Introduction

The Iranian ulema were quite unlike the Egyptian clergy. Many were aware that they would have to modernize themselves and their institutions if they were to support the people. They were increasingly distressed by the shah’s autocratic rule, which offended fundamental Shii principles, and his obvious indifference to religion.
In 1960, even Ayatollah Borujerdi, the supreme Marja, who had forbidden the clergy to take any part in politics, was moved to condemn the shah’s Land Reform Bill. It was a pity that he chose this issue, because it made the ulema, many of whom were landowners, seem selfish and reactionary. In fact, Borujerdi’s intervention probably sprang from an instinctive feeling that this could be the thin end of the wedge. The Land Reform contravened Shariah laws of ownership, and Borujerdi may have feared that to deprive the people of rights guaranteed by Islamic Law in one sphere could lead to worse abuses in other areas.
When Borujerdi died in March the following year, the post of Marja was not filled. A group of ulema argued that Shiism should become more democratic, and that it was not realistic to expect one man to be the Supreme Guide in this complex new world. Perhaps the new leadership should consist of several maraji, each with his own specialty. This was clearly a modernizing move, and this group of reformist ulema included several clerics who would later play a key role in the Islamic Revolution: Ayatollah Seyyed Muhammad Bihishti; the learned theologian Morteza Motahhari; Allameh Muhammad-Husain Tabatabai; and the most politically radical Iranian cleric, Ayatollah Mahmoud Taleqani. In the autumn of 1960, they held a series of lectures, and the following year published a volume of essays that discussed ways of bringing the Shiah up to date.
The reformers were convinced that, because Islam is a total way of life, the ulema should not be so wary of intervening in politics. They did not envisage clerical rule, but believed that when they felt that the state was becoming tyrannical or indifferent to the needs of the people, the ulema should stand up to the shahs, as they had done at the time of the Tobacco Crisis and the Constitutional Revolution. They argued that the curriculum of the madrasahs should be revised, to dilute the heavy concentration or fiqh. The clergy should also rationalize their finances: at present, they relied too much on voluntary contributions, and, as the people tended to be conservative, this inhibited them from making fundamental changes. The importance of ijtihad was stressed. Shiis must come to terms with such modern realities as trade, diplomacy, and war if they were to be of real service to the people.
Above all, they should listen to their students. Young people in the 1960s were better educated, and would not swallow the old propaganda.
They were drifting away from religion because the vision of Shiism they had been given was lifeless and old-fashioned. Before the youth culture had fully developed in the West, the Iranian clergy were already aware of the need to revise their view of the young. Their reform movement involved only a handful of ulema; it did not reach the masses, and made no attempt to criticize the regime. It was concerned solely with the internal affairs of the Shiah. But it did lead to a great deal of discussion in religious circles and predisposed more of the clergy toward change. Suddenly, however, the ulema were taken by surprise when a hitherto unnoticed cleric hit the headlines, and took a far more radical stance.
By the early 1960s more and more students were drawn to the course in Islamic ethics taught by Ayatollah Khomeini at the Fayziyah Madrasah in Qum. He used to leave his pulpit during class, coming, as it were, “off the record,” and would sit on the floor beside his students, openly criticizing the government. But in 1963, Khomeini suddenly broke his cover, and speaking from his pulpit, in his official capacity, began a sustained and outright attack upon the shah, whom he portrayed as the enemy of Islam. At a time when nobody else dared to speak out against the regime, Khomeini protested against the cruelty and injustice of the shah’s rule, his unconstitutional dismissal of the Majlis, the torture, the wicked suppression of all opposition, the shah’s craven subservience to the United States, and his support of Israel, which had deprived Palestinians of their homes. He was particularly concerned about the plight of the poor: the shah should leave his splendid palace and go and look at the shanty towns in South Tehran. On one occasion, he is said to have held a copy of the Koran in one hand, and a copy of the 1906 constitution in the other, and accused the shah of violating his oath to defend them. Reprisals were swift and inevitable. On March 22,1963, the anniversary of the martyrdom of the Sixth Imam (who had been poisoned by Caliph al-Mansur in 765), SAVAK forces surrounded the madras ah and attacked it, killing a number of students. Khomeini was arrested and taken into custody. It was inept and self-destructive of the regime to choose that date to make its move. Constantly, in the course of the long struggle with Khomeini, the shah seemed to go out of his way to cast himself as a tyrannical ruler and the enemy of the Imams.
Why did Khomeini choose this moment to speak out? Throughout his life, he had practiced the mystical disciplines of irfan, as taught by Mulla Sadra. For Khomeini, as for Sadra, mysticism and politics were inseparable.
There could be no social reformation of society unless it was accompanied by a spiritual reformation. In the very last testimony he made to the people of Iran before his death, Khomeini begged them to continue to study and practice irfan, a discipline which the ulema had tended to neglect. For Khomeini, the mystical quest associated with mythos must always accompany the practical activities of logos. People who met Khomeini were always struck by his obvious absorption in the spiritual.
His withdrawn demeanor, inward-looking gaze, and the studied monotone of his delivery (which Westerners found repellent) were easily recognizable by Shiis as the mark of a “sober” mystic. Where some Sufis and mystical practitioners were known as “drunken” mystics because they surrendered to the emotional extremes that are often unleashed in the course of this interior journey, the “sober” mystic cultivated an iron self-control as a means of keeping extremity at bay.
Mulla Sadra had described the spiritual progress of a leader (imam) of the ummah. Before he could begin his political mission, he must first journey from man to God, expose himself to the transforming vision of the divine, and strip himself of the egotism that impedes his self-realization. Only at the end of this long and disciplined process, could he, as it were, return to the world of affairs, preach the word of God, and implement the divine law in society. The American scholar Hamid Algar suggests that when he began to speak against the shah in 1963, Khomeini had completed the preliminary and essential “journey to God,” and felt ready to take an active role in politics.
Khomeini was released after spending a few days in custody, but he returned at once to the offensive. Forty days after SAVAK’s attack on the Fayziyah Madrasah, the students held the traditional mourning ceremonies for those who had been killed. Khomeini delivered a speech in which he compared the assault to Reza Shah’s violation of the shrine of Mashhad in 1935, when hundreds of protesters had died. Throughout the summer, he continued to denounce the regime, until finally, on the feast of Ashura, the anniversary of the martyrdom of Imam Husain at Kerbala (June 3,1963), Khomeini delivered a mourning eulogy, while the people sobbed and wept, as was customary during a rawdah. The shah, Khomeini claimed, was like Yazid, the villain of Kerbala. When they had attacked the Fayziyah Madrasah last March, why had the police bothered to tear the Koran apart? If they just wanted to arrest one of the ulema, why did they kill an eighteen-year-old student, who had never done anything against the regime? The answer was that the shah wanted to destroy religion itself. He begged him to reform:
Our country, our Islam are in danger. What is happening, and what is about to happen worries and saddens us. We are worried and saddened by the situation of this ruined country. We hope to God it can be reformed. The following morning, Khomeini was arrested again, and this time the lid blew off. When they heard the news, thousands of Iranians went out onto the streets in protest in Tehran, Mashhad, Shiraz, Kashan, and Varamin.
SAVAK forces were given orders to shoot to kill; tanks surrounded the mosques in Tehran to stop people from attending Friday prayers. In Tehran, Qum, and Shiraz, prominent ulema led the demonstrations, while others called for a jihad against the regime. Some put on white shrouds to show that, like Imam Husain, they were willing to die in the war against tyranny.
University and madras ah students fought side by side, laymen alongside mullahs. It took SAVAK days to suppress the uprising, which revealed the immense tension and resentment that had been smoldering under the surface.
When order was finally restored on June 11, hundreds of Iranians had died.
Khomeini himself narrowly escaped execution. Ayatollah MuhammadKazim Shariatmadari (1904--85), one of the most senior mujtahids, saved his life by promoting Khomeini to the rank of Grand Ayatollah, which made it too risky for the regime to kill him. After his release, Khomeini became a hero to the people. His photograph appeared everywhere as a symbol of opposition. He had put himself on the line and given voice to the aversion that many more inarticulate Iranians had come to feel for the shah. Khomeini’s vision was flawed by the usual fundamentalist paranoia. Constantly in his speeches, he referred to a conspiracy of Jews, Christians, and imperialists, a fantasy that for many Iranians seemed credible because of the association of the CIA and Mossad with the hated SAVAK. It was a theology of rage. But Khomeini enabled Iranians to express legitimate grievances in terms that they could understand. Where a Marxist or liberally inspired critique of the shah would have left the vast majority of un modernized Iranians unmoved, everybody could understand the symbolism of Kerbala.
Unlike the other ayatollahs, Khomeini did not speak in remote, academic language; his speech was direct and down-to-earth, addressed to ordinary people. Western people tended to see Khomeini as a throwback to the Middle Ages, but in fact much of his message and developing ideology was modern. His opposition to Western imperialism and his support of the Palestinians were similar to other Third World movements at this time; so was his direct appeal to the people.
Eventually, Khomeini went too far. On October 27, 1964, he delivered a strong attack against the recent granting of diplomatic immunity to American military personnel and other advisers, and to the shah’s acceptance of 200 million dollars for arms. Iran, he claimed, was virtually an American colony. What other nation would submit to such indignity? An American maidservant would go virtually unpunished for a serious crime committed in Iran, whereas the case of an Iranian citizen who inadvertently ran over an American’s dog would have to come to trial. For decades foreigners had been plundering Iran’s oil, so that it was of no benefit to the Iranian people, and meanwhile the poor were suffering. He concluded:
There is no redress for the Iranian people. I am deeply concerned about the condition of the poor next winter, as I expect many to die, God forbid, from cold and starvation. The people should think of the poor and take action now to prevent the atrocities of last winter. The ulema should appeal for contributions for this purpose.
After this speech, Khomeini was deported, and eventually took up residence in the holy Shii city of Najaf.
The regime was now determined to muzzle the clerics. After Khomeini’s departure, the government began to appropriate the religiously endowed properties (awqaf) and brought the madrasahs under stricter bureaucratic control. As a result, by the late 1960s the number of theological students had markedly declined. In 1970, Ayatollah Riza Saidi was tortured to death for objecting to a conference to promote American investment in Iran, and for denouncing the regime as a “tyrannical agent of imperialism.” Thousands of demonstrators poured onto the streets in Qum, and in Tehran, outside Ayatollah Saidi’s mosque, a huge crowd gathered to listen to an address by Ayatollah Taleqani. At the same time, the government attempted to create a form of “civil Islam,” obedient to the state: a Religious Corps was established, composed of lay graduates from the theological faculties of the secular universities, to work closely with the new Department of Religious Propaganda for Rural Areas. These “mullahs of modernization” would explain the White Revolution to the peasants, promote literacy, build bridges and reservoirs, and vaccinate livestock. It was a transparent attempt to undermine the traditional ulema. But the shah was also anxious to sever the connection between Iran and the Shiah. In 1970, he abolished the Islamic calendar, and the following year there were lavish celebrations in Persepolis to commemorate the 2500th anniversary of the ancient Persian monarchy.
Not only was this a tasteless demonstration of the immense gap that now existed between rich and poor in Iran, but it was a very public assertion of the regime’s desire to found its identity on Islam’s pre-Islamic heritage.
If Iranians lost Islam, they would lose themselves. That was the message of the charismatic young philosopher Dr. All Shariati (1933--77), to whose lecture halls the young Western-educated Iranians nocked in ever increasing numbers during the late 1960s. Shariati had not had a conventional madras ah education, but had studied at the University of Mashhad and at the Sorbonne, where he had written a dissertation on Persian philosophy and studied the work of the French orientalist Louis Massignon, the existential philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, and the Third World ideologist Frantz Fanon. He had become convinced that it was possible to create a distinctively Shii ideology which would meet the spiritual needs of modern Iranians without cutting them off from their roots. After returning to Iran, Shariati eventually taught at the husaimyyah in north Tehran, which had been founded in 1965 by the philanthropist Muhammad Humayun. Humayun had been much moved by the lectures of the reforming ulema in the early sixties, and had established the husaimyyah to try to reach Iranian youth. In Iran, a husaimyyah was a center of devotion to Imam Husain, and was usually built beside the mosque. The hope was that the Kerbala story would inspire the young who attended classes at the husaimyyah to work for a better society. Iran was also experiencing the swing toward religion that had taken place in the Middle East after the 1967 war, and by 1968, Ayatollah Motahhari, one of the reformers who had helped to set it up, could write that, thanks to the husaimyyah, “our educated youth, after passing through a period of being astonished, even repulsed [by religion] are paying an attention and a concern for it that defies description. None of the lecturers made as great an impact as Shariati. Students rushed to hear him during their lunch hour or after work, inspired by the passion and vehemence of his delivery. They could relate to him. Shariati dressed as they did, shared their dilemma of torn cultural allegiance, and some felt that he was like an older brother.
Shariati was a creative intellectual, but he was also a spiritual man.
The Prophet and the Imams were real presences in his life, and his devotion to them was obvious. His was a truly mythical piety. The events of Shii history were not merely historical incidents of the seventh century, but timeless realities that could inspire and guide people in the present. The Hidden Imam, he used to explain, had not disappeared like Jesus. He was still in the world, but concealed;
Shiis could encounter him in that merchant or this beggar. He was waiting to make his appearance, and Shiis must live in constant expectation of hearing the sound of his trumpet, ready at all times to respond to the Imam’s summons to the jihad against tyranny. Shiis must look through the concrete, perplexing realities that surrounded them in their everyday lives to catch a glimpse of their secret essence (zat).
Because the spiritual was not in a realm apart, it was, therefore, impossible to separate religion from politics in the way that the regime was attempting. Human beings were two-dimensional creatures;
they had a spiritual as well as a corporeal existence, needed mythos as well as logos, and every polity must have a transcendent dimension. That was the real meaning of the doctrine of the Imamate: it was a symbolic reminder that a society could not exist without an Imam, a divine guide, to help the people achieve their spiritual as well as their earthly objectives. To split religion and politics was to betray the principle of tawhid (“unification”), the cardinal tenet of Islam, which should help Muslims to achieve an integrity that reflected the divine unity.
Tawhid would also heal the alienation of the West-toxicated Iranians.
Shariati insisted on bazgasht beh khishtan, a “return to the self.”
Where the Greek spirit was characterized by philosophy, and the Roman spirit by art and militarism, Iran’s archetypal self was religious and Islamic. Where the rational empiricism of the West concentrates on what is, the Orient seeks the truth that shall be. If Iranians tried to conform too closely to the Western ideal, they would lose their identity and assist in their own ethnicide.
Instead of glorying in the ancient Persian culture like the shah, they should celebrate their Shii heritage. But this could not be a superficial or a purely notional process. Muslims needed the rituals of their faith to transform them at a deeper level than the rational.
In his beautiful monograph Hajj, Shariati reinterpreted the ancient cult connected with the Kabah and the pilgrimage to Mecca, which perfectly epitomized the conservative spirit, so that they could speak to Muslims in the rapidly changing world of modernity. In Shariati’s book, the pilgrimage became a journey to God, not unlike the fourfold interior journey described by Mulla Sadra. Not everybody is capable of mysticism, which requires a special talent and temperament, but the rites of the hajj are accessible to all Muslim men and women. The decision to embark on the pilgrimage--a once-in-a-lifetime experience for most Muslims--represents a new orientation. Pilgrims must leave their confused and alienated selves behind. While making the seven circumambulations around the Kabah, the immense crush of the thronging crowds, Shariati explained, caused the pilgrim to “feel like a small stream merging with a big river :
the pressure of the crowd squeezes you so hard that you are given a new life. You are now part of the People; you are now a Man, alive and eternal.... Circumambulating around Allah, you will soon forget yourself.
Egotism was transcended in this union with the ummah and a new “center” had been attained. During the night vigil on the plain of Arafat, the pilgrims exposed themselves to the light of the divine knowledge, and must now prepare to reenter the world and struggle against the enemies of God (a jihad represented by the ritual stoning of three pillars at Mina). Then the hajji was ready to return to the world with the spiritual consciousness that was indispensable to the social struggle to create a just society, which is incumbent upon every Muslim. The rational effort involved in this depends upon, and is given meaning by, the spirituality evoked in the cult and the myth.
For Shariati, Islam must be expressed in action. The timeless realities that the Shiis learned to see at the core of existence must be activated in the present.
The example of Imam Husain at Kerbala should, Shariati believed, be an inspiration to all the oppressed and alienated people in the world.
Shariati was disgusted by the quietist ulema, who had locked themselves away in their madrasahs and had, in his view, distorted Islam by making it a purely private creed. The period of the Occultation should not be a period of passivity.
If the Shiah followed Husain’s example and led all the people of the Third World in a campaign against tyranny, they would compel the Hidden Imam to appear. But the ulema had ruined the religious experience for young Iranians, bored them to distraction, and driven them into the arms of the West. They saw Islam in purely literal terms, as a set of clear directives to be followed to the letter, whereas the genius of Shiism was its symbolism.
This taught Muslims to see all earthly reality as “signs” of the Unseen. The Shiah needed a Reformation. The original Shiism of All and Husain had been obliterated in Iran by what Shariati called “Safavid Shiism.” An active, dynamic faith had been converted into a privatized, passive affair, whereas the disappearance of the Hidden Imam meant that the mission of the Prophet and the Imams had in fact passed to the people. The period of the Occultation was thus the age of democracy. The ordinary people should no longer be in thrall to the mujtahids and forced to imitate (taqlid) their religious behavior, as Safavid Shiism required. Each Muslim must submit to God alone and take responsibility for his own life. Anything else was idolatrous and a perversion of Islam, turning it into a lifeless observance of set rules. The people must elect their own leaders; they must be consulted, as the principle of shurah demanded. By their consensus (ijmah), they would give legitimacy to the decisions of their leaders.
There should be an end of clerical control. Instead of the ulema, the “enlightened intellectuals” (raushanfekran) should be the new leaders of the ummah.
Shariati was not entirely fair to the Usuli doctrines of “Safavid Shiism.”
They had arisen in response to a particular need, and, though they had always been controversial, they had expressed the spirituality of the premodern age, which could not permit the individual too much freedom.
But the world had changed. Iranians who had been affected by the Western ideals of autonomy and intellectual liberty could no longer submit to the rulings of a mujtahid as their grandparents had done.
Conservative spirituality had been designed to help people accept the limitations of their society and submit to the status quo. The myth of Husain had kept the passion for social justice alive in the Shiah, but his story and the story of the Imams also showed how impossible it was to implement this divine ideal in a world that could not accommodate radical change. But this no longer applied in the modern world. Iranians were experiencing change to an alarming degree;
they could not respond to the old rites and symbols in the same way.
Shariati was attempting to reformulate Shiism so that it could speak to Muslims in this deeply altered world.
Shariati insisted that Islam was more dynamic than any other faith.
Its very terminology showed its progressive thrust. In the West, the word “politics” derived from the Greek polls (“city”), a static administrative unit, but the Islamic equivalent was siyasat, which literally meant “taming a wild horse,” a process implying a forceful struggle to bring out an inherent perfection.”
The Arabic terms ummah and imam both derived from the root amm (“decision to go”): the Imam, therefore, was a model who would take the people in a new direction. The community (ummah) was not simply a collection of individuals but was goal-oriented, ready for perpetual revolution.
The notion of ijtihad (“independent judgment”) implied a constant intellectual effort to renew and rebuild; it was not, Shariati insisted, the privilege of a few ulema, but the duty of every Muslim.
The centrality of hijrah (“migration”) to the Muslim experience implied a readiness for change, and an uprooting that kept Muslims in touch with the newness of existence. Even intizar (“waiting for the return of the Hidden Imam”) suggested a constant alertness to the possibility of transformation and implied a refusal to accept the status quo: “It makes [man’s] responsibility for his own course, the course of truth, the course of mankind, heavy, immediate, logical, and vital.” The Shiism of All was a faith that compelled Muslims to stand up and say “No!”