is a source of embarrassment for the government: Al-Sistani, like al-Khui, has not conceded the legal validity of the political power vested.in amarja al-taqlid through the concept of the governance of the jurist.
In the popular imagination, the presumption that a qualified mujtahid is a general deputy of the twelfth hidden Imam facilitated the upgrading of the institution of the marja al-taqlid from a position of a supreme legal authority accepted for emulation to an authority invested with all kinds of constitutional and political powers. Naturally, such an expansion in the marja "s authority was less problematic in a commu‌nity that had come to believe that the hidden Imam is in constant communication with the leading mujtahids, guiding and protecting them from committing errors of judgment. These popular beliefs cannot be underestimated in their overall influence on the formation of the Shiite political culture. The sense of loyalty between the religiously acknowledged leader and the community of the believers is indeed a unique feature of Shiite culture.
The "nationalization" of the transnational, juridically founded position of the
marja that bound the Shiites together regardless of their national or ethnic affiliations, in the modern nation-state of Iran, continues to pose questions of legitimacy. By ordaining a constitutional position for the supreme religious authority, Iran was indirectly engaged in appropriating the loyalty of the entire Shiite community for the nation-state of Iran. It overlooked the religious implications of creating the modern territorial state under the inherently transnational and transcultural concept of the governance of the jurist, which admitted that with the obligation of acknowledg‌ ing the supreme holder of that position came the God-given right of the Shiite Mus‌ lims to live under his rule. The Shiite rights to Iran, then, would be on the same prin‌ciples that allowed the Jews in the diaspora to claim a divinely ordained right to migrate to Palestine. Such an oversight among the Muslim religious leaders is not surprising. Muslim scholars even now continue to think in terms defined by the Islamic legal tradition, which actually never conceived of the world as a community of nation-states. The Sharia always spoke in terms of the Umma, the religious‌ political community under Gods representative on earth. The presuppositions that govern the establishment of the modern sovereign state, however, treat territorial integrity as the fundamental principle of the claim to independent statehood.
In addition, the promulgation of the position of the marja al-taqlid in the consti‌tution made a mujtahid a state functionary, thereby requiring the government to fill his position with a qualified candidate. By using the model of leadership provided by Khomeini himself, who was able to fill both the traditional and the constitutional roles of the state marja al-taqlid, the government of Iran was ironically laying the foundation for the future division of the Shiite religious leadership into a govern‌ mental and a nongovernmental marja. As observed by al-Khui and other leading ayatollahs at that time, the traditional independence of the marja from government control was bound to be compromised with the establishment of the state marja, leaving the community at large to continue to choose its own preferred marja.
To be sure, the regularization of the marja through the state-created and -filled position was designed to overcome the problem of the plurality of the marja, some of whom had not even endorsed the political role of the jurist. Without first having such an agreement in place, the smooth functioning of the state was impossible. The