2018-01-21
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• Islam in Iran is usual in that the vast majority of the country’s population and major religious authorities are Shiites, not Sunnis.
• One of the country’s major religious leaders, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, emerged as a major spokesperson and leader of this opposition. At first jailed for his actions and later forced to live in exile in neighboring Iraq.
• Khomeini was the symbol and by far the most popular leader of the revolution that swept the shah from power in 1978-1979. His islamist ideals became the basis for the new government.
• Khomeini’s most original contribution to Islamist doctrine was the concept of the supreme leader. He argued that one leader with enough religious authority and popular support should be the ultimate guide of the Islamic state, with the power to veto any law he deemed as contrary to Sharia
• Ayatollah Khomeini helped create the first true theocracy in the modern world. It follows Shiite Islamist principles and includes some democratic elements justified via the concept of shura. How much power those democratic elements have had has varied over time. Khomeini’s death allowed stronger reformist movements and politicians to emerge in the 1990s, ensconced in the democratic elements of the regime: the presidency and Majlis. Conservative clergy used the religious institutions that the revolution created to frustrate reform and preserve what they saw as the pure path of the Islamist regime. With the ascendancy of Ahmadinejad, religious authorities seem to have decided that they need to control the regime’s democratic institutions as well, but pressure for change is clearly mounting. As socioeconomic changes continue and Iranians increasingly use the Internet and other means of communication to access the outside world, theocracy survives, but it seems to rely increasingly on military force to maintain control. The democratic elements it has allowed to operate in partial form, however, continue to question it and threaten more fundamental change.
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Exam Card # 30
On discipline "Political science”
Supranational political entities.
A supranational union is a type of multi-national organisation where negotiated power is delegated to an authority by governments of member states. The concept of supranational union is sometimes used to describe theEuropean Union (EU), as a new type of political entity.[1] The EU is the only entity which provides for international popular elections, going beyond the level of political integration normally afforded by international treaty. The term "supranational" is sometimes used in a loose, undefined sense in other contexts, sometimes as a substitute for international, transnational or global.
Exclaves. Examples
An exclave is defined as a portion of a country geographically separated from the main part by surrounding alien territory.An exclave is the enclave seen from the viewpoint of the main part. The word exclave is much less common than enclave, which tends to be the generic term to denote both concepts.
•Nakhichivan, which borders Turkey, Armenia and Iran, is an exclave of Azerbaijan. Additionally, Azerbaijan has three more small exclaves: Karki, Barkhudarli and YukhariAskipara (together with AşağıƏskipara) which are all occupied by Armenia.[10]
•Llívia is an exclave of Spain surrounded by France.
•Campioned'Italia is an exclave of Italy surrounded by Switzerland.
