The Dissident Mullah

Ayatollah Montazeri and the Struggle for Reform in Revolutionary Iran

Ulrich von Schwerin

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781784531737
• eBook ISBN:
  9780857737748
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Islamic Theology

The Iranian cleric Ayatollah Montazeri (1922-2009) played an integral role in the founding of the Islamic Republic in the wake of the Iranian Revolution of 1978/9. Yet at the time of his death, Montazeri was considered one of the Islamic Republic's fiercest critics. What made this man, who was once considered the leading advocate of the state doctrine of the 'Guardianship of the Jurist' (velayat-e faqih) and the designated successor to the supreme leader Ayatollah Khomeini, change his views? How did his political theory incorporate issues such as civil rights, pluralism and popular participation? And what influence did his ideas have on others? Ulrich von Schwerin's book answers these questions by examining the evolution of Montazeri's political thought over the course of five decades, and studies his role in the discourse on religion and politics in Iran. In doing so, he sheds a new light on some of the most crucial events and vital protagonists of recent Iranian history.

CHAPTER 1

MONTAZERI'S PATH INTO POLITICS

Social Modernisation and Other Challenges to Religion

At the time there were few students, and Reza Shah exerted great pressure on the clerics. They were mistreated and their turbans were removed. In the seminary of Isfahan, political matters were not discussed and the students did not read any newspapers […]. To read newspapers was not common among the people or the students, and only some of the senior clerics spoke about politics.

(Montazeri, from his memoirs regarding the situation during the 1930s)¹

The prominent role played by the clergy in the opposition to the Shah in the 1960s and 1970s had been difficult to foresee during the preceding decades. Disappointed and disillusioned by the failure of the Constitutional Revolution from 1906 to 1911, which had sought to replace the absolutist monarchy with a parliamentarian democracy, to introduce a constitution and to reduce foreign influence, the Shi'ite clergy had turned its back on politics and returned to its traditional position of quietism. According to this position, only the Imams have the legitimacy to rule. In the absence of the Twelfth Imam, who according to Shi'ite tradition went into hiding in AD 874, all government is considered illegitimate and the clergy is supposed to abstain from any participation in politics. This position was notably represented by Grand Ayatollah Abdolkarim Haeri-Yazdi (1859–1937), who on the invitation of the local clergy in 1922 had moved his seminary to Qom.² As the location of the tomb of Imam Reza's sister Fatemeh, this city in the arid plains south of Tehran had formerly been an important teaching centre but it had declined in importance by the 1920s. It was only on the initiative of Haeri-Yazdi that its seminaries were revived and rebuilt. In the following decades, the city attracted an increasing number of scholars and students and eventually eclipsed the other centres of Shi'ite learning such as Najaf, Isfahan or Mashhad. When in 1925 the former cavalry officer Reza Khan deposed the last Qajar ruler and proclaimed himself Shah, he initially maintained a position of polite respect towards the clergy. However, his programme of state-controlled modernisation and centralisation soon led to conflict. Inspired by the policies of the Turkish President Kemal Atatürk, he sought to modernise State and society through the adoption of modern science, technology and bureaucracy as well as certain outward forms of Western customs and culture. Central goals of this programme included the reform of the education sector and the justice system, which were traditionally controlled by the clergy.

In 1928 Reza Shah introduced a reform of the judiciary which profoundly transformed its traditional structures. Although the new code of civil law remained influenced by Islamic law, the penal and criminal law was reworked according to the Western model. Furthermore, the informal religious courts, which until then had played an important role in the judiciary, were abolished and replaced by a system of secular courts under the control of the State. This meant that the clergy not only lost an important source of income, but also one of its central functions: the interpretation of the law and the administration of justice.³ Reza Shah also introduced a reform of the school system. With the establishment of free secular state schools, the traditional religious school (maktab) organised by the local mullah, which in most villages and towns had held the monopoly on education, lost its dominant position and was eventually abolished along with other confessional schools. The religious foundations (waqf) that had served to finance the schools and other religious institutions were placed under state control and their funds appropriated to finance the new school system.⁴ In 1928 Reza Shah also introduced new dress rules. He prohibited the wearing of the veil in public and only allowed those clerics who conformed to the State's definition of this function to wear the traditional garment of the clergy. Prior to this reform, any person could wear a turban and cloak (abā) and call himself mullah, even if he earned his living as a farmer or trader. Henceforward, only those who had received a religious education and passed an official exam were entitled to this privilege. As recompense they were freed from the compulsory military service which had been introduced in 1925.⁵

These measures, which were violently enforced by the police if necessary, caused much resentment among the clergy who perceived them as an attack on religion and popular tradition. However, neither the State's intrusion into the religious field nor the clergy's loss of funds and important functions in the fields of education and justice led to any organised opposition on the part of the latter. On the one hand this was due to the threats and violence with which Reza Shah enforced his policies.⁶ On the other hand, after the chaotic and conflictual period of the Constitutional Revolution many clerics were content to return to their traditional religious functions. Furthermore, if Reza Shah's policies led to the loss of important functions and funds, they also helped define the religious field more clearly. While before it had encompassed a wide range of self-proclaimed clerics and preachers (rouze khan), who earned their money leading mourning sessions for Hussein but had little or no religious education, now only those with a formal religious education in the seminaries (madresse) were entitled to call themselves mullah. Thus, the reforms of Reza Shah helped establish the clergy as a professional group with a hierarchical structure and a formal education.⁷

This was the context when Montazeri first came to Qom in 1935. Born in 1922 in the small rural city of Najafabad, some 30 kilometres north-west of Isfahan, as the eldest son of the peasant Ali Montazeri and Shah-Beigum Sobhani, he attended several religious schools as well as one of the newly founded state schools. On the initiative of his father he started learning Arabic at the age of six. Although a peasant of very modest origin, his father valued religious learning and had himself acquired some religious knowledge under the guidance of the local mullah, so that he knew large parts of the Qur'an by heart and sometimes led the Friday prayer in the local mosque. Only 13 years of age upon his arrival in Qom, Montazeri was not eligible for a stipend. However, having answered some questions to the satisfaction of Haeri-Yazdi he did obtain a small allowance, which enabled him to stay for ten months in the city. When this money ran out he was obliged to return to Isfahan, where he continued his studies at the local seminary and obtained a modest stipend. During these initial years his life at the seminary was hard. In the beginning he lived with an elder student who made him do the housework and beat him if he did not do it to his satisfaction. Since his allowance was too small to survive, he was obliged to travel every two weeks to Najafabad to bring back basic provisions from his parents’ garden.

Officially, each of the students obtained a monthly stipend of four silver coins from the school. In reality, however, we only got two silver coins and for the rest I was obliged to make do with the bread, yoghurt and other things I brought from Najafabad,

Montazeri wrote in his memoirs.⁸ In the 1930s, the Isfahani seminaries were generally in a difficult financial situation, as income from the religious foundations was sparse and religious donations were mostly sent to Najaf. For students of Montazeri's social origin it was particularly difficult to obtain a good scholarship. Although in principle the religious field valued piety, learning and other personal merits, in reality one's position in the field often depended on genealogical descent. The posts of prayer leader, religious judge or shrine guardian were mostly held by families of clerics and seyyeds (descendants of the Prophet), who passed them on from one generation to the next. Related through marriage, these families formed a clerical elite into which it was difficult to penetrate. As Montazeri was not from any of these old families he remained in a marginal position, and it was only as he advanced in his studies that he was able to improve his social and financial position.

During this time, politics were discussed neither in the seminary nor in the mosque. As Montazeri critically remarked, only a few clerics were interested in political and social matters. Many were out of touch with the concerns of the people and, in the seminaries, most avoided discussing questions of current interest. Newspapers were not read among the students, and the radio was still looked upon with curiosity and suspicion.⁹ The situation only began to change in 1941 when Reza Shah was forced into exile by the British and the Soviets, who suspected him of harbouring sympathies for the Germans. Under the rule of his son, Mohammad Reza, Iran experienced a decade of relative freedom. The repressive measures against critical newspapers and dissident groups were eased. The young Shah also made efforts to improve relations with the clergy, which had been greatly strained by his father. In 1946 he visited the highly respected Grand Ayatollah Hossein Borujerdi (1875–1961) while the latter was in hospital in Tehran, and established a sort of non-intervention agreement.¹⁰ This tacit agreement implied that the State would refrain from meddling in religion as long as the clergy did not intervene in politics. When Borujerdi, upon the invitation of the local clergy, moved his seminary from Borujerd to Qom some months later, he imposed his position of political quietism on all other clerics. After the death of the highly respected cleric Seyyed Abolhassan Musavi-Isfahani in 1946, he advanced to become the supreme religious authority of the Shi'i world. Until his death in 1961, no cleric, with the notable exception of Ayatollah Abolqassem Kashani, dared intervene in politics.

However, not even Borujerdi could prevent the gradual politicisation of the seminaries, and during the following years his position of political quietism was increasingly challenged by the younger students. Although Montazeri had chosen Borujerdi as his marja'-e taqlid (source of emulation),¹¹ he too was discontented with his quietist stance. Having returned to Qom in 1942, Montazeri became increasingly interested in social and political developments. Upon his arrival he had made friends with the young student Morteza Motahhari who was to greatly influence his further intellectual development. Born in 1919 as the son of a cleric near Mashhad, Motahhari was three years older than Montazeri and somewhat more advanced in his studies, but he had also just arrived in Qom. During the 12 years in which they lived and studied together in Qom they not only discussed questions of religion, ethics, law and philosophy but also current social and political matters, and together became acquainted with the world of politics. In their thinking they were profoundly marked by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, whose courses they attended since their arrival in Qom. Khomeini, who with his teacher, Haeri-Yazdi, had come to Qom in 1922, did not yet count among the most senior clerics, but he was already a renowned scholar and teacher.¹² His evening lectures in ethics and poetry in the Madresse Feiziyeh, adjacent to the shrine of Hazrat Masumeh, were popular among the students but were frowned upon by the traditional clergy, who did not want mysticism, ethics, poetry and philosophy to be taught openly in the seminaries. In their view these subjects were close to the heterodox practices of Sufism and therefore suited only to the more advanced students, who were able to handle the ‘dangers’ of these questions. For Khomeini, however, the mystical approach to God was the foundation for all ethical and political action. He tried to overcome the traditionalist clergy's scepticism by showing that mysticism (erfān) and jurisprudence (feqh) are not contradictory, but many remained suspicious of his approach and opposed his teaching.¹³

Montazeri only read ethics (ekhlāq) and poetry (manzume) with Khomeini, but, as he recalled, all of Khomeini's teachings on philosophy were imbued with his mystical approach. Later, he and other students persuaded Khomeini to also teach jurisprudence (feqh) and methodology (osul). The first of these courses lasted for seven or eight years and was limited to no more than eight students. Later, he held another series of public lectures on osul, which regularly attracted 500 to 600 people.¹⁴ After the lectures Montazeri, Motahhari and some others regularly stayed on to continue their discussions. Twenty years their elder, Khomeini was a stern and for many an intimidating teacher who often answered questions with just one word, so that many dared not pose any questions at all. Montazeri and Motahhari, however, became so close to him that they spent long hours together discussing religion and politics, and regularly accompanied Khomeini, who was fond of walking, on walks along the riverbank. Many other clerics who rose to prominence after the revolution also took part in Khomeini's lectures, but according to Montazeri none were as close as he and Motahhari.¹⁵

At his arrival in Qom, Montazeri initially lived in one of the cells of the Madresse Feiziyeh. Measuring approximately three by four metres, these rooms on the second storey surrounding the central courtyard are even today only sparsely furnished and mostly shared by several students. Equipped with no more than carpets, thin mattresses and perhaps a shelf for their books, the students here lived an extremely spartan life, which they often only escaped when they married. However, for Montazeri, as for many other students of his social origin and financial situation, it was not easy finding a wife. Moreover, he feared that founding a family would keep him from his studies. His friend Motahhari, however, insisted that a life of celibacy was no good, and during the summer holidays of 1942 they both set out to their respective home towns to find a suitable girl. While Motahhari returned alone from Mashhad, Montazeri eventually found a bride after having consulted the Qur'an.¹⁶ Khadija Soltan Rabbani, as the eldest daughter of an artisan from Najafabad, was, like himself, of modest origin. After their wedding in September 1942, they together returned to Qom where he rented a small room for the two of them.¹⁷

As Montazeri, like most traditional Muslims, was very discreet about the female members of his household, little is known about his wife. However, she clearly played a substantial role in his life and work, staying by his side throughout the long years of exile and house arrest until his death. Over the years they had four daughters and three sons.¹⁸ Their first son, Mohammed, was born in February 1945 followed by their daughters, Esmat in June 1947 and Eshraf in July 1951. In April 1955, their second son, Ahmad, was born, followed by Tahere in May 1960, Sa'id in August 1962 and finally their daughter Sa'ide in June 1968. All four daughters completed secondary school and Sa'ide also obtained a bachelor's degree in arts and literature. The three sons studied feqh and osul at the seminaries in Qom – in the case of Ahmad, after receiving a diploma in textile engineering at Amir Kabir University in Tehran.¹⁹ Montazeri not only influenced his sons in the choice of their studies, but also left his mark on their political convictions. Mohammad, especially, engaged early on at the side of his father in the protests against the Shah and later played a major role of his own in the struggle, while Ahmad and Sa'id in their later years had an important part in publishing and distributing their father's writings.

In his first years in Qom, Montazeri not only studied with Khomeini but also attended the courses of Borujerdi. Although Borujerdi was recognised by the Shi'i clergy as the supreme religious authority, or marja'-e taqlid-e ‘āmme,²⁰ he was cautious not to anger the other senior clerics and hesitant to allow innovation. For example, when Montazeri began giving courses in poetry, Borujerdi after a short time asked him to close them down. It eventually emerged that he had been pressured by traditionalist clerics in Mashhad who disapproved of public lectures on poetry and philosophy.²¹ Borujerdi was also hesitant to allow urgently needed changes in the organisation of the seminaries. Although the number of students had risen from 800 to 3,000 since his arrival in Qom, the curriculum remained largely unchanged and was therefore increasingly unsuited to the growing number of students and to the rapidly changing world. The seminaries lacked publications to disseminate Islamic thinking and teaching, and students speaking foreign languages who could be sent abroad to preach and proselytise. Only slowly were new schools founded, new publications created and elements of the curriculum reformed. As part of these reforms official exams were introduced, which all students had to pass in order to obtain a stipend. In 1952, Borujerdi asked Khomeini and two other clerics to elaborate a plan for a more far-reaching reform, but after a short tim...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Note on Transliteration
• Introduction
• 1. Montazeri's Path into Politics
• 2. The Invention of a New System
• 3. The Difficult Consolidation of the Regime
• 4. An Inconvenient Successor
• 5. Political Crisis and the Debate on Reform
• 6. Power and Impotence of the Reform Movement
• 7. The Green Movement and its Failure
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography