Other Functions
The SCC do not only sentence criminal and dissident clerics. They also censor and confiscate works that might challenge the Rahbar’s theological and jurisprudential authority, notably those works authored by senior ayatollahs who oppose the velayate faqih or particular policies of the regime.
On June 25, 2000, the SCC ordered the Tehran daily Bayan, run by Hojjatoleslam Ali Akbar Mohtashemi, to cease publishing. Mohtashemi was a former interior minister and aide to President Mohammad Khatami.
The parallel between the Special Clerical Court and the Star Chamber at the Palace of Westminster is too close to escape notice. The Chamber met in secret, without a jury, wielded arbitrary powers, and dealt severely with opponents of the King who were too powerful for ordinary laws. The message of the Clerical Court was especially chilling in the sense that Mohammad Mousavi Khoeiniha was a stalwart upholder of the régime and the principle of the clergy's right to rule. It would be hard to imagine a step the authorities could take which would cause greater unease and insecurity amongst its supporters.
Read more about this topic: Special Clerical Court
Famous quotes containing the word functions:
“When Western people train the mind, the focus is generally on the left hemisphere of the cortex, which is the portion of the brain that is concerned with words and numbers. We enhance the logical, bounded, linear functions of the mind. In the East, exercises of this sort are for the purpose of getting in tune with the unconscious—to get rid of boundaries, not to create them.”
—Edward T. Hall (b. 1914)
“Nobody is so constituted as to be able to live everywhere and anywhere; and he who has great duties to perform, which lay claim to all his strength, has, in this respect, a very limited choice. The influence of climate upon the bodily functions ... extends so far, that a blunder in the choice of locality and climate is able not only to alienate a man from his actual duty, but also to withhold it from him altogether, so that he never even comes face to face with it.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)