A Comparative Study of the Basis and the Process of Designating a Muslim Ruler in Imam Khomeini and Sinhuri's Opinions

In determining a Muslim ruler, Imam Khomeini maintains that a Muslim ruler must be appointed while Sinhuri holds the view that he must be elected. Despite the sharp differences of opinion among those who take the “appointment theory” and those who take the “election theory”, the article in hand, while taking an analytical- descriptive approach to the problem, finds a democratic spirit as governing the theory of “Rightly-Guided (RÁshidah) Caliphate” by Sinhuri and that of Imam Khomeini’s “WilÁyat-e Mutlaqah-ye Faqih” or “the Absolute Guardianship of a Muslim Jurist”, which can be crystalize through some such mechanisms as conciliar and two-degree election, and as a consequence, by focusing on the common and agreed-upon grounds of election as such, taking justice, piety, and knowledge as conditions for the election of the experts (khobrigÁn) and the conciliar nature of their decisions, one can embark on the establishment of a council composed of the experts who can play a significant role in designating a Muslim ruler. Though one cannot ignore certain differences in the consequences of the fundamentals, providing a mechanism of this kind may result in securing the democratic feature of the process through which a Muslim ruler is designated, without ignoring the difference between this sort of democratic approach and western model of democracy.