INTERVIEW: Lebanese intellectual Chibli Mallat outlines principles for non-violent change in Iran
By GARETH SMYTH in Beirut
[TEHRAN BUREAU] A leading academic authority on Shia Islam has put forward proposals around which he believes advocates of non-violent change in Iran can agree.
Chibli Mallat, the Lebanese lawyer and intellectual, has recently published “A Legal Manifesto for Iran’s Green Revolution” in Beirut in Arabic and English in the An-Nahar and Daily Star newspapers.
Mallat, 48, is best known internationally for his role in establishing Indict, the campaign to try Saddam Hussein for war crimes, and for opening a Belgian legal case against Ariel Sharon for the 1982 massacres in the Sabra and Shatilla Palestinian camps in Beirut.
But the work that brought Mallat wide academic recognition was his 1993 study* of Mohammad Baqr Sadr, the Iraqi Shia scholar, killed by Saddam, who pioneered the idea of an Islamic Republic long before Ruhollah Khomeini gave his famous Najaf lectures in 1970.
Read more: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tehranbureau/2009/07/legitimation-crisis.html#ixzz1jKgCcaiC
