“IN THEIR PLACE”: MARKING AND UNMARKING SHI’ISM IN PAHLAVI IRAN by Aaron Vahid Sealy A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (History) in The University of Michigan 2011 Doctoral Committee: Professor Juan R. Cole, Chair Professor Paul C. Johnson Associate Professor Kathryn Babayan Visiting Professor Gerard J. Libaridian Copyright © 2011 Aaron V. Sealy For my wife and kids ii Acknowledgements This dissertation would not have been possible without fellowships and grants from the Rackham School of Graduate Studies and the Department of History here at Michigan. It was also made possible by the assistance of several archivists, on both sides of the pond. I am grateful to all those who assisted me in my research, including those who were kind enough to read early drafts of my dissertation. I thank my committee for their patience and valuable contributions. Juan Cole has always been very understanding and supportive. He has provided a wealth of information and offered many valuable suggestions over the years. Kathryn Babayan has been a great inspiration and has helped me to take a wider and more nuanced approach to the history of Shi‟ism. I am grateful to Paul Johnson for his theoretical insights and for his suggestion, early on, to look at the nationalization of Shi‟ism as a key component of Shi‟ite nationalism. I am also grateful to Gerard Libaridian for kindly agreeing to join my committee rather late in the process. I have benefited greatly from his insightful questions and comments and from the work that he has done to help me improve my dissertation. I would be remiss if I did not also thank the professors at UCLA who got me interested in the history of the Middle East (Michael Morony, James Gelvin, and Afaf iii Marsot) and the professors at A.U.B. and Michigan who greatly enriched my experience as a graduate student (especially Barbara Metcalf, Ray Jureidini, and Vahid Behmardi). Most importantly, I thank my wife for her patience. I could not have finished this without her support and encouragement during what became a very long and problematic endeavor. I am also very grateful for the encouragement and support of the rest of my family, friends, and associates. I am especially grateful to Barnaby Ward for helping me to get my mind off of my work every so often. iv Table of Contents Dedication ii Acknowledgements iii List of Figures ix List of Appendices x List of Abbreviations xi Note on Transliteration and Conventions xii CHAPTER I Introduction 1 A “Golden Age” 4 Nationalism and Religious Nationalism 12 The Baha‟is in Iran 16 Organization 24 CHAPTER II “Reza Shah Must Have Been Spinning in His Grave”: Mohammad Reza Shah, Borujerdi, and the Clerical Riposte, 1941-1953 29 Introduction 29 The Islamic Revival 31 “I am not a dictator” 38 Grand Ayatollah Borujerdi 51 The Islamic renewal in the context of the Cold War 55 The Brotherhood Party 60 The Feda‟iyan-e Islam 65 Kashani 78 Creating an “Islamic Sphere” 83 Conclusion 88 CHAPTER III v “Islam is in Danger”: Anti-Baha’ism and the Nationalization of Islam, 1946-1954 90 Introduction 90 Demonstrating loyalty: the official minorities and the nationalization of religion 91 Anti-Baha‟ism, 1941-1954 95 Borujerdi and the anti-Baha‟i lobby 107 Kill them, where possible 112 The “Martyrs” of Abarqu and the murder of Dr. Berjis 116 “Baha‟is have been killing the people” 120 Conclusion 125 CHAPTER IV The Anti-Baha’i Pogrom of 1955 as Object Lesson 127 Introduction 127 “To rule, not reign” 128 The “anger of the people” 137 “An ever-present insult” 149 The partial destruction of the National Baha‟i Center 154 A “national” pogrom? 160 The impact of the pogrom 168 “The fire now burning” 171 Conclusion 176 CHAPTER V “A Characteristically Messy Compromise”: The Failure of Borujerdi’s Loyal Opposition 178 Introduction 178 “Trying to face both ways” 179 The ongoing push for Baha‟i dismissals 194 The Shiraz Massacre 199 The Brotherhood Party 204 A “satisfactory agreement” 208 Hormuzak (Yazd) 215 Conclusion 219 CHAPTER VI “A Wave of Emotional Feeling”: Staging the 1955 Pogrom 223 Introduction 223 vi Falsafi‟s memoirs 224 The “People‟s Movement” 230 Phobic and epidemiologic responses to Baha‟ism 233 The “astonishing wave” lifting the nation 235 Sexual dominance and national hegemony 236 Staging “Muslim” violence 241 The “bloodthirsty” clergy 245 The Baha‟i lobby 249 Managing the press 261 Blaming the British: a “common Iranian psychosis” 271 Conclusion 277 CHAPTER VII “Completely Cowed”: Britain, America, and the Making of Shi’ite Nationalism in Iran, 1955-1959 279 Introduction 279 A note on sources 282 The Moharram holocaust that wasn‟t 285 “A danger signal” for the British 287 “A test of strength” 293 Moharram begins 296 Preparations in Mashhad 299 The Islamic Revolution of 1955 that wasn‟t 305 A quiet Moharram, save Mashhad 310 “I hate Mullahs”: Ramadan, 1956 315 “Half a loaf”: the arrest of Kashani and the Hormuzak trial 321 Continued firmness 328 Mashhad, 1956 335 The Baha‟is of Mashhad 337 “Centuries and civilizations apart”: Ashura in South Tehran, 1957 340 “How much better it was to act civilized”: Mashhad, 1957 344 “Completely cowed”: the emergence of SAVAK 347 Conclusion 353 CHAPTER VIII “I Am Reza Shah!”: Revolution from Above, Revolt from Below, 1959-1965 356 Introduction 356 “Loathing for the system” 358 The Hojjatiyeh Society 362 “Dying on the vine”: positivism and the myth of clerical decline 374 Alam‟s “White Revolution” 377 vii Borujerdi‟s last stand 380 An heir, at last 385 “The dust of mourning settles on the Iranian nation” 386 1962 389 1963 393 1964 407 Why Khomeini? 414 From Mansur to Hoveyda 417 Conclusion 419 CHAPTER IX Conclusion 423 Dominance without hegemony, hegemony without dominance 428 The Shi‟ite nation and historical amnesia 430 APPENDICES 434 Select Bibliography 499 viii List of Figures Figure 3.1. The planned Baha‟i temple in Tehran 112 Figure 4.1. The dome of the National Baha‟i Center 150 Figure 4.2. The destruction of the dome of the National Baha‟i Center 156 Figure 4.3. Interior view of damage to the dome of the National Baha‟i Center 156 Figure 4.4. Falsafi posing with a pickaxe as he takes part in the demolition 159 Figure 4.5. Batmanghelich posing with a pickaxe while Bakhtiar watches 159 Figure 10.1. Conflicting estimates of the number of Baha‟is in Iran 435 ix List of Appendices Appendix I The Number of Baha‟is in Iran in the 1950s 434 Appendix II Religion and Nation under Reza Shah 437 Appendix III The Imbrie Affair 473 x List of Abbreviations AUFS (American Universities Field Staff) DDEPL (Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library) IJMES (International Journal of Middle East Studies) FO (Foreign Office) LSA (Local Spiritual Assembly) NACPM (National Archives, College Park, Maryland) NFAC (National Foreign Assessment Center) NSA (National Spiritual Assembly) NSC (National Security Council) PKOF (President John F. Kennedy's Office Files, 1961-1963) SD (State Department) TNAPRO (The National Archives, Public Record Office) USDS (United States Department of State) WO (War Office) UN (United Nations) xi Note on Transliteration and Conventions I maintain the common spelling of proper nouns. I also maintain the common spelling of Persian or Arabic words and phrases that are familiar to most English speakers. For everything else, I use a simplified version of the transliteration system used by the International Journal of Middle East Studies (IJMES). For short vowels, I use “e” and “o” (instead of “i” and “u”). I also drop all diacritical marks except for ‘ayn („) and hamzeh (‟). For most quotations, I leave the original system of transliteration intact. For quotations of translations, I occasionally apply my own system of transliteration to avoid needlessly confusing the reader. I also try to prevent reader confusion by “translating” telegrams and other forms of abbreviated English into Standard English (by adding articles and other missing elements). xii 1 CHAPTER I Introduction This study offers a revisionist take on the history of early Shi'ite nationalism in Iran. It asks why it is that the Shi’ite ulama (clergy) were among the Shah’s most loyal supporters during the 1953 coup that restored him to power, yet a decade later clerical activists had largely abandoned royalism and a significant number had become so alienated from the regime that they espoused an early form of Shi'ite nationalism. This problem is insufficiently addressed in the existing literature, with clerical opposition in the early 1960s often explained in terms of Shi’ism’s supposedly revolutionary nature, reaction against the government’s attempt at land reform, Khomeini’s leadership, or other factors that undervalue the historical processes that led to this shift. In this study, I take a different approach, treating the oppositional clerical culture of the early 1960s as a cultural artifact and exploring the ways in which it was historically produced in the two decades between the 1941 abdication of Reza Shah and the uprising of June 1963. In this reevaluation, I have looked not only at Persian primary sources but also at previously unexplored British and American archival documents. Based on this material, I propose that the religious nationalism of the early 1960s was the result of the reorientation of cultural transformations that had been occurring over the preceding two decades. These cultural productions were catalyzed and shaped by a number of 2 developments, including an ongoing clerical campaign against the Baha’i minority 1 and British and American intervention in Iran’s domestic religious policy (first to patronize the Shi’ite ulama and affiliated Islamic organizations as a bulwark against Communism, and then to pressure the Shah to discipline these “fanatics” when they came to be seen as a liability).