The Persian Caliphate
From time to time, Medawar reads a blog or newspaper column to the effect that, in Iran, "The Revolutionary Guards are increasingly a parallel, separately funded, government." They observe, but do not understand. The situation in Iran today is very like that in the earliest stages of the Turkish Republic, where General Mustapha Kemal Attaturk had established a modern, democratic state, but the old Caliphate, which had recently led the Ottoman Empire into tyranny, genocide and disaster, was still levying what amounted to taxes and still passing decrees which were supposed to have the force of law. Parliamentary democracy, which Attaturk was trying to estbalish and stabilize, kept tripping over the remains of the Caliphate at every turn, until Attaturk effectively abolished the shadow government, not in the name of secularism, but with the words "the Caliphate requires Islam, Islam does not require the Caliphate!" In doing so, he not only secured Turkish democracy, b...