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Blackwell Publishing, Ltd. Oxford, UK MUWO The MuslimWorld 0027-4909

2004 Hartford Seminary

October 2004 94 4

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

What Recent History has Taught Iranians The MuslimWorld Volume 94 October 2004

What Recent History Has
Taught Iranians

1

Nikki R. Keddie

Professor Emerita
University of California
Los Angeles, California

A

s of early 2003, the situation in Iran appears to be one of crisis, multiple
uncertainties, growing opposition to the ruling elite, and continuing
arrests and crackdowns carried out by elements of that elite. Some
people are predicting that basic changes will happen very soon, some think
such changes will take some years, while others are pessimistic, except
perhaps in the very long run. I learned early that nearly all specic predictions
about Iran are most likely to be wrong, and so will here conne myself to
looking at some of the ways that Iran has fundamentally changed since 1890
as well as pointing to some cultural continuity, leaving it to others to make
predictions based on these factors.
One major element in Iranian political history since 1890 and, in particular,
in its movements of resistance and revolt between 1890 and 1979, has
been the often effective political alliance between the bazaar, or traditional
bourgeoisie, led by its large merchants, and the clergy, or important parts
of the clergy. This alliance was central to the successful movement against
a British monopoly tobacco concession in 189192, to the revolution of
190511, which gave Iran parliamentary constitutional rule (even though
the constitution was subsequently more honored in the breach than the
observance) and to the alliance that reappeared in force in the revolution
of 197879 and still continues as the underpinning of the ruling elite. While
this alliance may seem natural or obvious to many Iranians, it is not a
signicant feature of any other Middle Eastern country nor, to my knowledge,
of any other Muslim country. This is in part due to the great predominance of
Muslims in the Iranian bazaar class, whereas in other Middle Eastern countries,
minority populations often predominated, especially in the modern period,
where they could take advantage of their ties to the West.
The clerical role in politics is due not to Twelver Shi

ism itself, which was
predominantly a politically quietist movement after the disappearance of the
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twelfth imam, but to its special development in Iran after the Safavid dynasty.
This dynasty established Shi

ism as the state religion in the early sixteenth
century. While the early Safavids controlled the leading clergy, there
developed a largely autonomous clerical institution led by

mojtaheds

(today
mostly called

ayatollahs

), who were empowered to make judgments on a
wide variety of matters that were binding on their own followers.
The clerical institution, unlike those in many Muslim countries, also kept
most of its nancial independence from the government, collecting religious
taxes and managing growing inalienable endowments, or

vaqfs

. Clerical
autonomy was furthered by the location of most of the leading Iranian clerics
outside the borders of Iran, in Ottoman Iraq. While clerics mostly supported
the government, they also represented grievances held by their constituents,
especially from the bazaar. Those from the bazaar thus effectively appealed to
clerics to denounce the tobacco concession and, in 1905, to challenge their
own mistreatment at the hands of the monarch and they way this monarchy
favored foreigners.

The Failing Clerical-Bazaar Alliance

The situation in 1978 was more complex as there had been much modern
class development; politics and education had occurred, especially under
the Pahlavis. However, the old alliance reappeared as the government had
effectively suppressed many leftist and liberal nationalist oppositionists,
and it was far more difcult to suppress mosque sermons and networks.
The more modern groups came to think they could trust Khomeini to set
up a modern liberal government; this was the image of himself that he put
forth in 197879 under the inuence of his young non-clerical Parisian
advisers.
From 1979 to today, however, as the core of the ruling elite has become
more limited and challenged by opposition, the government continues to
follow policies that really favor only those clergy who are in or allied with state
or quasi-state institutions and elements of the bazaar who are involved in
trade. The great majority of the population do not fall into either of these
groups, and while some follow their ideology, most have come to see that the
bazaar-clerical alliance, which may have played a positive role a century ago
in limiting foreign intervention in Iran and allowing constitutional rule, has
since 1979 overwhelmingly been a factor in repression and an obstacle to
modernization and democracy.
The repressive aspects of the government are well known, with continued
jailings, executions, limits on dress and behavior, the institutionalization of
second-class status for girls and women, and so forth. Less well known are
economic aspects of this Islamic regime, which ironically arose from a
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combination of elements of doctrinaire leftism with clerical control. Royal and
migr properties were conscated and put under the control of either the
state or of large new foundations. The largest of these foundations is the
Foundation for the Dispossessed. Despite some reform efforts by Khatami
and the new parliament, the Foundations remain essentially untaxed and
accountable only to Leader Khamene

i, which makes them even more subject
to nepotism and corruption than usual and discourages private sector
competition in the many branches of the economy they control. They are
paralleled by large traditional religious foundations, such as that of Mashhad,
which similarly controls numerous agricultural and industrial enterprises and
is by far the largest economic unit in Khorasan province.
The fact remains that very few private banks or industries can be formed
to compete with such protected units. Private capital, as often in the past and
in other countries in the global south, heads for trade and real estate, which
have fewer barriers and promise quick returns. While Khatami had a ve-year
plan for 20002005 that addressed some of these problems as well as that of
growing unemployment, little of it has been realized, as it would injure the
self-interest of those in the bazaar, and of all traders, speculators, and the many
clergy involved in the current economy.
The foreign investment provisions of the Islamic Republics constitution
make it virtually impossible for foreigners to invest in Iran and repatriate
reasonable prots. While some new interpretations have meant that there is
some foreign investment, much more is needed, and again attempts in a freer
direction have met with considerable resistance by the institutions placed
above the parliament. Suspicion of foreign control of the economy has a
historical basis, but Iran has veered too far in the opposite direction. Greater
freedom and incentives for local and foreign productive investment alone will
not solve Irans problems; they will have to be accompanied by increased
job availability and welfare for the poor and unemployed. The point here,
however, is that the clerical-bazaar alliance, while effective in the past in
mobilizing mass movements, has proved disastrous in managing an economy
that could benet all Iranians.

Reform vs. National Strength

A second historical trend that has come to fruition under the Islamic
Republic is the increase in numbers and maturity of many of those whose
ideas have been key elements in movements for change. In the early twentieth
century, reformist thinkers tended to focus on one or two elements that
they thought accounted for the Wests advancement and Irans backwardness,
and advocated the adoption of these elements. Among these, one of the rst
was nationalism, which several Iranian thinkers interpreted in terms of the
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so-called scientic racism that was rampant in the West between the
mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries.
Racist theories confused language with race, and had a hierarchy of
language groups, with Indo-Europeans at the top, and did not much note that
Indo-Europeans ranged from dark South Asians to blond Scandinavians. By a
contingency lucky to those who held this theory, Persian is an Indo-European
language, and this was used to bolster the common nationalist tendency to
deprecate those who had at various times conquered and ruled the Persians
as being responsible for Iranian backwardness namely the Turks, Mongols,
and especially the Arabs. Along with denigration of the Arabs went, for the
educated new middle and upper classes, a deprecation of Islam and of Shi

ism,
including its practices and clergy. There thus emerged a dual culture, with a
Westernized class with modern education and values, and a larger group
encompassing mostly the bazaaris and popular classes with more traditional
cultural values that came increasingly to be identied as the proper Islamic
ones. Also, half of Irans population for whom Persian was not the rst
language were often discriminated against.
The Westernized groups also had, early on, certain cure-alls, one of which
was a constitution and parliamentary rule, and another of which was reducing
the role of foreigners in Iran. Both of these were important elements in
creating a modern Iran, but neither was sufcient. Russian and British
intervention and control after the parliamentary government tried to set up an
efcient tax collecting and budget system with the help of U.S. adviser Morgan
Shuster in 191011 showed that parliamentary government was not enough.
To be truly independent, Iran needed a strong military. This it got in the
interwar rule of Reza Shah (r. 19251941), who also introduced other elements
of modernization such as tariff autonomy, protected industries, and new public
education opportunities for those of both sexes, including at the university
level. His positive achievements were often marred by having been brought
about by brutal methods, including the forced settlement of tribes who had no
way other than migration to adequately feed their ocks, and forced the
unveiling of women at a time when many found this as shocking as we today
would nd forced public nakedness. A number of intellectuals joined Reza
Shah early on, thinking national strength was more important than democracy
or parliamentarianism.

The CIA Plot and Removal of Mosadeq

After a wartime and postwar period when the constitution was essentially
followed, there came the 195153 oil nationalization period under the very
popular Mosaddeq, who was overthrown by a plot driven primarily by the
CIA, though both the British and local elements were involved. Mohammad
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Reza Shahs cooperation with this plot and subsequent increasing autocracy
colored both popular and intellectual attitudes towards him. The leftist and
nationalist opposition tended to see him in an exaggerated way, as a mere tool
or puppet of foreigners with the U.S. assuming the dominant role formerly
occupied by the British. The 1960s and 70s were a period when oversimplied
and highly ideological solutions were in vogue among opposition movements.
The secular leftist parties followed either a Soviet or Maoist type of
line, with emphasis on anti-Americanism and eventual worker and peasant
rule. Two leftist groups, the Marxist Feda

iyan-e Khalq and the Left Islamic
Mojahedin-e Khalq justied individual assassinations dubbed urban warfare
in the prevailing situation of dictatorial controls. Nationalists were split
between those who tried to revive the Mosadeqqist oppositional National
Front and those who felt more could be accomplished by working with the
government. In a situation of dictatorship and jailings, with little leadership
from secular parties who could not express open opposition, it is not
surprising that effective opposition took an Islamic form. This comprised both
the strong attacks on the government by Khomeini, who was exiled during
196479, and more modernist and even leftist readings of Islam, especially by
Ali Shariati, the Freedom Movement, and the Mojahedin-e Khalq.

New Thinkers in Post-Revolutionary Iran

While Khomeinis new view of Shi

ism as endorsing rule by a top jurist
was not voiced during the revolution, it came out when the new constitution
was drafted by a largely clerical group. In the early period after the revolution,
there was a strange semi-alliance between Khomeinis followers and the so-
called Islamic left, which dominated early parliaments and favored measures
like extensive land reform. Such parliamentary measures were, however,
overwhelmingly vetoed by the clerical Guardian Council, which represented
the interests of the clergy and the bazaar bourgeoisie.
In time, most of the intellectuals in the former Islamic left radically
changed their views, including those of the students, following the line of
the imam who took over the U.S. embassy and held its occupants hostage for
444 days. Also changing their ideas since the early days of the revolution were
the leading oppositional thinkers of the 1990s, including Abdolkarim Sorush,
and to some degree President Mohammad Khatami himself.
Soroush, Khatami, and a whole series of new thinkers, both clerical and
secular and including many women who have effectively fought for increasing
womens rights, have presented many talks and published writings that try to
make room for Islamic values and their adherents while retaining Iranian
identity and placing a new value on democracy and power for democratically-
elected legislators. The diversity of these new writings and talks makes them
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difcult to summarize, but they reect a double disillusionment with the
effects of Islamic government and with the failures of communism. Instead of
following a single ideology such as Islamism or Marxism, the new thinkers
tend to be suspicious of ideology.
Reecting advances and changes in the educational system, where Western
philosophy is widely taught not only in secular higher schools but also to
budding clerics, the new thinkers are often well acquainted with both Western
and Islamic thought. This gives them a basis to reinterpret Islam not in the
manner of former Islamic modernists, who tended to nd everything they
liked in Islamic texts, but rather to stress the spirit of Islam and the need to
distinguish between its fundamental teachings about God and ethics on the
one hand and the rules of Islamic law on the other, which reect particular
times and should therefore change with the times. Some like Soroush go
further, distinguishing between essential Islam, which is unknowable, and its
interpretation, which is all that humans can do and which changes with time
and circumstance.
There are also brave secular oppositional thinkers like Akbar Ganji who
have called the rulers fascist and blamed them for killing many oppositionists
and been jailed for it or Professor Hashem Aghajari, who said that imitation of
leaders was for monkeys, not people. Aghajaris lawyer is currently appealing
his death sentence. Their sentences do not mean that oppositionists have been
silenced, however, as recent student demonstrations show. The point here
is that the opposition has learned from history; its thinkers are putting forth
ideas both more sophisticated and more attuned to appeal specically to
contemporary Iranians rather than their predecessors. In the realm of womens
rights, thinkers and publications have found ways to bring together those who
take a secular feminist approach and those who base their ideas on new
interpretations of Islam. The overwhelming support for democratic reform
expressed in four elections and the owering of intellectual reform efforts,
which now go to the Internet when most reformist newspapers are banned,
give hope that Irans historic future can be better than its recent past.

Endnote

1. This article is based on a talk given early in 2003 at UCLA and contains elements
from Nikki R. Keddie,

Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution

(New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2003).