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IN THE wake of the murder of America's ambassador to Libya and the violent reactions in many Muslim countries to an amateur film insulting the Prophet Muhammad, this week's issue of The Economist explains that mischief, not madness, often underlies Muslim anger.
SINCE his arrest three years ago, Yusef Nadarkhani, a Christian pastor in Iran, had become a diplomatic thorn in the flesh of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Islamic Republic’s supreme leader. The 35-year-old Mr Nadarkhani, who faced the death penalty for apostasy, had become a figurehead for Iran’s small Christian minority and a cause célèbre for international human-rights groups. His sudden acquittal on September 8th brought a sense of relief among the country’s ruling Muslim clergy, since it closed a case that was becoming an embarrassment and exposing tension within the regime.
Influential figures in Tehran, the capital, have in the past lobbied against executing well-known prisoners on death row, fearful lest it damage Iran’s standing in the Muslim world and beyond. But the Nadarkhani case was particularly tricky. Iran’s penal code does not specify a punishment for apostasy. Instead, judgment rests on fatwas by the country’s dozen-odd grand ayatollahs, who are divided on the matter. Throughout last year, the case shuttled between Iran’s Supreme Court and a tribunal in Rasht, a town north-west of Tehran where Mr Nadarkhani had been the pastor of a small Christian congregation before his arrest. Both courts confirmed the death penalty but neither was willing to carry it out. Mr Nadarkhani was offered innumerable opportunities to renounce Christianity and walk free. Each time he refused. Wrong-footed by his intransigence and with an international outcry building around the case, the courts passed the buck, appealing to Mr Khamenei for guidance.
This placed him in an unexpected bind and exposed a peculiar weakness in his position. Though Mr Khamenei wields supreme executive power, several senior clerics have always doubted his fitness for the post of supreme leader to which he was appointed in 1989, as he had never attained the status of grand ayatollah. To smooth his succession, this requirement was removed from the constitution.
While the supreme leader supports the death penalty for apostasy, several of those same senior clerics oppose it. To overrule them would have been divisive. To save Mr Khamenei’s face, Mr Nadarkhani was convicted of the lesser charge of trying to convert Muslims to Christianity. He was sentenced to time already served—and immediately released.
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“I think it will be a long time before self-driving cars are able to avoid running over pedestrians, particularly children and people on bicycles. Whether they will be deployed before then is another question.”
— WT Economist on “Look, no hands”, from Technology Quarterly, September 1st
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SHE married the shah, Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, after his previous wife turned out to be barren. She gave him the heir he craved, tolerated his philandering and became a model of the stylish, tirelessly charitable Middle Eastern consort. The 1979 Iranina revolution sent the couple into exile, where the shah died a year later; since then, his widow has been vilified by the Islamic Republic as an accomplice in tyranny. But now, in her 75th year, Farah Diba may be starting a comeback.
On July 26th, a popular London-based TV satellite station called Man o To (Me and You), best-known for adapting Western formats to Iranian audiences, broadcast a long documentary based on conversations with the former empress. “From Tehran to Cairo”, as the programme is called, tells the story of the royal couple, from their flight until the shah’s death from cancer in the Egyptian capital, where Egypt’s then president, Anwar Sadat, was the only leader to behave generously to an old ally. The day after the broadcast, the chatter in Tehran was of little else.
From the rumble of approaching revolution to the royal flight and a humiliating odyssey in search of a refuge, the programme made for affecting television. Far from the immoral hedonist of caricature, the empress came across as a loyal patriot and spouse. “Such dignity!” was the reaction of one tearful viewer. “It shows how much she loves the country and how much she’s been maligned!”
The programme had some pointed messages. It claimed that the shah did not, as his detractors have it, spirit untold billions out of the country. The empress puts the amount that reached her and her children after his death at a relatively modest $50m. The shah of his widow’s depiction was a devoted servant of his people. And her references to her son as Crown Prince Reza, now resident in America, reminded viewers of a possible alternative to Iran’s current rulers.
To judge by responses on the internet, she struck a chord. One young woman confessed regretfully that she had played the role of “Evil Queen Farah” in a school play. Another, a student at the women’s university that the empress founded (her name since expunged), paid tribute to her promotion of Persian culture. There was pathos, too, since the ex-queen has lost two of her four children to suicide in the past 11 years.
Would Iranians welcome back the monarchy they booted out 33 years ago? Many inside the country regret what has taken its place, but the empress unsurprisingly failed to acknowledge the corruption and despotism that marked the shah’s rule. The vision she put forward, of a tolerant Iran standing high in the world’s esteem, still seems distant indeed.
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