These concepts should be made clear and the people should...

These concepts should be made clear and the people should have a more realistic perception of the Islamic government and understand its exigency so that they may be prepared to defend their ideas against the opposing schools of thought and theories and not be satisfied with chanting slogans.

The academic status of the question of wilayat al-faqih When we say that we are supporters of the Islamic system and our society has to be governed according to Islam, we mean that the government should be based on Islam. Of course, attempts were made to consolidate the foundations of this system in our Constitution and to rely upon them. The principle of wilayat al-faqih [guardianship or governance of the jurist] is the most important of all other principles.

At this juncture, we shall touch on the issue in question so as to explain what we mean when we say that the system and government must be Islamic. The ideological nature of a system and its reliance upon specific principles and values—in other words, the dependence of a system on a set of specific principles, doctrines, ideas, and thoughts—manifests itself in at least two dimensions; the “legislative” dimension and the “administrative and executive” dimension. Of course, a third dimension, i.e.

the “judicial” dimension can also be considered, but this dimension is not as firm as the two dimensions already mentioned. In any case, there are two main dimensions, i.e. the legislative and the executive, and the judiciary comes next.

In view of this introduction, we may say that if firstly the laws, which the system regards as binding and which the system is ready to defend, are Islamic, and secondly those who are in charge of executing these laws reach the said position according to Islamic standards, principles and values, then it is an Islamic system. We do emphasize the idea that the Islamic nature of a system is conditional on the existence of the two dimensions.

As such, if the laws are drifted away from the Islamic path and non-Islamic laws are to be the criterion of execution, or if all the laws are purely Islamic and consistent with the Qur’an and the shari‘ah [Islamic law] but those who are in charge of the affairs and executive officials have not assumed the said responsibilities according to Islamic standards and criteria but through non-Islamic ways, the system will in neither cases be “Islamic” in the exact sense of the word.

So, theoretically, two main points come to the fore in this discussion.