[eynsham]

I agree that Islamophobia contributes to unhelpfully negative attitudes towards Iran.

> It's a double standard where nobody sees a problem with England even though there's a state religion and the religious head and government head are the same person...and unlike Iran, those roles are hereditary.

I don’t think that anyone familiar with both countries would consider that the rôle of the two is remotely comparable. The Queen’s influence, except when acting on the advice of the PM (i.e., doing precisely what the PM says), on the vast majority of policymaking is negligible. The Supreme Leader’s influence is much broader. The Supreme Leader chooses all sorts of important ministers (e.g., the interior and defence ministers). The IRGC directly reports to Khamanei and he does not direct it on the advice of the President.

As for the established church, it has barely any effect: at most, a few votes in the Lords (which under the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949 can be overriden by the Commons.) Government policy and the wishes of the C of E are pretty clearly in tension, which is why e.g. Thatcher spent rather a lot of time criticising bishops for effectively calling her heartless. Meanwhile in Iran, all sorts of policies are dictated by the religious establishment, e.g., Qisas.

> Iran today looks like what throwing off the yoke of foreign influence looks like.

There are many ways to ‘throw off the yoke of foreign influence’ (and hopefully replace it with a healthy attitude towards foreign ideas.) I don’t think it’s incorrect to suggest that there are pretty substantial deficiencies in the seem not particularly to like the present path taken by the régime. See e.g. Ahmadinejad (presumably irked by being sidelined) on MEMRI (I know, I know),¹ or the election of Khatami and Rouhani (whose ambitions have often been thwarted by those you seem to be defending here.)

> Never mind the bloody legacy of Calvinism though. The traditional head of the European church launched the crusades and backed the long slog in the Iberian Peninsula.

This seems to be logically fallacious whataboutism—where do you get the idea that OP wants a return to Roman Catholic theocracy?

> So long as the first reaction is to frame Iran in religious terms, the Mullahs are logically correct in their claims about the enemy without.

Simply criticising the religious establishment as done above is common even amongst Iranians, so this seems to miss the point. Now, it may be that actually this is cover for some raving about Muslims generally or Iran qua an Islamic Republic as opposed to one say even less democratic than e.g. Pakistan or Bangladesh. But this comment seems to be a sort of reflexive defence against a certain sort of Islamophobic criticism which wasn’t actually made.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUW_XwvHQNw, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bOfDBoQ7yA

[brudgers]

The English Parliament is allowed to pass legislation to which the head of state consents.

Among such legislation is the English church’s military arm engaging in the ongoing Irish religious war. A conflict that goes back to the time Henry VIII made his own church to sanction his divorce…so he could marry the first woman he is known to have killed.

More recently the English head of state created a new legal structure to harden the already armed religious border on Ireland.

[eynsham]

> The English parliament

doesn’t exist; presumably you mean either the UK parliament or the Legislative Grand Committee for England.

> is allowed to pass legislation to which the head of state consents

Case 1: you mean the UK parliament.

In this case, royal assent is a mere formality. The last refusal of royal assent was in 1708, and on the advice of the PM. Constitutional practice has changed since that time. Refusal of assent is an impossibility—in particular if it a purported refusal were on the advice of the PM; see Miller:

> This court is not, therefore, precluded by article 9 or by any wider Parliamentary privilege from considering the validity of the prorogation itself. The logical approach to that question is to start at the beginning, with the advice that led to it. That advice was unlawful. It was outside the powers of the Prime Minister to give it. This means that it was null and of no effect: see, if authority were needed, R (UNISON) v Lord Chancellor [2017] UKSC 51, para 119. It led to the Order in Council which, being founded on unlawful advice, was likewise unlawful, null and of no effect and should be quashed. This led to the actual prorogation, which was as if the Commissioners had walked into Parliament with a blank piece of paper. It too was unlawful, null and of no effect. —R (Miller) v PM [2019] UKSC 41 at para 69

Now the Guardian has recently published certain articles on Queen’s consent. I found its misuse regrettable. However, the scope of Queen’s consent is essentially the regulation of a very small fiefdom—probably less in value than e.g. a supermarket chain. This pales in comparison to e.g. control of defence and foreign policy, which the Supreme Leader and religious establishment have. Royal assent, therefore, provides no grounds for drawing an equivalence between Iran and the UK.

Case 2: you mean the Legislative Grand Committee for England.

The Legislative Grand Committees had no power to pass legislation to which a majority of the Commons was opposed.

> Among such legislation is the English church’s military arm engaging in the ongoing Irish religious war. A conflict that goes back to the time Henry VIII made his own church to sanction his divorce…so he could marry the first woman he is known to have killed.

There is no ‘ongoing Irish religious war’; it is an insult to the victims of the Troubles, the siege of Drogheda, etc. to suggest that present conflicts are remotely similar.

It is pretty hard to work out in these circumlocutions what you are actually referring to here, but I hazard that you are referring to the Irish border. You seem to ignore that, as I point out, HM Government does not exercise its powers on the advice of the Church of England, and indeed often the C of E is rather opposed to government policy (see e.g. _The Guardian_, 18 October 2020: ‘The Anglican church has publicly challenged the government’s willingness to break international law over Brexit, with five archbishops from Great Britain and Ireland joining together to condemn what could be a “disastrous precedent”.’)

> More recently the English head of state created a new legal structure to harden the already armed religious border on Ireland.

Nobody acts _qua_ the ‘English head of state’ because there is no such thing.

A fundamental mistake here is to see the acts of a reactionary but democratically elected government in the UK as _sui generis_ because monarchy is symbolically reactionary. When HM Government do stupid things, they do so in the same way any other Western government does stupid things. That laws begin with a recitation that they are enacted by ‘the Queen's most Excellent Majesty’ is a distraction.