Power must be shared to be exercised. The manner and extent of power sharing is the subject of a large portion of human history. And a large portion of that history is concerned with the sharing of power between religious and secular authorities.

Iran and Turkey are writing the latest chapter in the story of power sharing between Islamic and secular authorities.  The majority in Turkey are demanding more religious content in government, Iran may be going the other way.        

The authors of the Koran constructed in the figure of Mohammed the embodiment of the religion and the state in one person. The caliphs of the Islamic empires were not clerics, but were required to be Muslims in good standing. The religious leaders exercised the power of deciding what behavior was acceptable in a good Muslim. 

For example, the Sauds of Arabia gained political control of the country by agreeing to Wahhabist religious demands. This kind of power sharing was common between Christian kings and popes. 

Then Khomeini came to power in Iran with a different sort of power sharing. What he proposed was based on the Islamic legal theory of Vilayat al Faqih or rule of the jurist. The idea was to give elected officials some power, but to reserve final authority for the earthly representative of the 12^th Imam who was to come and rule. 

What Iran and Turkey are finding is that, in politics as in biology, you can’t be a little bit pregnant. When secular and religious principles clash, only one can win. That is when lines of authority become clear and those being ruled find out how much their voice counts in deciding who rules.   

There is a three-way split in Iran. Khamenei and Mousavi want to continue under the rule of the jurist, but they disagree on the name of the jurist. Many of the people who were demonstrating in the streets of Iran and elsewhere want to reverse the power sharing arrangement, with elected officials having the final say.                 

Candidate Mousavi is evidently raising the stakes as reported in the New York Times:

If the large volume of cheating and vote rigging, which has set fire to the hay of people’s anger, is expressed as the evidence of fairness, the republican nature of the state will be killed and, in practice, the ideology that Islam and republicanism are incompatible will be proven,” wrote Mr. Moussavi in a letter calling for a new vote after the election. 

Cheating in an election does not prove anything about the compatibility of Islam and republicanism. But history does. When in history has a pious Islamic society chosen to govern itself by the expression of the will of the majority, when that will opposed Islamic law? 

The Koran is very specific in describing the Islamic requirements of power sharing. No man-made law can supersede the law of Islam-- the law of Allah. This is the ultimate source of the friction between secular and religious power sharing in Islamic countries. 

To the extent that Muslims follow Islamic law, they reject democracy.