Introduction

By the time Khomeini’s book was published, the British had forced Reza Shah to abdicate because of his pro-German sympathies, showing that for all Reza’s noisy assertions of independence, he was as much in thrall to the European powers as the Qajars. When Reza died in 1944, he was succeeded by his son, Muhammad Reza (1919-80), a much quieter and, at this point, weaker character. He came to the throne at a difficult time. The Second World War had been very disruptive in Iran; industry had come to a standstill, machinery had deteriorated, and there was widespread famine. The new middle classes were beginning to chafe at their lack of opportunity, nationalists wanted to shake off foreign control, and there was increasing discontent, at this time of economic hardship, about the British control of Iranian oil. The ulema were happier, however. The new shah was not yet strong enough to oppose their demands: the Ashura passion plays and recitations were allowed to resume, Iranians were permitted to go on the hajj, and women could wear the veil. Several new political parties emerged at this time: the pro-Soviet Tudeh, the National Front, led by Muhammad Musaddiq (1881-1967), which demanded that Iranian oil be nationalized, and a new paramilitary group, the Fedayin-e Islam (“Fighters of Islam”), which terrorized people who promoted a secularist agenda.
In 1945, Ayatollah Sayyid Mustafa Kashani (c. 1882--1962), who had been imprisoned by the British during the war, was permitted to return to Iran. Huge crowds turned out to greet him, rolling out carpets under his car.
Busloads of some of the most brilliant ulema traveled long distances to welcome Kashani home, and ecstatic madras ah students turned out en masse. Kashani was the third portent of future events during this period. His extraordinary popularity might have shown a perceptive observer that Iranians might well follow a cleric in political matters far more enthusiastically than they would any layman. Kashani and Khomeini knew each other well, but in fact the two men were very different. Where Khomeini would be utterly disciplined and single-minded in pursuit of an objective, Kashani was much more erratic, willing to jump on any bandwagon, and some of his schemes were morally indefensible. He had been imprisoned by the British for pro German activities in 1943: the iniquities of the Nazis were less important, in Kashani’s eyes, than the fact that they might help the Iranians to get rid of the British. Kashani also had links with the Fedayin-e Islam, and when one of them tried to assassinate the shah in 1949, Kashani was sent into exile.
From Beirut, he threw in his lot with the National Front party, issuing a fat wa in July 1949 in favor of the nationalization of oil. In 1950, Kashani was permitted to return to Iran and received another hero’s welcome. The crowds started to assemble at Mehrabad Airport the evening before his arrival. Musaddiq, whose National Front had just made large gains in the elections because of the oil issue, joined the welcoming party of senior ulema; when Kashani alighted from his plane, the din was so tumultuous that the official speech in his honor had to be abandoned, and when he began his journey to his Tehran home, the crowds became delirious, sometimes even lifting his car off the road.
The fourth crucial event of these years was the oil crisis, which flared in 1953, when the prime minister, All Razmara, a supporter of the Anglo Persian Oil Company, was assassinated by the Fedayin. Two days later the Majlis recommended that the government nationalize the oil industry, and Musaddiq became premier, replacing the shah’s candidate. Iranian oil was nationalized, and, even though the International Court at The Hague ruled in favor of Iran’s right to nationalize its own resources, British and American oil companies joined in an unofficial boycott of Iranian oil. In Britain and the United States, the media portrayed Musaddiq as a dangerous fanatic, a thief (even though he had always promised compensation), and a communist, who would hand Iran over to the USSR. (even though Musaddiq was a nationalist who wanted to free Iran from all foreign control).
In Iran, however, Musaddiq was a hero, rather as Nasser would be after he nationalized the Suez Canal. He began to arrogate more power to himself at the shah’s expense. When he demanded control of the armed forces in July 1952, the shah dismissed him, but there were massive popular riots in Musaddiq’s favor, which alarmed the royalists, since it suggested that Iranians were on the verge of demanding republican rule. The riots also disturbed London and Washington, who wanted Musaddiq out. Ayatollah Kashani played a leading role in these demonstrations, rushing through the streets in a shroud to declare his willingness to die in the holy war against tyranny. After only two days, the shah was forced to reinstate Musaddiq.
It was at this moment that the United States, which had hitherto been seen as a benevolent power, lost its political innocence in Iran. By 1953, Musaddiq’s support was on the wane. He had never commanded the full allegiance of the army, but now the oil embargo was causing a grave economic crisis, and the bayaris deserted him. So did the ulema, including Kashani: Musaddiq was an avowed secularist, and was determined to relegate religion to the private sector. He had also felt strong enough to dismiss the Majlis, which made the Shii clergy nervous of tyranny. But just as these old allies abandoned Musaddiq, Tudeh, the socialist party, swung to his support. This alarmed the U.S. government under President Dwight Eisenhower, who feared a pro-communist coup. He therefore approved United States participation in Operation Ajax, a coup engineered by British intelligence and the CIA to depose Musaddiq. In August 1953, however, Musaddiq got wind of the plot and, as agreed in case of discovery, the shah and the queen left the country, only to return under the aegis of CIA agents, who, three days later, orchestrated the dissaffected Iranians and key men in the military in an uprising which unseated Musaddiq. He was later tried by a military court, defended himself brilliantly, and escaped the death penalty, though he spent the rest of his life under house arrest.
The 1953 coup could not have succeeded had there not been considerable disaffection in the country, but it is also true that it would not have taken place without foreign intervention. Iranians felt betrayed and humiliated by the United States, which they had previously considered a friend. America was now following in the footsteps of the Russians and the British, who had cynically manipulated events in Iran for their own gain. This seemed clear in 1954, when a new oil treaty was made which returned the control of oil production, its marketing, and fifty percent of the profits to the world cartel companies. This sickened the more thoughtful Iranians. They had tried to take control of their own wealth, with the backing of the international court, but this had not been respected. Ayatollah Kashani was appalled. American aid to Iran benefited only a few people, he protested, and did not reach a hundredth of what the United States took from Iran in petrodollars.
“For the hundreds of millions of dollars that the American colonialist imperialists will gain in oil,” he predicted, “the oppressed nation will lose all hope of liberty and will have a negative opinion about all the Western world.
In this, at least, Kashani was a true prophet. When Iranians looked back on Operation Ajax, they would forget the defection of their own people from Musaddiq, and believe implicitly that the United States had single-handedly imposed the shah’s dictatorship upon them, for its own interests. Bitterness increased in the early 1960s, when the shah’s rule became more autocratic and cruel. There seemed to be a double standard.
America proudly proclaimed its belief in freedom and democracy, but warmly supported a shah who permitted no opposition to his rule, and denied Iranians fundamental human rights. After 1953, Iran became a privileged American ally. As a major oil-producing country, Iran was a prime market for the sale of American services and technology.
Americans looked upon Iran as an economic gold mine and, over the years, the United States repeated the old political patterns used by the British: strong-arm tactics in the oil market, undue influence over the monarch, demands for diplomatic immunity, business and trade concessions, and a condescending attitude toward the Iranians themselves. American businessmen and consultants poured into the country and made a great deal of money. There was a glaring discrepancy between their lifestyle and that of most Iranians; they lived isolated from the people, and since most worked under contracts associated with the throne, they became fatally associated with the regime. It was a shortsighted, self-interested policy that would eventually cast the United States in a demonic light.
Iran was becoming a polarized country: a few benefited from the American boom, but the vast majority were being left behind. And Iran was not unique. By the middle of the twentieth century, the societies of all the countries we are considering were being divided into two camps. Some saw the modern age as liberating and empowering; others experienced it as an evil assault. There was fear, hatred, and a barely suppressed rage. It would not be long before fundamentalists, who felt this anger acutely, would decide that it was no longer sufficient to hold aloof from society and build a counterculture.
They must mobilize and fight back. 8. Mobilization
(1960-1974)
By the 1960s, revolution was in the air throughout the West and the Middle East. In Europe and America the young people took to the streets and rebelled against the modern ethos of their parents. They called for a more just and equal system, protested against the materialism, imperialism, and chauvinism of their governments, refused to fight in their nation’s wars or to study in its universities.
Sixties youth began doing what the fundamentalists had been doing for decades: they started to create a “counterculture,” an “alternative society” in revolt against the values of the mainstream. In many ways, they were demanding a more religious way of life. Most had little time for institutional faith or for the authoritarian structures of the monotheisms.
Instead, they went to Katmandu or sought solace in the meditative or mystical techniques of the Orient. Others found transcendence in drug-induced trips, transcendental meditation, or personal transformation in such techniques as the Erhard Seminars Training (est). There was a hunger for mythos and a rejection of the scientific rationalism that had become the new Western orthodoxy. This was not a rejection of rationality per se but of its more extreme forms.
Twentieth-century science itself was cautious, sober, and highly conscious in a disciplined, principled way of its limitations and areas of competence. But the prevailing mood of modernity had made science ideological and had refused to countenance any other method of arriving at truth. During the sixties, the youth revolution was in part a protest against the illegitimate domination of rational language and the suppression of mythos by logos.
But because the understanding of such disciplined ways of arriving at a more intuitive knowledge had been neglected in the West since the advent of modernity, the sixties quest for spirituality was often wild, self-indulgent, and unbalanced. There were flaws too in the visions and policies of the religion radicals, who were beginning to organize their own offensive against the secularization and rationalism of modern society. The fundamentalists were beginning to mobilize. They had often experienced modernity as an aggressive onslaught. The modern spirit had demanded freedom from the outmoded thought patterns of the past; the modern ideal of progress had entailed the elimination of those beliefs, practices, and institutions that were deemed to be irrational and, therefore, retarding. Religious establishments and doctrines had often been key targets. Sometimes, as in the case of the liberals at the time of the Scopes trial, the weapon had been ridicule. In the Middle East, where modernization was more problematic, the methods had been more brutal, involving massacre, despoliation, and the concentration camp. By the 1960s and 1970s, many religious people were angry and were determined to fight the liberals and secularists who had, they believed, oppressed and marginalized them. But these religious radicals were men of their time. They would have to fight with modern weapons and devise a modern ideology.
Ever since the American and French revolutions, Western politics had been ideological; people had engaged in mighty battles for the Enlightenment ideals of the Age of Reason: liberty, equality, fraternity, human happiness, and social justice. The Western liberal consensus believed that with education, society and politics would become more rational and united. The secular ideology, a way of mobilizing people for the battle, was a modern belief system which justified the political and social struggle and gave it a rationale. In order to appeal to as many people as possible, an ideology was expressed in simple images that could often be reduced to such slogans as “Power to the People!” or “Traitors within!” These highly simplified truths were thought to explain everything. Ideologists believe that the world is in a parlous state, find reasons for the current crisis, and promise to find a way out. They direct the attention of the people to a group that is to blame for the world’s ruin, and to another group that will put things right. Since in the modern world, politics can no longer be an entirely elitist pursuit, the ideology must be simple enough to be grasped by the meanest intelligence, in order to gain the support of the people as a whole.
Crucial is the conviction that some groups will never be able to understand the ideology, because they have been infected by a “false consciousness.”
The ideology is often a closed system that cannot afford to take alternative views seriously. Marxists, who see capitalists as the source of the world’s ills, cannot understand the values of capitalism, and vice versa.
Colonialists are impervious to the truths of emerging nationalisms.
Zionists and Arabs are unable to appreciate one another’s point of view. All ideologies imagine an unrealistic and, some would say, unrealizable Utopia. They are by their very nature highly selective, but ideas, passions, and enthusiasms that are in the air at any given time, such as nationalism, personal autonomy, or equality, are likely to be picked up by a number of competing ideologies, which will often, therefore, appeal to the same ideals, since all derive from the same Zeitgeist.
The historian Edmund Burke (1729-97) was one of the first people to realize that if a group of people wished to challenge the ideology of the establishment (which may itself once have been revolutionary), they will have to develop a counterrevolutionary ideology of their own. This was the position of some of the most discontented Jews, Christians, and Muslims by the 1960s and 1970s. In order to counter what they regarded as the rational fantasies of the modern establishment, they would have to challenge ideas which had once been radical and revolutionary but had now become so authoritative and pervasive that they seemed self-evident. They were all in a weak position and all convinced, sometimes with reason, that the secularists and liberals wanted to annihilate them. In order to create a religious ideology, they would have to reshape the myths and symbols of their tradition in such a way that they became a persuasive blueprint for action that would compel the people to rise up and save their faith from extinction. Some of these religious ideologues were deeply imbued with the spirituality of the conservative age. They were mystics and had a deep appreciation of myth and ritual, which made them acutely aware of the reality of the unseen. But there was a difficulty. In the premodern period, myth had never been intended to have a practical application. It was not meant to provide a concrete plan of action; on occasions when people had used myth as a springboard for political activity, the results had been disastrous. Now, as they planned their counterattack on the secular world, these religious radicals would have to turn their myths into ideology.
In Egypt, Islam had come under sustained ideological attack during the 1960s. Nasser was at the height of his popularity, and had called for a “cultural revolution” and the implementation of what he called “scientific socialism.”
In the National Charter of May 1962, he reinterpreted history from a socialist perspective; it was an ideology that “proved” that capitalism and monarchy had both failed, and that socialism alone would lead to “progress,” defined as self-government, productivity, and industrialization.
Religion was regarded by the regime as irredeemably passe. After the destruction of the Muslim Brotherhood, Nasser no longer bothered to use the old Islamic rhetoric. In 1961, the government castigated the ulema for their timorous adherence to their old medieval studies, and for the “defensive, reserved and rigid attitude” of the Azhar, which made it impossible to “adapt itself to contemporary times.” Nasser had a point. The Egyptian ulema had indeed closed ranks against the modern world and would continue to resist reform. They were making themselves an anachronism and losing all influence over the modernizing sectors of Egyptian society. Similarly, the immoral, injudicious terrorism of a fringe group of the Muslim Brotherhood had been largely responsible for the destruction of the Society.
The Muslim establishment seemed to be putting itself out of business and demonstrating its incompatibility with the modern world.
In both Egypt and Syria during the 1960s, “Nasserist” historians reinforced the new secularist ideology. Islam had become the cause of the nations’ ills; it was made to fill the role of the “out group” which must be eliminated if the Arab countries were to progress. The Syrian scholar Zaki al-Arsuzi believed that instead of dwelling on the fact that the Arabs had given Islam to the world, historians should stress their contribution to material culture (their transformation of the alphabet from hieroglyphics to letters, for example). It was their concentration upon religion that had put Arabs behind the Europeans, who had focused on the physical world instead of the spiritual, and created modern science, industry, and technology. Shibli al-Aysami argued that it was deplorable that the pre-Islamic Arabian civilization should be dismissed by Muslim historians as jahiliyyah (“the Age of Ignorance”), since its cultural achievements in the ancient Yemen had been considerable. Yasin al-Hafiz cast doubt on the reliability of the Islamic historical sources which had simply reflected the views of the ruling classes. It was pointless and impossible to build a modern ideology on inaccurate memories of a dead and distant past. Historians must construct a more scientific and dialectical historiography, “one of the battle fronts one ought to join in order to destroy all the superstructures of the old society.” Religion was responsible for the “false consciousness” that held the Arabs back. It must, therefore, be eliminated like all other impediments to rational and scientific progress. As with any ideology, the arguments were selective; the portrayal of religion simplistic and inaccurate. It was also unrealistic. Whatever the place religion would have in the modern world (and that was still to be decided), it is always impossible to obliterate the past, which continues to live on in the minds of the people who make up a nation, even if old institutions and their personnel have been removed.
In response, the new religious ideologues were just as simplistic and aggressive. They believed that they were fighting for their lives. In 1951, the work of the Pakistani journalist and politician Abul Ala Mawdudi (1903--79) began to be published in Egypt. Mawdudi feared that Islam was about to be destroyed. He saw the mighty power of the West gathering its forces together to crush Islam and grind it into oblivion. This was a moment of grave crisis, and Mawdudi believed that devout Muslims could not retire from the world and leave politics to others. They must combine together and form a tight-knit group to fight this encroaching and la dini religion less secularism. To mobilize the people, Mawdudi tried to present Islam in a reasoned, systematic way, so that it could be taken as seriously as the other leading ideologies of the day. He was, therefore, attempting to turn the whole complex mythos and spirituality of Islam into logos, a rationalized discourse designed to persuade and to lead to pragmatic activism. Any such attempt would have been condemned as utterly wrongheaded in the old conservative world, but Muslims were not living in the premodern period any longer. If they wanted to survive in the dangerous, violent twentieth century, maybe they had to revise their old conceptions and make their religion modern?
The basis of Mawdudi’s ideology, like that of the other modern Muslim thinkers whose work we shall consider, was the doctrine of God’s sovereignty.
This immediately threw down the gauntlet to the modern world, because it contradicted every one of its sacred truths. Because God alone ruled human affairs and was the supreme legislator, human beings had no right to make up their own laws or take control of their destiny. By attacking the whole notion of human freedom and human sovereignty, Mawdudi was defying the whole secularist ethos:
It is neither for us to decide the aim and purpose of our existence nor to prescribe the limits of our worldly authority, nor is anyone else entitled to make these decisions for us.... Nothing can claim sovereignty, be it a human being, a family, a class, or a group of people, or even the human race in the world as a whole. God alone is the Sovereign, and His commandments the Law of Islam.
Locke, Kant, and the Founding Fathers of America would be turning in their graves. But in fact Mawdudi was as enamored of liberty as any modern, and was proposing an Islamic liberation theology. Because God alone was sovereign, nobody was obliged to take orders from any other human being. No ruler who refused to govern according to God’s will (as revealed in the Koran and the Sunnah) could command the obedience of his subjects. In such a case, revolution was not simply a right but a duty.
The Islamic system, therefore, ensured that the state was not subject to the whims and ambitions of the ruler. It freed Muslims from the caprice and possible evil of human control. By the principle of shurah (“consultation”) in Islamic law, the caliph was bound to deliberate with his subjects, but that did not mean that government derived its legitimacy from the people, as in the democratic ideal. Neither the caliph nor the people could create their own legislation. They could simply administer the Shariah.
Muslims, therefore, must resist the Westernized forms of government imposed upon them by the colonial powers, since such governments constitute a rebellion against God and usurp his authority. Once human beings hubristically seized control, there was danger of evil, oppression, and tyranny. It is a liberation theology that sounds bizarre to a confirmed secularist, but it is in the nature of an ideology that its insights cannot be appreciated by opponents. Mawdudi had imbibed and shared the values of the current Zeitgeist; he believed in liberty and the rule of law, which he also saw as a device to prevent corruption and dictatorship. He just defined these ideals differently and gave them an Islamic orientation, but this would be impossible for somebody with the “false consciousness” of secularism to understand.
Mawdudi also believed in the value of an ideology. Islam, he declared, was a revolutionary ideology that was similar to Fascism and Marxism, but there was an important difference. The Nazis and Marxists had enslaved other human beings, whereas Islam sought to free them from subjection to anything other than God. A true ideologist, Mawdudi saw all other systems as irredeemably flawed. Democracy led to chaos, greed, and mob rule; capitalism fostered class warfare and subjected the whole world to a clique of bankers; communism stifled human initiative and individuality. These were the usual ideological oversimplifications. Mawdudi skirted over details and difficulties.