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Iranian Politics and Religious Modernism Iranian Politics and Religious Modernism THE LIBERATION MOVEMENT OF IRAN UNDER THE SHAH AND KHOMEINI H. E. CHEHAB! ,. _,:...,~ ·::,~:-- . ,,.;:\.<;;:. I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd Publishers Lon_don Published by For my parents l.B.Tauris & Co Ltd 110 Gloucester Avenue London NW1 8JA Copyright © 1990 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Chehabi, Houchang E. Iranian politics and religious modernism: the liberation movement of Iran. t. Iran. Politics I. Title 320.955 ISBN 1-85043-198-1 Printed in the United States of America Iranian Polity in Comparative Perspective / 31 ide?logically t~e re~l or imagine.cl _local representatives of powers against N.llillll·ili·;in ,111 .1 1.:\·ligious Modernism which. , all Nahonahsts. were stnvmg·· communism, Bah a ,.ism, z·ionism. · is l·k.ir th.ii 111 tlH' old polities of the non-Western world National- 11 Lmz s observation that the "anti" character of fascism can be t b . .\·lii'H''''• 1111Hkrnism share many affinities. Both strive to make d d . 4 s e 11 un erstoo as anh-mternational and anticosmopolitans also a r t \Sill ,\Ill ,, ' I . N t' l. d . pp ies o tlw l\it1ntn· ,111 d 1h ndture. an equa.l .among equals: the one in the raman a 10na ism an religious modernism. Transnational move- . .• l si1\1t·n· tlll' sl'cond m the spmtual sphere. Religious modern- t'l' 1Ill1 •I · 1 ' . , ments such as Baha'ism, communism, and Zionism were seen as isls tq'il·,tlh· l ·n1·1\:l' prov1dmg a to 11 the~11selves a~ ~p~ntual di~ension ele~ents o~ the ongoing crisis of sovereignty that characterized the N.itiillt.ilisnt, \'~;\•\'!'I.illy m countries whose rehg1on constitutes the Iraman polity. li.tsis lit 11.tliPn.il 11 11'ntity. Perhaps what kept Nationalism and religious modernism from de­ In ~ri Lrnk.1. tl11· example, the target of this fusion of religious gen~rating immediately into forms and styles of political action akin to . ·sttl tnd N.itionalism after independence was the Anglicized tlllll I l'l 11 1' ' . fasci~m was the fact that they were also reacting against a regime that .t . t'l•nt·l•si•nt1•d by the United National Party (UNP); the ideas l' lt I.' .l~ t ' was itself nondemocratic, and whose founder, Reza Shah, had been to . i Li\' i·l'li •i11us modernism were then skillfully championed by pn'llH' tll . 1,• . some extent influenced by fascist models. Moreover, most of the .., \\'JU). H.tnd.ir.tll·"kc who mtegrated them mto a basically democrat- lea~ers had been educated in the France of the Third Republic, a fact ~· l'tt'. ,1 .,,·stl'tll .tlbcit at the price of antagonizing the Tamil minori- IL t '1' l 1. • .~. • ' • • • wh~c.h also accounts f?r the absence of an antiparliamentary and tY. In l'h.lil,\lld. 111t tl~c other hand, rehg10~s mode~~ism and National- ~nhhberal. component m the "anti" dimension. The original "anti" .· . , .1l'li h ·n"1111ously and were not m opposition to the state, a 1 11 impulse did, however, contribute to the weakening of the commitment \Sill'. \\l ·t "-ltll'l' th' ti l''nbins their relative conservatism. The king's tradi- circun1 ~, · r to democracy in the anti-Pahlavi opposition. ",.._·11,,n .ts nrotector of the Sangha, the Buddhist order of tt1'll·l 1 r l, 1 r . Politically, the religious modernists were latecomers to the Iranian , . 11l''''l'd ltitn to modernize the religious establishment and the see~~· It was the coup of 1953 that triggered their entry into Iranian llll'll"-~· '1 , llt' Cl'll1.'lHnit.u1th·. One should also remember that the target of Thai pohhcs as they took a leading role in the founding of the underground 1 ,n,,\ism w.1s 1wt only foreign domination of the country but also <, 111 Nati?nal. Resi~ta~ce M~vement (NRM). By that time Iran already had ~l ', L~hiiwst' mith'rit~· within it. As for religious modernism, since the par.hes _1dentifymg with communism, socialism, fascism, ethno­ .. ~:tt' 1..iid wt t'llt~rn· .1ggressively secularizing policies in Thailand, it 1 nahonahsm, and liberalism. The communists were excluded from the ·i. , ·t, J t't..; thrust nwstlv inward and toward peripheral regions hither- " ll'l l t ll • , -., National Movement on account of their close ties with the Soviet t1.' k..;s p1.•iwtr.th'\.l t,~. Buddhism.:i- Union, b~t the National Movement did comprise socialists, liberals, ln. lr.Hl. it is r1..·rh.1ps precisely because of the separation between conservatives, and extreme nationalists. The LMI became a new com­ drnn:h ,rnd st.t!'-' th.1t the modernizing elites of the early twentieth ponent of this coalition after 196i. 1..'t'nturY chi1s1.' th' r,1th of secularization, unlike, for instance, Thailand Natio.n~lism is Iran ~njoyed a brief period of ascendency in 1951-53, 1..'r l.lp~rn. ln F~' :·t. modernize~s worked together with Muhammad and religious modermsts formed a government for a few months in .-\b.luh ..rn1..i tr\':~~ tht' outset their goals included the modernization of 1979. Other than that, both forces have always been in the opposition. tlw l'l'li~i ...,us l':'!.1:-:ishment. When religious modernism first appeared ,,n :ht.' lr.rni.rn :',';.':~t' in the early 1940s, it was a reaction against forces :h. : Wt't'-' l'(.'::,., '"~ h) be subve~ting Iranian youth: communism and Religious Modernism in Iran 1 1'..frt.l isrn. \t:.:<::~~ intellectuals telt that they had to provide young Islamic modernism displays a certain paradox in Iran. The man l:-.!:~:.rn~ w:!h -~ , ::': ...,n L)f "true" Islam, so that they would no longer usually co~sidered the.founder of Islamic modernism, Seyyed Jamaleddin :-t':':"'\.'n ... !. , i 1 ,•:·.1 ~\ t1.1 the_ lure ~f communism and Baha'ism. Iranian Asadabad1 (al-Afgham) was an Iranian, but he did his best to hide his ...... ,~~n1 un 1 ~~ \n':~' : ...kntitied with the Soviet Union, while Baha'is, origins (probably so that his Shi'ite background would not affect his .llth... ,u~h .h1b.':~':':~ 1.'f a faith that had originated on Iranian soil, were effectiveness in the Sunni world) and had a more lasting impact on :"rt'X't1,k"-i ~u ...'..."-~......:_,~:Iy as Russian, British, American, and lastly Israeli Egypt and the Ottoman Empire than on the country of his birth. From ~ .. a ... ni:;C) .l.~':":.~ :-..· The religious modernists were thus confronting "The_Terror Facing the Bahais," New York Review of Books, May 13, 1982, pp. 43-44. ~~ ~ f~~tence,". pp .. 62-65 and 69-74· . 54 ~"-..,...a trirt ~~'ll of the histoncal roots of these accusations see fl.l"UZ I<azemzadeh, Lmz, "Some Notes," p. 16. 32 I Religious Modernism and Nationalism Iranian Polity in Comparative Perspective I 33 the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century the Shi'ite clergy democratic interplay between government and opposition. The LMI were the most politically active ulema in the Islamic world, 55 the has been an oppositional force most of the time, and this raises the independence of the clergy from the state enabling them to play that analytical problem of how to conceptualize the role of oppositions in role. Yet with few exceptions it would be wrong to call the ulema who nondemocratic regimes. were active in the Constitutional Movement "modernists": They were above all concerned with establishing the rule of law, of Islamic law, not Oppositions in Authoritarian Settings with harmonizing Islam and the prevailing spirit of the times. Modern­ ist tendencies, as defined earlier, appeared relatively late among Iranian Nondemocratic regimes vary in their degree of repression, and often Muslims, probably because, compared to India and the Arab Middle oppositional tendencies in monistic systems manifest themselves inside East, the foreign impact was less dramatic in Iran. Also, religious the regime. 58 Few such systems allow structured oppositional move­ modernists in Iran have tended to be of lay background, which has ments to emerge, and it is therefore understandable that most studies limited their effectiveness among the religious masses, which look to of oppositions in nondemocratic polities center on functional, or interest­ the clergy for guidance. Let us not forget that in Egypt a Muhammad based oppositions, rather than would-be opposition parties. 59 In au­ Abduh became Grand Mufti and head of the al-Azhar establishment; thoritarian regimes with limited pluralism, there may also appear he thus had the means and the authority to apply at least some of his "semi-oppositions," which Linz defines as "those groups that are not ideas. In Iran, by contrast, even the clerical members of the modernist dominant or represented in the governing group but that are willing to movement were regarded with considerable suspicion by the ulema. In participate in power without fundamentally challenging the system."60 response the modernists became quite anti-clerical, some of them going Such truly oppositional movements as try to maintain a societal pres­ so far as to evoke wistfully the Protestant Reformation. The existence ence in the face of oppression receive relatively little attention. More­ of a powerful clergy in Iran also explains why the most important over, most of these opposition movements become active only in periods modernist movement of the nineteenth century, Babism, when faced of transition, when an authoritarian system is undergoing internal with the hostility of the ulema, came to reject certain fundamental reformulation or even breakdown.
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