In his book, Iran from Religious Dispute to Revolution (1980), Fischer explores the religious roots of the 1979 Iranian revolution with the emphasis on the roles of the Madrasa (the traditional Islamic college), the ulama (the Islamic clergy), rawzeh (popular preaches at religious gatherings), rituals of Muarram (anniversary of the third Imam’s martyrdom), and the emergence of sociological reading of Islam by western educated popular lecturers such as Dr. Ali Shariati. Another way to put this, Fischer underscores the importance of Shi’aism in the 1979 aftermath.
He begins by historicizing the emergence of the Madrasa whose underlying scholastic structure is not estranged from that of the Jewish Yeshiva and the Christian Studium from the early 11th century onward. However, he goes beyond the intellectual and pedagogical functions of the Madrasa and shows its interrelated multilayered presence in the Iranian society from economics, social services, and politics to its symbolic representation of the Iranian heritage against the west and the rapid (and at times forced) westernization of the country in the 19th and 20th centuries. In other words, the Madrasa system is not only a scholarly institution where lectures and intellectual debates take place, but also a deeply rooted (and perhaps the oldest) political and economical institution which intertwines with everyday life of different classes in Iran, mainly, the peasants, the urban working class, and the bazzaris (the merchant class). Understanding the Madrasa in this light (a powerful multilayered institution rather than a place to merely teach and learn theology) is crucial to explain the 1979 revolution, an enigma for those (mainly secular middle class Iranians) who favour dismissing madrasa as an unimportant place of gatherings for some “backward” people.
Aside from the importance of the role of the Madrasa and the Ulama, Fischer also stresses on the role of the Muharram ritual (anniversary of the third Imam’s martyrdom), and other popular Shi’a tales as “religious” idioms for political inspiration in the course of the 1979 revolution. Knowing how Iranian masses understand Shia’ism is essential to the understanding of the causes and the aftermath of the 1979 revolution. In the Iranian common sense, Shia’ism emerged from the resistance against the corrupt dominant political powers of the time, the illegitimate caliphs. The idea is that Ali (Muhammad’s son-in-law) was the appointed caliph by the prophet, and he (and his descendants after him) was the only one capable of governing the society with justice, (the alluring promise of Islam for Iranians ---the non-Arab subjects, hence the second degree citizens, of the early Islamic empire). The only just society for the Shia’s is the one which precisely mimics the short-lived societies governed by Muhammad and Ali for a few years they sized power. In other words, unlike the (western) popular assumption, Shia’ism is not merely rejection of state dominance, but the idea that no government is legitimate (just) except the one which models itself after Ali’s and Muhammad’s.
The stories of Ali’s justice and wisdom in contrast to the incompetence and tyranny of the first three caliphs, who illegitimately sized power before him, are preached repeatedly in every rowzeh (preaches at religious gatherings). Even more popular than Ali’s peaceful resistance, it is his son’s---Hussein--- legendary but tragic battle with the concurrent caliph. While anecdotes of Ali’s just government provided people with an ideal form of the government, Muharram rituals (Hussein’s martyrdom anniversary) modeled their structural resistance.
In every Muharram, not only the Shi’a identity with its underlying value of yearning for justice intertwined with a sense of victimization was reproduced, but also the solidarity between the mourners rehearsed their unification against the common enemy: the Pahlavis, who on top of all their other tyrannies had also banned the Muharram ritual for a few years and had slaughtered those who had ignored the ban. It was during the 1978 Muhrram ritual that Khomeyni, a charismatic clergy figure who has been sent to exile as a result of his bold criticism against the Shah, was identified as Imam Hussein, and received the (unofficial) title of Imam (183). (In Shi’a tradition, the title of Imam is reserved only for the first 11 descendants of Ali plus himself. The fact that Khomeyni was called Imam was an exception to the rule, which was resisted by many upper-class Shia’s).
One important point that Fischer misses here, however, is the importance of the emotional impact of Muhrram narratives, particualry on younger audience. The paradigm has elaborate chapters on the starvation and slaughter of Hossein’s young children with whom the younger audience can easily identify and feel empathy for. From early years, the Shi’a Iranians grow great sensitivity for the sufferings of Hussein and his family.
On a separate account, explicit yearning for justice was already in the Iranian consciousness before the Arabian invasion and conversion to Islam/Shia’ism. The (Middle) Persian term daad (justice) is a highly loaded term which reflectes in many tales and popular historical anecdotes the evaluation of a king or governor’s moral conduct. Moreover, both the Persian terms daad and the Arabic loanword edaalat correspond closely to the idea of the Truth/God. Hence, injustice is not only abhorred on the grounds of unfairness or cruelty, but it is perceived as an offence against the Divine/Cosmic Order.
Beside the institution of Madrasa, the rowzeh, and the Muharram ritual which mobilized mainly the peasants, the working class, and the bazzaris, the emergence of a new religious class allied many groups of the middle class with the revolutionary crowd as well. “Traditionally” (before the introduction of western education), the clergy were considered to be the well-read and intellectual, hence, the middle class. During the period of westernization of Iran in the 19th century when western educated Iranians were trying to modernize Iran by establishing western institutions in the country, the intellectual superiority of the ulamas gave in to that of the university graduates. Particularly during the constitutional revolution of the 1907, which is referred to as the middle class revolution in contrast to the working class revolution of the 1979, there were systematic attacks on the religious and “superstitious” beliefs by the “enlightened” class. The result was a noticeable loss of overt prestige for the ulamas and religion in the mind of those who wanted to identify as middle/upper class. In the 70’s, however, the contradiction between belonging to upper/middle class and having religious fervour was resolved through western educated religious individuals such as Dr. Ali Shariati. A history graduate from Sorbonne, Shariati became a popular lecturer and writer for young Iranians who despite having a religious background were cynical of the “backwardness” of the ulamas. Plagiarizing Marx and Durkheim, Shariati re-constructed Islam in general, and Shia’ism in particular, through sociological idioms and jargons as the only way to achieve the Plato’s Utopia and the society of the just. Many who may not have admitted as having religious devotion (a sign of backwardness) otherwise, proudly identified as Shi’a Muslims after attending Shariati’s lectures and/or reading his books. Thus, through people like Shariati the self-identified intellectual class was also joined the course of the revolution.
To sum up, unlike the popular assumption, it was politics which took up religious idioms during the course of the 1979 revolution, and not the other way around. That is to say, it was not for the intrinsic sake of Islam that people established the Islamic Republic, but for the instrumental use of (shi’a) Islam: a way to govern society with justice. Through Shi’a narrations and rituals, many segments of the society reproduced themselves as one imagined community with a collective tragic history of falling victim to the unjust central government. Ulamas, who had been acting like a political party for at least a 1000 years through the institution of Madrasa, took the leadership of the masses, particularly the most disempowered segments of the society as well as the merchant class who had close links to the ulamas through marriage alliance and/or city architecture (the central mosque is built in the central bazzar where the bazzaris go daily for prayer and/or signing their commercial contracts before a Mullah). The emergence of western educated intellectuals like Shariti who sophisticated the folk narrations of Ali and Hussein attracted many young middle class Iranians, including the university students, and gave an intellectual twist to the revolutionary movement.
Fischer, M. J. Iran: from Religious Dispute to Revolution. Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London: Harvard University Press, 1980.
No comments:
Post a Comment