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Shi'ite Islam and the Revolution in Iran

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Said Amir Arjomand
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BARON HOLBACH'S EPIGRAMMATIC DESCRIPTION OF RELIGION as ‘the “eau de vie” of the people’ will undoubtedly outlive the memory of its author. On the other hand, Kingsley's advocacy of Christian socialism to the masses clearly implied the presumption that religion could also be their amphetamine. This latter possibility was systematically explored by Troeltsch with reference to Christianity. Weber deepened the analysis of the revolutionary potential of religion and extended it to the other world religions of salvation. There was something the philosophes did not know; religion could be revolutionary.

Type
Original Article
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , 01 July 1981 , pp. 293 - 316
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1981

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References

1 A. de Tocqueville, The Ancien Regime and the Revolution.

2 Ibid., p. 156.

3 Ibid., p. 7.

4 Soboul, A., ‘Sentiments religieux et cultes populaires pendant la révolution’, Archives de Sociologie des Religions, No. 2, 1956 Google Scholar. It is interesting to note that the initiative for dechristianization of the cult of the martyrs came from the militants occupying positions of political authority.

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8 The (Twelver) Shi'ites believe in a line of Imams as divinely‐inspired, infallible leaders of a community of believers and teachers in religion. The Twelfth Imam, Muhammad al‐Mahdi, is believed to have gone into hiding in the year 874. He is considered to be the Lord of the Age, to reappear at the End of Time.

9 Arjomand, S. A., ‘The Shi‐ite Hierocracy and the State in Pre‐Modern Iran: 1785–1890’, European Journal of Sociology, XXII, 1, 1981.Google Scholar

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12 Some religious leaders had, by the 1970s, come to see the weakening of the clergy as a direct consequence of the Constitutional Revolution. As the Grand Ayatollah Musavi Shirazi, who came closest to Khomeini in intransigence during the 1978 crisis, put it: ‘in reality, mashrutiyyat (Constitutionalism or the Constitutional Revolution) was only a game, and the foreign [powers] launched it to bring about the separation of the spiritual powers and government. The cause of all the calamities of the country is this very mashrutiyyat.’ (Personal interview, August 1977.)

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17 Ibid., p. 132. A cohesive déclassé stratum can potentially be revolutionary. Fascism, for instance, has been described as ‘a revolutionary movement led by a declassed minority counter‐elite”. ( James Gregor, A., The Ideology of Fascism, New York, Free Press, 1969, p. 375.)Google Scholar

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24 Algar, loc. cit., p. 245.

25 In the 1970s, the predicament of the Shi'ite religious institution was aggravated by the pressure from the Baathist regime on the Shi'ite leaders resident in Iraq, which did not relent after the Iraqi government's rapprochement with the Shah in March 1975. According to one informed estimate, the number of scholars and students at the Shi'ite centres of learning in Iraq had declined from 3000 to 600 in the year preceding the revolution in Iran. (Private interview in 1977.)

26 Interview No. 10, conducted by the researchers of the Iran Communications and Development Institute, Tehran, in 1974–75. Interviews Nos. 4 and 10 also support the above assertions. I am grateful to the Institute's director, Dr Majid Tehranian, for having put the interviews at my disposal in July 1978.

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30 Interview with an informant who had participated in these discussions, January 1978.

31 Razi, op. cit., Vol. 8, n. d., 1979, pp. 26–7.

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34 See Arani, Sharif, Iran: From the Shah's Dictatorship to Khomeini's Demagogic Theocracy, Dissent, Winter, 1980.Google Scholar

35 See, for instance, Berger, M., Islam in Egypt Today, Cambridge, 1970.Google Scholar

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39 Fischer, op. cit., p. 132.

40 Najafi, S. M. B., ‘Appendix (peyvast)on religious media, centres and organizations’, in Asadi, A. and Mehrdad, H. (eds.), Naqsh‐e Rasanehha dar Poshtibani‐ye Tause'a‐ye Farhangi, Tehran, Iran Communications and Development Institute, 1976/1355, pp. 151–3.Google Scholar The table is based on Najafi's data.

41 Ibid., p. 152.

42 Ibid., pp. 161–2. Here are some typical examples: Religious Associations of shoemakers, of workers at public baths, of the guild of fruit‐juicers (on street‐corners), of tailors, of the natives of Natanz resident in Tehran, of the desperates (bicharehha) of [Imam] Husayn, of the Abjects (dhalilha) of [Imam] Musa ibn Ja'far.

43 Ibid., p. 162.

44 Shari'ati, A., Hajj, Tehran, 1971/1350 (reproduced by the Islamic Society of Students in America), pp. 2–6.Google Scholar

45 Ibid., p. 120.

46 Shari'ati, A., Fatima Fatima Ast, Tehran, 1971/1350, p. 40.Google Scholar