November 11, 2006

• An Interesting Paradigm

  While I don't agree with Dr. Crane that Iran is unique in the world in its practice of "compassionate justice" - some of the other Arab countries come to mind, as well as Venezuela and Brazil - it's certainly different from the American model of social Darwinism, isn't it?

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  November 7, 2006
  The American Muslim

  The New Triple Threat in Iran: Compassionate Justice?
  by Dr. Robert D. Crane

  Now we may have a triple threat
  in Iran. Not only has Ahmadinejad's statement on regime change in Israel and
  America been grossly distorted, and his theoretical right to nuclear weapons as
  a deterrent to attack been denied, but we may now soon hear that his policies of
  compassionate justice are the first step in a radical socialist scheme designed
  to destroy the financial system that sustains the world.

  On October 28th,
  2006, the Iranian CEO, President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, announced that government
  will be down-sized and political power will be decentralized through the
  privatization of state-owned industry, with 50% "sold" free to the poor. This is
  a good start on what Ayatollah Sistani might well advocate in Iraq. Sistani is
  only too well aware of the downside of concentrated political power in Iran and
  of the American strategy in Iraq to concentrate political power in a central
  government there in order better to orchestrate control of its natural
  resources.

  At a conference called to officially inaugurate the new
  Iranian plan to privatize industry through "justice shares" to "justice stock
  companies" Ahmadinejad emphasized that justice is not merely an individual
  responsibility but a joint responsibility of every person working together as a
  community. The Speaker of Parliament, Gholam Ali Haddad, stated at this
  conference that justice had been the driving force behind the original Iranian
  revolution, but had been side-tracked for an entire generation.

  Now the
  question arises, when will Iran start privatizing the oil industry to the
  general populace through inalienable voting shares of stock? This has been
  priority number one in position papers that I and others have been advancing
  since the first day of the Iranian revolution more than a quarter century ago as
  an essential first step in any faith-based and normative economic system? The
  possible domino effect of such a policy to broaden capital ownership might be
  perceived as the "ultimate threat to global stability." In fact, it would be the
  ultimate moral H-bomb designed to restore the universal right to private
  ownership of productive property as the essence of economic justice in a capital
  intensive world and to counter the primary source of growing global chaos,
  namely, the rapidly escalating wealth-gap both within and among
  nations.

  Iran is the only country in the world where justice is not
  considered to be a threat to stability and where justice indeed is now
  considered to be the major pillar of national security. In America, neither the
  Republican nor Democratic parties dare to even mention the word, because it
  would require fundamental reform of the entire system of money and credit to
  broaden capital ownership rather than to concentrate it. In any research on
  justice in Shi'a jurisprudence and public policy, the new Iranian policies on
  economic and social justice, as a model of both what to do and what not to do,
  might well serve as a principal case study of Jafari jurisprudence in practical
  application.

  Justice in Jafari jurisprudence is holistic, which makes it
  different from all the other legal systems in the world. This system necessarily
  addresses the importance of respecting the right to life, which has immediate
  relevance to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The leading
  ayatollahs in Iran have condemned the production and possession of nuclear
  weapons as fundamentally immoral. I agree with this, not only from the
  perspective of what Catholics call moral theology, but because such weapons are
  irrelevant to shaping the course of history. This is the area where the rubber
  hits the road, because this is where courage as a central element of
  compassionate justice will be seen.

  [Dr. Crane is Chairman of the
  newly formed Center for Understanding Islam, and Vice-Chairman of Crescent
  University. He is Associate Editor for Law and Policy of the new online
  magazine, The American Muslim. Since 1996 he has been President of the Center
  for Policy Research, which develops "grand strategy" to infuse Islamic thought
  in a systematic and professional way into the formation of current policy in
  Washington, D.C.]

  MORE at http://www.twf.org/News/Y2006/1107-RDCrane.html

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