, publicly, about matters as important as the events of the last week (thinking hypothetically), then clearly the interests of religion and politics clash. I have not read any serious argument which considers the IranianRahbar to be greater in stature than Sistani, who is arguably the leading Shi'i cleric of our age and indeed one of the great scholars of the Muslim world.

This where I feel the history of Sunni Islam proves instructive.

Over the last 200 years, the Muslim world had been rather uniformly colonized. Very few areas escaped from direct European control; practically none escaped from some form of indirect control or regular foreign interference. This was disastrous for the Muslim world as a whole, but most disastrous for the Sunni world, as in major Sunni Muslim states, the clergy was often subordinate to the state in a way that did not hold in the Shia tradition. This proved to be a bad idea for the ages. When foreign troops landed, governments were overthrown and endowments seized, scholarship found itself without resources or strategies for recovering its previous role. Today, far too many Sunni scholars are perceived, rightly or not, as no more than outmoded tools of the domestically oppressive and internationally impotent state. They have very little credibility for this reason, which leaves an immense gap of authoritativeness often filled by extreme or marginal voices, many of which have no training in the tradition and end up agitating for positions deeply harmful to society, religiosity and human dignity.

The Shia scholarly tradition has fared much, much better. I could name only a handful -- Fadlallah, Sadr, Sistani, Montazeri, Khomeini, Khatami -- and few could argue that these were not among the most influential personalities of the Muslim world or still are today. Take for example Muhammad Khatami, who although not an ayatollah is nevertheless an 'alim (properly, a Hujjat al-Islam). Is there any Muslim cleric from the Sunni tradition who commands as much respect, admiration and influence as he does, globally speaking? He was the leader of a massive reform movement that captured the attention of the world; he broadcast a message of dialogue between civilizations that represents one of the most successful initiatives originating in the Muslim world which embraced the wider world and inspired it -- as once Islam inspired so many, so broadly. How many other scholars can do so, or could even try to? There are numerous reasons for the vigor and vitality of the Shia tradition, many of them relating to historical processes and decisions which have elevated the profile of these scholars and made them voices to be heard, not just within a select tradition but with weight on the planetary scale.

Part of the success must go to a system that produces scholars and yet depends on community supports and mutual acknowledgment, both by scholars and by "laypersons", elevating the best, most compelling and attractive personalities and minds, without instituting any kind of rigid structure or hierarchy. That flexibility and that scholastic seriousness has already been deeply threatened by the events of the last week, the full effects we will not see for years (In triumph often are the seeds of downfall, especially when we are unable to conceive the chance of overreach.) When scholars clash over politics, and one reading is privileged over another, then that privilege becomes a matter of imbalance. All the more threatening to a tradition because that privilege is tied not to stronger arguments or more persuasive reasoning but to the institutions of a state, which inevitably affect religious opinion and moral character and from there, reputation and reliability (read: the ruination of the Christian right when blinded by the might.) I am not so simplistic as to propose that there can be a clean line between religion and politics; that probably could never be accomplished, as neither religion nor politics are like Lego blocks which can be placed on opposite ends of a room. But when religion and politics become isomorphic with each other, then certainly there should be cause for concern.

I'd like to know what readers think: how does the Iranian structure and ideology of velayat-i-faqih affect the authority and prestige of other scholars, including those maraji' who are more esteemed by the community than the supreme leader himself.

Haroon Moghul is a Ph.D. candidate at Columbia University. This post was reprinted from his personal weblog, avari, with his kind permission.

In the context of a critique of President Obama for his speech at Notre Dame, Daniel Larison engages in a theologic examination of the nature of doubt, invoking the doubt of the apostle Thomas. In response, E.D. Kain at LOG defends the function of doubt and argues it serves a valid spiritual purpose in its own right.

The preponderant position in all of the 4 sunni madhahib (and apparently others of the remaining eight according to one contemporary `alim) is that the verdict is capital punishment.

Of concern for us is that this can only occur in the domain and under supervision of Muslim governmental authority and can not be performed by non-state, private actors.

Some contemporary thought leaders have emphasized the differing views (i.e. not capital punishment) that a few fuqaha' in the last few centuries apparently held on this issue, including reportedly the senior Ottoman religious authority during the Tanzimat period and Al-Azhar in the modern period. Still others go further and attempt to elaborate on the argument that the indicants (such as the hadith: (whoever changes his religion, execute him) used to build the traditional position apply only to treason in the political sense and therefore in the absence of a political reality in which apostasy is both forsaking the community and akin to political treasons in the modern sense, the indicants do not indicate capital punishment.

I would finally note that there is great wisdom (hikma) associated with the established and preserved position (capital punishment) and so, even if it makes some uncomfortable in the face of the hegemonic modern human rights discourse, one should not dismiss it out of hand. The formal consideration of excuses for the accused and the absence of Muslim governmental authority in our case here in the North/West is for dealing with the issue practically.

I see in Abdul-Basser's comment insufficient safeguard against violence. His comment was weighted and preferential of capital punishment, and therefore permissive. It is not a benign discourse. My rant is that someone in such a position should be trying harder when discussing such an issue to put a boundary around it.

"...whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death..."

Freedom of religion is an absolute and may not be abridged by any government. Any government which attempts to do so is, itself, illegitmate and has no right to exist.

...
the proper response is simple: strip Mr. Taha Abdul-Basser of his position, blacklist him from any other institution in receipt of public funds, and (metaphorically speaking) ride him out of town on a rail while throwing lumps of doggy-doo and rotten vegetables.

[4:157] That they said (in boast), "We killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah";- but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them, and those who differ therein are full of doubts, with no (certain) knowledge, but only conjecture to follow, for of a surety they killed him not

[4:158] Nay, Allah raised him up unto Himself; and Allah is Exalted in Power, Wise

[4:159] And there is none of the People of the Book but must believe in him before his death; and on the Day of Judgment he will be a witness against them

Posit an omnipotent God who created the Universe. Can God create a stone He cannot lift?

If the answer is yes, then there exists a stone that God cannot lift, hence God is not omnipotent. If the answer is no, then God cannot do something, and hence God is not omnipotent.

Now, this is a bit of a problem for some as far as God's existence is concerned (of course you can have degrees of omnipotence, but as far as the major religions go omnipotence is part of the job description).

However, the question itself is logically flawed, akin to asking "What color are the eyes of the King of the United States?" The reason for the flaw is because we are trying to shoehorn certain biased meanings into the words "stone", "lift" and "cannot".

Consider first the stone. The paradox doesn't invoke more thorny creations like an equal to God (now, that would be a philosophical head-scratcher). It's just about a stone. So, what is a stone? It's a physical object, comprised of N ordinary bosons, and of radius R. Nothing more complex than that (though presumably at some very large radius R it would collapse under it's own weight and become a neutron star). But let's be really generous and rephrase the question, "Can God create a black hole He cannot lift?" No.

Let's turn our attention to lifting. For us to lift a black hole is sort of meaningless, but if you consider that to lift something is merely to manipulate it, then we can generalize further to "Can God create a black hole he cannot manipulate?"

Now by this point the Dawkins acolyte will accuse me of having moved the goalposts. "Surely your omniscient God could create a big stone, immune to gravitational forces which would cause its collapse but not immune to an external gravitational field which exists solely to provide something against which to literally lift it?" I suppose if you insist that this is different from what I described in my reformulation above, we can agree to disagree, because frankly creating a supermassive black hole (and just how massive, I am about to explore further) in an instant and then shoving it around seems pretty much just as miraculous to me. Then again, as a believer in a religious faith, I'm not exactly addressing the paradox with an open mind, now, am I?

So let us continue. The last hurdle is the word, "cannot". For a black hole to be so massive as to essentially be impossible to manipulate, it must be so large as to not provide any room for it to be manipulated. The physical manipulation of an object in N-dimensional space involves rotation about and translation along the N physical axes. Since God created the Universe of radius U, and the black hole is radius R, then the only way the black ole cannot be manipulated is if R = U - in essence, if the universe itself contains only the black hole (or the stone, if you insist) and nothing else.

Now, the question has reduced down to, Can God create the Universe? To which we already know the answer is yes, by virtue of the Posit above.

Alternatively, we could just be talking about a normal piece of rock, say the size of a softball, weighing less than a pound, and unremarkable in every way except that it has also been assigned a property that nothing (including God himself) can move it. This too is a meaningless paradox, though for a different reason than the one above. In essence, what does it mean to say that god cannot move it? God can choose not to move it, but since God is omnipotent, the definition of that power is that God can do whatever God wants to do. Defining omnipotence as "the ability to not do something" is not omnipotence but limitation.

To put it plainly, anything God creates, God can uncreate. Perhaps God can relinquish that power if God so desired; the ability to relinquish it would fall within omnipotence, but once relinquished, God would no longer be omnipotent. That doesn't mean God wasn't omnipotent before choosing to do so, though. In a sense, thats what this Interpretation 2 is asking: Can God choose to abdicate being God? The answer is probably yes, but that's an affirmation of God's present omnipotence, not a denial of it. Creating a stone He could not lift? No, he "can't" do that, anymore than he can't not be omnipotent while He is omnipotent.

That said, if you think that faith can be discussed with logic, then you're kind of missing the point. But Douglas Adams said it best, which is rather ironic given how fierce an atheist he was.