Iranian-American journalist Hooman Majd is very well connected and articulate. Salon describes him as “the consummate insider and outsider…Majd served as the English-language translator for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s now infamous 2006 speech at the United Nations.”

I heard the interview on NPR where he explained what Ahmadinijad was really saying when the West reported that he wanted Israel wiped off the map. It amounted to a distinction without a difference.

Whatever. Majd is certainly smooth. And/But I find the following exchange, from an interview in Salon, to be self-serving — at the least — and puzzling if not downright disturbing:

What does Mousavi, the most public face of the reform movement, want right now?

What he wants is a return to the law. Mousavi is a child of the revolution. He believes in the revolution…Mousavi is someone who is very much an Islamic democrat.

So he doesn’t want secular democracy?

I don’t know if that’s something he wants deep in his heart, but it’s certainly not something he would admit.

Iran is not a secular nation. The majority of Iranians are deeply religious, and even though it sounds paradoxical to us, they believe in an Islamic democracy. They want most of the elements of democracy: They don’t want the state to jam religion down their throats; they want a lot of freedom. But they also understand that to be guided by Islam, which is basically how they live their lives anyway, is not counter to democracy.

He never quite explains how religion, which puts God at the top of the hierarchy, is not counter to democracy.

There’s nowhere in the constitution of the Islamic Republic that says votes should be rigged if you don’t like the candidate or that the president should have no power. There’s nowhere it says that the people’s choice does not count.

Well, no — why should it, if it is understood that God’s will will be done. It remains an unwritten law, interpreted by the Islamic clergy in whatever way they see fit.

So it’s entirely possible for someone like Mousavi or Rafsanjani to believe that Islam and democracy are compatible.

Compatible insofar as Islam, and God’s will, retains supremacy over the peoples’ democracy.

What about the role of the supreme leader?

Some people believe he shouldn’t be the commander of the armed forces, that this should be in the hands of the president. But the reformers want to work this out internally, through democratic change, and not through violence or an uprising. And certainly not with assistance from the West.

” ‘Some people say….’  But not me of course!” Spoken like the ultimate insider/outsider.

Never mind separation of church and state. First, you have to have separation of church and war, but that isn’t going to happen in Iran.

Here’s the thing: religion and democracy ARE compatible…if they run on separate, parallel tracks, never converging. It makes both stronger. But you can’t put God over the Constitution, any Constitution. Otherwise you eventually get a “supreme leader” who will claim that he alone hears the voice of God telling him what to do. And that’s not democracy.

Sandra Day O’Connor said it best:

At a time when we see around the world the violent consequences of the assumption of religious authority by government, Americans may count themselves fortunate: Our regard for constitutional boundaries has protected us from similar travails, while allowing private religious exercise to flourish…

Those who would renegotiate the boundaries between church and state must therefore answer a difficult question: Why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly?