Religious Minorities, the Oppressed in Iran’s Elections
While supervision of city council elections and qualification of candidates is the responsibility of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, Ahmad Jannati, Secretary of the Guardian Council, issued a circular on 26 Farvardin of the current year calling for the disqualification of non-Muslim religious minority candidates in city and village council elections in areas with Muslim majorities.
According to FCN reports, under the Constitution of the Islamic Republic, religious minorities and Sunni followers in Iran have not been given the right to nominate candidates for participation in Iran’s presidential elections…. or is there any solution to reform these legal provisions in favor of religious minority rights?
“According to the Constitution, the official religion of Iran is Twelver Shi’ism, and the only position recognized in the Constitution that must be held by a Twelver Shi’ite is the presidency. Regarding other positions, whether appointed or elected, the legislator has not imposed any restrictions on followers of non-Shi’ite sects holding these positions and offices.”
According to Article 13 of the Constitution, Christian religious minorities, including Armenians and Assyrians, Jews and Zoroastrians, are recognized minorities of the country, each of which has one or two representatives in parliament, and according to the Constitution, they take oaths on their own holy books and there are no other restrictions in this regard. Furthermore, according to Note One of Article 26 of the Councils Law passed in 1996, recognized minorities in the Constitution adhere to their own religious principles and take oaths on their own books. Therefore, there have been no restrictions in this area so far. However, regarding religious minorities covered by Article 113 of the Constitution, they have only reached parliamentary representation.
The letter from Ahmad Jannati, Secretary of the Guardian Council, to prevent the approval of religious minority candidates in city and village council elections is quite surprising, as it states that in cities with Muslim majorities, minorities cannot participate in nominating candidates for city council elections. He (Jannati) has cited one of Imam Khomeini’s statements, which the Imam made in October 1358 on this matter—he generally stated that candidates for city council positions must be Muslim, religious, and recognized. However, the Constitution, the Covenant Law and mother law, was approved in November 1358, one month after the Imam’s statements.
The Councils Law was passed in 1996 and rewritten in 2009. In 2012 and 2013 it was rewritten again, but each time this law went to the Guardian Council and the Guardian Council never objected to Note One of Article 26. So why is Mr. Jannati now regretting it after 21 years is surprising.
The Guardian Council cannot enter laws that have followed the proper legislative procedures through a path that the law itself does not permit, and declare that a law is contrary to religious law simply because this law went to the Guardian Council once and was not challenged. Therefore, the process of its amendment and approval has been completely executed and has already passed the Guardian Council’s filter.
We must know that if this matter takes hold, on this pretext, the Guardian Council will expand its retroactive oversight from laws that have passed through the legal process. The Guardian Council, based on Articles 19 and 22 of its internal regulations, cannot reverse a law whose amendment and approval procedures have been completed and suddenly say this law is contrary to Islamic law.
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The failure to appoint followers of official religious minorities to the highest government positions so far has not been due to legal prohibition. In any case, it has been an innovation that exists in the country and is persistent. In the Constitution, only regarding the presidency has it been said in detail that the president must be Shi’ite; for other positions, legal prohibition has not been declared. In any case, this is the administrative approach governing the country.
The role of religious minorities in the Iran-Iraq War is very worthy of reflection….. We had this many martyrs among religious minorities in the Iran-Iraq War, they were good during the war but bad when participating in city council elections?
The governmental structure of the Islamic Republic is defined based on the principles and values of Twelver Shi’ite Islam, which does not grant separate rights to national and religious minorities. Over the past thirty years, non-Persian ethnicities and followers of non-Shi’ite sects have constantly complained that they are treated as second-class citizens.
Undoubtedly, the existence of religious minorities with different orientations resulting from different cultures and civilizations brings cultural and social diversity to any country, which strengthens and reinforces the country. In this regard, one of the ways to achieve sustainable development is to pay more attention to human resources and human development; therefore, religious minorities can play a special role in the country’s development and prosperity.
According to informal estimates by religious organizations, two percent of the country’s total population consists of Baha’is, Jews, Christians, Mandaean Sabians, and Zoroastrians. Baha’is with a population between 300,000 and 350,000 are considered the largest non-Muslim religious minority. Informal estimates of the Jewish community population vary between 20,000 and 30,000 people.
According to UN statistics, 300,000 Christians reside in the country, mostly from the Armenian ethnic minority. According to informal estimates, the population of Assyrian Christians in the country is between 10,000 and 20,000 people. Various Protestant denominations, including evangelical groups, also have presence in this country. Christian groups outside the country estimated the Protestant Christian community population at less than 10,000, although many Protestants apparently keep their religion secret. The number of Mandaean Sabians is between 5,000 and 10,000 people. According to government statistics, the population of Zoroastrians, who are an originally Iranian minority, is between 30,000 and 35,000 people, while Zoroastrian groups claim their population to be 60,000.
Based on the Constitution, Christian, Jewish (followers of Judaism), and Zoroastrian minorities are officially recognized as religious minorities, and therefore special rights have been provided for followers of these religions in elections. Among four types of nationwide elections in Iran, religious minorities can only nominate candidates in parliamentary and council elections. According to Note One of Article 2 of the Parliamentary Election Law, out of the total number of representatives, five people are allocated to religious minorities as follows. Zoroastrians and Jews each have one representative, Assyrian and Chaldean Christians collectively have one representative, and Armenian Christians in the South and North each have one representative in parliament.
In fact, this nomination is limited only to areas where minorities have population concentration in that region, and of course, based on the rate of population growth, the number of their representatives can also increase. Therefore, a religious minority cannot be a candidate in a city where that minority does not have population concentration. Rather, a minority can only be a representative of their own co-religionists. Although practically it could be said that if such a person were to become a candidate, there would be no chance of winning the election considering the Muslim population composition of that region, from the interpretation of this law and its implementation, one can correctly deduce that this is also prohibited in the law.
However, the Councils Election Law is silent about the manner of minorities’ participation in elections. In fact, this law does not provide a quota for religious minorities and at the same time does not impose limitations on the number of elected members. Therefore, the assumption that the members of a city council would be composed of minorities would be theoretically possible. In presidential and leadership expert elections, no rights are given to religious minorities to nominate candidates. The Constitution explicitly states that being Muslim and Shi’ite is one of the conditions for the presidency; therefore, religious minorities only have the right to vote. In the leadership expert elections, the requirement of jurisprudential expertise, which is one of Islamic sciences, is provided for the elected members, by which means the aforementioned minority will have no role in these elections except the right to vote.
In a brief summary of the above discussions, it can be concluded that religious minorities, whether recognized or unrecognized in law, do not have equal rights with other citizens in elections. But this is not the whole story. In fact, the restrictions imposed on all Iranian citizens who follow the official religion of the country by the political system are applied more severely to religious and denominational minorities. Among these restrictions is the special oversight of the country’s intelligence apparatus over candidates nominated by religious minorities. The qualifications of these individuals, even before being reviewed by the Guardian Council, are reviewed by a special office for religions and sects in the Ministry of Intelligence, and in some cases candidates are nominated by the recommendation of this ministry. And throughout their presence in parliament, they have close cooperation with this apparatus. These cases, of course, do not apply to religious servants. Muslim-born converts to Christianity not only lack social rights from the perspective of the Islamic Republic system but are also sometimes detained and prosecuted and sentenced to heavy penalties including execution. Therefore, it can be said that their situation is similar to that of Baha’i followers.
The above reviews show that religious minorities have legal and extra-legal restrictions for participating in elections within the framework of Iran’s religious government. In fact, if it is said that elections in Iran face very significant restrictions for the majority of people in Iran, this restriction is much greater for minorities. Currently, minorities can benefit from the opportunity to participate in decision-making centers determined by law only if they gain the approval of intelligence and security agencies based on the extent of their cooperation with them. In sum, it can be said that none of the minorities in Iran can play a role in micro and macro decision-making of the country..
