~ CERI Seriesin omparntivePolitics an d Intema tional Studi~ FARIBAADELKHAH aies cditurs; JEA -~RAN('() I B.-\\'A~l' AND CiilUS1'0PHR JAFFRtiLOT

Thi£ ~rie · consi 'ts of translations of noteworthy publications in the ·ocial sc1enc"' emaruttit\g from the foremost French research centre in Being Modern internarionalstudies.. the Paris-based Centre d'Btudes et de Recherches Inremationale, {CERI). part of Sciences Po and associated with the CNR (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique ) The focus of I.heseries is the transfom1ationof politics and in Iran ·oc ie,t) by mmsnationaJ and domestic factors - globalisation, migration. and the post-bipolar ba1anceof power on the one hand, and ethnicit) and religion on the other. States are more translated from the French by penne.able to external influence than ever before and this JONATHANDE RRICK phenomenon is accderating processes of social and poJitical change the world over. In seeking to understand and interpre t these rr:msfonnations, this series give priority to social tre nds from belo\\ as much as the interventions of stale and non-state actors . Founded in 1951. CERI has forty full -time feUows drawn fro m different cbsciplines conducting research on comp arative po litical analysis. intemationaJ relations, regionalism , transnatio nal flo ws, political sociology. political economy and on individual states.

Columbia University Press New York in association with the Centre d 'Etudes et de Recherches lntemationales Paris Preface

. s ccially the regionaJist pressu res of the Kurd~, also had to deal with , e,p d the Iraqi military tlueat. And the Republic Azcris, Turk.men~ and Arabs ~n , s which is often forgotten . now has a long h1sto.ry.o f ~~nty ~ea~ phases in that history . After the first So it is best to d1stmgu1s vano~ d .freedom the increased st rength of PREFACF TO THE ENGLISH EDIT[ON month . of post-revolutionary euphor~~ a~errorism of radical Islamist groups the movements for local autono,my, . c . in and above aJI the war imposed such as Forghan and. t~e People~ ~uJl:~dto' a hardening of the regJm: , by Sadd_am ~usscm s ?ggress.,o nd a so-called 'C ultural Revolut1on . In May ]~7 the \.ictory in Jmn's presidential elections of Mohammad culminatmg in a real Terror . a t end to that in 1983· this involved 1'.hamni (the outsider of the Left and the advocate of refonn) over Nategb Intervention by ~m~m Kho"!eyni pu a~h (the ardiansh ip 'of the Islamic Nuri. the ·peakcr of parliament who had been considered the favourite, imposing the pnnc1ple of vell1f~t-efaq Th gu·me remained all the more :seemed to oonfinn thac the Islamic regime instaJled after the 1979 jurist) on the clergy and _thepoh~cal class~he :~lictwith Iraq made the Revoluti n wa· being eroded. and ·opened up·. A number of observers saw centralised and authontanan ecause However the factional struggle thi. as supporting. a theory of a new era of 'post-Islam ism' for Iran and for organisation_~f a war ec~nomy .n~ce~~~;t it led to the Islamic Republican the Muslim world more generally. But in fact it may be asked whether this 0 i 1101 a ·second\\ ind' for the Islamic Republic. ~:~:nd:J~~~:\~ e~d;~c;;;~ 1; u:: 1985, foreshadowed the emergen;:e j It should be tressed first of all that Mohammad Khatami is himself a 0 man of the system. He i not. strictly speaking, a product of 'civil society ' ~:~:~:icar~.:t;~:~ · 0~ ;hs:c~!~!1!1on!\:~ce~:!:~~ :~;;:~ja~i (as as was said too often in I.he aftennath of his surprise victory. His political President of the Republic ) after the cease-fire of 198~ an~ the ?ea~ of Im~ . . J The political and economic bberahsation ca.med career is ,et) different from that of someone like Vaclav Havel in the Czech Khomeyni m une 1989· d · 'ble to speak Republic, for example . Cenainly. in his speeches and actions, he has known the new team during the following decade ma e it_pos~1 in ouf~Thby 'd . Iran' But it should be recalled that that b1Stoncal metaphor how to express words and actions the ell..--pectationsof wide sections of the o enm or 1D • • Ii · f th population regarding freedoms and the rule of law, and to take advantage of ( ferring to the French Revolution) denotes a profess1ona smg o e them .• But there is no indication that tho e aspirations were in themselves in r::olutionary class, much more tha~ ' m~deration' . of that class or contra.diction v.;tb the revolu1iomuy heritage of 1978-79. however much uestionin of the heritage of revolutJ.on; m France m _1_794-1815,~e coercion there may have been in the political running of the state in practice. i>irectory !id Empire gave institutional form and a ne:,,v:polttical expression More fundamentall)'. it would be very difficuJt to define Islamism to the revolutionary changes, they secured the trans1t1~0 from the age of precisely and distinguish what is 'p re-lslamic'or 'poSt-Islamic'. Islamism, as 'revolutionary passion' to that of 'revo lutionary reason , to use the actual a political and social phenomenon, bas never been something rigid, at least terms employed today in Iran. . . not in the context of Iranian society. It has, in panicular, inspired numerous In this situation the election of Mohammad 1:(hatam1a~ Pres1dent of the ideo}ogical debates and bas never given rise to a special mode of production, Republic, preceded not only by an intense elecllOn campa1~ but also by a nor even Lo a specific:. original form of political eoonomy comparable to quite unprecedented turnout in the parliamentary el~ct10ns . of 1?96, what Soviet SociaHsm possibly was. In other words, Islamism has always indicated not the exhaustion of the regime but a reshapn_ig of 1t. This of remained in gear with the dynamics of social change, including those of course does not exclude conflicts within it. lmm~d1a~ely after the globalisation. Thai is why it putS on such a different appearance from one presidential election the factional struggle resumed with v1g~ur, ~d _the country or historical situation to another. outcome remains uncertain . One of Mohammad Khat~ s prmc1p3:1 In the case of Iran the historic break due to the Revolution did not have supporters, the highly dynamic Mayor ofTehran_Gbola~o_sse 1~ Karhasc~1, to do with the lslamist movement alone (the Liberals, Marxists and was tried for embezzlement and sentenced to five years 1mpnsonment m nationalists played a not negligible role in popular mobilisation) and it did July 1998 by a judicial system still in conservative hands. Similarly rus not v.ipc out all the achievements of the old regime. Even where the Minister of the Interior, Abdullah Nuri, has been forced out of office by situation of women was concerned, militant Islamic women turned to their parliament, and several newspapers sympathetic to refom h~ve been closed awn account the defence of some clauses of the Civil Code which both the down. But a decisive contest has not yet been engaged, 1f only because conservatives among the clergy and the revolutionaries could have Gholamhossein Karbaschi has appealed and the Leader of the Revolution. challenged. In addition the Republic had to cope with developments that bad reputed to be close to the conservatives, bas several times expressed his nothing particularly Islamic about them and which the Shah's regime had viii Preface Preface xi

suppon for Mohammad Khotami' poUcie , even on the very dcHcatc . . t th· s reshaping of the Islamic questi ns of relorioru with the United States and the resumption of Essentially, there are four d11nens1ons o Jt' . and above all the h f t place the bureaucra 1smg diptomAti.c(t11aticm with B.ritain in spite .of lmaru Khomeyni 's fatwa Republic . In t e us . ' ' de considerable progress over twenty <:ondemnmgSalman Rushdie to death. The regime, whose nature is rationalising of socia l l~e h?v~r:aof this trend religion least of all. The t~oroughl) collegial, is proving capable of keeping its leading people at its years.No sphere of society is . . .n struction , and co llection of religious ' de. C\'t"D when th ey are in disgrace: the Islamic Left, driven out of organisation of the cler~y, ~hef1~gt~~:u~~nalised. 'The believer's relationship pal'l_ui~entfro~ .19<12to 19~6, has continued to be represented in other taxes have b~cof!le part,cu ar y ms/ sfonned because the faith is now tnstitu tJ~nal ~1?~ and to tnspire an influential ection of the press; and with his faith is all thde more ran of commun ication . Thus religious ·tted through mo ern mean s . . b H3Shenn Rafsan1am, who ·was not able to seek re-election for another transm1 . . charitable deeds are cootnbuting to t e practices such as pilgnmages 0 l reli ·ous but also a factor in p~d:ntfal re~ in 1997: ~as been _appointedChairman of the fu-pediency ! . I Council, and m I.hat position remams one of the key personalities in the Republic. ::;r:;:i~~p~~i~ii:i~~ecn~~~~;::~: ~o:~fu~sra;n !~~=~:tu~~~ In practice the stability of institutions is ensured by power sharing ~t:~;~~rn:tt:i~~ie~y :;h~~!f :i:::~;:~t~~::~ralsp here in .t~e early betw~ t.he Leader of the Revolution, the President, parliament and the l980s he philo sophised about the historically -related of r~~ 0Je~~ &:pedienC)'. at the price, it is true, of some tendency to immobility ~tuft Co?Dcil. the roie of the Subject in it. In that way he became.the mte. ~a a due to the_meVJtable compromises among the various political tendencies. the Islamic Left which renounced the charms of d1r~ct action. m favour~ of~ That certainly d~ not mean that the regime is not changing at all. The turns critical and constitutionalist conception of the Jslanuc Repubhc and velityat. tak~n by ~e facnooal struggle in the last few years show the contrary, and e faqih and be remains close to the positions upheld by Ayatollah Monta:en the m~t} ' ~f the current debate on velilyat-e faqih, and the revision of the . Im~ Khomeyni 's former heir apparent fallen from favour, more or ess Consti~on m 1989, sus._.!?CStthat the Republic is definitely going through under house arrest in Qom, now an avowed oppo~~nt of 1!3e~~der _of the constructtve change. But the 'Thermidor' political class knows how to face Revolution , but one of the most respected religious d1grutanes m the ~eng~ to _defe?d. its revolutionary heritage and, as a connected tts Gholam.hossein Ka:rbaschi, while waiting for considerauon._ pnvileges; cou~~~h interaction between the political and religious fields is also found the result of his appeal, and while voicing his criticisms of the Constitution on the right wing of the political chessboar~. ~he debate am~ng Council for its methods of selecting candidates, did not ~dianship conservatives expressed through the variety of pubbcatJons and theolog.ica1 hesitate to ask voters, at a press conference in October 1998 to turn out in 1 schools, is no Jess keen, and bas led some of them, if not to back Mohamma~ fon:e for eJe.ctions to the Assembly of Experts and so to save ',the honour of the system'. Khatarni at least to start fresh approaches; the attempt by Ahmad Tavak:koh to start the daily Farda in 1998, the hesitation showed by membe~ of the . • AU ,th.ism~ ~at the pro~Je?1 is not to determine whether the Republic Association of Lecturers at the Qom Theological College dunng_ the JS Jess Isl81IUSlor post -Isiannst , but to make out the lines of force in what presidential electio n campaign, and _the compro~ses between . the ~~t­ seemsto be_a second wind for it, based on the renewed legitimacy accorded wing majority in parliament and President Khatamt show that this politica1 bJ the_massive t:un:ioutof voters in the 1997 presidential elections (including tendency is also undergoing a transformation. . . . . the ~spora, whi~h was something new) and Mohammad Khatamj's Whatever may be the case for these strictly politJcaJ .expressions, . rt ~demable pop ulanty. The changes in the regime seem, io particular , to be seems that the Islamic Republic, in contrast to the Soviet and Maoist mseparable from a wbol~ series of social dynantics which it has encouraged regimes, has ensured recognition of the social by the politi~ - in that way or must ~e to terms with. Among them should be mentioned, in particular, it.bas never been totalitarian - and has thus contributed to its strength . The the population movements set in motion by the war with Iraq; urbanisation private sphere of the family, the religious domain , and the economic (61 JJ:Clcent of the population lives in towns); the spread of liter acy, especially among women (74 per cent); the increased numbers of students structures have continued in the direction of modernisation and and the increasingly youthful population due to high growth rate until th~ diversification; this has given some consistency, or some plausibility, to the earl~ 19?05; l:he be~ing of demographk transition due to a spectacular regular theme of civil society to which Mohammad Khatami bas been giving decline m the fertili~ rate; r~e development of the informal economy, prominence since 1997. There is also clear convergence between his encoura~ by women s entry mto the labour market; and more generally insistence on the need to create a state based on the rule of law and the the effects of the economic crisis. ' increasing tendency of players in society to resort to legal rules and the judicial system to sett le their family , economic property and other conflicts. xiii ii

In 3ddition. the fortuncS of the factional stniggle among the various once again how much the holy city bas djstanced itself from the Republi~'s tendencies in the political serag:lioare more and more dependent on how it reli ious ideology. And at the h.ighest level of the stat~ the complemen!ant7 u ecliocd m th public arena . Ill 19Q, . for e:-.:ample, the Karbnschi case of tte roles of the Leader of the Revolution - embod_1ment of the regJm~ s show~ th:it judi fa.Irulings were now the object of debate in the media and reli ious and revolutionary legitimacy - and the Pres1~ent of the Republic, on the puMic hi.gh,vny.and tfJus could be contested. Some officials of the res goni,ible for governmental affairs, expresses t~1s tenden~y tow~rds Tuhr.m uroon authori ty have complained in the press of ill treatment that div~rgence of the two fields well; it characterised Ah Khamen .e1 s rel.atro~s the, haw endured in prison, and parliament has been considering the case. with Hasbemi Rafsanj ani before, and seems to have continued ill h1s In · April th imprisonment of Gholamhossein Ka tbaschi led to relations with Mohamm ad Khatami. . . demon~tions by his supporten.. and in June and July the broadcast Thirdly, the Islamic Republic bas maintained ~e centraltsat1o_n of Iran royerage of his trial was n popular \' iewing ns the World Cup football match which it inherited from the oJd regime . However , 1t has. also ~resided over R-'-flOrtS..Similarly. in September and October, the methods of selection of increasing differentiation within the national space . MaJor regional ~ntres c.-mdidates for the Assembl) of Experts opened up a constitutional are asserting themselves, such as Mashhad, Shiraz, Isfahan ~d Tabnz .. In discussion on the role of thai institution and above all on the very principle addition, the war of 1980-88, the opening of the northern frontier followm~ of clearance of candidates by the Constitution Guardianship Council, while the collapse of tile Soviet Union, the large-scale Af?han and Iraqi al the same time reviving the debate on the idea of velayar-e faqih. More immigration, and the increase in trade - legal and other - ~1th the Gulf have mg:iC3.lly,the murders of intellectuals and legal opposition figures such as completed the redrawing of Iran's human an~ econo~c geography .. The Mr. and :Mrs. Foroubar aroused numerous criticisms and quest ions in the Republic 's second wind owes a good deal to !h1s dyna~msm o_fth~ provmces newspapers and more street demonstrations: both reactions contributed to which recurs in all social and cultural domams. The mcreasmg unportance the unvei ]ing of the truth and suspicion fell on the security services, even the of some places of pilgrimage and the Free Zones on the Gulf co~tributes !o higher authorities of the Ministry of Intelligence. We are very far from being the improvement of ties among the regions, through .the large increa~e m able to talk of true democratisation of the regime, as is proved by these multi-directional trade among them. It also underlJes the extraordmary dramatic e\'ents and also by the attacks by the Ansa.r-e Hezbollah against mobilisation of charitable activity all over Iranian society, which is now i:heir political opponents, incl uding min isters, as on 4 Sep tember, as well as being reflected in majo r investment in infrastructure. So everything the cirrum~ces of the death senrence on Morteza Firouzi , edito r of Iran indicates that the Islamic Republic is not lacking in solid support twenty Nt!M"S.the release of Faraj Sarkouhi , editor of the magazine Adineh, and the years after its foundati on. Its capacity for adaptation - sometimes in spite of temporary detention of the staff of the daily Taus. But the progress of itself and without its knowledge - should not be underestimated, especia.l)y pluralism and of 'p ublic use of reason· are undeniable, and even seem because it has acquired authentic representative institutions, guaranteeing a irreversible. minimum level of interaction between the state and society, whatever role Secondly, the political field bas - paradoxically - contin ued to become coercion may have played within it. Meanwhile the exiled opposition seems differentiated from the religious field since the creation of the Islamic out of touch with the realities of the country and does not offer - far from it Republic. That Republic is based on a dual legitimacy, democratic and in fact - an alternative solution. religious. Th.is duality is reflected in tile heart of the political structu res. The The main challenge facing the regime now is an economic one: the t\li'enty-odd consuJtations of the peop1e since the Revolution, the debate collapse in oil prices and the world recession make structural adj ustment between ·oonstitutionalists' and 'transcendentalists' on the velayat-e faqih urgent while the built-in immobility of the collective leadership seems question.and the resecvations expressed by a good many of the clergy about incapable of getting it started. The deterioration in living conditions has excessi\ 1e politicisation of the relig ious field have encouraged the lauer's already led to fairly numerous riots since 1992. But until there is proof to the dissociation from the srate. Political events of recent years provide contrary, these displays of social discontent are not political in nature. numerous illustrations of this change . In the winter of 1994-95, Ali Twenty years after the Revolution, the Islamic Republic is continuing Khamenei, the Leader of Lbe Revo lution, did not succeed in getting his basically along the same course. primacy as a 'source of emulation ' accepte{i after the death of severa l Grand That basic course does not amount simply to a pitiless struggle between Ayatollahs, while on the other band Ayatollah Montaze ri has retained his conservatives or radic als and moderates, as is too often suggeste d. religious following despite the worsening of his relations with the regime. Paradoxically, Mohamm ad Kbatami's strength may come from what is often More recently, the Constj tution Guardianship Council only approved one presented as his weakness or his failure. To explain: in such a differenti ated ca:ndidatwe for the Assemb ly of Experts in Qom Prov ince, which showed society as Iran 's is today, there is no longer room for a man of destiny, and Pre/ace

Mohammad Khatsmi could not be the demi~e or Me ·iah of greater INTRODUCTION openness t!ts~some _peop~ehoped to see. On th~ other band he is pre.siding over n~gohattons.di ::-U~t)n :in~pennanent compromises nol only arnon the vanous elemt.nts lll his ma1ontyfollowing - e entially the lslamic1.ef :ind. the Recon.;;~:~~ - but _al~. _andmoi;e ~specially, with t.heRight: even A POLITICALEARTHQUAKE if _hi deJam> pohc! 1., margmah mg categones of players intimately finked \\'"I.th the development of the Republic sin~ the Revolution such as for In May 1997 Iran's voters astonished the world and. maybe ~stonishe

1 8t?ing, \fodc:m i,i fru11 lntroductiori: A PoliticalEarthquake 3 _h would be." rong ~oveer today to the oppo.5itc extreme and glorify the . soc1'ety means returning to some of the universal ~ tstllncc or Vtctol) ot , odety aft~r consigning lslamist domination to lbe labyrinth of Ira~an Devil. On closer look, one 'ees that the welcom ing ceremony for the soccer questions of our _un;t'h, 1979 Revolution the Islamic Republic of IJ:an team at the Azndi ~·radium wa o~nised by the authorities, and the mullahs 1\venty ye~s a er t. c . assion and polem ic. ft rema10s and the Re, olutioniiry Guard were not the last to join in dancing in the remains a subJect of mi;u~der;~~~i:i~~; of access for research ers and streets 10 celebrote the qualifyin,g march resuJt: and that Mohammad little known because o t e 1 .1 .d ewed analyses based on 0 Kha~i is ?~s-elf man of the system. A member of the clergy, he was journalists. Th_eaim of this : ~~ 1:/r~90s. But additjon, the .3 11 l~n::;~~I in le:idmg paltllClpant m the 1979 Revolution. After that he continuous ly held fieldwork earned o~t frombt ~ . r ction between social transformation s responS1"blcpoliticaJ positions unlil Parliament, considering him too liberal aim is to ask questions a ou m era . . f odemity Mo st 1 0 forced him to resign as Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance in 1992'. and political changes, un~erlyin\ •i~~;:a t:~tho th:past du; to the l\~ohamm.ndKhatami then began some years in the wilderness, working as Director of the Ational Library. So he is not really a product of 'civil ~:~:~:ro:fiJj~;]fi.'~~b~f ;.At:i~b~%~:;u: d·::.:::i~: society' . But he hru known how to express in bis speeches and actions the s~:t~~:ic~lly given most attention but without being properl~ undrstood expectations of large sect ions of the people for liberalisation, greater openness. and perhaps even a state based on the ruJe of law and tum them with all its variation s. Yet many aspects _of _the. new re~e ~ ow_ - sometimes very much against the regime's mclrnauo~s - contmu1ty with to his advantage. ln this way he is a liviog synthesis between' the institutions th Pahlavi Empire.J Consideration of that aspect -which can be ~ompar1 forged in the fire of I.he1979 Revolution and forces at work in society which Alexis de Tocqueville's study of France in L 'Ancien Regime et Hashemi ~afsanjan.i had already been trying, with some success, to bring w;lb ~ togethe r smce 1989. Revolution - deserves to be pursued more thoroughly , a?d refined _an narrowed down. It should not lead to a simplistic interpretatton on _the lines . The eYents of 1997. and what they revealed about Jranian society, have of plus fO change, plus c'est la meme chose. The reaJ problem ~s not so 1ntportance going far beyond the Islamic Republic itself . They raise in acute much emphasising aspects of continuity, even when they are obvious, ?ut form a much more genera l problem that directly concerns the Western world utting them in the new context where they are to be found, and assessing - its media as well as its political and academic circles: how far Islam is able 1d . properlyp the strength of socia. ynatn1cs. . . to ~v~nt a form of modem living that is compatible with democrac y, Those dynamics follow their own momentum and logic ~b1~h the cap1~ and the ordinary working of the international system. That wielders of power have never been able to bring u~de: contr?~· bemg m fact ~estion JS a1 the heart of debates about immigration, terrorism , the Algerian ctvil ~-ar. the future of Bosnia, Turkey's relations with the European Union, not always aware of them. The Islamic Repu?hc, m add1hon, h~ gone the em~rgence of the Mediterranean Basin as an entity, the future of India, through major changes, especially those followmg the ce~7e-fue with Iraq MaJaySJa and Indonesia, the talk of a 'clash of civilisations', etc . Indeed, the (1988) and the death of Imam Khomeyni (1989). Such political changes can ~y of Isl~~ become a real industry. with colloquia, seminars, lectur es, simply express changes in society, or else draw strength from them. or reinforce them. But we see no one-way or automatic cause and effect link chans and msu tutes.. periodical publications, websites, and, inevitably, its ov.n star actors. Iran has a very special place in this study as it is the only between those two sorts of phenomenon. Our intention is to exp lore the role ~p~e of ~l~ ~mg from a true revolutionary mass movement of new developments in society within a regime which, d~cidedly, _can no longer be discussed only in terms of the problems of mterpretmg the which lS now 1J1StltulionaJ.1sed, rather on the lines of Thermidor 1794 in the French Revolution. 1 Revolution and its origins.• But what js moderojty, if not some relation to real life in all its We must, however, avoid a naive interpretation of these changes, such as compJexiLyand diversity? Much of tlhe literature on globalisation and the has been made following Mohammad Kbatami's election. There is not an world village is repetitive and verbose as it fails to make allowance for the 'odious' backward and repressive regime on one side and, on the other, grea t bulk ~f facts and_human beings with all their actions and quirks. To 'kindly' civil society representing progress and freedom. We cannot imagine be modem m £ran,or l.D any other society, is to reinvent its difference , to an essential dichotomy between the state and society as if they were use a phrase now made famous by a post-modem anthropologjst. 1 That is identifiable objects, refining them in the imagination into worst and best - a also how one 'makes sense' in the modem world. Plunging into the 3. J.-F. Bayart, 'Les trajectoires de la Republiqueen ban et en Turquie:un essai de lecture tocquevillienne', in G. Salame(ed.), Democraties sans democrates, Paris. Fayaro, 1993, l. F. Ade~ J.-F.Bayan ~ 0. Roy, 11termidoren Iran, Bll!l&.5e1S,Editions C.Omplexe, 1993. pp. 373-97. 2 James Oiffo,-d, The Pri!d4C11men1of Cu/run. Twentieth Cemury Ethrwgraphy, Lilerarure aJ7dN7, Cambndge (MAJ, Harvard University Press, 1985, p. 15. 4. Anousturavan Ehteshami goes so far as 10 speak of the 'Iranian Second Republic' (!.fter Khomeini.The Iranian Second Rep11blic,London and New York, Roulledgc, 1995). 5 4 Introduction:A Political Earthquake totalitarian regimeon ()11e:idc. and 011 the other. n ·ociety confron ted with But the javtmmard ethic has to come to terms with ~~othe~ moral th .:imple cb1ice be~\een ' n:dslance' or acc:eptance (as if totalitarianism · ·nl which has been constant ly in the course of defin1t1on srnce t~e requsremc . b . , ( "d e eitema'i' who 1s nl) a~kd to a !-OCict· whose freedom hus omehow gone wrong) . The 1960s if not earlier : that of the 'socia 1 eing a am- 'J '~ problem i not so much the real impossibility of lrncing a denrly defined chara~terised by his commitment to others, .exte~ding into the p~bhc .arena, frontier N't\\ ~n the t\\ o • ph~ a the difficulty of even conce iving them, on the bosis of redefinition of his relationship s with others and v.:ith hss o;n 3:. c, c.ndefining them autc:,nomous m relation lo the period which concerns 0 Je. Through this interaction between ot~er ~?pie . and hss o~n, e u in tbi:sbt'OJ... . It i ~Iler to cTehran: TeD eb Raj Rezai. the leader of the fruit and vegetable criticised the traditionalist view that saw the faith as servile obed1e~ce , market in the 1Q50 : the athlete Takhti. 1956 Olympic gold medallist; seeing in it rather a principle of freedom and reason. Even before taking a Ayatollah Khomeyni: and Mehdi Bazargan, founder of the national stance in relation to political affairs, they formed part of a movement for liberation mo, ement - alt in their different ways. epitomise the ethic of change in the religious field, going back to the great ~ebates of the the 1m·J11mard. the ·man of integrity'. This seems to be a constant of nineteenth century and, more recently, to the ref?rms rn.troduced by Iranian culture: Henri Corbin devoted a long commentary to it in his Ayatollah Borujerdi and the arguments that followed bss death tn 1?61: Thls published tran lation of a Persian book, the ·Treatise on the Knight­ rationalising process, and more particularly .a process ?f bureaucratisa~oo of Companions· .• However. the very diversity of the personalities claiming Shia Islam has continued under the Islamic Republic , though not without more or less ex-plicitly to follow that ideal, and of the contexts in which conflicts that have been revealed in tum by the institutionalising of Velayat­ ther have emerged, suggests two things: such a lifestyle is inseparable e faqih (the guardianship of the Islamic jurist), t~e cent~alisin_g~f r~ligious from material considerations and, far from being an invariable that can taxes and since 1992 the succession to the ma1or clencal dsgmtanes (the alone account for t>ehaviour, it is a dynamic combination within which 'sour~s of emulation', marja'-e taqlitf). Above all, its impact appears in inc&.idual activities and social changes are discernible. The ethic of the relation to the religious practices of the believers, such as participation in jal'anmard cannot be understood only as a traditional legacy, but rather as new forms of religious gathering, ritualising of a ceremony for the 'age of a permanent improvisation according to a given mode in the musical sense. obligation' for children, refonn of Islamic education on formal schooling Throllgh stud) ing it one can understan d more clearly the emergence of lines, and use of new media in dealfag with religious matters: written, ·meindh ·idualit) of eminence'' with a certain charisma; the affirmation of computer and audio-visual. This change in religious practice, besides social qualities that can be turned into political qualities; the importance of reflecting various individual approaches, also has an economic dimension: a gifts in Iranian societ): lhe changes in, and especially the institutionalising very blatant one in development of the network of Islamic banks and of, the idea of trust that is at the heart of practices involving gifts; and, in charitable institutions, in the management of vaqf (religious property), and addition. rhe operation of the economic networks of the bazaar. The in the fixing of charges for services performed by the clergy. A process of jcn:anmard ethic. similarly. cannot just be seen as an expression of Islamic commercialising of the religious arena can even be seen. ideas, lhough it does not necessarily go against them. It is another At the same time Iranian society does not escape the general process of expression of the autonomy of society in relation to the ideology of the globalisation, even though its involvement is of a special sort because of the regime and, to some extent, to religious orthodoxy. nature of its regime, hostile to 'cultural aggression'; its adherence to 'the age 8 5. ~ means tha1 we take a differe01 view from Farhad Khosrokbavar. 'The Islamist State of the um.ma', fundamentally distinct from the 'age of the global village '; the see5 il.Selfas the mcamation of the Community . It encloses society with its chains, stifles special features of the Iranian emigrant communities; and the strength of its it. uies to breakthe aUIOIIOlll}"'hicb., until just recently, was saill allowing ii 10escape from identity derived from its own civilisation. Its involvement in the international I.be tot.aliwian state. "Antlrropolbgie de la rei:oluJion ironienne. Le rive impossible, Paris, arena is fairly paradoxical. On the one band, Iran is forging ever closer links L'Hfll'IIWf.an,J 997 . 6. H. c.ort,in. Tr(IJ[/des compagrw~Fie.·oliers. Tehran and Paris, D~panemcni d'Jranologie with countries of the region (Central Asia, Turkey, Pakistan and lndia, the Gulf de 1'lnslinn F~lran ien de Recherche, ubrairie d' Amcrique el d'Orieni, Adrien­ emirates), and is steadily re-forging its distinct identity. On the other hand, it ~ ·e. 1973. remains a pariah in the world community, while the United States is seeking 7. M. M.i:oes,Public Faces, Pm·ate Voices. Communiry and /ndividualil y in South India, &rule} , Uruvet5ity of Califorma Press, 1994. 8. Z. Laidi (ed.), Le temps 111011dial, Brussels, Complexe, 1997. BeingModem i11/ra11 J,itroduction: A Political .Earthquake 7

to isol.atc it s.!ill further. The relationship between Iranian society and the sort of critical relationship between the privat e an~ p~blic :~~;:sso~~i outsid \\ orld ren,ain potcmtfo.Uyquite a confrontations! one, as was shown todn to involve self-r eOexivity (Chapt er 6). From this v1ewpo . f ' bio · by the debuieon satellite dishes in the winter of 1Q94-95 . But the logic of trade be' y,follows self-oriented practices that come under the heading o b relation which are C>.'{'8mling.a.pace , the invasion of new corumunica1ion ~tfcs,,' o and he joins in creation of th~ pub_lic space not thbroue, tbye po on!~1 rechoolo~. and the e:\.'J)&lsion of closer relations with the diaspora - ·se of hi's cn'tical faculties by the public use of reason ' ut a exerc1 ' . . 11 especially the Irani.an communities in the United States, Turkey and Japan - h sical behaviour and acts of production and co?s umpt1on. . . probabl) m3ke Iran· entry into the ' age of the globru village ' irreversible. p \'h d namics of the religious sphere contribute to th1s change 1n a However, globalisationcertainly does not just mean one-way influence of confus:d ~d often contradictory fashion. As far . a~ Iran in the last two !he ou 'ide world upon Iranian society.That influence is received in a dynamic decades is concerned, the conclusion drawn by 01.1v1erRoy, that there bas and in\'e.ntiYeway. related to the situation in Iranian society. Thus voyages to been a 'failure of political lslam' ,13 needs to be q~alifie_d. However , that d~ ()lber countti~ transmission of Japanese and Western television broadcasts, not necessarily mean agreeing with conclus,?ns. bke th~t of Fran~J~ use of oonsumer goods, the fashion for sports ucb as football, tennis, riding Burgat,1• suggesting an unquestionable modernity ~ Is~am,sm, ~[ that o and body-building. and the emeigence of a real import-ex'J)Ort enterprise Olivier Carre who speaks of the potential for seculansm in Islam. Each of cu!ture are all blended with indigenous processes of social innovation in these three approaches, backed by solid arguments'. des~rves to be family and bu iness matters for example. The affinnation of the 'social befug' reexamined in the light of the social realities of an Islam1s! regune tha t has ethic. the renegotiation of relations between the private and public spheres. the no equivalent, since it is the fruit of a formidable Revo~ut1on and has now creation of a unified national spaoe - all, to a great extent, pass through the become institutionalised, even routine. Because ~f ~s the problems of globalisation p~ but they retain autonomy in relation to the international interpretation concerning political Islam in Iran are mev1tably different from sysremaod also in relation to the regime. The individualising process operates those regarding the new Islamist opposition movements, such as tho~ part)~· through borrowing from foreign appearances or behaviour; this is studied at a vecy early stage by Gilles Kepel in E~pt, 16 or e~en an ~slam1c ~,,iden~ from examination of changes in funeral rites, the press, and the parliamentary party, such as Refah in Tur~e_y;for 1t 1s more d~~d m lr~n , mcreasmgnumber of IIllUlaalsdealing with 'caring for oneself' in the fields of it merges with sodety at large. Other spec1f1c features of the_s 1tuat1on v:b1cb food. health and beauty, a:ndin consumption practices in daily life. we take into consideration derive from Iran's particular reg1onal V.'hile we bad no desire to consider society and the state as opposed to environment, bordering the Gulf and Central Asia~ the historic w~igbt _of each other. our research has made it possible for us to establish the autonomy Shia Islam and its clerical organisation; and an ethruc and cultural d1vers1ty of what pertains to society within the Islamic Republic, and to bring out more under control than m most states of the Middle East. In all these some of its points of interaction with the political field. Starting with the respects Iran is clearly distinct ~rom the other. 'Islami~t' ~xamp le~ with study of a ·life style', that of the javanmard (Chapters 1 and 2), we note that which it is often compared, or which are even said to be mspued by it. this is associated with a strategic skill in giving and receiving that has been Our aim is not to provide a comprehensive vision of a society of more than institutionalised over the past decades, especia lly through charitab le 60 million people, comprising about ten major linguistic or ethno-religious orga:nL~tions and financial networks (Chapter 3); thus the modem groups; that would be impossible. Nor do we intend either to start a jawinnwrd bas become a social being. We also note how, as a result, this prosecution against the regime, or to sing its praises; rather, we want to form of open-handedness' is contributing to the formation of a true public refonnulate the tenns of the debate. The debate has, throagh becoming space. That public space is specifically political, especially because of the specialised, tended in practice to concentrate on the one tree of political Islam, vitality of information media and the holding of undoubtedly competitive at the risk of missing the charms of a forest rich in other varied features. ~l~ons, e\•en if they are not strict ly speaking democratic (Chapter 4). But 1t IS also a product of the bureaucratising, rationalising and commercialising 10. M. Foucault, Histoire.de la sexualite, I: La volonre de savoir. Paris, Gallimard, 1976, p. of the religious sphere (Chapter 5). At stake in all these developments is 188; cf. A. Giddens, Modernity and Seff-Tde11tiry,Stanford University Press, 1991. Iranian society's entry mto the modem wo rld- if that is taken to mean some 11. l. Habermas,L'Espacep11blic,Paris, Payot, 1993. 12. A. Appadurai and C.A. Breckenridge, 'Public Modernity in India', in C.A. Breclcenridgc (ed.), ConsumingModernity, Minneapolis, University of Minneapolis Press, 1995, pp. 1- 9. P. V«:)11r, Le pam er k cirque, Sociologie historique d'un pluralisme polirique, Paris, Le 23. Seuil, note: 1be by 1be 1976, p. 9. Translator's French word used Veyne and present author, 13. 0. Roy, L 'echec de /'Islam poli1ique,Paris, Seuii, 1992. Mrgehsme , bas no close English equivalent but the sense is sufficiently conveyed by 14. F. Burgat,L'islamisme e11face,Paris, La Decouvene, 1995. :open_-handed~s:, ~- we have adopt.eel generally while sometimes using the tenn 15. 0 . Carre, L 'is/am laique Qule retour a la grande tradition, Paris, Armand Colin, 1993. pubJk geoerowy . H.istcnans of the :ancieot world, such as Veyne and Peter Brown,use 16. G. Kepel, Le Proph~tt: et le Pharaon. Les mouvements islamistes dans l 'Egypce iw:rgi.isrM IO desctr.bean individual's Lberality in giving to the community. contemporaine,Paris, La Decouverte, 1984. It m3y be that l!Uram)! si · of th~ way in which Iranians are f:ash' · · d il Ii~ d th · • • • 1onmg ti1etr a \ 1.c. an us tnYenllot•their modem W'e (or a ~ ...... of d · h · ·, . .~ . · ,.. , i ,0 uu mo em1ty L. at as thelCown). will arouse cnl1c1sms.and will be overtaken by other . !he-spotrese.arcll . Thtlt is no problem: it is precisely one of the aims we s~~ 1 m ~,·hat foUo, ~- In any co e the unique nature of the l)OCialexperiment \\ htcb ;ran ha ~ ~ing . through for the past twenty yeurs deserves somellung bet!er than mv~ve or convemionaJ ideological discussion. It offe~ s prec.iou· ~~portumty to reconsider some of the fundamemal WHENTAXES BLOOM IN TEHRAN qo~"'tionsfaced b~ citizens of our time. Gobineau,in a celebrated passage about nineteenth~entury Iran, saj? that the Persianstate did not exist in reality, that the individual was everything: 'The state? How could it exist, when nobody cares about it?' Jn his view the Persian people were •incapable of political loy_alty~d devotion' - 'Full_of adorationfor the country itself, they do not believe m any means of running it'. At the most one could note that 'policing of the cities is quite effective' - 'You do not hear any noises at night, there is no public disorder' . That is because'eve r since ancient times' cities of that part of Asia 'have known and practised an excellent system of security, consisting of posting night­ watchmen in every street'. But for the rest, 'with everyone looting without shameor scruple, and extracting as much as they can from public funds, there is in fact very little administration,or none at all'. Above all, 'a part of the population never pays taxes, either because excessive privileges with no justificationexcept long-established custom have given legitimacy to a claim for exemption,or because such a claim has through dishonest measures been approved by royal authority, or else simply because taxpayers, not in the mood to pay, drive away the collectors or refuse to Jet them in.' 1 That French diplomat's words have an amazinglycontemporary ring. It is common knowledgethat order is maintainedin the streets of Tehran today by the vigilanceof the RevolutionaryGuards, the bassij and other Komiteh who patrol the streets. But Iranians are still not paying taxes! In 1990 the InternationalMonetary Fund noted that the ratio of tax revenue to gross nationalproduct bad fallenfrom 6 per cent in the first half of the 1980s to 3 per cent in 1989. Certainlythat decline could be explained partly by a restrictive incomespolicy, curbs on imports, the inelasticity of most indirect taxes, and the ravages of war. But the IMF report also blamed the weaknesses of the tax administrationand the large numberof exemptions:'It is believed that effective tax collectionhardly amounts to half of what can legitimately be expected'. The Iranian government itself agrees; it has expressed the hope of ~creasing th_eratio. of tax revenue to GDP to 8.4 per cent by simplifying mcome tax, 1IDprovmgcollection and reducing the range of exemptions.~ It 1. 1.A. de Go~ineau,T~ois ans en As!e (1855-1858), Paris, A.M. Metailie. 1980, p. 298. 2. IMF, lslam,c Republic ~f Ira'.,:Article IV Consultation prepared by the Staff Represenratil'e fo,: the 1990 Consul!allOnwith tltelslamic Republic oflra11,Washington DC 7 Mav 1990. m1meo,p. 15; Planningand Budget Organisation,·Economic Repon 1371 (1992)'. Tehran 1372/1993,pp. 34 and 38. ' 9 11 When Taxes Bloom in frar, 10 Bcin.gModem in Iran . . Mossadegh · you often hear peopl e bas pointed the fi~~r unambiguously at the people ~ pon ible for tax fulfilled their tax obhgatJons und~rb longed to ~s, so we paid our taxes'. e\'asion: the ha:zaMmercllants . wh e contribution docs not exceed that of saying, ·we thought .the gove~m:ent through a period of grace for tax S3larkd employe ~ d~pite their po~icr and the va t profits they have been Similarly, the Jslauuc Rep~~~in before the classic distance between s~te making ince the Revo lution .• Thi explanation is too simple. The bazaar payment just after the ~evo d 't d y by the very numerous press notices tndexs ba,·e ties. espe inlly fumil) ties. with members of the politic-alclass or d society' returned - illustrate o a .. the cleig) . Besides. the great quasi-public foundations inherited from the :~oning taxpayers before the tax authonti es. imperial regime or CJUted ince the Revolution and their offshoots, are not theie3l!t of the beneficiaries ofa la.~ ·y tern of tax enforcement, on the pretext GivingIslami c Legitimacy to Taxation h that they are engaged in charitable work, even though Hashemi Rafsanjaoi's . should therefore not be seen as t e govemm~m et out to discipline them ; and despite the currency reform of Iranian~' relaxed ~ttitude to ~a.y1~gc~;:e but rather as the frui t of defini te expression of a tuneless poht1ca . b' s been through an intense debate Mardi 19Q3 the) continue to make useof the different exchange rates to get political process~s. The current r~f teco~tributed to the legitimising of aroundtheir !.3.~obli~tion . To this must be added an array of organisations - from the Islamic schools approved by Qom to the Islamic Propaganda which, paradox1cally, .hasl ~oss~ Jto fight on two fronts: on one side, to Organisation. the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution , the University centralised state authonty. t as a scd to contest the imperial regime 's Crusade and the Revolutionary Guards - which enjoy similar exemptions. persuade the clergy, 7h~c~ h::u:::;::late taxes as well as religiou s ones; In reality the Islamic Republic. in that respect as in others, shows rig.htto levy taxes, o t e a llection effective in the disturbed situation on the other, tolm~ke stadte~:: ~hile still claiming to speak for the common historical contim1ity.A constant feature of the imperial era under the created by revo uhon an , . Safa,ids. the Qajar.. and the Pahlavis was lighter tax enforcement than that people and the dispossessed wh~ w~re being asked ~o ~~ ur rm of tax will imJX)SCdby the state in Europe. ' In lran the taxation question is, now as in . le 51 of the 1979 Constttullon lays down t at o o . the past. above all a question of exemption (mo'afiya t-e miiliyliti). It is be ~~ced unless it conforms to the law. Conditions for ~x exemptions~: striking to note . oomparing archives of the beginning of the century with reductions will be defined by law.' This summary wordmg contras~ w1 contemporary statements. that in the eyes of both the taxpayer and the more detailed articles which, quoting verses from the Koran, deal w~th the authorities acts of public generosity or open-handedness merit exemptions; highl controversial issues of the position of women, v_ela1at-efaqz~ '.'11d contnl>utions for a religious ceremony, the building of a schoo l, or the ioter!t (reba). However, the text applying that constltuttonal provmo~ , cunning of a spans hall are given as reasons for paying less in taxes. a proved by the Revolutionary Council in March ~f the same year, mad~ it Iranians· proverbial lack of enthusiasm for their tax obligations clear that the taxation question was just as conte.ntlous, ~d that the concise illustrates the distance perceived between the state (dolat) and the nation wording adopted by the framers of the Constituhon was ~!en~ed to conceal (mellat)- the 'indifference· which means 'that it is of little importance to the their confusion. There was an appeal for the peo?le's ~arttc1fatton, an ~ppeal Persians to knov, who governs them, and they have no preference or hostility to their national and social duty (farizeh melli v~ e1temli i - the religi ous to anyone; with this qualification, however - that they never like those term farizeh being preferred to vazifeh, but refemng to secular concepts. of currently in pov.er·.- However, one must guard against seeing such distrust the nation and society). There was a specific mention of the 1967 taxation between the people (ma rdom) and the regime (rezghim) as something law which was confirmed as remaining in force; taxpayers were aske~ to pay physical; one should not speak of a 'permanent state of mind' like Gobineau. in accordance with, and within the limits of, their own asse~ments (szc!);for Such feelings represent historical consciousness rather than atavistic the biggest ones, three months were allowed to pa~ the": taxe~, an~ they reactions. The biiztiris of today are convinced, rightly or wrongly, that they were offered a 20 per cent rebate if they complied with this (sic.)1 ; a conciliation commission was set up to deal with taxation djsputes .' .. 3. Acoarding to the stat.isticalyearl>ook, the coombulion to tax revenue of salaried staff and ci\il sernnts of the private and public sedors together amounted to 231 billion rials in This somewhat confused text calls for three comments. The legitimacy 1991, while that of all the guilds for tbe same year was221 billion rials (Markaz-eamar-e of state taxation was upheld once for all by a Council consisting !argely of lrtln, S6.lnamd, amari, 1372 (1993), p. 576). religious dignitaries , despite the stiff resistan~e of a large proportion of the 4. Ra.aJm.,25.3 .1373 (1994). The newspaper Keylum, on 9.5.1373 (1994), promised rewards clergy;•0 state continuity was formally reaffirmed by the reference to the for denouncing tax ~aders. S. SA Arjommd, The Turban for w Crowtr, Oxford, OUP, 1989. 6. We v.ish to record our thanks to lhe National Archives Ccnue, which has since 1992 been 8. F.Adelkhah, J.-F. Bayart and 0. Roy, Thermidor en lr~11, Brussels, Cornpiexe, 1993. . publishing a journal of good documentary quality, and which kindly made lbese 9. F. Ghorbani, Madjmou 'eh kamel-e qav6nin ba dkharm esldhilr 1371, Tehran.Ferdow si, docume!m, of greataesthetic and historical value, available to us. undated, pp. 29-31. 7. JA de Gobinuu, op. cit., p. 212. 10 S.M. Beheshti, Eqtesbd-e es/omi, Tehran, Daftar-e nashr-e farhang-e cslAmi.1362 (1983). 1- Bt1iJlgMod em 1i1 1nm WhenTax es Bloomin Iran 13

1%7 la,; , and ta.,1>ayers'reluctance to pay, a ource of dispute, was openly . j tif the obligation to pay taxes. But menti ned. and at'Cepted as being a matter for negotiation and compromise lslnmic character of their r~g1mc tort ~:xt~ by certain religiou s leaders su~h rather than repre..~k1n. they are also able to quote ~n s.uphoheshti and Motahhari, who argued ·~ Not until 19& was a law on direct taxtitionenacted on the initiativeof the as Ayatollahs s.adr, Taleg. am, ethe follow the traditio .n of the. ~ea Mouss.wi go,-emment The GututliansJ1ipCouncil did not express an opinion favour of taxation . Jn this way Yba s Naraghi (d. 1829)and Na1m1 (d. during the ten day period laid down in the Constitution. and the law came into reformers of lhe nineteenth century su: rs who in the J 940s, were cal mly fooce after one month. What was most remarhb1e was to see the major 1936) and the generation of Islam 1stthml~e. s _,,;.airs authority , to make up . ti' of a state re 1g1ou clll, t rtligi<>m le~ders...throughout that period. fulling over each other to defend the contemplating the crea on. . the faithfu l and to profit from sta e separate kgi.timae) of state ta.~es as compared with Islamic taxei strictosensu . for the inadequa~y ?f contnbutiollns ft~oo:itself is continuing to undergo •• Religiou s tax co ec l ·Foc a Muslim, paying taxes is a pa.rtof his contact with the eternal, of h.is resources.l. t·on as we shall see in a later chapter. bureaucra 1sa1 , cooociousness of responsibility·. said Imam Khomeyni. 'Tax payment pre,:cnrs accumulation of ,veal th·, Ayatollah Montazeri declared, and that. The 'Rentier State' and Taxation in Iran . coming from a revolutionary who aspired to serve the dispossessed (mosm:.'ajin), was a positive point. ·one of the duties of the Islamic . henomenon of light tax enforcement m It is clear, then, that the recurring{ ·t f the debates and the scale of the government is to determine taxes·, said Ayatollah Khamenei - today the Iran should not conceal the comp ~hot the break due to the Revolution Leader of the Revolution -on th.esame Jines. 'Toe most holy of administrative tx1 changes under way. The f~cts ;:n 1:mi: Republic in many respects, is and state systems is that which is founded on raxation', added Ayatollah Ardebili. for long head of Justice. 'Those who do not pay their taxes are like was not complete al~d. t at d r:tionalising work ot'previous regimes.' sThe continuing the centra ISlng ~n . . as a linear and conscious process, those who do not pay cbeir khoms: their property is illicit, because propeny or mistake would be to see t~1s co;1mu~Ispa rate and often local practices, at wealth that evades tax pa}'lilent does not belong to the owner but to the people, lbe martyrs..the wretched rural dwellers', Hashemi Rafsanjani exclaimed. He when in r~ali~ cbang~ sp~ng~ ro~st of thoroughgoing change. From this various pomts m a. so~1ety 1D t m1 ming the relationship between then echoed a statemem by Ayatollah Beheshti: Tutablislting an equitable ~ viewpoint the pnnc1pal. tbeor~~\ been the focus of Middle East taxation system to respond to the needs of the Islamic Republi c's programmes c~~:: taxation and state building, w ic d t be ualified and is in perfect harmony with the prindples of Islamic order.' specialists' attention in rtent/ears,ta~~~bai~y ~:\as~ of ie historical These eloquent statements, quoted from a series of brochures published in the autumn of 1986 by the Ministry of the Economy and the Treasury, 11 suppl~mentedf. Swoemst:;utE~~p/v:h:t dir~ct taxation has been directly experience o ' . · hil on the other mark a complete change from the numerous reHgions edicts which, for more correlated with the principle of poliucaJ representation, w e l than a century, denied legitimacy to state LaXation - starting with Sheikh band indirect taxation or oil rent has favoured ?uthoritarian. g~vernme~ Fazlollah Nu.ti's stance during the Constitutional Revolution of 1905-09 u One of the main exponents of this theory, G1aC?mo. Lu71an~, ,;:: ~ and Imam Khomeyni's fatwa calling on traders to pay no more taxes to an brought it up to date to take account of the fall m. oil pnces. th impious govemmenL u The leadera of the Revolution naturally invoke the countries where a tax revenue cris is . was proclaimed long ago, e IL Mimsny of !he .Eco110myand TreasuryPub lic Relations Office,Az miiliyat cheh midanim, overnment follows a policy of adapting to .reduced rent rather _th~ 4 ,·olumes. 1986-198&. acceg p ting the need to alter. . the . economic foundation, of the State - precisely 12. "Under C:Onstirutionalism,the inhabitants of this oouan-ywit! pay taxes aJ the rate of 90 pet to avoid changing the mstituhonal system . 16 . cem Mone) Will be extorted from them bi1 by bit under a thousand pretexts. The ci1y That comment, made with reference to Arab states, has an obv10~ COUDcil,for example, ~in find a hundm:I ways 10 take your money from you. Every ~rnor will have the right, under the Fu:mlam.ental Law, Lo levy two contributions per relevance to Iran. While the Rafsanjani government started economic ycai. And !he ne"' Minister of Justice will extract even more from you' (Ayatollah Sheikh reforms to respond to the needs of reconstruction and m~e upfor t~e FazJollah Nun. 1908-1909). decline in oil revenue , many observers doubted its dete~auon or 1ts 13. On ,\yalCUah Sheikh fazloJfah Nuri's staa~ during the Constirutional Revolulion cf. V. ability to carry the reform through by bringing under. eff~cti~e control the Manin. lslam and Mtax evasion enjoyed by the regm1e s big speculators be Constitlllionalists a1 Lhebeginning of the cemu:ry,only wamcd to weaken an impious go ..emmem (Vela.;ar-efaqih, Tehran, Amirlc.ahir, 1360 (1981). He acknowledged - 14. Ai11-ees/am, 56, 1324 (1945). . . forced lo doso, on.c can be sure - lawfulnc!;S two sons the 'primary n:l!ICUJ;(lly the of ofrax: 15. J .•f. Bayart, 'Les trajectoires de la R~publigue en Iran et en Turqu1e: un essai de lecture ta ' for financing of Koranic scilOo]s was di!,tina, in his view, from a 'seco ndary tax' 1ocquevillienne',in G. Salam6(ed.), Democratiesans democrares,Pans , Fayard, 1994, pp. whoseamoont must vazy in accordance with lhe sta te's nuds (Keyhan, 29.4.1372 (1993) ; 373-96. . R.aJuremud.Myeeqtesudi do.r baya11a1-eEmiim , vol. 3, 1366 (1987), pp. 136-7). 16. G. Luciani, 'Rente perroli~re, crise de I 'Eta1 ct dt!mocnuisation', in G. Salame, op. cu. . p. 201. B~i11gAfodt1m in Jr,m Wheri Taxes Bloom In Iran 15

- smu~clinl?..t.ll~ ~tee Zone outlets, the multiple exchange rotes, and public lar intellectuals and by a specia l issue of the fortnightly G_ardo:;( ~Tierosit) .3-ct1\·1t1~ lemilly~xempt from taxes.17 Although non-o il expons secu t about numerous improvement s, and today the trans_format1on o e ~a\:e ~ mcrerutng for sevcrnl yearsand the government i committed to bro~~. tr'k' But that policy has been at a price: creat1on. of nc~ taxes 11 8 mc:reasmgus tiu re,-enuc.,there is a long way to go before Iran leaves the :~ i~c~~=s;s~: iocal taxatjon . Mr. Karba schi , wh o is ve ry pop~la r, isa/ ~ .·tt..~ct .categoTJ ~f ·rentier tat .. , to join the more respectable one of much under attack; be has, for exampl e, becom e the favou.nt e tar~e. o produ~m~ states . l-10\~e\/er, that does not me an that Homayoun ;;satirical weekly Gol Agha. We intend her e to ~ook at this mumcipal Kato~311 , analysesof ·o~ despotism' are whoUy appJicable 10 the Islamic 1 debate to study what is arguably the growth of a pubh c space, or even of the Repubhc. ~ Iran has a re~atJv,e social and even political pluralism, evidenced idea of citizenship. . d h th b~ the ~net) • ?fthe wntten press, regular elections with some measure of In Iran the relationship between taxation on one side an , ~n t. e o er, compennon. differentiated powers for the regions. and a real growth of the reform of society and the state for the sake of_sa~ing the nallo~ is~ old auton~y. fo:social and ~n?mic forces." In fact the relationship between . ·1 as notably dominant during the ConstJtut1onal Revolution. B~t authont3rtanism and taxanon 1smore complicated. It is never one of simple ~~~~l~p';e~t of tax~tion does not lead automatically to gro~ .o f a ~ubli c ~use and effect Giacom? Lucia~ e~Jains .i))As John Waterbury puts it, s ace. The two processes are connected, but n~t necess arily lJl a Sllll~le There have to be several 10termed1ate variables between the levels and the ~use-and-effect way. Toe operation of the taxation syst~m JS _an essentl~ fonns of ra.~enforoement and the requirements of responsibility; before we element in political consciousness, especially in the wa~ m which pow er 1s ~ be spcc.ific about those variables. we can ooly have an intuitive and often perceived. But in that respect public statements and laws w force ar_e perhap s maccurate tdea of the dynamics of the situation. ' 11 less important, in the roles played by people involved, than the existence or One of those 'in1ermediate variables· can now be explored. In the winter non-existence of a visible and direct relationship between money collected o'.19 9-~. while the_new ~esident of the Republic, Hashemi Rafsanjani, and public achievements recorded. Fro~ tha! point ~f view the ~eba te \\ as stamng. o~ rus pahcy of economic recovery and reform, between 'sta te control' and 'libe ral ' v1ewpomts, which ha~ dommated Gbolamhossem Karb~sch1 ~s a~pointe~ Mayor of Tehran. He had already political life since the Revolution, bas been to a I_a~geextent d1v~rced from ~ade ~ name ~o~ himself m h1s earlier job as Prefect of Isfahan, by the real issues at stake : the Left's hopes of li:rmtmg accomulauon by the unprovmg the city s appearance for the greater enjoyment of its inhabitants; richest through taxation and vario us forms of economic regulation did 1:1ot the banks of the Zayandeb Roud had been tidied up and monuments win the day, and neither did the charity-oriented ide~s of the conse~anve restored, the parks had become more lively, and everyone agreed that Right, since social inequality has continued to grow ~mce the Re_volution. Isfahan had ~ally bec~m.e once again 'baJf of the world' (nesf-e jahan), to However Mr. Karbaschi is an adept at public presentation of tax ~ the ~assic descnp_tlon. ~ilh this repu tation preceding him, Mr. collection, through bringing the taxpayer closer to the fruits of his Karba...'-Cltisettled down unmediately to the task of restoring to Tehran the contributions. One of his first opera tions , in the spring of 1990, was to caJ.l splendour of a capital city. on the people of Tehran to put pots of flowers on the pavement, in front of . ~s was no small challenge. The urban area had by then 10 million their houses or at their workplaces, to brighten up the capital. This plan , inhabnants and was on the veige of choking up; in addition its population, announced repeatedly by the city council, was supported by a true verbal ?<""'\~~re youthful,. was J~nging fo:r change after eight years of war, barrage from the most popular radio broadcast - Salam Sobh Bekheyr, 22 unpo erishment and ideological drabness. The decisive and efficient new 'morning greetings', presented every day between 7 and 8 a.m. by Atash mayor. immediately greeted by a concert of praise from public opinion and Afrouz - and was thoroughly prepared by the city 's technical departments. 17. OD the_tu ex=ptions . for public gene~ity actiyjties cf. R Ghorbani, op. cit., p. 99. It was wildly successful. Spurred on by the prospect of winning prizes, the ~mg to tbf: _ ~rman . o_flhe_ ~ament.ary Planning and Budge1 Committee, people responded to the call on a massive scale, and for several days the only ~OJ&lOlesla:mDorri NaJ.afabadi,m an IDICNJCW wil.b the daily Keyhan of 8.12.1373 (J 995), topic of conversation was 'the Mayor's flowers'. Not that people were taken tax rrvenues for lhe year 1993-94 amounted only to 5,700 bj]Jion rials compared with rhe forrast of 7.800 billio.ii. in: it was clear that Mr. Karbaschi was aiming at the most visible and easiest target, and that Tehran's fate was not bound up with pots of flowers - ' one 18. MR,...,.; Katouzian.TM &ononry o/Modun Iran. Despot.ismand Pseudo-Modernism 1926· 17r,, London, Macmillan, 1980, Oia.pter 12. bud does not make spring'; in addition, the spectacular nature of his 19 F. Adtlk:bahet at. op. cit. initiative could annoy as well as attract people, like all political gimmicks, 3>. G. Luciani, op. cit., p. 205. 21 ;~ Watemu~···.u?e ~e sans democraies? Le po1en1ielde liberalisation polilique au 23. Garck,un, no. 13-14, 1370 (1991). ,..o}'ell-Oriem , 10 a. SaJame,op. cit., p. 10s. 24. V. Martin, op. ci1.; S.M.H. Naini, Hokumat az nazar-e es/fim, Tehran, Sberka1-e sahami:ye 22. 8. lioormdeandY . Richard (eds.), Tehtran 011-dessousthl vulcan, Paris, Autremeot, 1991. entcsh!lr,undat ed. 1<> Being Modem in Jrou When Taxes Bloom i,z Iran 17 and did not indicate the exi tence or otherw. de\·e!(\rment plan. Eve-0 ' his method wn in im i: ?f a proper .urban The killing of doves in Qom provides an interesting example o! thi~.The authorities' call for their slaughter in 1994 aroused soT?e em~t~on m lhe .itate accu tomed way~ at the opposit 1 fro P ive c~~tras1with the tdeclog)\ Mr. K.aro.a·c hi related to lb c po e. . m the prevailmg Messianic western press, always ready to denounce the Mullahs fanatJc1sm: after people under his jurisdiction - oard~/ m?st mtunatc ~reoccupations of the obligatory veiling of women, stoning of adulterous women to death'. and the in a less maJ.-m1..:(d•',io • . ~ . mg is a true cul t m Iran - and he acted ban (at least in theory) on satclli.te dishe s, _now came a massacre of ~nnocent m ""'trma1re) style than the hik althoul!h be wore their beard and colla d a~paratc ·s of the regime, birds! It is hard to believe that those birds were agents of the ci_ilturaJ the religious chools. a talabeh In . r. an l was imself a former student of aggression' denounced by the Lcader_o! the Revolution,~ Khamene1 -!he ~d up the rnte of munidpaJ . de!:;:e~-~o~as 7orked unceasingly to bead of the judiciary, Ayatollah Yazd1, 1n fact came to their defence , call~g PI'OJectsheing completed. th · on Y are more and more the Qom city council's order irresponsible. So it is necessary to examme !Olimit the incoovenkn~ toe w~~=~re bein~ hastened as ruucb a~ pos.5ible why that strange decision was taken. 10 implemented projects called~. P . the neig~bourhood; such vigorously In Iran one cannot talk of doves without think ing of a particular group of are like a svmbol ofthe ci bf!:mgope~tio~s' ('amaliydt-e zarbati), people, the kaftar-bilz (pigeon-fanciers). Those peep.le were. already under ~ayers· money immecHatelitan 'bl determmation to make the USC of some suspicion in the Shah's time. The kaftar-bfiz 1s a solitary man who ~ gi e. Tbe 1an!!tlage used bv th · · r devotes his Jjfe to his doves: he feeds them, looks after them, makes them closer to th; people. Its - e mum_cipa .~ty also reveals its concern to get fly and lovingly watches them return. He has hardly any time left to carry on a tenn which Mr. Karba::spaper lS called ·Fellow-Citizen' (Hamshahri), proper profess ional activity; he saves up his slender resources to buy rare nonetheless reflects t:h • _hasfpropagated more than anyone, but which species which wiJJ allow him to show up well in competitions, betting ..._ e spmt o the times It th e • uclonging to the cit,,• (sliahr), whi . · e?'-presses e 1eeling of a contests and gambling on the bird mark et. In addition the kaftar-bilz is often difficuJty in prev--::•· ch cenainly existed before but had some unmarried. When the moment finally comes to marry he must sacrifice his ~ uumg over communal se f h . brood of doves by selling it. That does not prevent him from continuing to (velaym), tribaJ (qoi\..w) 0 d' tri (. n ~ems sue as regional Kaibasdnis seeking r l is ct .mahalleh) feelings. In a certain way Mr. visit the pigeon market , where the objects of his past obsession are traded, a 'geography of des:·~pace the geography of nostalgia' of old Tehran by for the pleasure of seeing his friends and admiring rare specimens, keeping Similarly of the municipal tax Id ~ . , his eyes glued to the sky to watch out for doves ' free flight, and keeping talces up the ideaone of self-help . . ~ wd-yan ( self -help'), explicitly some of his favouri te birds in a cage, on the roof or in the courtyard of his amused reactions - is it real!· puttmg Jt m monetary form; th.is has produced house. In short, the kaftar-baz is a misfit or at least an unusual character . yon t~ help your.;elf! But M:.=a~ ~or money to be taken fro~ yo~ for He is also a lean man with staring eyes . He has the reputation of living like his city counciUors, when he chi 15 not bot:hered by such obJecttons; in a dream world. Malicious tongues assure everyone that his passive the television screens and hiJ h gets off the radio ~e rushes to appear on appearance does not come only from waiting daily for his birds to come we sba]] see later- he' ce~ e e may have the skill of a javanmard - as down from the sky before nightfall to return to their dovecot, but also from of such a person! Y does not aJways have the discretion expected imbibing certain toxic substances. Although he is of dubious reputati on, The case of Tehran he.lps us t d without a respectable occupation. and in a world of men only, the pigeon­ of Which taxation is one ele t ;t8erstand better that bureaucratisation, fancier is a peacefuJ character, except when his birds are in danger - and that down the periphery. It can tak.1:en • ~ not o~y mean !be centre grinding in fact happens quite often. to legitimising iL Of COUISeTe~~~ the pe_nphery, which thus contributes The difficulties faced by the kaftar-baz start from the very nature of his belongs to the centre of the . . e capital of the country and in a way passion. The flights of bis doves are a nuisance for the neighbourhood. fought his first . st~te. But lt should be recaUed that Mr. Karbaschi which comp lains that droppings foul the soil, the small water basins in . . campaign in Isfahan and 1·s ·d l · . provmciaJ city authorities. E . WJ e Y. un1tated today by courtyards_,clolhes hanging out to dry and mattresses waiting for nightfall 1 encouraged the adoption of bur:: att~n among. re_g1onal capitals has before being unrolled for summer conviviality. The kaftar-baz is also space. There is a true interaction be:tic ;:ioderrus~uon ?f city dweUers' criticised because, as he stands on the roofs to watch the flight of his birds, the expectations - confuse ee~ t e reforming WJUof mayors and he tres~asse~ on t~e ~timacy of inner courtyards. Lastl y, people do not people they govern. d and contradictory as they may still be - of the much. like him bemg m contact with chi ldren, because of the risk of his tempting them to follow him in his madness. 25. To a,dopt lhe ve,y good . , ~ut t~e dove is also? priv! leged lin~.wi th sa~red and symbolic things. Mes..rem. "Wnde, Paris, :=~99~by Paul Zurnthor about the Middle Age.~: La Iranian film producers , like Ah KhataTUJ10 Toghz,readi ly choose the death l Bei,r.g~Vodan i11lrcm WirenTaxe s Bloom in Iran 19

of a do\'~ a the tragic moment of a story. Doves perched on the minarets and . 'gh f 11 li hting in the national colours domes of mosquesore a ign of continuity be~ een this world and the next. water basins with fountains . At n; v::tati:n and fountains ; it contributes They are s further reminder that the my tery of the mystical is forever rooted (green,white and re?) plays on th cesgjn a climate where the first hours of in what is pMaic and material llms the pigeons of the Imam Reza hrine grtatly to the attraction of these pla cots and are particularly good for the evening are the most pleasant mo~ t ds and especially refre shment al Mashhad are forever fed by the offerings of pilgrims . Those offerings are relaxation. In addition _there are news-s an so abundant tba1they form a real carpet of wheat in the mosque courtyard reserved for me purpose: the guardians - 'servants of Imam Reza' - stalls offering thei~ ~crv1ces.d h generated various eve ryday habi ts. The new mun~c1pal ~ar ens av\·ch is after all fair ly traditional , but ~ iduously g:uher up whatever is left to repackage it and put it on sale I again. People visit them in .family groupsf, w young people retired people , . . pec1al groups - o women , ' . In its oome.-.;tthe e:ttermioation of the Qom doves reflects not so much also m vanous s th 1·ndependently without arousing bloodmirsty fanaticism on the part of Mullahs for whom tyranny had gone soldiers, etc. - who are ab~~ to f fac~~: for social differentiation and ro their .heads.. as the many aspecrs of a programme of urban renewal. That curiosity. The parksf ~ed. ~s als as we shall see Jater. The inhabitants of program.me has aroused the approval of the greatest number , despite the autonom?~s con~uct or J~ht~e: p~blic gardens in numerous ways : they go increased tax burden involved, and it has been combined with a struggle lhe localities ma e use o . . to look after their children , to chat, to against social practices seen as undesirable - gamb ling, drug-taking - and there to rest, tofs ~~i~ !~t~~:e sh~!~:s(o revise for their examinations, t.o read against superstition~ ~~Js~~~ ~n ~isplay, to watch open air films, to pray, to d~ sh~: 1~r~~ A. Look Inside the Mayors Gardens go after girls_,or just to pass by. f~o~t of ~:spe u;~~sp~::~tte principal open spaces mvolve new ways o ivmg. . . . h a ly Our ideas need to be more clearly defined. In addition to macroeconomic places for practicing fashionable sports - aerobics and Jogg:g ~ t e.e r 5 and macropolitic:aJ analyses of the relationship between taxation and state . table tennis and badminton in the afternoon - an eattng pJZZa ' building, there is room for an anthropologist ·s angle. Fieldwork in Tehran :~;:~hes and hamburgers. Craftsmen's stalls are also founk,dtbe~eth for b .d basket making lute making, woodwork, stonewor etc., ese during the summeTof 1994. through interviews and on-the-spot observation, em ro1 ery, • . h b" f ·t dwellers and made it possible for us to define more clearly the terms and the range of the illustrate well some of the new consumptton a 1~s? ~1 Y . , nf that in Iran as elsewhere, commerc1ahsat1on mvolves _an urban government debate launched by Mr. Karbaschi 's modernisation 28 policy.:sThe Shah set about creating monumental gardens 'in the desert', to ;i,,a;I::aireof the authentic and special object' , The }?arks ~re the :ttin~ reflect the grandeur which he saw as surrounding his dynasty, and did not for social innovation, though maybe at the expense of mve~tmg tra tton , care about integrating them into an overall town planning vision. In contrast but they do not exclude old habits, which have even acquued S?me new the ne;,v Mayor of Tehran- wjthout completely abandoning that tradition, as legitimacy - people play chess and draughts there, they unroll theu carpets is evident from the embellishment and opening to the public of the Sad­ and pray. · b b ~ c·a1 Abad, Niya\·aran and Pirouzi parks, and the restoration of the Javadiyeb For all these reasons the public gardens are the settm~ ot or so 1 slaughterhouses, the former brewery and the Mesgarabad cemetery - bas reconciliation and for at least potential conflict. They p~ov1de - be~er than concentrated its efforts above all on creating many smaller green open the mosques, religious meetings, good-bye parti~ and buthday parties - ~or spaces in the different districts of the capital, for fairly basic 'public health' coexistence among different classes of society and theu ~av~unte reasons_::> The various squares are generaJJy laid out between houses, quite consumption and leisure practices. Next to the young couple ~eking mto ~ often on plots of land confiscated or abandoned during the Revolution, and pizza bought from the fast food dealer at the crossroads is a sonnati. especially at the centre of crossroads that have been systematically planted (traditional, 'authentic') family eating shiimi~kab~b prepare~ at home; and with trees. Besides the inevitable municipal authority flowers, the district the father will move to one side to pray while bis grandchildren play ball public gardens have been provided with benches, children's pJay areas, and games. . . But at the same time the public parks are the scene for social practices so varied that they can become contradictory and rival, and thus a cause for 26. ~ch carried ou1 in the spring of 1994 among 100 people, through generalised ~ cspccially in lhe western districts of Tehran (Pirouzi, Nirouye Havai, Tehran conflict. For example, despite the prying eyes of the neighbourh~d, the Pars). watch kept by the local authorities and the vigilance of the Revolutmnary 27. Our ti1aDbto Mn. Nasrioe Faghih, archilea and town planner., for her help in eslablishing chk ponn. See her rq:,cm,produced at lhe request of the Mayor of Tehran, on 'Ulban i.mpm,;ement of the capital and its future' , Tehran, 1370 (1991), mimeo. 28. J.·P. Wamier,Le paradoxe de la marc/1a11dise aut/umtique. /m11gii1aireer consommatio(Ide masse, Paris, L'Harmattan,1994 . Bd,~ Modem ii, lrcm When TaxesBloom in !ran 21 Guard· they are places for me-cling and flirting by the evei:growing rank s o( tbe youQg,who do not alwa · submit to the austere moral code demanded people we spoke totendeddto seed~~: ~~~~~n~~:;f ~r~~~n1h;~r~~°,!i~s: b) the ~g.ime. Of c<:'ucsethi doe' not stop the district from callingfor t S·on of the courtyar gar ' · 1i h • 't;..,,, s bassij ex en , . b b_j d the 1990 operation in whlCh e ran s c1 u.,.,n ::olJectwe prayers m the same parks. We should not see in these brief reca!ledit:sutpho:1~~ade~or~te thefr doorsteps with flow~rs. The feeling of glim~~ the expression of some Manichean confrontation between were ca e . ccs was emphasised. Those space s totalitarian authorit) and a frightened populace; for several years past the intimacy produced by the gre~n openffsapma ily space made inevitable by the b me de facto extensions o , . . · f>.cJ.ssijhavt been ordered to act in a non-coercive way in this regard,and they have. ec:horta e in the present situation of inflation and ec~nom1c cns1s; compete above all with the mosque ·s pace:l'>in an}' case their intervention hous~~~akcthet children there and meet there to relax. As this has beco~e is no, so frequent. and one can spend hours in the parks without seeing them rrigular habit, and as the public gardens are nearby? many have the f~e~tn1 appear. Howe, er, it is ahvays a po ibility, one that is constantly mentioned . . ·1·ke home' But it may be worth notmg that the mumCJpa by people u. ing the parks, especiaUy by the young who dread it but who also that It IS I . · h t J' g· the areen open ~how their social standing by such hostility or concern. It is after nightfall, authority's gardeners are good at encouragmg sue. a ee in ' . et' . spaces are cleverly divided into numer~us baqc~eh? well suited, if not to "\\'hen- as we ha, e seen - the parks are most popular, that the tensions near :flirtation at least to meetings, conversation and picnics. b lhe sum e are most ,·i ible. The public parks are scenes of reconciliation Besides the feeling of intimacy produced by the parks there. b~ . een and conflict. or. as Pierre San ot put it, of 'alliance and tension '; they really are public spaces in the fuUest sense.~ individualising of their use. The public gardens aim to satisfy the md1v1dual needs of precise categories of people: mothers who are offered play areas for The intervie\\s we conducted during the summer of 1994 confinned this their children retired people who find a haven of peace, students who ~o point but also allowed us to establish it more precisely. The people we interviewed spoke without reticence on the subject. First of alJ, they their revision' under the shade of trees, lovers who !e-enact the favounte scenario of the region's film producers - a fountain, flowers, tears. and immediately identified the Mayor of Tehran. That may seem unremarkable, even ob,ious. to a Western reader. But Mr. Karbaschi is the first municipal reconciliation! The public in the parks is heterogeneous; Mr. Karbasch1 ~as well understood this and facilities are provided to try to respond to vaned office holder to be in the public eye in lhis way, at least since the 1960s (Mr. expectations. In short, the parks back up the individualising process that Shahrestan.i had real popularity at that time, and it was that which cost him his position). Mr. Karbaschi's action aroused immediate comments from the characterises Iraruan society. . people interviewed. They spontaneously linked it with the policy to improve As well as this feeling of familiarity, the municipal parks provide the people of a district with a way to widen. their social space. For example, they open spaces, \vhich aroused unreseived satisfaction. The parks give the city its character of a great modem 'European ' (orupa·1) city; that opinion make it possible for women to go out m a completely lawful w~y, a_ndalso corresponds to the city authority's own - al.ready, at the end of the last in a quite djstinctive way: nothing is more respectable , but nothmg 1s more cemury, the Qajar administration took Paris as its model /' and today Mr. modern either than taking the children for a walk in the park - and from that Karbaschi,who readily visits the great capital cities of the world while viewpoint th; public gardens are places of pai:ticul~ impartance f<:r ~! others devote themsehres to international Islamic conferences, cites Bonn 'social being' (iidam-e ejtemii 'i) or the person of mtegnty (adam-e hesabi). and Tol..1·0as examples to follow in addition to Paris." The city authority provides furnishing that reveals very well tbe w~~ the Wben asked what constitutes modernity in a city, people gave answers park legitimises modem ways. While it is possible to lay out a trad1t1?nal both spontaneous and remarkably rich in detail . Behind the most obvious carpet to sit down or eat together as a family, it is more fashionable lo s1t on signs ~f modernity - parks, big tree~lined avenues heiping the flow of traffic, the Mayor's multi-coloured benches, if only t~ preserve_ th~ crease of one's cl~ess. public benches, lighting. etc. - processes of redrawing of public trousers or the neat appearance of one's Islamic robe. S1IDilarly, old people and pnvate spaces C3JI be made out. Traditionally the individual homes or no longer hesitate to occupy benches for hours on end to make conversa hon small blocks of flats whjch make up most of the housing in Tehran have had or just to enjoy the peace and quiet of the place. The city authority is courtyards turned into gardens (baqcheh, literally 'small garden'). The beginning to install benches in a circle to make conversation easfor and tables to discourage picnic parties from invading the lawns . 29. F.Adel.khah,·voner pour cnieux mobiliser', Cemoti, 17, 1994, pp. 293..S. It is not only at the district level that the green open spaces contribute to 30. P. Sansoc,Jardi,is pµblics. Paris,Payot, 1993, p. 54. broadening the city dwellers' social life. You can escape there to wait for 3 l. M. M.ahboubiArd.1.kam, 1ilrilch-e rrwassessiir-e ta"'addoniye jadid dor Iran, vol. II, Tehran, relatives whom you wanted to visit but who were not at home; a retired man Entesbarai-e~gah-e tehran, 1376 (1977), p. 133. 32. In.t«view, Mr. JamaJi Bahri, bead of the Public and Interna1iooal Relations office of the can take a bus across the city to spend the afternoon in a park that he Tehr.wcemr.d municipality, spring1994. 33. F. Adelkhah et al., op. cit., pp. 65-7. Bd11g1\fodern i11Jrar, WhenTaxes Bloom in Iran 23

~tti -~arl~ like . ln.a l~_ra_ngiblefashion , but 1\0 less real to judge by our backgrounds, quoting equally readily the Haclith of the Prophet ~ad the l.lllcn1e,,: th: P?hc · of mipyov~ the appearnnce of the capital is of Hafez s0metimes mentioning Socrates and Western admirer s of en.:-oti~mg a t~hng of Teh:rnn1dent1ty lrtm ccnding barriersof area and of ~~;;: 11gardens. 'oreen open spaces are a setting for coexistence .between th~ "e.x..ag and social cla.,~.It opens up a field for consensus or at least neutrol Jslamic Republic's ideology and nationaJ culture (makta.bi an~ mellt kdmg among the dty dwellers. Admiring flowe't'li, trees and fountains in respectively), and even between both of them and something univer sal: lmn is a bit tike talking about the weather in France: there is a code that flowers have no cou ntry or religion . Jt is well known that the ~urrcnt hol~ers allo~\J.;someo~e to tart a co~~rsation ~ting nothing and unrelated to any of power are less and less hesitant lo identify ~emseJves with _expre~Jons par11cuJar -OClal group - rehgious. pohhcaJ, sexuaJ or professional. Since of Jrnnian identity given prominence by the laity. Mr. ~afsan~am paid an alm \ all the l.ranian ur~an centres follow similar town planning policies, it official visit to the ruins of PersepoHs, .and Mr. Karbasch, co~_s1ders that _of could e,-en be that _pubhc parks are helping lo unify society on a national the speeches by Ayatollah Khamene1, one of the most _imbued w1tb scale and encouraging a feeling of national identity. spirituality' ('erfdm) over the past fifteen years was dedicated to the 3 ~~ value attac_hed to green open spaces is not due only to the importance of flowers in the poetry of Hafc~. ~ • ameruties they pr_onde. The language used by people that we interviewed It is certainly clear to s~e ~ow mumc1pal policJ relate~ t0 other evo~e mo~e particul~ly ~e pi.ritual - , o to speak - qualities of the parks. sensibilities besides a modern1sat1on concerned only with the city 1s world Be:s1de· bemg the Kor.uuc symbol for paradise, they are described as standing. Mr. Karbaschi has been at the point wher_e sp!ritu~ity (ma'ad) pla~ o_f·~v~·iog the spirits' (ruhiyeh) and 'peace and quiet' (tirdmesh); and material things (ma'dsh) converge, and at a pr~1se histoncal rnome~t , the} bnng JO)' to the heart' (del-e adam shad misheh), and the flowers are that of the reconstruction of the country after a rumous war. So he has m ~do"'ed with a 'm)sticaJ virtue' (kluisiyac-e 'erfam). People who do not practice been opening up a space for au sorts of practices which , as we have like flowers are seen as lacking 'inspiration' (zoq) or 'taste' (saliqeh). In seen, involve reshaping the private and public spheres. In an unprecedented 1992 .Mr. Karbasch.i himself made this comment at the opening of the first way his parks allow the people of Tehran to live their spirituality, their in_ner Tehran flower show: 'Arranging flowers and trees expresses our turning lives every day and in public. ln addition, this ancestral and mystical towards the culture of beauty, the culture of aesthetics, the culture of dialogue between man and flower is now carried on collectively. It governs ~ness_ \Ve want to rise above today's economic and material problems. social habits , norms and behaviour, no longer just individuaJ ones. This I~ IS ~ effon. o~_,.,our ~rt to tum society's thoughts to the spiritual expansion of the space in which life is lived, this reshaping of the private dimeru10n of lLfe. In tlus way be sought to answer his detractors who and public spheres, finds expression in the new distribution of flowers . reproached him for paying more attention to non-essentials than to Some flowers, once reserved for the baqcheh of interior courtyards - essentials. But the parks do not in fact seem to be experienced as a useless violets, pansies, geraniums and roses, for example - now adorn the streets l~ry. They appeal to imaginary concepts, deeply rooted in people's of the capital. On the other hand certain plants, such as varieties of fir and ID.I.Dds.of the ·oasis of fertility' (abadl), as opposed to the idea of ruin cactus, are moving more and more from the public parks to the family (kluuabe~, viraneh) or aridi£y (khosh.la). People readily declare th.at Mr. baqcheh.This traffic in plant life expresses better than any words the ~hi bas "ma~e the city fertile' (shahro ii.bad kardan), or even done support Tehran's people give to their Mayor's actions. But we should not so to the country (mamlelcat), but that the Mullahs have 'ruined' the conclude that these have completely unanimous backing. They also arouse country (khardb kardand). tensions and even antagonisms, which should now be examined more . !hes~ vit:V.'Sinvite two comments. In the first place, parks link closely. spmrua.lity w1tb material plant life, and that is indeed what gives them ~gth. ~ the ?35i<: principle of life is to ally spirit with matter - bate,i Parks as Scenes of Conflict (mner ~ty) with zaher (appearance). In that way parks are an antidote to corrupti~n (/esiid), which arises precisely from separation of the internal The municipal parks are also the setting for antisocial behaviour that arouses o~r. (ba1en) ~~ the external order (zaher). And as they, representing the disapproval from people who use them; they can even inspire more or less fnncJpl~ of fertility, are opposed to 'ruin', so they are also the antithesis of violent acts of vandalism. 11 is not uncommon for street lamps to be poverty (faqr). the mother of all vices. smashed, flowers uprooted or trampled, or litter left behind after picnics. Secondly, parks succeed in bringing together the pre-Islamic heritage Sue~ beha~iour )s se;erely criticise~ by the public using the parks; they and Koranic tradition. The Mayor and the press constantly refer to both readily attnbute 1t to lack of culture on the part of lranians , especially of

34. Go/niimdi, 1, JJ71 (1992), p. 15. 35. Golrrnmeh,1, 1371 (1992), p. 16. Modern Bring itt 1nm WirenTaxes 81.oom In Iran 25 those living in the south of the capital. Open warfare has been declared At the culling edge of the critjcisms of Mr. Karbasch!'~ a~tion~s~; ~~ bet\, een the Mayor and the hool igans. According to one woman who deplo:re5the regular deciine in the state of her boulevard's lampposts, but be institutions and networks which .feel that. the mu~1~,p~e a:ut~~rity'~ c m eting with them, and which in any case co~ . . . aJ who.·~ plea 'ed at the determination of the municipal authority to go on i~eoiogical direction or jts style, perhaps just because it '; ~ecom~~g~~;be reramng them. Mr. Karbaschimake;s a point of being more patient than lbe centre of power or interferes with property specu lators. n pa ·~ ,'3.lldals...~nd counts on them getting tired of it. But he also seek to be a Ministry of the Interior, the Resalati parliamentary group, _the newspapers te:iciter. and want to wage many more campaigns of enlightenment and foundations linked with that group (such as the daily Re)sala~ _th~ especially in the school .~ \\'bile wailing for these efforts to bring results ii Or anisation of Islamic Banks, the Chamber of Comme rce , sa n:3 is possil>le to see numerou petty frictions among the park users, rangi~g u:Jication s and - at least until 1996 - the Islamic ~ft (through the datly ~m a ~ndescending attitude towards behaviour considered vulgar, or ~ lam) have expressed open disapproval, followmg the example of children s annoyance at grandparen ts' attitude, to the reprimands which ~ovahhedi Savodji who condemned in the Majles the '80 _taxe;s'.demanded young men chat.tingup the girls get from outraged mothers. by the city authorit ies.3$The readers' letters columns - which, ~t is ~e, are Abo,·e all. tbe merits of Mr. KarbaschPs policy can be contested. He is ·d to be commonly invented by editorial staff in accordance with tbeu o~ accused of continuing to give priority to the north of the city - the parks ~litical opinions - seem to reveal defi~ite discontent amo~g the public, there are Seell as more numerous and better laid out than those in the south. which goes together with the real populanty of Mr. Karba~~hJ. . Refuse oollection is ·fill very defective during the ma in rainy season in the On the one band there is criticism of the burden of muructpal taxes which most populous parts of the capital. The period of economic crisis seems to today exceeds that of taxes payable to the state, and which is blamed for the some ill chosen fur a preoccupation with flowers. 'The Mayor should have high rate of inflation. For ex~ple~ ~he detenninatio~ ~hown by the Tehran concentrated anention on the flowers of our btite11,the flowers of our soul municipality in strugg ling agamst itinerant ~aders, piling pressure on the_?3 (goi.hayejune.mun), instead of the flowers of the zM,er, and given jobs to for breaches of regulations , contributes - m the view of 1:-fr·Karbasch1 s young people so lhat they can marry·. as one comment has it. The city detractors - to the rise in prices of fruit and vegetables, JUSt as the new auth?rity's generosity over plant life contrasts with demands that people municipal tax pol icy leads retail trade~s to put ~I:their pric~s. On the other restrict water and electricity consumption. Less well-off families can also hand, the modernising actions of the city authontte~ are ~ettmg_dangero~siy feel frustrated at being unable to satisfy children ·s requests when tbey go to friendly with 'cultura l aggression' which some leadtng figures m the regune the parks where money is now king. denounce unceasingly. One deputy, writing in Resalat, attacked the s~le of That is the~- in fact Mr. Karbaschi's policy costs a good deal and, as a newly completed building, saying it recalled 'a churc?' and was 'w_,~out v.e have seen, it bas been accompanied by increased tax pressure. Not only any link with the urban context, or with Iran's national and religlous are J~ taxes h~vier than before, but the various services provided by the culture';39 while Keyhan, which was already outraged that such a modem mW11crpal~u~oaty have increasingly to be paid for. Taking the motorway building could be called the 'White House' , today calls the Cultural Centre buildmg ~ ~m. an extra floor on to one's house, putting up an illuminated (Farhang-sarain Persian) in Bahman the Farang-sarii. (the foreigners' sign m ~t of one ·s shop, placing a footbridge ben.veen a shop and the dwelling). As for the municipal authority's publications , they show too ~any stx:eetcrossmg over a newly dug open drain, cutting down a tree in one's footballers wearing shorts and too many underclad wrestlers to be entirely pnvate garden or (still more) a tree in the public highway, rearranging the respectable. Genera lly speaking, the voluntarist modernisation embodied in space ofone·s fiat, driving in the centre of Tehran between 6.30 a.m. and 5 Mr. Karbaschl involves some waste - is it really reasonable to plant narcissi p.m., having a private parking space when one does not even have a car - all along the motorway, and are all the successive construction sites always these ar_epretexts! among others, for payment of a fee to the municipality. It justified? - and it is in many ways contrary to the religious and revolution ary goes ~ithout saymg that a number of Tehran's citizens, especialJy lraders, ethic of belt-tightening which is fitting for the mostaz'afin, especially at a are fairly e~ by this fiscal or quasi-fiscal harassment, which they time of crisis. tend to see as arbitrary. Indeed the city authority sometimes shows rhe same zeal in forcing recakitranrs to pay up as in carrying out public works: a 37. On the extent of propeny speculation in the 1960s, see the pioneering worJ

It i diffi<'ttlt to intt'.'rpret the e divi ions in striclly political or h 'lds and Mr. Karbaschi is resolved , However this contest between I c guht • t of state centralisation. At the 1n~itutional1cm1,· Often it i· imply conflicts of interest, inherent in the s·mp1 ly as t c agen . . d' ,rJdof ractionalconflict. that explain the position of thi, or thntgroup, and lhe Mayor docs not emerge · h. h gemony over trad1t10nal tra mg th~ potitkm~ are not tdways obviously coherent. The Lender of 1hc same time as he tries to im~ose , .•s a:io care to obtain more autonomy Re, olution. who has taken the lead in the crusade against 'culrur:11 networks through the tax systcmh heJ t tbe fncrease lo his own resources , from the central government t ro~i d s11·ppi~gaway from its hold. So ag__messin· .int:-ethe ~ummer of 1992. has never crilid ed Mr. Knrbaschi. . h 1 •s prerogatives an . . · · g encroaching on t es 1a e 1· that Hamshahn ts campa1gnm And the Mayor. \\ ho in theory come under th.eMinister of the Interior, was . . 1 d at any rate rcvea ing, h ) h" b unliJ tW7 in open oppo·ition Lothe policies of Mr. Beshara1i,e-spec ially on it is quite log1ca , an . , .1 (shorilhd-ye eslami-ye sha r w ic lhe que tion. of bu ilding high-rise block,. urban renewal. and the defence of for the election of municipal counc~~e cit office holders. Although l~ss ra..\payen, up against the arbitrary power of the municipaLity. There were would have the power to ~hoo~emulti-pa~y politics -which is also be1.ng e,-enpress notires in which the cemral government urged motorists not to spectacular than the res~~ration o h a change from current pracuce 0 suggested by some political leaders -Esucn Lheword used shora, fits in with put money in the city ·s parking meters!" But behiJid these often quite f 'd ble importance. ve ' . ·.u t confused anragonisms lie the fundamental issues of state centralisation, would be o cons1 er~. Although the style JS very d1ueren ' bure3ucratisation and the emergence of a public space. the Revolution 's pobtic~l ~oca~ulary. f show continuity wi th the Mr. Karbaschi's adm101stra11v\9ac ~~n: through mass demonstrations, On one side some traditional networks want to preserve their freedom of revolutionary movement of 1978- . w JC ' action and their tax exemption, which they describe as their liberty but which in fact is akin to a monopoly. involving regulation of the world of the laid the foundation~ for a. fir~t p~bh~:e~~~-g its existence vis-a-vis the state guilds (as.rial) with wbicl:i the late mus1 oonstantJy come ro terms. On the Howev~r, ~e city which t~ ~ ~s er a differentiated grouping of more other ide Mr. Karbaschi plans to rationalise this liberty of the city dweller and the gmlds is not~- :~n~d, :i:~~i~~inct personalities, and a sett ing for or less autonomous JS ,c ' h en vary according to the people - whether trader. landlord or tenant - through the tax system. His action · h · h as we ave se - widen. mesocial space of Tehran's citizens, but assumes that they will social prac11ce~w ic -;- Wi h'1 fu1 Mayor's' Tehran has some features always pa:,. the price for its enjoyment. The city authority now seems involved. In th~s sense t?e . o~s ~al sed b Max Weber, 'divided not determined to take over the essential pan of the prerogatives formerly held recalling the d~mocratic city ~he ~es Jrterritorial districts, which, by the gu ilds by setting up the Refab (welfare) chain of stores . But the according to guilds, but al~ng I cli t .cts' ,2 With its runaway expansion formally speaking, were most y rura . s n . m rural areas but also to is process still incomplete and such a transfer of material resources and after the Revolution, due to an influx fro . ital has absorbed administrative powers is meeting resistance, even if it involves some liberalisation of Ian~ t~nure policy anbd·shecul~~1o;b~~=g new spaces for liberation from the subtle constraims of sociability in the bazaar. Flower number of towns m its penphery, w 1c are u d b selling bas given rise to just such a conflict; in bis parks, on the public aurbanintegration and identjfication. The public parks, watered edvery ay yt highway. and around hospitals Mr. Karbaschi bas opened kiosks whose local taxes, are an essential. element of conse~su,?s conflict an to movemen win re- keepers seJI at a profit flowers bought from the municipal greenhouses. to within the 'democratic city'. They are helpmg it gratally I . . i the the great annoyance of traditional dealers and horticu lturists. In addition he eminence over the old city of the guilds, and they may e proc a1mm decided to organise in 1994 - as we have seen - a flower show rivalling that birth of a new idea of citizenship. of the producers· guild. linking the flower theme with sport and moving the John Waterbury, it will be recalled, wrote that 'there have ~o be s~ve~e1 C\'ent ro the big stadjum in the east of the city. Professionals who believed intermediate variables between levels and f?~s of t~a~on a\ ~ that their skill had been usurped and not recognised for its true worth re uirements of respons ibility'. The moderrusatlon of e an an. e succeeded in wrecking the municipality's show by boycotting it and in~reased tax pressure that goes with it seem_ to ill~strate th~t ne~ess1ty t? organising their own flower shov.• a week earlier, at the usual site of the bring analysis of actual social practices into discussion of ~e re~he_rstate . annual show, and did so with the backing of the Export Promotion Mr. Karbaschi's action has opened up contact with the various d1stncts that Organisation .'1 make up the capital, and facilitated unpreced~nted movement _among them. 40. Key/um, }4.10.1374 (1996). The city air makes the inhabitants -: esrectall~ those co~g fr?m the 41. By lhe organisers' own admission, the producers' flower show was not as brilliant as had countryside_ 'social' people: in P~rs,an_adam, 1~ the sense m which one been expected.. for lack of means. While the general public hardly thouglu lhe identity of speaks of lldam-e ejtemii 'i, the social bemg. ~n th1s sense the _develop~e~t the produoers of the iv.o rival shows mattered, and rather saw the public and private of Islamic Iran is no different from that discerned by Serif Mardm m initiatives .ascomplementing eac.hother, a number of visitors were disappointed by the muokipaJ show and ~Ire of it as 'a mess' (pcr50nal information, May 1994). 42. M. Weber,La Ville, Paris. Aubier Montaigne, 1982, p. 179. '\ - Beil,~ Modem i11Iran When TaxesBloom in Iran 29

'em:tlist l\rnk-ey•._. In Tehranthe public parl'S are an importantforce backing . . less as an ad mm1. .s trator than as a rbero . al, up thi social change, and we haw een how they are now a burden on the criticised. Mr. Karbhasch1 't~cshc·~;o who~e position on the naub·onablpoke1dll cby h be a tee nocra 1 • • known to e ac city finance· o their own . Bui a similar analysis could have been made of 1 publi trnn~n or , portin,g eve nt , cultural fuundations or youth cenlres, !;~:bo:rJ is not well defined - :~t1~;:~;t_:nd who , while he hd1~s a \\ hich :ire other preferred areas for the operntion of the municipal voluntarist Hashemi Rafsanjan~ and Moha~m for that to the people for wh~m be JS ~ outlook. osition of power, is no Jess c ose lare 'May God pardon his parents A ke) to all the :e change i the still very uncertain struggle over the ~ediator. The people u~ing the p~r!~o~~ of his parellls!, - expressiodnds.:~at reation of a true public space . Mr. Kan:wschi's policies give the city its sins!' or 'May Light shme upon t ds the person referred to. In a ! ion dynamic unity among the various districts . They organise cornplementarity indicate familiarity and s~path~ o:%ours of amazing adventures said to 1 3nd movement between north and south, and are making progress towards the city is constantly bUZZ1ng"". th fr kidnapping to various attacks to h Mayor ranging om O\ eTC(lmingdiscrunination according to sex. age, ocial status and religious have befallen t e ' . ditional gossip. · or secular labels. EYen more than the chools, reserved by definition to the imprisonment, in the best vein of !ra odem erson though be is, is s_een m young. and the mosques, valued by the devout, the space being opened up to This is because Mr. Ka:basch1ib: ·avon~ard, the man of integrity (~r the ci~· d\\etlers is tnt1y ·public' in the sense in which the word is used by tenns of society's conception of I . 1 h"p between taxation and the publtc . "ty) The re ahons 1 · Ir • P. Sansot-:4' • o-one risk being charged· for entering iL Of course all that would-be man ~f integn · thos which, while deeply rooted m a~ s does not exclude either lensions or the revival of some fonns of space is perceived th~ougb an;al henomenon nor an obstacle to SOCI?l discrimination - or e,·en prosecutions of tho e breaking the so-called lsJamic history, is neither a fix~. cul d Pti nalising process under the Islamic change The bureau craus mg an ra o rules of the new space. However. those conflicts themselves help the Republic must be placed in that context. emergence of a public space as a field of inequality, power and self­ entichment_ but also. above all, of rights. The basic notion of haq, which as P. Vieille and F. Khosrokhavar have shown greatly influenced demands made in tbe Revolution. remains at the centre of the debate between city dwellers .and the Mayor in the newspapers and over the radio. 45 Criticising .Mt. Kalbaschi means not only raging at a dolati authority which one can do nothing about. it means above all demanding one's rights as regards public transport. cleanliness in one's district, green open spaces: in short, it means demanding lo be considered as a full citizen. In this sense tax colJection is as much an opening for negotiations as a mark of arbitrary assertion of power or of the distance between the state and the nation. The formation of a publ ic space, however, should not be seen as a linear process. There is no reason to assume that it will lead to democratisation of the regime in due fonn. And it is interesting to note that the vast majority of the people we interviewed ruled out the possibility of Mr. Karbaschi being elected President of the Republic . 'That would mean he would not longer work for us•. people said in answer to our question ; a link between competence in city administration and that required for governing the state did no1 appear obvious to the people we talked with. In addiLion, I.he process of rationalising the Tehran municipality and giving it a tax-based administration continues to be mixed up with the actions of one man who is immensely popular, however much he is

43. S. Mmlin, 'Religion and Secularism in Turkey'. in A. KazancigiJ and E. Ozbudun (eds.), Ar.JMk: Fount:1q of a Modern State, London, Hum, 1981, pp. 191-221. 44 . P. San50l.,op. ci.L, p. 49. 45. P. Vteille and F. Kil05rokhav.ir, Le Discours populaire de la rivQ/urion irar,iem,e, Paris, C.OntemporaoeJll,2 vols., 1990