In 680, the Shias of Kufa in Iraq called for the rule of Ali's son, Husain. Even though the caliph, Yazid, quashed this uprising, Husain set out for Iraq with a small band of relatives, convinced that the spectacle of the Prophet's family, marching to confront the caliph, would remind the regime of its social responsibility. But Yazid dispatched his army, which slaughtered Husain and his followers on the plain of Kerbala. Husain was the last to die, holding his infant son in his arms.
For Shias the tragedy is a symbol of the chronic injustice that pervades human life. To this day, Shias can feel as spiritually violated by cruel or despotic rule as a Christian who hears the Bible insulted or sees the Eucharistic host profaned. This passion informed the Iranian revolution, which many experienced as a re-enactment of Kerbala--with the shah cast as a latter-day Yazid--as well as the Iraqi arba'in to Kerbala.
Shi'ism has always had revolutionary potential, but the Kerbala paradigm also inspired what one might call a religiously motivated secularism. Long before western philosophers called for the separation of church and state, Shias had privatised faith, convinced that it was impossible to integrate the religious imperative with the grim world of politics that seemed murderously antagonistic to it. This insight was borne out by the tragic fate of all the Shia imams, the descendants of Ali: every single one was imprisoned, exiled, or executed by the caliphs, who could not tolerate this principled challenge to their rule. By the eighth century, most Shias held aloof from politics, concentrated on the mystical interpretation of scripture, and regarded any government--even one that was avowedly Islamic--as illegitimate.
The separation of religion and politics remains deeply embedded in the Shia psyche.
Faith and Freedom (Karen Armstrong, May 8, 2003, The Guardian)
This book is a distinctive blend of personal biography and national history that manages to provide a wide perspective on how the Islamic Revolution came to and succeeded in Iran and a narrow perspective of what that Revolution meant to individuals. Mr. Mottahedeh presents a life of a pseudonymous mullah of Qom, who he refers to as Ali Hashemi. He follows Ali Hashemi from childhood through seminary on to Najaf in Iraq, where he studied under Ayatollah Khomeini, and through the religious and political ferment of the Shah's Tehran, even into prison, until the tale culminates in the fall of the Shah (January 16, 1979) and the return to Iran of Khomeini, on February 1, 1979.
Along the way though, he goes off on long discursive digressions about: the Persian language; Zoroastrianism; the rise of Islam; the splintering off of Shia Islam; Sufism; Baha'i; poetry; the philosophy of Avicenna; the educational system; the oil industry; the influence of Russia, Britain, and finally America on Iran's development; enthusiams engendered by the Algerian revolution and Nasser's pan-Arabism; etc.. This is all fascinating, but by the end a few main themes converge: first, the degree to which Shi'a practices and view of history--which include the idea of a "hidden Imam", the celebration of martyrdom, marches after Friday prayers and the like--provided an ideal environment for revolt; second, what appears to be the most hopeful long term episode of Iran's history, the enduring legacy of the 1906 Constitutional Revolution; and, third, the Shah's attempts to modernize Iran, and the resistance of clergy and some intellectuals to this "Westoxication" or "Euromania" (a concept coined by Jalal Al-e Ahmad).
These factors combined disastrously in 1971, when the Shah determined to celebrate 2500 years of Iranian empire, dating (at least in theory) from its founding by Cyrus. People were alienated by the opulence of the celebrations, the extent to which the Shah catered to the West during them, and, maybe most of all, the degree to which this looking back to Cyrus tended to marginalize the importance and authority of Islam (even to the point of redating the Iranian calendar so that the year was calculated not according to the Islamic era but the era of the "King of Kings"). Alienation led to greater social unrest which led to reaction which led to resistance in that familiar cycle which so often leads to revolution, as it did here.
Though there's an enormous amount of information to process along the way, Mr. Mottahedeh presents it clearly and in a context that helps us to make sense of it. Through the life of Ali Hashemi we see how even ancient influences played out in modern Iran and through his aspirations we come to have a stake in the Revolution. But this last is obviously a problem, because it is not all certain that the Revolution was a good thing, either in conception or as it has played out. The author expressed his own ambivalence most clearly in a Preface to later editions of the book:
Some reviewers, and many readers, have asked me to provide for the new edition of this book an assessment of the Iranian Islamic Revolution of 1979. I can give no better answer than to refer to some sentences written by the great Macaulay in 1835. Macaulay, torn between his sympathies with the progressive aspirations of the French Revolution of 1789 and his horror at its periods of unhesitatingly bloody sacrifice, wrote of the difficulty for a fair observer to give judgment on an event so complex and still, at his time, so unsettled:
"A traveller falls in with a berry which he has never before seen. He tastes it, and finds it sweet and refreshing. He praises it, and resolves to introduce it into his own country. But in a few minutes he is taken violently sick; he is convulsed; he is at the point of death. He of course changes his opinion, denounces this delicious food a poison, blames his own folly in tasting it, and cautions his friends against it. After a long and. violent struggle he recovers, and finds himself much exhausted by his sufferings, but free from some chronic complaints which had been the torment of his life. He then changes his opinion again, and pronounces this fruit a very powerful remedy, which ought to be employed only in extreme cases and with great caution, but which ought not to be absolutely excluded from the Pharmacopoeia."
This simply won't do. Regardless of the tortured emotions of folks like Mr. Macaulay, objectively we must judge the French Revolution a murderous, society-destroying disaster that disrupted rather than aided the natural progress of reform. Likewise, Mr. Mottahedeh, with great fairness, presents the Shah as a genuine reformer, if too brutal a one and one who made some serious missteps--especially in not consulting sufficiently with a population whose Shi'a beliefs emphasize such consultations and in not recognizing the central place of Shi'a in Iranian life generally. Indeed, what Mr. Mottahedeh's book does more than anything else is to convince us of the extraordinary complexity of the Iranian mind and soul, of the many contradictory impulses contained therein, and of the real danger inherent in disregarding any of the various influences that have contributed to this mutli-layered richness. But how then can we greet with anything but regret the takeover of Iran by the Ayatollah Khomeini and his cohorts, whose smallmindedness and the disastrous prospects for whose reign was foretold in the Ayatollah's own writings:
The fundamental difference between Islamic government, on the one hand, and constitutional monarchies and republics, on the other, is this: whereas the representatives of the people or the monarch in such regimes engage in legislation, in Islam the legislative power and competence to establish laws belongs exclusively to God Almighty. The Sacred Legislator of Islam is the sole legislative power. No one has the right to legislate and no law may be executed except the law of the Divine Legislator. It is for this reason that in an Islamic government, a simple planning body takes the place of the legislative assembly that is one of the three branches of government. This body draws up programs for the different ministries in the light of the ordinances of Islam and thereby determines how public services are to be provided across the country.Though we have the benefit of hindsight, we hardly need it to know that a Revolution proceeding from such totalitarian roots was destined to failure, and the swapping of one form of tyranny for another is not to be celebrated just because the first is gone--this is not "progress". Fortunately for Iran itself, it now appears that the fundamentalist Revolution will prove to be a short-lived detour, and that genuine democratic reform may come, hopefully peacefully, within the next couple of years. That will be a berry well worth awaiting the ripeness of and one whose flavor and effects we may all savor.
Islamic Government (Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini)
(Reviewed:22-Apr-03)
Grade: (B)
