in Iraq. French security agents raided MEK prop-
erties in France in 2003, fearing that the organiza-
tion was attempting to set up a new base in that
country. Several members burned themselves to
death in protest.
The MEK’s original ideology was based on a
modern Marxist interpretation of traditional Shii
concepts and symbols, paralleling ideas espoused
by Iranian intellectual and visionary ali shariati
(d. 1977). In its propaganda Islamic terms such as
tawhid (monotheism), Jihad, mujahid, and shahid
(martyr) were reconfigured to mean “egalitarian-
ism,” “liberation struggle,” “freedom fighter,” and
“revolutionary hero,” respectively. umma, the idea
of the ideal Muslim community of believers, was
interpreted to mean “dynamic classless society,”
an idea that is a cornerstone of Marxist ideology.
The movement’s ideology has changed consider-
ably as the political dynamics of the Middle East
have changed and Marxism has fallen out of fash-
ion. It now presents itself as an enemy of the reli-
gious fanaticism of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Maryan Rajavi is known as president-elect of the
National Council of Resistance of Iran, in which
MEK holds a dominant position.
See also commUnism; politics and islam;
terrorism.
Further reading: Ervand Abrahamian, The Iranian
Mojahedin (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press,
1989); Nikki R. Keddie and Farah Monian, “Militancy
and Religion in Contemporary Iran.” In Fundamental-
isms and the State: Remaking Polities, Economies, and
Militance, edited by Martin E. Marty and R. Scott
Appleby, 511–538 (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1993); Nicola Pedde, “Role and Evolution of the
Mojahedin-e Kalgh.” Vaseteh: Journal of the European
Society for Iranian Studies 1, no. 1 (2005): 113–123.
mujtahid
Among the Shia, the mujtahid is synonymous
with the faqih: an expert in Islamic jurisprudence.
However, in the absence of the Imams, the muj-
tahid has the ability to issue legal decisions by
means of employing ijtihad, or independent juris-
tic reasoning.
Ijtihad has long been a cause of strife in
Islamic law. Because many legal scholars con-
sidered it to be based on little more than the
personal opinion of the jurist, ijtihad ceased to
be a major source of the sharia in the traditional
Sunni schools by the 10th century. And yet, even
within the Shia schools there existed a fervent
debate over the validity of the mujtahid to use
individual reasoning or rational conjecture to
make legal decisions about those issues in which
the qUran and the sUnna are silent. The akhbari
school, for instance, utterly rejected the use of
ijtihad, and required all jurisprudence to be based
on the traditions of the Prophet, the Imams, and
the previous jurists. However, the UsUli school,
whose position eventually became the dominant
ideology in shiism, encouraged the use of ijtihad
in the formation of Islamic jurisprudence, thereby
elevating the position of the mujtahid to “the
deputy of the Hidden Imam,” or mahdi.
Today, there are so many qualified mujtahids in
the world that only those who have attained the
highest level of scholarship and who can boast
the greatest number of followers, are truly free
to practice ijtihad and issue authoritative legal
declarations (fatwa), which the Shia are obliged
to follow. At the top of this order of mujtahids are
the ayatollahs, whose authority on legal issues
is unmatched in the Shia world. Indeed, it was
precisely this religious and political authority
that allowed the Ayatollah rUhollah khomeini to
impose his leadership upon the social, political,
and economic forces that led to the iranian revo-
lUtion oF 1978–1979. Currently, only a handful
of authoritative ayatollahs exist, primarily in iran
and iraq, though their religious and political lead-
ership over the world’s Shiis is still formidable.
Reza AslanFurther reading: Moojan Momen, An Introduction to
Shi’i Islam (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press,K 500 mujtahid