Similarities Between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Islamic Caliphate Militants

Rooz Online

An old news report from Fars news agency, an affiliate of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) caught the attention of social media users. The news item published a story that criticized the imposition of the hijab on women by the group that called itself DAESH Caliphate (ISIL or ISIS, the Islamic Caliphate of Iraq and Sham - Greater Syria) in areas it had recently occupied in Syria. The report read, “Elements of the terrorist group “Islamic Emirate of Iraq and Sham” known as DAESH, were preventing students who were not wearing the hijab from attending their schools. In justification of this move, a circular by DAESH wrote that the measure was in line with Islamic teachings because young girls in grade five and above had reached the sharia legal age.” The report further wrote that the move had infuriated the residents of the towns under the control of the group. People, it said, considered this an interference in their lives. Observers, it continued, “viewed this as an indication of the group’s regressive and backward views and stressed that the group intended to reverse Syrian society back to the Middle Ages.”

After social networks noted and commented on this news report by Fars, the news agency removed it from its site. Users of these communication sites in Iran were dumbfounded by the criticism aired by Fars because this practice of forced hijab has been vigorously pursued by the Iranian regime for years and remains forcefully enforced. Social network users frequently compare the religious edicts issued by ISIL (now simply referred to as IS, Islamic State) armed group and those issued by clerics in Iran and their similarities are mocked and scorned.

A few weeks ago, an image of a young man tied to a cross was posted by IS with the caption that the Syrian was being punished for taking food during the fasting period in the month of Ramazan. A report said that the man was kept under scorching sun for hours without water or food as punishment for illegally breaking his fast.

A few days later, a similar news report was published by Iran’s ISNA student news agency about two young Iranian men in Shiraz who had been flogged for unlawfully breaking fast during the fasting period. The police chief of Fars province told the news agency the men received 80 slashes for unlawfully eating during the fasting period. He said eating in public during the month of Ramazan during fasting hours was a punishable crime.

The publication of these two reports brought forth comparisons between the violent practices of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

An example of comments on the similarities came from Mostafa Hemat, son of Mohammad Ibrahim Hemat, a Revolutionary Guards commander martyr of the Iran-Iraq war, who wrote on his Facebook, “Such measures (the flogging of the two Iranian men) are used by some people to question the regime. If officials are really concerned about such issues, then at least they should present a more modern image of the punishment and fine the violators rather than use DAESH methods of retribution.”

Punishing violators of fasting is not new in Iran. The first prime minister of the Islamic republic in 1980s critically wrote in one of his books that people were punished unjustly in the Islamic republic even for eating in their own house, and some of these incidents had resulted in death.

An even harsher example is what appeared in the question/answer section of a website belonging to the office of Islamic Propagation of the Ghom Theological Center (Daftare Tablighate Islami Hoze Elmie Ghom). In response to a question about the punishment for those who publicly ate during the fasting period, the operators of the site wrote that for the first two incidents the violator would be flogged. “If it happened for the third or fourth time, the verdict of the judge would be death,” the site wrote. The justification for such a harsh punishment was said to be that the violator must be undermining Islam to repeatedly engage in such acts. “The presence of such individuals brought sedition and corruption,” the site commented. (See Mehdi Bazargan, Majmooe Asar 23, footnotes on page 367.)

But similarities between the practices of the Islamic republic of Iran and those of other extremist Islamic groups is not limited to fasting. Again, prime minister Mehdi Bazargan writes in his book, “Only God knows the extensive negative and destructive effect that the rulings of religious and revolutionary courts, the happenings in prisons, the actions of the Guards, or the televised programs have had on the public. What is worse is the rejection of Islam, clerics and faith among Muslims because of these actions.”

Even if Islamic fundamentalists different in their tactics, their ultimate goals remain identical: the establishment of an Islamic regime. And the only way to establish this is through the execution of sharia rulings. Islamic Iranian revolutionaries argued from the first day that the solutions to all problems can be found in the Sharia.

Mohammad Mojtahed Shabestari (an influential Iranian cleric who is said to believe that religion does not possess the answers to everyday questions) recently wrote a piece in which he said that the only criticism that Iranian senior ayatollahs had about Abu Bakr Baghdadi – the head of IS was that they believed he was implementing the Sharia too violently.

The problems and difficulties in implementing religious edicts in Iran is so extensive that even the Islamic regime sometimes annuls some of them.