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Monday, 15 March 2021, 10:17 amArticle: Gordon Campbell

Asan exercise in global symbolic politics, it would be hard totop last weeks meeting in Iraq between Pope Francis andthe most respected cleric in Shia Islam, the Grand AyatollahAli al-Sistani. Both men have strong liberal credentials.Francis has led a welcome break from his policies of his twoarch-conservative predecessors. In fact, you would have togo all the way back to the early 1960s, to the widely lovedliberal reformer Papa Roncalli (aka John XXIII) to find aPope who seems more in tune with socially progressiveforces.

The 94 year old al-Sistani is a more complexfigure. His credentials as the most learned religiousauthority in Shia Islam are undisputed. From his humble homein Najaf, Iraq, al-Sistani condemned the disastrous USinvasion of 2003 at the time. In 2014, he famously issued afatwa that called on all able bodied Shiite volunteers tojoin the militias fighting against Islamic State. In theprocess, he urged tolerance towards all religiousminorities, including the Christian and Yazidi populationsthat Islamic State and other Sunni fundamentalists had beentargeting. He also supported the 2009 Green Revolution inIran that eventually failed to expand the role of seculardemocracy in that country. Consistently, al-Sistani hasopposed the involvement in politics by the mullahs in Iran.Correctly, he pointed out that the blurring of the linesbetween religious authority and political power wouldeventually end up discrediting religion in the eyes of thepublic.

Like Pope Francis though, al-Sistani is not afigure without controversy. Last year, the popular Iraniandissident and blogger Ruhollah Zam was lured out of hisrefuge in France on the (bogus) promise of a meeting withal-Sistani. Once in Iraq, Zam was seized by Iranian securityforces, takenback to Iran and executed. While al-Sistani was not anaccomplice in the trap, he has been criticised for notappealing (even only symbolically) to his fellow Shiaayatollahs in Teheran to spare Zams life. Many Iraniansbelieve that the office of al-Sistanis son-in-law JavadShahrestanii (who is al-Sistanis representative in Iran)wasinvolved in the Zam plot

In similar vein,,al-Sistani has never condemned the harsh retribution carriedout against the supporters of the 2009 Green Revolution.Hundreds of young Iranians were executed in the aftermath ofthat social movement. Having supported the attempt atopening Iran up to greater democracy, al-Sistani remainedsilent while those who believed in it were hunted down,tortured and eliminated. Pope Francis has also had hiscritics. Some Catholic conservatives feel he has strayed toofar from the path of orthodoxy, while some liberal criticsfeel that (a) his reforms have not gone far enough, and (b)have not been entrenched in ways that will survive hispapacy. (Francis replied to some of his critics in this memorablestatement in September, 2019.)

All of that aside, what did Francis andal-Sistani talk about in Najaf? Part of their conversationwas private. Their joint public statement made the expectedcalls for tolerance and mutual understanding. Francis was inIraq partly because of the steep decline in IraqsCatholic congregation which had flourished under the secularreign of Saddam Hussein. Since the 2003 invasion, theCatholic congregation has shrunk from 1.5 million to barely250,000 believers today. Sectarian conflict sent manyCatholics fleeing into exile abroad, while many of thosethat remained inside Iraq were systematically persecuted anddriven underground during the hey-day of the IScaliphate.

By meeting with al-Sistani and issuingcalls for mutual tolerance and respect, Francis was hopingto convince Catholics in Iraq that they had not beenabandoned. For al-Sistanis part, there might have beensome hope that Pope Francis might have greater sway with theCatholic president now occupying the White House. Pointedly,the joint communique urged the lifting of economicblockades throughout the region. Exactly one year ago,Iranian clerics haddelivered a letter to Pope Francis asking for his helpin ending the US economic sanctions against Iran that haveinflicted so much harm on ordinary people, especially duringthe Covid pandemic:

On March 22 [2020] an IranianShiite leader, the Ayatollah Seyed Mostafa Mohaghegh Damad,delivered a letter to Pope Francis imploring hisintervention to end economic sanctions against Iran as itendures one of the worlds worst Covid-19outbreaks.

The Iranian people, he wrote, arestruggling painfully with the loss of loved ones caused veryoften by the serious lack of medical resources due to theconsequences of sanctions imposed by the United States.Suspending the sanctions regime he called a humanitarianaction proper to those who believe in Jesus, who forthe whole world is a universal symbol of peace andlove.

So far,the lifting of US sanctions against Iran has proved to bemore difficult than Biden had originally supposed. Bidenclearly wants to lift the sanctions against Iran, if only tore-balance US policy towards Saudi Arabia, and to stop Iranfrom being driven into the arms of China. Yet at the sametime, Biden has felt the need to avoid a domestic backlash fromlooking soft on the mullahs, so. any steps to normaliserelations apparently will have to be done by both sides,simultaneously. Thats not an easy dance to co-ordinate.Also, the mullahs clearly dont want to hand a politicalvictory to the relatively liberal administration of HassanRouhani, only months before the next general elections inIran, due mid year.

So the mullahs have been playing aspoiler role. Thats something they can economicallyafford to do, since they control the smuggling trade thathas flourished under the US sanctions, while ordinaryIranians have suffered. As al-Sistani correctly predicted,the political strategizing by the mullahs has had anextremely corrosive effect on religious authority. Caughtbetween mindless US hostility and the iron rule of themullahs, Iranian society has simplyimploded.

Footnote: Ironically, PopeFrancis response to his critics ( link above) had a fewpointers to offer as to why PM Jacinda Ardern has cancelledher weekly interview with Newstalks Mike Hosking.Francis made a useful distinction between criticism made ingood faith, and criticism made from a fixed position thathas no interest in dialogue :

Criticism is acomponent in construction, and if your criticism is unjust,be prepared to receive a response, and get into dialogue,and arrive to the right conclusion. This is the dynamic oftrue criticism. The [other] kind of] criticism instead..Is like throwing the stone and then hiding your hand. Thisis not beneficial, it is no help. It helps small cliques,who do not want to hear the response to their criticism.Instead, fair criticism. Is open to a response. This isconstructive.[But] to criticize without wanting to hear aresponse and without getting into dialogue is not to havethe [general] good at heart, it is chasing after a fixedidea.

Chasing after fixed ideas. Serving ideasheld by small cliques. Criticising without wanting to hearthe response. Yep, all of that sounds like Mike Hosking. Hisweekly browbeating of Ardern like his previousbootlicking of John Key has had nothing to do withdialogue, or with journalism. Journalism is about talkingtruth to power, not talking nonstop about the power of yourown truths. There was no social benefit in having Hoskinguse his audience with the PM to expound on his ownideological fixations, as if by some god-given right. Weall, Ardern included, have better things to do.

One of the great forces in traditionalPersian music the singer Mohammed Reza Shajarian died in October 2020 at the age of 80. A supporter of the2009 Green Revolution, Shajarian earned the wrath of themullahs for doing so, but was protected to some extent bythe reverence with which he was publicly regarded. HeresShajarian in 2013, recorded during one of those typicallyintimate 15 minute Tiny Desk Concerts for NPR.

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Gordon Campbell On The Pope's Visit To Iraq | Scoop News - Scoop.co.nz