PDF hosted at the Radboud Repository of the Radboud University Nijmegen The following full text is a publisher's version. For additional information about this publication click this link. http://hdl.handle.net/2066/146546 Please be advised that this information was generated on 2021-10-09 and may be subject to change. THE SACRALIZATION OF WAR IN THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN een wetenschappelijke proeve op het gebied van Letteren Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen, volgens besluit van het College van Decanen in het openbaar te verdedigen op dinsdag 24 maart 1998 des namiddags om 3.30 uur precies door Saskia Maria Gieling geboren op 26 april 1961 te Angerlo Promotores: Prof.Dr. C.H.M. Versteegh Dr. H. Motzki Leden van de manuscriptcommissie: Dr. D. Douwes Prof.Dr. J. ter Haar (RUL) Prof.Dr. R. Peters (UvA) ® 1998 Saskia Gieling All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photoprint, microfilm, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher, except for the quotation of brief passages in criticism. Printed: Ridderprint, Ridderkerk Photograph cover: Dah sâl bâ tarrâhân-i graßk-i inqilâb-i islamî, 1357-1367, Compiled by Dâwûd Sâdiq 'Ali, (Tehran: Hawza-yi hunarî-yi sâzimân-i tablîghât-i islâmî, 1368/1989) Vol. 3. THE SACRALIZATION OF WAR IN THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN Saskia Maria Gieling To my mother and the memory of my father CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 1 NOTE ON TRANSCRIPTION 2 ABBREVIATIONS 2 INTRODUCTION 3 The object of this study 3 Sources 5 Theoretical framework 9 The contents of this study 11 1. THE WAR: A CHRONOLOGICAL SURVEY 15 1.1 Background of the conflict 15 1.2 Iraqi invasion 24 1.3 Iranian counterattacks 25 1.4 Invasion of Iraq 27 1.5 Extension of the war to the Persian Gulf 31 1.6 More Iranian attacks 33 1.7 Continuation of the war on all fronts 36 1.8 Cease-fire 41 2. THEOLOGICAL-DOCTRINAL DISCOURSE: ISLAM AND WAR 43 2.1 Introduction 43 2.2 Classical Islamic conceptions of jihâd 43 2.3 Shî'î conceptions oîjihâd 45 2.4 The war against Iraq and jihâd 48 2.5 Other dimensions oî jihâd 55 2.6 The bughât 58 2.7 Al-amr bi-1-ma'rûf wa-l-nahy 'an al-munkar 61 2.8 Expansion of the Islamic idea 63 2.9 War and shahâda 64 2.10 War andana 69 2.11 The war as God's ordeal 71 11 Contents 3. THEOLOGICAL-DOCTRINAL DISCOURSE: THE SHÎ'Î woRLDviEw 77 3.1 Introduction 77 3.2 Iman and islam: Sunni, Shî'î and Western views 77 3.3 îmân and islam in the Iranian rhetoric 80 3.4 The use of kufr in the Iranian rhetoric 87 3.5 Some other theological notions 91 3.6 Mustakbimn and mustad'qßn 100 3.7 Haqqandbâtil 104 4. HISTORICAL EXEMPLARY DISCOURSE 109 4.1 Introduction 109 4.2 Historical analogies: Parallels with the wars of the Prophet 111 4.3 Historical analogies: The lessons of 'АИ 115 4.4 The Karbalâ'paradigm 117 4.5 The role of the twelfth imam 127 4.6 The names of the military operations 135 5. ISLAMIC SOLIDARITY AND RELIGIOUS NATIONALISM 141 5.1 Introduction 141 5.2 Muslim solidarity: The universalist appeal of the revolution 141 5.3 Muslim solidarity: Iraq 143 5.4 Muslim solidarity: Palestine and Lebanon 147 5.5 Nationalism: Theoretical background 148 5.6 Iran and nationalism 150 5.7 Nationalism: Religious nationalism in the Islamic Republic 153 5.8 Nationalism: Milla, mîhan and umma 158 5.9 Nationalism: The religious minorities 162 5.10 Iranian nationalism versus Arabism 163 6. JUSTIFYING PEACE: THE ACCEPTANCE OF RESOLUTION 598 167 6.1 The attitude of the Islamic Republic towards peace 167 6.2 Towards a cease-fire 170 6.3 The acceptance of Resolution 598 173 CONCLUSION 179 BIBLIOGRAPHY 187 SAMENVATTING 201 CURRICULUM VITAE ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am grateful to a number of people and organizations who in different ways helped me to write this book. The Catholic University of Nijmegen gave me a stipendium and enabled me to visit Iran and see how much the memory of the war is still alive in Iran. Nicoline and Herman van Renselaar's hospitality and kindness during my stay in Tehran will not easily be forgotten. The Netherlands Organization of Scientific Research (NWO) gave me a grant for visiting the Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel-Aviv University. Yigal Shefi and Haim Gal were very helpful in collecting material there. I would like to thank Prof. Dr. Johan ter Haar, Prof. Dr. Ruud Peters and Drs. Leon Wecke for reading the manuscript and offering helpful comments. I also thank Marijke Post of the Department of Middle Eastern Studies of the University of Nijmegen for all her assistance. I am indebted to Kamil Banak of the Documentation Center for Modem Iran, Leiden University for his help during my numerous visits to the center. Without Erik Jan's patience and support throughout the past years, I could not have written this book. NOTE ON TRANSCRIPTION The transcription of Arabic and Persian terms is based on the transliteration system as used in the International Journal of Middle East Studies. For the translation of Qur'ânic passages I have used Bell's translation (The Qur'ân: Translated, with a critical re-arrangement of the Surahs (Edinburgh: Clark, 1953). ABBREVATIONS - Dar maktab-ijum 'a: Dar maktab-ijum 'a. Majmû 'a-yi khutbahâ-yi namâz-ijum 'a-yi Tehran Vol. 2-7 (Tehran: Ministry of Islamic Guidance) - Jang wa jihâd: Khumaynî, Dar justujû-yi râh az kalâm-i imam: Jang wajihâd. Az bayânât wa i'lamiya-hà-yi imam Khumaynî az sâl 1341 ta 1361 Vol.2 (Tehran: Amîr Kabîr, 13632/1984) - Farhang-i jabha: Farhang-i jabha (tablû-yi niwishtihâ éd. by Sayyid Mihdî Fahmîdî (Intishârât-i hawza-yi hunarî-yi sâzimân-i tablîghât-i islâmî, 1369/1990) - Jang bâ inqilâb: Jang bâ inqilâb, barrasi zamînahâ-yi tajâwuz-i rizjîm-i 'Iraq 'ala Iran (Tehran, 1360/1981) INTRODUCTION The object of study The war with Iraq which started shortly after the establishment of the Islamic Republic has received much attention in Western literature. These studies stress the fact that the Islamic character of the Iranian republic posed a threat to the stability of Iraq and that during the long and difficult period of the war the Iranian govern­ ment made Islam the focal point of its rhetoric, but the actual religious content of the propaganda has not been analyzed yet. By examining in which way and to what extent the Iranian leaders made use of Islamic beliefs, symbols, vocabulary and motifs in defending the war with Iraq I want to contribute to a better understanding of the way Islam is used for political action in Iran. The main purpose of this study is to examine how the Iranian leaders sacralized the war, or, in other words, gave it a religious dimension. The central questions I ask are firstly: what Islamic beliefs and emotive symbols and imagery were instrumental in the sacralization of the war and secondly: were both beliefs and symbols equally important or was there a difference in importance ? It should not be assumed that the religious dimension of war is shaped by the doctrinal concept of 'holy war' or jihâd - terms which have gained currency even outside the world of Islamic studies. It has been argued that in a society where ideology is dominated by religion and where there is theoretically no difference between religion and politics, war and revolts, regardless of their cause receive a religious dimension 'in that their aims, their justifications and their appeals for support are expressed in religious terms'.' According to Peters, in Islamic history the doctrine of jihâd constituted the religious dimension of the war. But Iranian history shows that it was not always the doctrine oîjihâd which formed the religious dimension of war. In the early Safavid times, at the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century, the symbol of the martyrdom of Husayn, the third imam played a major role in the motivation of the warriors for military action. By contrast, during the Qajar period, in the first war which Persia waged against Russia (1810-13), Husayn's martyrdom only played a secondary role, but the Shî'î credenda or beliefs constituted the main instruments for the sacralization of military action. At that time, the Iranian mujtahids wrote extensively about the jihâd duty, 1 Rudolph Peters, Islam and Colonialism. The Doctrine of Jihad in Modern History (The Hague: Mouton, 1979) p. 6. 4 The sacralization of war in the Islamic Republic of Iran urging the people to fulfil their ethical duties and declaring it an individual duty to participate in the jihäd.2 The study will concentrate on two of the central themes in the war rhetoric of the Iranian leadership: the justification of the war and the mobilization of the Iranian population for the actual warfare. Rhetoric is understood as 'a practical discipline that aims not at producing a work of art but at exerting through speech a persuasive action on an audience'.3 Mobilization is understood as mass participation in military activity. Justification will be defined as a process 'to provide legitimacy or credit for government policy by someone who has decision-making responsibilities', or in other words, 'justifying policy is defending before others what constituted the rationale for action by disclosing the conditions that apply to the policy about the action'.