quality:corruption, stylistic:tone
Religious debate

The 1891 fatwa by Mirza Hasan Shirazi that effectively shut down tobacco use in Iran and reversed the monopoly agreement on tobacco, showed the enormous influence of the Usuli Twelver Shi'i clergy among the Iranian people that went beyond issues directly involved with religion. (Usuli Shi'i consider it obligatory for a Muslim not trained in the religious sciences to obey a mujtahid, i.e. a marja', when seeking to determine Islamically correct behavior.)After this debacle, the new Shah, Mohammad Ali Qajar, understood that he could not use royal prestige and tradition to fight constitutional government. Instead, he would find religious allies.

There were clergy on both sides of the dispute.On the side of constitutional government were three of the highest level clerics (marja') at the time – Akhund Khurasani, Mirza Husayn Tehrani and Shaykh Abdullah Mazandarani – who telegraphed fatwa in favor of the constitution from their schools in Najaf, Iraq; of the three, Muhammad Kazim Khurasani, (aka Akhund Khurasani) was the most involved in the issue, he and his student Muhammad Hossein Naini argued that while complete justice was impossible until the return of the Hidden Imam, "human experience and careful reflection" shows "that democracy reduces the tyranny of state" making it a "lesser evil" in governance and something Shi'i must support until the return of the Imam; also supporting constitutionalism was Mirza Ali Aqa Tabrizi, who argued that only the sources of emulation (highest level clerics) should be heeded when it comes to matters of faith.

The leader of those opposing constitutional government was Fazlullah Nouri. Other opponents included Mullah Qurban Ali Zanjani. Nouri maintained that sharia was a complete code of life, not just for religious ritual, and any other codes were both unnecessary and against Islam. Although he ranked below Marja' religious leaders, he told Shi'i Muslims to ignore the Marja' they followed if that marja' supported democracy.