Larison counters Abbas Milani:
Is there anything more useful to the [Iranian] regime than identifying leading thinkers of the Green movement with a highly liberalized form of Shi’ism?
When a political protest movement has been able to tie its cause together with a people’s traditional religion, or at least when the movement does not appear to attack that religion openly, it tends to win far broader and deeper support. If it appears to challenge established claims of the religion as part of its “reform” project, it necessarily meets with stiffer resistance and wins less support. It opens itself up to charges of impiety and religious error, which the movement may not take seriously, but which a majority of the general population may be only too ready to believe. Instead of appropriating traditional religious language and ideas and turning them against the regime, these Green theological arguments distance the movement from the religion of the majority and they permit the regime to reclaim some of its lost authority.
The Dish 