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Modern Islamic Messianism: Eschatology to Teleology

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Modern Islamic Messianism: Eschatology to Teleology Modern Islamic Messianism: Eschatology to Teleology By Mateen Rokhsefat A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department for the Study of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations University of Toronto © Copyright by Mateen Rokhsefat 2020 Modern Islamic Messianism: Eschatology to Teleology Mateen Rokhsefat Doctor of Philosophy Department for the Study of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations University of Toronto 2020 Abstract In this dissertation, I use primary and secondary sources to trace the development and transformation of the concept of Mahdi in Iran from the early 1900s to the late 1970s. I provide an alternative historiography of the Mahdi that has been missing from the Mahdist scholarly work arguing that there was a significant discursive shift regarding the Mahdi in Iranian religious writings from a distant figure in the early period to a revolutionary figure of future hope and justice in the late 1970s. In the early period, intellectual circles did not focus on the urgency of the Mahdi’s arrival, content to maintain the Mahdi’s distance. This changed in the early 1940s where the Mahdi took on a revolutionary aura and writings regarded his imminent arrival as critical for the revolutionary ethos to reach its logical conclusion in religious and political emancipation. In this dissertation, I argue that this discursive shift occurred due to a number of factors which caused contemporary Iranian society to question the idea that emancipation would ii come from the constitutional revolution. This shift also occurred due to rising divergences among intellectual circles including leftists, secularists, and nationalists whose criticisms of religion forced the religious figures out of their intellectual comfort zones. I am mainly focused on unpacking the nature of this factor by charting discursive treatments of the Mahdi through this period among these various intellectual milieus. iii Table of Contents Abstract ii Table of Contents iv Notes on Transliteration, Names and Dates vi Chapter 1 – Introduction 1 Arguments and Theory 1 Materials and Method 10 Literature Review 14 Historicizing Shi‘ite Eschatology 14 Early Shi‘ite Formation and Sectarianism 20 The Office of the Deputyship and the Occultation of the Twelfth Imam 23 Modern Literature 29 Conclusion 32 Chapter 2 – Parousia Postponed: Distant Mahdist Temporality 34 Introduction 34 The Role of Pragmatic and Law-Focused Shi‘ite Clerics 36 Babi/Baha’i Movements “Threaten” the Sanctifying Role of Mahdi 40 Assured Defense Against Babi/Baha’is and Other Foreign Forces 44 Protection of Shi‘ism Requires Othering of Babi/Baha’is 50 Conclusion 63 Chapter 3 – Critiquing Predestinarianism 65 Introduction 65 Brief Historical Context of the Intelligentsia’s Polemics 68 Kāzimzādah Irānshahr and the Rise of the Iranian Hero as Saviour 71 Kasravī and the “Myth of Mahdīgarī” 79 Sharī‘at Sangalajī and Religious Reform from Within 91 Hakamīzādah and Divine Uncertainty 97 Guardians of Charm and Magic and the “Shi‘ite Fable of the Mahdi” 104 Conclusion 108 Chapter 4 – Emergence of Teleological Messianism 111 Introduction 111 Historical Circumstances as Prelude to a Teleological Mahdi 114 iv Brief Historical Background on the Rise of Religious Writing and Activism 123 “A Response Letter” to Thousand Years Old Secrets 126 Khomeini’s Inaugural Call to Action 130 Unveiling of Secrets and Condemnation of Enemies of Shi‘ism 132 Khomeini’s Earliest Compliance on Governance During Mahdi’s Absence 137 Khomeini’s Passionate Letter on “Rising Up” [Qīyām] 140 Religious Journals and the Defense of Mahdi 143 Āmulī and A Reason-based Belief in the Mahdi 143 Personal Qīyām against Enemies of Shi‘ism 148 The Shah as a “Friend” and the Guardian of Shi‘ite Religion 151 Ulama as Guardians of Charm and Magic 153 Pseudo-Philosophers 153 Bandits of Truth and Reality or Returnees to Barbarism and Ignorance 156 The Hujjatīya: Apolitical Defense of the Mahdi 166 Conclusion 168 Chapter 5 – Revolutionizing Messianism 170 Introduction 170 Futurist Shi‘ism 174 Davānī and a Hopeful Promise 190 Shabistarī and Universal Government 196 Quintessential Shi‘ite Ideologizers: Shariati and Bazargan 201 Conclusion 210 Chapter 6 – Conclusion 211 Epilogue 216 Bibliography 220 v Notes on Transliteration, Names and Dates Regarding the transliteration of the Persian words, I have adopted the simplified version of the Library of Congress Persian Romanisation Table. For a simplified reading of the material, I have dropped the diacritics indicated in the Library of Congress Romanisation Table for Persian I use the common and contemporary spelling of names .ظ and ,ط ,ض ,ص ,ذ ,ح ,ث letters such as of well-known and contemporary authors and personalities such as Mahdi, Khomeini, Iran, Shariati, Amanat. In general matters of citation and footnotes, the 16th edition of The Chicago Manual of Style has been followed. I will be providing my own translation of the majority of the primary sources referred to in this work, unless an English translation is available and will be mentioned. vi 1 Chapter 1 – Introduction Arguments and Theory Historiography on modern Mahdism in Iran has primarily focused on Mahdist conceptualizations post-1979, particularly the development of a politically advantageous concept of the Mahdi used as a tool by powerful clerics to justify and consolidate a modern Islamic theocracy. These studies tend to neglect the transformative evolution of Mahdi conceptualizations across time in the decades leading up to the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Situated within the broader framework and literature of Shi‘ite historiography of the Mahdi concept, this dissertation provides an alternative historiography of the Mahdi that has been missing from the messianic scholarly work to-date. By tracing the development and transformation of the concept of Mahdi in pre-revolutionary Iranian Shi‘ite writings, specifically those from early 1900s to the late 1970s, I argue that evolving cultural, identity- related and political influences affected and altered these conceptualizations, thereby evolving the Mahdi, as a concept, from a distant figure in the 1900s, whose urgent arrival is discursively and politically kept in abeyance, to be later reconfigured during the reshaping influences of the formative 1940s and 1950s, and then emerging as an increasingly imminent, revolutionary, and decidedly future capacitating figure in the 1960s and 1970s that helped mobilize a revolutionary Mahdist fervor among Iranian Shi‘ites. My central argument is that through discursive analysis, one can identify a shift from an eschatological understanding of the Mahdi to a teleological understanding of the Mahdi 2 and that by temporalizing the concept of the Mahdi one is able to, first, pin-point that the shift occurred, and second, identify the nature of this transformation. Notably, the Mahdi is characterized as moving from distant temporality1 to a revolutionary temporality; the discursive shift creates a shift in the way temporality is regarded. The emergence of the revolutionary temporality was a revolution in temporalizing not because the Mahdi was regarded as imminently arriving – Shi‘ites always held the view that he would one day arrive - but because the Mahdi was coming now instigated by human action. Keeping the advent of the Mahdi undefined once empowered the Shi‘ite clerics; later, expediting his advent through increasing discursive certainty of the Mahdi’s imminence empowered the clerics. The Iranian Revolution became partly possible due to a discursive revolution on the Mahdi that preceded, supported, and justified the Revolution. The Mahdi became a symbol or signifier for an end of time that was emerging not only as a consequence of God’s action, but as a consequence of human action, particularly table turning fervor to actualize a State/state of hope deemed to now be in reach. The Mahdi now had a purpose in the political sphere, not just the religious sphere. The temporal positionality of the Mahdi moving from abeyant to actualized is a phenomenon that is revolutionary. In the current Iranian Shi‘ite scholarly focuses, this fascinating transformation is left unknown or insufficiently analyzed. Revolution is about the way space and time moves and turns, how ideas and actions evolve, revolve, and resolve themselves in places and moments. One discovers from the revolution in Mahdi’s temporality 1 The use of the terms temporality or temporal in this dissertation, is my interpretation of Reinhart Koselleck’s definition of “historical time” which designates that historical periods under study do not necessarily conform to normative political and social chronological studies of Iran. 3 in the Iranian Shi‘ite context that Mahdi conceptualizations are flexible, yielding, affirming, mutable, and future/fate-changing. This is the case as the conceptualizations evolve and revolve on themselves - not to a past, but to a future that is being inaugurated by end of time purposeful action that expects and puts into momentum the end of the future by affirming the now. The revolution in Mahdist discourse resolves contradictions or inconsistencies in the way that messianism is attenuated when political expediency demands that the messiah’s absence be privileged over his presence. In a sense, the revolutionary temporality of the Mahdi saves early Shi‘ite conveniences and inconsistencies from themselves by re-affirming the necessity of the future and futurality for emancipation. In this chapter, in outlining the contextual framework for this study, I define key concepts, introduce the historical perspective and arguments that shape this work, discuss my method of inquiry and the materials that I will be examining; and review the literature that covers the history of Shi‘ite eschatology and the development of conflicting concepts of Mahdi in history. What is clear is that there is a dearth of modern literature on the pre- revolutionary concept of the Mahdi and within the existing literature, an eschatological understanding of the messiah is presupposed which obscures the clear emergence of a teleological understanding of the Mahdi during the revolutionary period.
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