Revolutionary Iran

Civil Society and State in the Modernization Process

Masoud Kamali

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429824982
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Civil Rights in Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

First published in 1998, Revolutionary Iran investigates two major political transformations in the modern history of Iran: the Constitutional Revolution of 1905-09 and the Islamic Revolution 1976-79 and their relation to the modernization of Iran in this century. It addresses a core question: Why did the clergy not take political power in the Constitutional Revolution when Iran was a traditional society and they played a key leadership role in the revolution; yet they succeeded in the more modern Iran of 1979.

Characterization of socio-economic relationships between the two major influential groups of civil society in Iran and their role in political transformation is considered central for answering such a question. The book deals with revolution in terms of relationships between civil society and state; which, it is argued, are central to analysing and understanding modern movements in Iran and other Islamic countries. The major contribution of the book can be summarized as follows:

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• It identifies a socio-political division of power and influence between state and civil society during a long period of Iran's Islamic history as the key theoretical basis for understanding modern transformations of Iranian society. Such a division has, so far, been largely ignored.

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• It explores the clergy and bazaris as the social basis of civil society in Iran, and challenges Gellner's viewpoint that an Islamic civil society is an impossibility.

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• It argues that the modernization of religion and the creation of modern political theories by the clergy were both crucial means for defeating a modern authoritarian state and seizing political power.

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• It identifies the main social group without whom the Islamic Revolution of Iran would not have achieved political victory, i.e., the dispossessed.

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• It presents a theoretical basis for analysing and understanding new Islamic movements in the Islamic world.

Part I
Civil Society in Iran, Foreign Impact, and the Constitutional Revolution

1 The Construction of the Muslim Society of Iran

Questions concerning the Islamic Revolution of Iran call for an interpretation of the historical conditions of uprising, change, and the continuation of particular social institutions of Islamic, and in particular Shi'ite, Iran, After the Arab conquest and 'Islamicization' of Iran, Iranian socio-economic and cultural institutions went through crucial changes that led to reconstruction of the pre-Islamic society. The new Islamic society of Iran was reconstructed in part according to Islamic rules and norms. In this chapter 'Islamicization' of Iranian society will be discussed.

One of the most decisive historical changes in Iranian society was the conquest of Iran by Arabs in 637 AD and the introduction of the religion of Islam into Iran. The Arabs' tribal, and often unorganized, army defeated Sasanid's well equipped and professional army. They occupied the country and put an end to thousands of years of the old Persian Empire. In this way the Islamic vision of equality and brotherhood had a great impact on the Iranian people, who were subordinated to Sasanid's Ständestaat that was legitimated by the hierarchical religious authority of Zoroastorianism. Arabs cultural norms and social institutions, which were arranged by a tradition of more equality and kinder treatment combined with the Islamic vision of religious equality, brought about a social and cultural revolution (Wilber, 1981). Notwithstanding Arab invasion, Iranian people did not convert to Islam by force but as a reaction to the corrupted state of Sasanids and their despotic taxation system Zimmis. 'It is true, however, that there was no serious attempt at wholesale conversion to the Muslim religion. Much of the population of Iran converted to Islam in self interest' (Wilber, 1981, p. 37). The Arabs succeeded in conquering the entire plateau of Iran in 650, establishing the authority of the Caliphate, An interesting characteristic of the Islamic ruling system was its concentration in urban areas. Arabs established their socio-political and religious institutions either in the already existing cities or new ones that they built (Hourani, 1991, p. 24). They left the rural areas to the Sasanian landowners, dihqans. Much of Iran's high land plateaus were populated and controlled by tribesmen and therefore difficult for Arabs to conquer. Some of these tribes such as Afshars, Qezelbash, Zand, Qajars, and Bakhtiaris, came to play a crucial role in the post-Arab period of state formation.

The Islamic ruling system was based on a Caliphate system. The Caliph was the chief and leader of the whole Islamic empire. He ruled the conquered lands by a representative system, i.e., local rulers were the Caliph's representatives, directly subordinated to him. Caliphs who resided in Medina, Damascus (Umayyads), or Baghdad (Abbasids), were far away from the conquered lands and, naturally, could exert little control over them. Generally, local representatives possessed more authority than the Caliphs, and they resisted controls over distant Arab territories. This fact gave the local representatives an opportunity to adapt old socio-political institutions of conquered lands to enable governing and organizing the socio-economic Life of their territories.

Iranian society after the Arab conquest has gone through crucial socio-economic and cultural changes that led to reconstruction of the pre-Islamic society of Iran according to new Islamic rules and norms. Social institutions such as marriage, family, inheritance, religious activities, ceremonial traditions, bazaars, and so forth, were changed and reconstructed on the basis of Islamic codes.¹⁶ Perhaps the most important socio-political change was the creation of a new influential center in the society of Iran. Due to the appearance of new social duties and commitment to the new theocratic state, a group of religious leaders was gradually formed to exercise Islamic jurisprudence and act on behalf of the government, namely the ulama.

Questions concerning the socio-political life in Iran, and the ulama's role as a prominent social group who exert social hegemony and influence over the long duration of Iran's history, cannot be properly answered without paying attention to specific historical developments, in particular those concerning power balances and configurations. Iranian society since the early sixteenth century witnesses the appearance of two 'national' centers of power which in coexistence and conflict have played a crucial role in the social events and development of Iran: (1) state authority, and (2) Religious authority.

In the following chapter construction and continuation of these two institutions of power after the Arab conquest of Iran and the establishment of Islam up to the nineteenth century will be discussed. This period can be characterized by socio-historic processes that constituted and institutionalized socio-economic and political configurations of Iranian society.

State Authority

Islam initially appeared among Arabs who lived in a tribal society based on kinship and alien to the conception and institutions of the state (cf. Vatikiotis, 1987).¹⁷ Islam's theory of leadership in Muslim community was clear: sovereignty is God's and 'so exalted be Allah the true king' (20:113); 'to Him belongs the majesty in the heavens and the earth;' (45:36).¹⁸ Thus, all authority on earth comes from God and applies on earth by His deputy the Prophet, and, after him, by his successors. It explicitly means also that even the political authority of the Muslim community has to be divinely legitimized. Muhammad, as the only prophet of great religions who had both religious and political power, crystallized the theory of Islamic state.¹⁹

Sunni versus Shi'ite Theory of State

Differing perspectives and movements concerning the linkage between religion and politics, emerged in the decades following the death of Muhammad. The immediate issue concerned the question of the Prophet's successor, or Caliph. Sunnis believe that Mohammed died in 632 AD without choosing any successor. However, he left his Sunna (tradition), in which his umma could find guidance for their Islamic actions. Hence, through shura (consolidation), the most respectable men in the Muslim community, Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman and AIL were chosen to lead the Muslim community. After the Prophet's early death in 632, his four immediate successors, Kholafa-ye rashedin (the rightly guided Caliphs), tried to legitimize their religious and political authority through their family ties and personal connections to the Prophet. As discussed earlier, during the reign of the fourth Caliphs, Ali ibn-e Abu Taleb, the questions concerning the 'true succession' to the Prophet divided the Muslim community into two rival groups, Sunnis and Shi'ites. The later branch of the Muslim community was in the minority. They claimed that the true successor to the Prophet is one who had blood bonds with the Prophet, i.e. his ahal-e beyt (members of his family).²⁰ Under the Caliphate of Uthman, some of the respectable and influential men who were dissatisfied with Uthman began to preach in favor of Ali, Mohammed's nephew and son-in-law. They rejected any other Caliphate for the Muslims than Ali and his family. Some of these people believed that Muhammad, during his last pilgrim journey to Mecca in 631, had, in a place named Qadir-e Khom appointed Ali as his successor and Amir al-Mo'menin (the legitimized leader of believers). Such a belief was the basis for the founding of a religious group among the Muslims, called Shi'ite, or the Shi'ites of Ali. They believe that the members of the Prophet's home (ahal-e beyt) had the right to leadership of the Muslim community. Ali reigned a short time after the third Caliph, Uthman. He was assassinated, and the Umayyads took political and religious power in the Muslim community.

Shi'ism claims that succession to the prophet is a divine right inherited by his direct descendants. They recognize no immediate, legitimate leader other than Ali (d. 661), his cousin and son-in-law, and eleven of his descendants. In this view, no Imam (the legitimate and lawful leader of the Shi'ite community) aside from Ali ever occupied the position as head of the Islamic community. This belief was the motivation/ justification for several Shi'ite revolts against the Umayyads dynasty that seized power after the Prophet's death. The Shi'ites did not accept the reign of Umayyads, they considered them illegitimate and continuously challenged the Umayyad Caliphs. In this challenge, the Umayyads succeeded in crushing Shi'ites resistance, and the third Shi'ite Imam, Husayn, was killed. The Shi'ites gradually took a quiet position in relation to the Sunni Caliphs.

The Sixth Shi'ite Imam in line, Ja'far al-Sadiq (d. 765), ordered his followers to give up armed struggle and to adopt instead an attitude of acquiescence towards the Sunni state. Historically, it was the first ideological shift towards the temporary depoliticmation of Shi'ism. In 874 this process was completed when the son of the Eleventh Imam, Hasan al-Askari, disappeared from public life and was visible only to a group of four ulama who were his message bearers (vakils) to the Shi'ite community. This period of the Twelfth Imam's occultation and connection with the Shi'ite community continued for some seventy years and is called the 'Lesser Occultation', gheybat-e soghra. In 940, the death of the last vakils, Ali ibn-e Muhammad al-Samarri, put an end to this limited communication with the Hidden Imam and the community was led to the 'Greater Occultation', gheybat-e kubra (Algar 1969, p. 3). Hence, after the death of the fourth vakil, al-Samarri, the Shi'ite ulama declared the Twelfth Imam, Mahdi, occulted (alive, even present in this world, yet invisible, the Hidden Imam). The Hidden Imam would not appear until 'the end of time'. Thus, Muslims who believe in the Imams as the only true and legitimized successor to the Prophet are called Shi'i-ye Ali (believer of the First Imam) or Shi'ite.²¹

The doctrine of gheybat-e kubra means implicitly that the time is not yet ripe for Mahdi to appear and help the 'true believers' to establish the reign of the 'just'. The doctrine enabled Shi'ites to temporarily give up their immediate claim to political power?²² It also implies that temporal rulers are not legitimate as the 'true rulers' of the Muslim community. It does not, however, state or imply that the Shi'ites have no claim to power in such a society. While awaiting for the appearance of the 'Hidden Imam', Shi'ite religious leaders, such as Imams, fuqaha (Islamic jurisprudents) and Mujtahids (religious interpreters), have the freedom to practise their theology and jurisprudence. The immediate political consequences of the theory of gheybal was Shi'ites' de facto acceptance of Sunni states. This historical change of Shi'ites' attitude became apparent when the Buyids, a Shi'ite dynasty, took political power within the territory of Abbasid Caliphate (Algar, 1969). The Buyids defeated Abbasid's army and occupied their center, Baghdad, but they did not change the Caliphate and they accepted the sovereignty and symbolic authority of Abbasid Caliphs. The reign of some dynasties with Shi'ite sympathy in Iran under the Abbasids encouraged many Shi'ites, who were more or less persecuted in the Sunni territories, to move to Iran.

The Sunni theory of state, on the other hand, was based on the Caliphate until the second century after the Prophet (eighth AD), in which the political leader of a Muslim community gains social/pragmatist justification to reign. The attitude of the Sunnis was that it was important for all Muslims to live together in peace and unity, and this implied that they should accept what had happened. They came to accept all four of the first Caliphs as legitimate, and as virtuous or rightly guided (Rashedin); later caliphs, who ruled in Muslim community after the first four Caliphs, might not always have acted justly, but they should be accepted as legitimate so long as they did not go against the basic commandments of God (Hourani, 1991, pp. 60-61). After some two centuries of ideological and social conflict between Sunnis and Shi'ites, the latter seemed to have succeeded in gaining religious legitimacy for their theory of Imamat. The Shi'ites' theory of Imamat, as discussed earlier, is based on divine legitimization of the ahal-e beyt's (the Prophet family's) right to lead the Muslim community. Shi'ite Imams' theological works, such as Nahj al-balaghah of the First Imam, Ali, Sahifat al-Sajjadiah of the Fourth Imam, Zein al-Abedin, the works of Muhammad al-Baqer the Fifth Imam, and Jafar al-Sadeq the Sixth Imam, and even the works of other Shi'ite theologians and philosophers such as al-Farabi, strengthened the theological bases of Imamat as the only legitimate authority in Muslim community. Even the Sunni caliphs, Abbasids, who were in conflict with other Sunni caliphs, Umayyads, attempted to gain legitimization for their rule in the Muslim community by cooperating with Shi'ites and choosing the Eighth Imam, Reza, as crown prince for Abbasid caliph, Ma'mun. The Sunnis Mujtahids who realized the critical situation of the Sunni theory of state and its legitimization crisis, attempted to form a theological framework for the Sunni state. One of the first theologian in this line was al-Baqillani, who wrote a book entitled al-Tamhid fi'l-radd ala'l-mulhida al-mu'attala wa'l-khawariji wa'l-mu'tazila,²³ which was a work of refutation and polemic against revival groups, Shi'ites, Kharijis, and Mu'tazilis (Lambton, 1981). Al-Baqillani adopted the theory of Imamat from Shi'ites' theological and political framework and tried to combine that with the theory of Caliphate. By this attempt he wanted to establish a divine legitimization for Sunni caliphs based on Islamic religious law, Shari'a.

The other Sunni theologian who tried to form a more sophisticated theory of Imamat was al-Baghdadi. In his book Usul al-din, he conducted a pragmatic polemic with the Shi'ites, trying to illegitimate their theory of Imamat. Al-Baghdadi, by discussing the historic necessity of leadership by one or more Imam in the Muslim community, rejected the Shi'ite theory of gheybat. He meant, in contrast to the Shi'ite theory of the Hidden Imam, that a visible imam, living in the Muslim community, is necessary (Al-Baghdadi (1928). The third Sunni theorist who more than others tried to create an ideological framework for the Islamic government, Caliphate, was al-Mawardi. Besides continuing in line with al-Baqillani and al-Baghdadi, he introduced the notions of wizara and imara, prepared the way for an historic innovation in the Sunni theory of state (Lambton, 1981, pp. 81-102). By adapting Islamic state authority to worldly authority of office, wizara, and divine authority of caliph, al-Mawardi unintentionally created ideological notions that were used by other Sunni theologians such as al-Juwayni and al~Ghazali to develop and formulate the theory of Sultanate, in which religious and political power gradually became separated. Al-Ghazali, who was Persian, adopted the Sasanid's (the last dynasty of Persian Empire) theory of state in which din (religion) was the base and dawlat (temporal power) was its guardian.²⁴ He meant that a coalition between the Sultan (the political leader), and faqih (jurisprudent) is a necessary condition to avoid fitna (civil war) and fasad (demoralization). Al-Ghazali reformulated the theory of Imamat and limited the imam as a symbol of the supremacy of the Shari'a (religious law), while the Sultan was acknowledged as the holder of coercive power (Lambton, 1981, pp. 114-15).²⁵ Al-Ghazali, like many other Islamic scholars, was aware of the importance of the ulama and their legitimate place in Muslim community. As Hourani pointed out:

Not only the tradition of literate converts, but the essential nature of Islam itself-the revelation of words, and therefore of ideas and knowledge-made it imperative that those who wished to conform to the Will of God should seek knowledge and reflect upon it. The search for religious knowledge, 'ilm, began early in the history of Islam, and there gradually developed a body on informed and concerned Muslim scholars (Alim, pl. 'ulama) (Hourani, 1991, p. 60).

As we see, an important development in the Sunni theory of state helped Sunni Muslims to live harmoniously with different forms of states such as the Caliphate (Umayyads and Abbasids), the Sultanate (Ottoman Sultans), and the Mamluks (in Egypt).

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Preface by Bryan S. Turner
• Introduction
• PART I: CIVIL SOCIETY IN IRAN, FOREIGN IMPACT, AND THE CONSTITUTIONAL REVOLUTION
• PART II: THE NEW MONARCHICAL REGIME, MODERNIZATION, AND THE ISLAMIC REVOLUTION
• PART III: DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
• Notes
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index