History of fundamentalist Islam in Iran
Encyclopedia
The history of fundamentalist Islam in Iran (or History of Principle-ism) covers the history of Islamic revival
ism and the rise of political Islam
in modern Iran. Today, there are basically three types of Islam in Iran: traditionalism
, modernism
, and a variety of forms of revivalism usually brought together as fundamentalism
. Neo-fundamentalists in Iran are a subgroup of fundamentalists who have also borrowed from Western countercurrents of populism
, fascism, anarchism
, Jacobism and Marxism
.
The term Principlists, or Osoulgarayan, is an umbrella term commonly used in Iranian politics to refer to a varieties of conservative circles and parties. The term contrasts with reformists or Eslaah-Talabaan who seek religious and constitutional reforms in Iran.
There are some major differences between Christian fundamentalism and what is called Islamic fundamentalism. According to Bernard Lewis
:
The Islamist version of political Islam ("neo-fundamentalism" in this article) emerged in response to the perceived shortcomings of fundamentalism. The Islamists, with their cosmopolitan backgrounds, introduced various tools they had borrowed from the West into their organizational arsenal. Ideologically, they drew on antimodernist philosophies that embodied Western dissatisfaction with the consequences of industrialization and positivism.
Iranian fundamentalists and conservatives, commonly describe themselves as "principalist" (also spelled principle-ist); that is, acting politically based on Islamic and revolutionary principles.
Currently there exists three main types of Islam in Iran: traditionalists (represented by Hossein Nasr, Yousef Sanei), modernists (represented by Abdolkarim Soroush
), fundamentalists (represented by Ali Khamenei
, Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi
, and several Grand Ayatollahs the youngest one Mahdi Hadavi). Subsequently, religious fundamentalism in Iran has several aspects that make it different from Islamic fundamentalism in other parts of the world. Finally, fundamentalism in Iran is not limited to religious fundamentalism. In fact, Iranian secular fundamentalists can be just as dogmatic and ideological as religious fundamentalists—-deny that any religious law or social practice can be just or equal. The terms Iranian "conservatism," "fundamentalism" and "neo-fundamentalism" are all subject to numerous philosophical debates. Javad Tabatabaei
and Ronald Dworkin
and a few other philosophers of law and politics have criticized the terminology and suggested various other classifications in the context of Iranian political philosophy.
According to Bernard Lewis
:
Some researchers, categorized Iranian thinkers into five classes:
Traditionists who account for the majority of clerics keep themselves away from modernity and neither accept nor criticize it. Traditionalists believe in eternal wisdom and are critics of humanism
and modernity
. Traditionalists believe in a sort of religious pluralism
which makes them different from Fundamentalists. Fundamentalists are also against modernity. Contrary to traditionists, fundamentalists openly criticize modernity. Moreover fundamentalists believe that for reviving the religion in the modern era and for opposing modernity, they need to gain social and political power. This makes fundamentalists different from traditionists and traditionalists who are not interested in gaining political power.
As an example of different views on fundamentalism, one can refer to Ruhollah Khomeini
who is considered as populist
, fundamentalist and reformer by various observers. In July 2007 Iranian reformist president Mohammad Khatami
said that Ruhollah Khomeini was the leading "reformist" of our time.
The birth of fundamentalist Islam in Iran is attributed to the early 20th century, almost a century after secular humanism and its associated art and science entered Iran. Sheikh Fazlollah Nouri and Navvab Safavi
were among the pioneers of religious fundamentalism in Iran and today serve as the Islamic Republic’s foremost heroes and role models.
Iran was the first country in the post-World War II era in which political Islam was the rallying cry for a successful revolution, followed by the new state formally adopting political Islam as its ruling ideology. The grand alliance that led to the 1979 revolution abandoned the traditional clerical quietism, adopting a diverse ideological interpretation of Islam. The first three Islamic discourses were Khomeinism, Ali Shariati
’s Islamic-left ideology, and Mehdi Bazargan
’s liberal-democratic Islam. The fourth discourse was the socialist guerrilla groups of Islamic and secular variants, and the fifth was secular constitutionalism in socialist and nationalist forms.
Hassan Rahimpour Azghandi
offers the following apologia for the emergence of Islamic fundamentalism:
While some researchers refute explanations of "Islamic fundamentalism" as an anti-imperialist political force directed against Western dominance in the Islamic world, others, such as Moaddel, argue that Islam has been politicized only during the second half of the twentieth century as a discourse of opposition, not to Western domination in the state system, but to the ideas, practices, and arbitrary political interventions of a westernizing secularist political elite. This elite has established ideologically
uniform, repressive states which have imposed a Western model and outlook in Muslim societies by coercive means. Islamism thus emerged as a competing narrative contending for state power against a secularist discourse. Its goal was to seize state power through an Islamization of all aspects of life in a Muslim society.
In May 2005, Ali Khamenei
defined the reformist principle-ism (Osoulgaraiee eslah-talabaaneh) of his Islamic state in opposition to the perceived hostility of the West:
In January 2007, a new parliamentary faction announced its formation. The former Osulgarayan ("principle-ist") faction divided into two due to "lack of consensus" on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's policies. The new faction was named "Faction of creative principle-ists" which is said to be critical of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's neo-principle-list policies and to reject conservatism on such matters related to the government. The main leaders of the faction are Emad Afroogh
, Mohammad Khoshchehreh
, Saeed Aboutaleb and MP Sobhani.
idea of justice, states that "equals should be treated alike, but unequals proportionately to their relevant differences, and all with impartiality." The radicals (neo-principle-ists), on the other hand, gave a messianic interpretation to the concept, one that promised equal distribution of societal resources to all—including the "unequals." And finally, those with a liberal orientation to Islam understood the notion of justice in terms of the French revolutionary slogan of egalité, i.e., the equality of all before the law.
While the principle-ists (conservatives) were generally suspicious of modern ideas and resistant to modern lifestyles at the time of the Iranian revolution, the Islamic radicals (neo-principle-ists) were receptive to many aspects of modernity and willing to collaborate with secular intellectuals and political activists.
Many of the so-called neo-principle-ists (neo-fundamentalists), like Christian fundamentalists, pull out a verse from the scriptures and give it a meaning quite contrary to its traditional commentary. Also, even while denouncing modernism as the "Great Satan", many principle-ists accept its foundations, especially science and technology. For traditionalists, there is beauty in nature which must be preserved and beauty in every aspect of traditional life, from chanting the Qur'an
to the artisan's fashioning a bowl or everyday pot. Many principle-ists even seek a Qur'anic basis for modern man's domination and destruction of nature by referring to the injunction to 'dominate the earth' – misconstruing entirely the basic idea of vicegerency: that man is expected to be the perfect servant of God.
An example of an environmental
problem is the overpopulation of the earth. The Neo-fundamentalists's family policy is to increase the population dramatically. Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's call for increasing Iran's population from 70 to 120 millions can be understood in the same line.
In Mehdi Mozaffan's chapter on a comparative study of Islamism in Algeria and Iran, he says,
A major difference between fundamentalism in Iran and main stream Islamic fundamentalism is that the former has nothing to do with Salafism. According to Gary Legenhausen
: "The term Islamic Fundamentalism is one that has been invented by Western journalists by analogy with Christian Fundamentalism. It is not a very apt term, but it has gained currency. In the Sunni world it is used for groups descended from the Salafiyyah movement, such as the Muslim Brotherhood
." It is worth noting that the concept of "Salaf" (السلف) does not exist in Shia theology
in contrast to Sunni Islam as well as Christianity (a similar concept referred to as "original Christianity").
Political Islam consists of a broad array of mass movements in the Muslim world, which share a conviction that political power is an essential instrument for constructing a God-fearing society. They believe that Muslims can fulfill their religious obligations only when public law sanctions and encourages pious behavior. To this end, the majority of these movements work to take control of state power, whether by propaganda, plebiscite, or putsch.
A look through several generations of clerics in seminaries shows significant differences in viewpoints and practical approaches. When young Ruhollah Khomeini
urged his mentor Ayatullah Husain Borujerdi, to oppose the Shah more openly. Broujerdi rejected his idea. He believed in the "separation" of religion from politics, even though he was Khomeini's senior in rank. However just before his death Hossein Boroujerdi (d. 1961), expressed his opposition to the Shah’s plans for land reform and women’s enfranchisement. He also issued a fatwa for killing Ahmad Kasravi
. Khomeini remained silent till his seniors Ayatollah Haeri or Ayatolla Boroujerdi's, were alive. Then he was promoted to the status of a Grand marja
and started his activism and established his Islamic Republic
eventually. Among Khomeini's students, there were notable clerics whose ideas were not compatible with their mentor. As examples of the prototypes of his students one can mention Morteza Motahhari
, Mohammad Beheshti and Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi
. Criticizing Mesbah Yazdi and Haghani school Beheshti said: "Controversial and provocative positions that are coupled with violence, in my opinion...will have the reverse effect. Such positions remind many individuals of the wielding of threats of excommunication that you have read about in history concerning the age of the Inquisition, the ideas of the Church, and the Middle Ages". Morteza Motahhari
, the most notable student of Khomeini, was widely known as the main theoretician of Iranian revolution (next to Ali Shariati
). While Mesbah Yazdi was an advocate of expelling secular University lecturers, Motahhari insisted that the philosophy of marxism
or liberalism must be taught by a marxist and liberal respectively. Both Motahhari and Beheshti were assassinated by terrorist groups early after the revolution. Motahhari also introduced the concept of "dynamism of Islam".
After the triumph of the revolution in February 1979, and the subsequent liquidation of the liberal and secular-leftist groups, two principal ideological camps became dominant in Iranian politics, the "conservatives" (fundamentalists) and the "radicals" (neo-fundamentalists). The radicals' following of Khomeini of the revolution rather than his incumbency of the office of the Supreme Jurist (Vali-eFaqih) or his theocratic vision of the "Islamic Government." Today, Mohammad Taqi Mesbah Yazdi clearly rejects Khomeini's "Islamic Republic" and supports the idea of "Islamic government" where the votes of people has no value.
Contrary to Iranian traditionalists, neo-fundamentalists as well as Iranian liberals have been under the influence of western thinkers. The Islamic neo-fundamentalists have also borrowed from Western countercurrents of populism
, fascism, anarchism
, Jacobism, and Marxism
without the welfare state
.
During 1990s, Akbar Ganji
had discovered crucial links that connected the chain murders of Iran
to the reigning neoconservative clergymen (Ali Fallahian, Gholam Hossein Mohseni-Ejehei, Mohammad Taghi Mesbah-Yazdi) who had issued the fatwas legitimizing assassinations of secular humanists and religious modernists. In May 1996, Akbar Ganji presented a lecture at Shiraz University
entitled "Satan Was the First Fascist." He was charged with defaming the Islamic Republic and tried in a closed court. His defense was later published under the title of "Fascism is one of the Mortal Sins." (Kian, Number 40, February 1997.)
Another important issue is the concept of "insider-outsider" introduced by Ali Khamenei
, the supreme leader of Iran. Accordingly, in his administration outsiders have less rights compared to insiders and cannot have any administrative posts. He stated that "I mean, you [to his followers] must trust an insider as a member of your clique. We must consider as insiders those persons who are sympathetic towards our revolution, our state and Islam. The outsiders are the ones who are opposed to the principle of our state."
In another speech Ali Khamenei
compared what he called "American fundamentalism" and "Islamic fundamentalism":
He also made a clear distinction between what he called "extremism" and "fundamentalism": " There may be a handful of extremists here and there, but all the elements serving in various departments of our country are fundamentalists in essence."
Iranian neoconservatives are against democracy, Universal Declaration of Human Rights
and disparage the people and their views. In particular Mesbah Yazdi is an aggressive defender of the supreme leader's absolute power, and he has long held that democracy and elections are not compatible with Islam. He once stated that:
In contrast to neo-principle-ists, principle-ists accepts the ideas of democracy and UDHR. During his lifetime, Ayatollah Khomeini expressed support for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
; in Sahifeh Nour (Vol.2 Page 242), he states: "We would like to act according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We would like to be free. We would like independence." However, Iran adopted an "alternative" human rights declaration, the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam
, in 1990 (one year after Khomeini's death).
There exists various viewpoints on practice of controversial Islamic criminal codes like stoning. Ayatollah Gholamreza Rezvani states that the Quran sanctions stoning unequivocally and since it is the word of God, it must be carried out in real life as if Rezvani is the Prophet on Earth tasked by God to carry forward this message. This is in contrast to principle-ist point of view. In December 2002, Hashemi Shahroudi, the principle-ist Head of Judiciary ordered a ban on the practice of stoning. In 2007, the Shahrudi directive, Mohammad Javad Larijani
called stoning "a feature of Shari'a law," "original and respectable punishment" and claimed that "Mr. Shahrudi is not opposed to the principle of a...verdict that is based on Islamic Sharia." He also said:
Fabrication of fake history and use of propaganda is common among neo-fundamentalist circles. A good example is spread of superstitions over and fabricating a fake history for Jamkaran
mosque, a small ordinary mosque suddenly turned out to be the holiest place in Shia Islam. The issue has been harshly criticized even by conservative circles. Some of Iran's ayatollahs say the legend of Jamkaran is superstition. During Khatami
's presidency, Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi claimed that an unnamed former CIA chief had visited Iran with a suitcase stuffed with dollars to pay opinion-formers. "What is dangerous is that agents of the enemy, the CIA, have infiltrated the government and the cultural services," he was quoted as saying. On top of its official budget for Iran, the CIA had given "hundreds of millions of dollars to our cultural officials and journalists," he added. "The former head of the CIA recently came here as a tourist with a suitcase full of dollars for our cultural centres and certain newspapers. He made contact with various newspaper chiefs and gave them dollars." Nasser Pourpirar for instance believes that a significant portion of Iranian history are baseless fabrications by Jewish orientalists and Zionists. The whole existence of Pre-Islamic Iran is no more than a Jewish conspiracy and the most important key for analyzing today’s world events is the analysis of ancient "Jewish genocide of Purim
." Another neoconservative theorist, Mohammad Ali Ramin believes that contemporary western history (e.g. Holocaust) are all fabrications by Jews. He also claimed that Adolf Hitler
was a Jew himself. M.A. Ramin, Hassan Abbasi, Abbas Salimi Namin and others have been giving speeches about Jewish conspiracy theory, Iranian and western history intensively all over the country since the establishment of Ahmadinejad government in 2005.
Currently, Abadgaran described itself as a group of Islamic neo-principle-ist, have the control over current Iranian government. However it lost the 2006 city council election.
The problem with identity
is at the heart of fundamentalism, no matter it is Islamic, Jewish or Christian. If people's religious identity becomes more prominent than the national identity, fundamentalism will rise. In other words, fundamentalism can be seen as "identity-ism." Many of the religious remarks that are made in Iran, especially from official platforms, basically rest on identity-oriented thinking and the inculcation of an identity known as a religious identity.
Under Ahmadinejad, neo-conservative forces are determined to make the Islamic Republic more Islamic than republican. Whether they will succeed is another matter. Power in Iran is a complicated matter, and various factions exist even among conservatives, who run the gamut from hard-liners to pragmatists. Some among Iran’s leadership would accept accommodation with the West in exchange for economic and strategic concessions, while others are content to accept isolation from the West. Others favor a "Chinese model," which in Iran would mean opening the economy to international investment while maintaining the clergy’s dominance. It is these complex internal forces that will decide the future of Iranian politics.
was founded in 1946 as an Islamic fundamentalist organization. The founder of the group was Navab Safavi, a neo-fundamentalist cleric. The group's aim was to transform Iran into an "Islamic state." To achieve their objective, the group committed numerous terrorist acts. Notable among these was the 1946 assassination of Ahmad Kasravi
, an intellectual who had criticized the Shia Islamic clergy. The group also assassinated two prime ministers (Ali Razmara and Hassan Ali Mansour, 1951 and 1965) and an ex-prime minister (Hazhir, 1949).
The MEK
philosophy mixes Marxism
and Islam. Formed in the 1960s, the organization was an attempt in bridging Islam and Marxism to offer a revolutionary brand of Islam. It was expelled from Iran after the Iranian Revolution in 1979, and its primary support came from the former Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein starting in the late 1980s. The MEK conducted anti-Western
attacks prior to the Revolution. Since then, it has conducted terrorist attacks against the interests of the clerical regime in Iran and abroad. The MEK advocates the overthrow of the Iranian regime and its replacement with the group’s own leadership.
During the 1970s, the MEK killed US military personnel and US civilians working on defense projects in Tehran and supported the takeover in 1979 of the US Embassy in Tehran. In 1981, the MEK detonated bombs in the head office of the Islamic Republic Party and the Premier’s office, killing some 70 high-ranking Iranian officials, including Chief Justice Mohammad Beheshti, President Mohammad-Ali Rajai, and Premier Mohammad-Javad Bahonar. Near the end of the 1980–1988 war with Iran, Baghdad armed the MEK with military equipment and sent it into action against Iranian forces. In 1991, the MEK assisted the Government of Iraq in suppressing the Shia and Kurdish uprisings in southern Iraq and the Kurdish uprisings in the north.
In April 1992, the MEK conducted near-simultaneous attacks on Iranian embassies and installations in 13 countries, demonstrating the group’s ability to mount large-scale operations overseas. MKO is recognized as a terrorist group by both US and EU.
The MKO maintains fascistic behaviour with all those who do not share its views and positions and routinely attacks Iranian intellectuals and journalists abroad. For instance, MEK agents attacked Iranian journalist Alireza Nourizadeh
and injured him seriously.
is a neo-fundamentalist school of thought in Iran
founded by a group of clerics based in the holy city of Qom
and headed by Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi
, an influential cleric and theologian.
The school trains clerics with both a traditional and modern curriculum, including a secular education in science, medicine, politics, and Western/non-Islamic philosophy (the topics that are not taught in traditional schools). It was founded by Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati
, Ayatollah Dr. Beheshti
and Ayatollah Sadoughi.
Many famous theologians and influential figures in Iran's politics after the revolution were associated (as teacher or student) with the Haghani Circle or follows its ideology.
The Combatant Clergy Association was the majority party in the 4th and 5th parliaments after the Iranian revolution
. It was founded in 1977 by a group of clerics with intentions to use cultural approach to overthrow the Shah. Its founding members were Ali Khamenei
, Motahhari, Beheshti, Bahonar
, Rafsanjani and Mohammad Mofatteh
and its current members include Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani
, Ahmad Jannati
, Mahdavi Kani, Reza Akrami and Hassan Rohani.
As the foremost advocates of the Iranian status quo that has left millions disenfranchised, the Militant Clergy Society is exceedingly unpopular among rank-and-file Iranians.
is a militant neo-fundamentalist group in Iran
. Mojtaba Bigdeli is a spokesman for the Iranian Hezbollah. Human Rights Watch
strongly condemned the brutal assault on students at Tehran University
halls of residence in the early hours of Friday 9 July 1999 by members of the Ansar-e Hezbollah.
Basij
is a military fundamentalist network established after the Iranian revolution. In July 1999, Ezzat Ebrahim-Nejad was shot dead in Tehran University dormitory by a member of Basij military force. The event initiated a huge demonstration
. In 2001, a member of the Basij, Saeed Asgar attempted to assassinate Saeed Hajjarian
a leading reformist and political advisor to reformist Iranian President Mohammad Khatami
. Asagar was arrested and sentenced to spend 15 years in jail, but was released after spending only a short term in prison. Human Rights Watch
informs that the Basij belong to the "Parallel institutions" (nahad-e movazi), "the quasi-official organs of repression that have become increasingly open in crushing student protests, detaining activists, writers, and journalists in secret prisons, and threatening pro-democracy speakers and audiences at public events." Under the control of the Office of the Supreme Leader
these groups set up arbitrary checkpoints around Tehran, uniformed police often refraining from directly confronting these plainclothes agents. "Illegal prisons, which are outside of the oversight of the National Prisons Office, are sites where political prisoners are abused, intimidated, and tortured with impunity." On 8 March 2004 the Basij issued a violent crackdown on the activists celebrating the International Women's Day
in Tehran. On 13 November 2006, Tohid Ghaffarzadeh, a student at Sabzevar University was murdered by a Basij member at the University. The murderer reportedly said that what he did was according to his religious beliefs. Tohid Ghaffarzadeh was talking to his girlfriend when he was approached and stabbed with a knife by the Basij member.
ian clerics. One can distinguish four types of theocracies
. Typology of the types of government adumbrated in Shiite jurisprudential sources can be summarized as follows (in chronological order):
in 1997, there have been two basic approaches, two outlooks, toward the achievement of reform in Iran: "Reformists" within the regime (in-system reformers) essentially believe that the Constitution has the capacity—indeed, the positive potential—to lead the "Revolutionary" government of Iran toward "democracy." By contrast, secularists, who remain outside the regime, basically think that the Constitution contains impediments profound enough to block meaningful reform.
On the other hand, fundamentalists and in-system reformers on one side and neo-fundamentalists on the other side are struggling over "Khomeini’s Islamic Republic" versus "Mesbah’s Islamic administration." Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi
and Ansar-e-Hezbollah
call for a change in the Iranian constitution from a republic to an Islamic administration. They believe the institutions of the Islamic Republic, such as the Majlis
(Iran's Parliament), are contradictory to Islamic government which is completely centered around Velayat-e Faqih and total obedience to him.
Ali Khamenei
, himself, has remained silent on the issue of whether Iran should have an Islamic Republic or an Islamic Administration. However, he clearly rejected the supervision of Assembly of Experts
on the institutions that are governed directly under his responsibility (e.g. Military forces, Judiciary system and IRIB).
Neo-fundamentalists believe that the supreme leader is holy and infallible and the role of people and elections are merely to discover the leader. However, the legitimacy of the leader comes from God and not the people. In January 2007, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani
who won the 2006 election for Assembly of Experts
, clearly rejected this idea and emphasized on the fact that the leader and the cleric members of the Assembly of Experts may make wrong decisions and the legitimacy of the leader comes from the people not the God.
Beyond these theoretical debates, elements of the "Islamic Administration" are (in practice) slowly replacing those of the "Islamic Republic".
, the two factions (conservatives and radicals) differed on foreign policy and cultural issues. The radicals (neo-cons) adamantly opposed any rapprochement with the United States and, to a lesser extent, other Western countries, while seeking to expand Iran’s relations with the socialist bloc
countries. They advocated active support for Islamic and liberation movements, so called "export of the revolution," throughout the world. The conservatives favored a more cautious approach to foreign policy, with the ultimate aim of normalizing Iran’s economic relations with the rest of the world, so long as the West’s political and cultural influence on the country could be curbed.
According to Iranian scholar Ehsan Naraghi
, anti-Western attitude among Iranian Islamists has its root in Marxism and Communism rather than Iranian Islam. Iran and the West had good relations with mutual respect after the Safavid era. However with the emergence of Communism in Iran, anti-Western attitudes were taken up by some extremists. As Naraqi states, anti-Western attitude in other parts of the Muslim world has a different root than the one in Iran.
After the end of the Iran–Iraq War in 1988 and the death of Ayatollah Khomeini, pragmatists (under the leadership of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani
) sought to normalize Iran’s relations with other countries, particularly those in the region, by playing down the once-popular adventurist fantasy of "exporting the Islamic revolution" to other Muslim lands. After the victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the 2005 elections and the defeat of pragmatists/reformists (under the leadership of Mohammad Khatami
), the Neoconservatives who gained full control of both parliament and government for the first time since the Iranian Revolution again recalled the idea of exporting the revolution after years of silence.
Since the Iranian Revolution
, the new Islamic Republic of Iran has pursued an Islamic ideological foreign policy that has included creation of Hezbollah, subsidies to Hamas
, opposition to Israel
and Zionist leaders, and aid to Iraq's Shiite political parties. Hamas leaders verified in 2008 that since Israel pulled out of the Gaza strip
in 2005 they have sent their fighters to Iran to train in field tactics and weapons technology. In an interview in 2007, Hezbollah Deputy Secretary-General Naim Kassem told the Iranian Arabic-language TV station al-Qawthar that all military actions in Lebanon must be approved by the authorities in Tehran; in 2008 Iran issued a stamp commemorating a recently-killed Hezbollah leader.
Fundamentalism and political realism
are diplomatically incompatible. It is believed that the most evident characteristic of diplomacy is flexibility. The reason Iran’s diplomacy has encountered many shortcomings and lost numerous opportunities provided by international or regional political developments is the country’s focus on fundamental values and neglect of national interests. Fundamentalism is always accompanied with idealism
while diplomacy always emphasizes realities. Therefore, the model of realistic fundamentalism will not work in the diplomatic arena.
Muslim thinkers in the world generally believe in a sort of "religious internationalism
." Even religious modernists in Iran have still some inclinations towards religious internationalism, and the concept of nation-state
is not firmly established in their mind. These kinds of beliefs are mainly rooted in traditional thinking rather than postmodernism
. There are however some religious intellectuals like Ahmad Zeidabadi
who are against religious internationalism.
Meanwhile, Western countries have adopted various different strategies with respect to fundamentalists. The attitudes of these countries have been mainly driven by geopolitics and the oil market rather than religious extremism itself. According to Graham Fuller of the RAND Corporation and a former Vice-Chairman of the National Intelligence Council at CIA, "United States had no problem with Islam or even Islamic fundamentalism as such. [...] one of the closest American allies in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, is a fundamentalist state."
Also Maryam Rajavi
, the leader of an Islamist-Marxist group, has been invited several times by EU parliament members to address the assembly. In 2004 Alejo Vidal Quadras, European Parliament
’s first Vice President, met Maryam Rajavi whose group is listed as a terrorist group by EU and USA.
Mehdi Noorbaksh, a professor at the Center for International Studies, University of St. Thomas in Texas, believes that the perceived threat of Islamic fundamentalism to world peace and security is based on politically and ideologically motivated misinterpretation of the reformist nature of Islamic revival. The portrayal of Iran as a radical Islamic terrorist state by the US has strengthened the extremists and weakened democratic, reformists groups in Iran. According to Professor Noorbaksh, "The spread of democracy and the introduction of socio-political reforms in the Middle East, especially in Iran, will undermine US domination over the region."
as the only cleric president of University of Tehran
in 27 December 2005 can be understood in the same line. Tehran University is the symbol of higher education in Iran. Abbasali Amid Zanjani hold no academic degree and was appointed by Mohammad Mehdi Zahedi
, the minister of Science, Research, and Technology in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's cabinet.
There was a journal in 1980s, by the name of "University of Revolution" which used to include some material written by neofundamentalists. They wrote many articles to prove that science is not wild and without a homeland, that it is not the case that it recognises no geography, and that it is therefore possible for us to create "Islamic sciences."
In 2007, Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi, a well-known cleric, attacked the University people calling them the most indecent people. In April 2008, four leading clerics namely Abdollah Javadi Amoli, Ebrahim Amini , Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi and Mohammed Emami-Kashani
criticized Iranian Universities, University students and Iranian Higher education system as being secular, non-Islamic, indecent and cheap.
Both Iranian principle-ism and neo principle-ism are associated with their own art, cinema and literature. In cinema, the first attempts were perhaps made by Masoud Dehnamaki
. Dehnamaki, a famous neo-principle-ist, made his first documentary film "Poverty and Prostitution" in 2002. His next documentary was "Which Blue, Which Red," a film about the rivalry between the Iranian capital’s two football teams, Esteqlal and Persepolis, and their fans. He is now making his debut feature-length film "The Outcasts".
Iranian journalist turned documentary filmmaker Masud Dehnamaki was formerly the managing director and chief editor of the weeklies "Shalamcheh" and "Jebheh," which were closed by Tehran’s conservative Press Court. These journals were among the main neo-principle-ist publications. The rightist newsweekly "Shalamcheh" under the editorship of Masoud Dehnamaki, one of the strongest opponents of President Khatami and his
policies, has been closed down by the press supervisory board of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, presumably for insulting or criticizing the late Grand Ayatollah Kho'i, who had called the "velayat-e faqih" position unislamic, prior to his passing away.
Perhaps the most influential neo-conservative newspaper during the 1990s and 2000s was Kayhan
daily. Hossein Shariatmadari
and Hossein Saffar Harandi (who later became a Minister of Culture) were the main editor and responsible chief of the newspaper. In 2006, the British ambassador to Tehran met Hossein Shariatmadari and acknowledged the role of Kayhan in Iran and the region.
To promote art and literature, Islamic Development Organization was founded by Ayatollah Khomeini. In 1991, Ali Khamenei revised the organization's structure and plans. The plan is to promote religious and moral ideas through art and literature. According to the Minister of Culture, Hossein Saffar Harandi, the funds for Qur'an
ic activities would increase by fourfold in the year 2007. "All of the ninth governments' cultural and artistic activities should conform to the Holy Book," he declared.
While promoting their own art and literature, principle-ists are against the development of art and literature that has no "valuable content." In late 1996, following a fatwa
by Ali Khamenei
stating that music education corrupts the minds of young children, many music schools were closed and music instruction to children under the age of 16 was banned by public establishments (although private instruction continued).
Khamenei and his followers believe that "Nihilism
and Beatle-ism" have ravaged Western youth. According to the renowned novelist and the first president of Iranian Association of Writers after the revolution, Simin Daneshvar
, Islamic Republic has been generally hostile toward Iranian writers and intellectuals. This is contrary to the attitude of the Pahlavi regime, Daneshvar added in an interview with Etemaad Daily in 2007.
In 2007, Javad Shamghadri, artistic advisor to president Ahmadinejad, publicly stated that: "Like many other countries in the world, Iran too can get along without a film industry." "Only 20 percent of people go to the cinema, and their needs can be provided through the national radio and television network," he added.
, about the economy by simply noting that "Economics is for donkeys!" However Khomeini in many occasions advised his followers about justice and giving priority to the rights of the deprived and the oppressed members of the community.
"Association of the Lecturers of Qom's Seminaries," or ALQRS (Jame'eh-ye Modarresin-e Howzeh-ye 'Elmiyeh-ye Qom), published their authenticated version of Islamic economy in 1984. It was based on traditional interpretation of Islamic jurisprudence, which the ALQRS find compatible with the market system
and neoclassical economics
. They emphasize economic growth against social equity and declare the quest for profit
as a legitimate Islamic motive. According to ALQRS, attaining "maximum welfare" in a neoclassical sense is the aim of an Islamic economic system. However, the system must establish the limits of individual rights. In accordance with this ideological-methodological manifesto of the ALQRS, in February 1984, the council for cultural revolution proposed a national curriculum for economics for all Iranian Universities.
The concept of "Islamic economics" appeared as a rainbow on the revolutionary horizon and disappeared soon after the revolutionary heat dissipated (the end of 1980s and after the death of Ayatollah Khomeini). It disappeared from Iranian political discourse for fifteen years. In the June 2005 presidential elections, neither the populist-fundamentalist
winning candidate, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, nor any of his reformist or conservative opponents said a word about Islamic economy. However, after the establishment of Ahmadinejad's government, his neoconservative team opened the closed file of Islamic economy. For instance, Vice-President Parviz Davoudi said in 2006:
Factional conflict dominated Iranian economic politics under the Ayatollah Khomeini from 1979 to 1989. The two principal factions were a statist-reformist group that favored state control of the economy and a conservative group that favored the private sector. Both factions claimed Khomeini's support, but by 1987, he clearly had sided with the statist-reformists because he believed state capitalism to be the best way of heading off any threat to Islam. Khomeini's death on 3 Jun 1989 left the factions without their source of legitimation.
, principle-ists have initiated the policy of de-Iranianization of the Iran, by replacing the notion of Iranian Identity and Nationality with Moslem Identity, both inside and outside Iran. Ayatollah Khomeini has emphasized this goal in several of his speeches, for example, on Dec 1980 (as published in Kayhan
):
Mehdi Bazargan
, the first Prime minister of Islamic Republic, once said: "Imam [Khomeini] wants Iran for Islam and we want Islam for Iran." Due to the commitment to Pan-Islamism inherent in Iranian Islamic revolutionary ideology, the Islamic Republic's attitude toward Sunni Islam is positive.
At the beginning of the Islamic Revolution, one of the most-notorious clerics in Iran, Sadeq Khalkhali known as the hanging judge, who was renowned for his brutality and mass executions in post-revolutionary Iran, tried to destroy 2500-year-old Persepolis
, and after that the mausoleum of Ferdowsi
. He was stopped by the efforts of the locals.
Iranian government in several occasions constructed dams and rail roads in the vicinity of ancient archeological sites that date back to pre-Islamic era. In January 2007, the Minister of Energy, Parviz Fattah
directly ordered the opening of the Sivand Dam. Referring to the critics, he said: "I will make a museum next to the dam with my own money!" Sivand dam project has been one of the most condemned projects in post-revolution Iran due to its potential to destroy Iranian archaeological sites. Some Iranians are furious about the construction of the dam and argue that there is no objective in the world worthy to justify the construction of a dam, so close to Pasargadae. Hossein Marashi
, the Iranian Vice President for Cultural Heritage and Tourism said: "We can not sacrifice the dam for cultural and historical sites." Sivand Dam
became operational in 2007. Ahmadinejad's government, however, refused to buy the detectors needed for monitoring humidity of the Pasargadae. Also "Karun-3 dam
" was constructed during Rafsanjani's presidency which led to destruction of ancient archeological site in Izeh
.
Defaming Cyrus the Great
, Islamist negationist Sadeq Khalkhali wrote an article entitled "Kourosh-e Doroughin" (Impostor Cyrus) shortly after the revolution. In 2001, Nasser Pourpirar wrote two books entitled "Twelve centuries of silence" and "A bridge to past", claiming that the Sassanid empire
and Parthian Empire
s never existed, and are the fabrications of Jewish and American orientalists.
Abbas Salimi Namin attributed Persepolis
to Russian
civilization. Islamist negationists Abbas Salimi Namin and Purpirar were coworkers for the hardline "Kayhan Havaei" (a weekly review of the daily Keyhan in English) after the revolution. Namin, a computer engineer and former member of Haghani circle
is a close ally of Ali Khamenei
, the leader of the Islamic Republic. Ignored by Iranian scholars, such figures managed to enter and influence traditional clerical circles and the policy makers of the Islamic Republic. Interestingly several of these Islamist negationists were formerly associated with Marxist groups before acting as agents of Islamic Republic.
Ruling clerics sought to stamp out many traditions, like Nowruz
, a celebration with some Zoroastrian links that stretches back thousands of years to the pre-Islamic era, to mark the arrival of spring. The celebration is considered by many here the most Iranian of holidays.
Several proposals have been made by conservatists to replace or shorten Norouz celebrations but rejected because of public protests. Ayatollah Khazali, a member of the powerful Guardians Council and the Experts Assembly for Leadership, has proposed that the celebration of Ghadir (Shiites commemorate these festivities as the day prophet Mohammad is recorded to have named disciple Ali to be his successor) should replace the traditional Iranian celebration of Norouz.
Ali Khamenei in many occasions attacked the Iranian fire festival Chahar Shanbeh Suri and also called for shortening Norouz
, claiming that the holidays are seriously damaging Iranian economy. Following an order by Ali Khamenei the fire festival has been banned by the regime since it is of Zoroastrian origins and is not Islamic. However, due to internal opposition, the government had to step back.
in 1981 in an important Sermon linking the fate of Persian language directly to that of Persian nationality: "both shall vanish as soon as Islamic unity is attained".
The tradition of banning names dates to the beginning of the Islamic Revolution in the early 1980s, when Iran's conservative leaders sought to purge the country of both Western culture and its own Persian, pre-Islamic past. Fundamentalists consider it unfortunate that Iranians used to be Zoroastrians, or that the ancient Persian empire achieved its greatest triumphs before Islam's arrival. To that end, they compiled a long list of forbidden names that included Zoroastrians gods and goddesses, commanders of ancient Persian armies, and other such tainted, best-forgotten figures. Indeed, Arab
ic names, except for a handful of Sunni villains, were fine. Persian ones, despite originating from the language actually spoken in Iran
, had to be checked against the official list. Along the way, other politically inconvenient realities were fought on the baby name terrain. Wishing to quell an uprising by ethnically Kurd
ish Iranians in the north, the government banned Kurd
ish names. Street names had changed from old Persian names to Arab
ic and Muslim names .This whole shift of the Iranian identity toward a more Islamic one created a kind of crisis.
Iranian society on the other hand, identify itself as Iranian. In Iran-Iraq war
for example, all Iranians irrespective of their religions and ethnic groups defended the country. Abdolkarim Soroush
, foremost Iranian religious intellectual, once suggested to adapt the religion to Iranian culture by organizing Ashura and other Islamic festivals according to Iranian calendar
instead of Islamic calendar
to avoid conflicts between Iranian identity and religion.
Principle-ists, irrespective of their genders, support a very strict life style for women in Iran. The women in the seventh Iranian parliament were against the bill on Iran joining the Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), which the female reformists in the sixth parliament had fought for vigorously. The women in the seventh parliament have exhibited conservative, right wing tendencies, setting them apart from their counterparts in the preceding parliament. In July 2007, Ali Khamenei criticized Iranian women's rights activists and the Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW): "In our country ... some activist women, and some men, have been trying to play with Islamic rules in order to match international conventions related to women," Khamenei said. "This is wrong." However he is positive on reinterpreting Islamic law in a way that it is more favorable for women – but not by following Western conventions. Khamenei made these comments two days after an Iranian women's right activist Delaram Ali
was sentenced to 34 months of jail and 10 lashes by Iran's judiciary. Iranian judiciary works under the responsibility of the Supreme Leader and is independent from the government.
Principle-ists in Iran forced Islamic dress on Iranian women soon after the revolution of 1979. Since then Iranian police, governed under the responsibility of the Supreme Leader, have continuously attacked women who do not adhere to the dress code. Fighting such women is considered "fighting morally corrupt people" by principle-ists. In 2007 a national crackdown was launched by the police in which thousands of women were warned and hundred were arrested. Violators of the dress code can be given lashes, fines and imprisonment. Sae'ed Mortazavi, Tehran's public prosecutor, made this clear when he told the Etemad newspaper: "These women who appear in public like decadent models endanger the security and dignity of young men". Mohammad Taqi Rahbar, a fundamentalist MP, agreed, saying, "Men see models in the streets and ignore their own wives at home. This weakens the pillars of family."
In October 2002, Ali Khamenei asked the Iranian women to avoid feminism and sexism
in their campaigns for better female rights. "In the process of raising women's issues and solving their problems, feminist inclinations and sexism should be avoided," he told a group of female parliamentarians.
Like many other Grand Ayatollahs, Ali Khamenei believes that women should be wives and mothers. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has publicly stated: "The real value of a woman is measured by how much she makes the family environment for her husband and children like a paradise." In July 1997 Khamenei said that the idea of women’s equal participation in society was "negative, primitive and childish."
Fundamentalist scholars justify the different religious laws for men and women by referring to the biological and sociological differences between men and women. For example, regarding the inheritance law which states that women’s share of inheritance is half that of men, Ayatollah Makarim Shirazi quotes the Imam Ali ibn Musa Al-reza who reasons that at the time of marriage man has to pay something to woman and woman receives something, and that men are responsible for both their wives' and their own expenses but women have no responsibility thereof. Women, however, make up 27% of the Iranian labor force, and the percentage of all Iranian women who are economically active has more than doubled from 6.1% in 1986 to 13.7% in 2000.
In terms of health, life expectancy went up by eleven years between 1980 and 2000 for both Iranian men and women. With respect to family planning, "levels of childbearing have declined faster than in any other country," going from 5.6 births per woman in 1985 to 2.0 in 2000, a drop accomplished by a voluntary, but government-sponsored, birth control program. The fact that these changes have occurred within an Islamic legal regime suggests that formal legal status may not be a key factor determining women’s well-being.
Women in Iran are only allowed to sing in chorus. Also women are not allowed to attend Sport stadiums. In 2006 Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, surprisingly, ordered the vice president to allocate half of the Azadi Soccer Stadium to women. Six Grand Ayatollahs and several MPs protested against Mr. Ahmadinejad's move, and finally the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei ordered the president to reconsider his order and follow the clergy.
The issue of tolerance and violence has been subject to intense debates in Iran. A cleric and member of the conservative Islamic Coalition Party, Hojjatoleslam Khorsand was cited by "Etemad daily" as saying that "in cultural issues, a policy of tolerance and laxity is not acceptable." Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, a member of the Assembly of Experts, said about Islam's enemies: "They presented principles such as tolerance and compromise as absolute values while violence was introduced as a non-value." Mesbah-Yazdi believes that "the taboo – that every act of violence is bad and every act of tolerance is good – must be broken." Opponents of violence – "even some of the elite" – have been "deceived and entrapped" by "foreign propaganda," he said. Mesbah-Yazdi believes that "The enemies of Islam must also feel the harshness and violence of Islam." He also stated that "The culture of tolerance and indulgence means the disarming of society of its defense mechanism."
Dividing Iranians into Insider and Outsider was first introduced by Ali Khamenei. "Kayhan", which is governed by Ali Khamenei, editorialized on 5 August 1999 that an Insider is "someone whose heart beats for Islam, the revolution and the Imam," while Outsiders are those who have "separated their path from the line of the Imam, the system, and the people who, by relying on citizens' rights, want to introduce themselves as equal partners."
Irreligious people in Islamic Republic of Iran are not recognized as citizens and do not enjoy any civil rights. While Jews, Christians and other minorities have the right to take part in University entrance exams and can become members of parliament or city councils, irreligious people are not granted even their basic rights. Most irreligious people, however, hide their beliefs and pretend to be Muslims. Non-believers – atheists under Islam – do not have "the right to life." Non believers such as those supporting communist ideologies have been executed purely for being non-believers. The charge against them has been made as "corrupters on earth." In an attempt to disguise the Islamic attitude to apostasy, some Muslims often quote the Koranic verse: "There shall be no compulsion in religion." For a Muslim wishing to leave Islam in Iran this is simply not true and is punishable by death. "Any newspaper or writer wanting to renounce the fundamental principles of Islam or questioning the vengeance law is an apostate and liable to the death penalty," Ali Khamenei told a gathering of several thousand troops in the northeastern town of Mashhad
.
In one occasion, Persian daily "Neshat" published an article which called for abolishing the death penalty, claiming that the capital punishment is no cure for maladies afflicting modern society. In reaction to this article, conservative "Tehran Times Daily" stressed that writers of such articles must remember that the Iranian Muslim nation will not only never tolerate such follies but that the apostates will be given no opportunity to subvert the religion. Neshat's article drew severe criticism from the theologians and clerics, particularly the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, who in clear words warned that apostate journalists will be liable to the death penalty, noted the article in the opinion column of the paper adding that the judiciary also promptly warned against any acts or words that undermine the pillars of the Islamic revolution.
In 2002, Ansar e Hezbollah, a hard-line group best known for disrupting reformist gatherings and beating up students, declared a "holy war" to rid Iran of reformers who promote Western democracy and challenge the country's Supreme Leader. Masoud Dehnamaki
, an ideologue with the group, also said that Iranians who try to appease Iran's enemies such as the United States "should be stopped."
During Mohammd Khatami's presidency, minister Ataollah Mohajerani launched a tolerance policy ("Tasahol va Tasamoh"). This policy was criticized harshly by conservatives and ended in resignation of the minister.
while some conservatives like Emad Afrough support the idea of Civil society, some like Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi are opposed to the idea of civil rights
for citizens. Emad Afrough stated: "If we do not actively seek cultural change, our national and ethnic cultures get destroyed. We must consciously choose to answer the questions confronting us. Today's question is civil society ... I believe we can easily reconstruct civil society here (in Iran) based on our own values and cultural characteristics. Civil society is a necessity, and the growing complexity of society requires it. Our historical past also supports it. In reality, in Iran, as in elsewhere in the Middle East, the only obstacle to civil society is the state." Mesbah Yazdi, however, stated: "It doesn’t matter what the people think. The people are ignorant sheep."
In February 2004 Parliament elections, the Council of Guardians, a council of twelve members, half of whom are appointed by Ali Khamenei, disqualified thousands of candidates, including many of the reformist members of the parliament and all the candidates of the Islamic Iran Participation Front
party from running. It did not allow 80 members of the 6th Iranian parliament (including the deputy speaker) to run in the election. Apart from Ali Khamenei, many conservative theorists as Emad Afrough supported the decision of Guardian council and accused the reformist parliament members of "being liberal, secular and with no Iranian identity". Referring to 7th parliament members, Ali Meshkini
said that the list of candidates had signed by Imam Mahdi: "...I have a special gratitude for Honorable Baqiyatullah (aj), whom when seven months ago during the Night of Power the Divine angels presented him with the list of the names and addresses of the members of the (new) parliament, His Eminency signed all of them...".
In June 2007, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was criticized by some Iranian parliament members over his remark about Christianity and Judaism. According to Arab News Agency, President Ahmadinejad stated: "In the world, there are deviations from the right path: Christianity and Judaism. Dollars have been devoted to the propagation of these deviations. There are also false claims that these [religions] will save mankind. But Islam is the only religion that will save mankind." Some members of the Iranian parliament criticized these remarks as being fuels to religious war. However Musa Ghorbani, a chairman of the parliament, strongly supported the president's remark, calling it "in accordance with the constitution". Also Hossein Noori Hamedani
advocates fighting the Jews in order to prepare the ground and to hasten the advent of the Hidden Imam, the Messiah according to Shiite belief.
In 2007, Ali Khamenei
claimed that "Today, homosexuality is a major problem in the western world. They [Western nations] however ignore it. But the reality is that homosexuality has become a serious challenge, pain and unsolvable problem for the intellectuals in the west." Khamenei, however did not mention any names of western intellectuals.
While Iran has been quick to condemn attacks on Shia mosques and Shia holy places all over the world, it has been intolerant toward other religions. For instance in 2006, authorities in the city of Qom
arrested more than 1,000 followers of the mystical Sufi tradition of Islam. Iran's hard-line daily "Kayhan" on 14 February 2006 quoted senior clerics in Qom as saying that Sufism should be eradicated in the city, while the Reuters news agency reported that in September one of Iran's hard-line clerics, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Noori Hamedani
, called for a clampdown on Sufis in Qom. In 2006, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad launched a plan to suppress what he called "indecent religious associations that work under the cover of spirituality and Sufism". Morteza Agha-Tehrani
, one of the closest disciples of Mesbah-Yazdi and moral advisor to President Ahmadinejad was the leader of a raid on Sufi mosques in Qom.
Iran does not allow a single Sunni mosque to be built in Tehran
. Although President Mohammad Khatami
promised during election times to build a Sunni mosque in Tehran, he refused to do so after taking office. After winning the election he was reminded of his promise, but he came up with the excuse that the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had not agreed to the proposal. Shias make up roughly 30 percent of the Islamic world, with Sunnis and other branches making up the rest. In Iran, Shias constitute almost 90% of Iran's population
Although the Iranian government invests funds for the promotion and spreading of Islam, it does not tolerate active promotion of other religions by its believers. Maryam Rostampour and Marzieh Amirizadeh Esmaeilabad were two Iranian women, both converts from Islam to Christianity, who were active in church activities and distributing Bibles. Both were arrested and kept in Evin prison in 2009.
In Iran, unlike most countries, epistemological debates have political implications. Because the Islamic Republic stakes its legitimacy on the scholarly authority of its jurist-ruler, the regime takes such debates quite seriously. Through the Special Clergy Court, the regime has tried to clamp down on relativism, calling it self-defeating. The dissident seminarians, too, have
distanced themselves from relativism, calling themselves legitimate religious authorities. It is unclear how the dissidents will reconcile the two seminary norms of open debate and scholarly authority, or what political ramifications might follow from such a reconciliation. It is already clear, though, that the dissidents are creating an unprecedentedly rich documentary record of
Islamic critique of the Islamic state.
, advocate of Islamic pluralism, believes that fundamentalism in Iran will self-destruct as it is afflicted with an internal contradiction, which will shatter it from within.
Similar ideas have been put forward by Iranian scholar Saeed Hajjarian
. Abdolkarim Soroush
, Mohsen Kadivar
, Saeed Hajjarian
and Seyyed Hossein Nasr
are among most notable critics of fundamentalism in Iran. Today Iranian neofundamentalists are a very strong minority in Qom seminaries. However they enjoy support from two Grand Marja
s, namely Nasser Makarem Shirazi and Hossein Noori Hamedani
as well as direct support from supreme leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei
.
.
In 1943, a Saudi religious judge ordered an Iranian pilgrim beheaded for allegedly defiling the Great Mosque
with excrement supposedly carried into the mosque in his pilgrim's garment.
In 1987, Saudi Arabia's fundamentalist regime attacked Iranian pilgrims who were doing a peaceful annual demonstration of Haj and killed some 275 people. 303 people were seriously injured. For years, Iranian pilgrims had tried to stage peaceful political demonstrations in the Muslim holy city of Mecca
during the hajj
. Iran sees the 1987 massacre of Iranian pilgrims as the first major attack by Sunni extremists like Osama bin Laden and the emerging Al-Qaeda on Shia Iranians. A few days before the massacre of Iranian pilgrims by Saudi police, USS Vincennes
shot down Iran Air Flight 655
, killing 290 civilians.
In March 2004 (Ashura
), Al-Qaeda
killed 40 Iranian pilgrims at the Shia holy places in Iraq. Many others were injured in the blasts. Ashura commemorates the killing of the revered Imam Hussein at the battle of Karbala
in the seventh century AD. It is the event that gave birth to the Shia branch of Islam which predominates in Iran. Ashura is by far the most significant day in the Iranian religious calendar, and it is commemorated as a slaughter of innocents by traitors and tyrants.
Justifying the attack on Iran, Saddam Hussein
accused Iranians of "murdering the second (Umar
), third (Uthman
), and fourth (Ali
) Caliph
s of Islam". In March 1988, Saddam Hussein killed about 20,000 Iranian soldiers immediately using nerve-gas agents. According to Iraqi documents, assistance in developing chemical weapons was obtained from firms in many countries, including the United States, West Germany
, the United Kingdom, France and China.
Iraq also targeted Iranian civilians with chemical weapons. Many thousands were killed in attacks on populations in villages and towns, as well as front-line hospitals. Many still suffer from the severe effects. In December 2006, Saddam Hussein said he would take responsibility "with honour" for any attacks on Iran using conventional or chemical weapons during the 1980–1988 war but he took issue with charges that he ordered attacks on Iraqis.
Islamic revival
Islamic revival refers to a revival of the Islamic religion throughout the Islamic world, that began roughly sometime in 1970s and is manifested in greater religious piety, and community feeling, and in a growing adoption of Islamic culture, dress, terminology, separation of the sexes, and values...
ism and the rise of political Islam
Political aspects of Islam
Political aspects of Islam are derived from the Qur'an, the Sunna , Muslim history, and elements of political movements outside Islam....
in modern Iran. Today, there are basically three types of Islam in Iran: traditionalism
Religious traditionalism in Iran
Today there are basically three types of Islam in Iran: traditionalism , modernism, and a variety of forms of revivalism usually brought together as fundamentalism....
, modernism
Religious intellectualism in Iran
Religious intellectualism in Iran reached its apogee during the Persian Constitutional Revolution . The process involved philosophers, sociologists, political scientists and cultural theorists.-Summary:...
, and a variety of forms of revivalism usually brought together as fundamentalism
Islamic fundamentalism
Islamic fundamentalism is a term used to describe religious ideologies seen as advocating a return to the "fundamentals" of Islam: the Quran and the Sunnah. Definitions of the term vary. According to Christine L...
. Neo-fundamentalists in Iran are a subgroup of fundamentalists who have also borrowed from Western countercurrents of populism
Populism
Populism can be defined as an ideology, political philosophy, or type of discourse. Generally, a common theme compares "the people" against "the elite", and urges social and political system changes. It can also be defined as a rhetorical style employed by members of various political or social...
, fascism, anarchism
Anarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
, Jacobism and Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
.
Definition
"Fundamentalism is the belief in absolute religious authority and the demand that this religious authority be legally enforced. Often, fundamentalism involves the willingness to do battle for one's faith. Fundamentalists make up only one part of any religion's followers, who usually fall along a wide spectrum of different interpretations, beliefs and strong values."There are some major differences between Christian fundamentalism and what is called Islamic fundamentalism. According to Bernard Lewis
Bernard Lewis
Bernard Lewis, FBA is a British-American historian, scholar in Oriental studies, and political commentator. He is the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University...
:
"In western usage these words [Revivalism and Fundamentalism] have a rather specific connotation; they suggest a certain type of religiosity- emotional indeed sentimental; not intellectual, perhaps even anti intellectual; and in general apolitical and even anti-political. Fundamentalists are against liberal theologyLiberal movements within IslamProgressive Muslims have produced a considerable body of liberal thought within Islam or "progressive Islam" ; but some consider progressive Islam and liberal Islam as two distinct movements)...
and biblical criticism and in favor of a return to fundamentals-i.e. to the divine inerrant text of the scriptures. For the so call fundamentalists of Islam these are not and never have been the issues. Liberal theology have not hitherto made much headway in Islam, and the divinity and inerrancy of the Quran are still central dogmas of the faith ... Unlike their Christian namesakes, the Islamic fundamentalists do not set aside but on the contrary embrace much of the post-scriptural scholastic tradition of their faith, in both its theological and its legal aspects."
The Islamist version of political Islam ("neo-fundamentalism" in this article) emerged in response to the perceived shortcomings of fundamentalism. The Islamists, with their cosmopolitan backgrounds, introduced various tools they had borrowed from the West into their organizational arsenal. Ideologically, they drew on antimodernist philosophies that embodied Western dissatisfaction with the consequences of industrialization and positivism.
Iranian fundamentalists and conservatives, commonly describe themselves as "principalist" (also spelled principle-ist); that is, acting politically based on Islamic and revolutionary principles.
Background
Abdolkarim Soroush
Abdolkarim Soroush , born Hosein Haj Faraj Dabbagh , is an Iranian thinker, reformer, Rumi scholar and a former professor at the University of Tehran. He is arguably the most influential figure in religious intellectual movement in Iran. Professor Soroush is currently a visiting scholar at the...
), fundamentalists (represented by Ali Khamenei
Ali Khamenei
Ayatollah Seyed Ali Hoseyni Khāmene’i is the Supreme Leader of Iran and the figurative head of the Muslim conservative establishment in Iran and Twelver Shi'a marja...
, Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi
Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi
Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi is a hardline Iranian Twelver Shi'i cleric and politician who is widely seen as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's spiritual advisor. He is also a member of Iran's Assembly of Experts, the body responsible for choosing the Supreme Leader, where he heads...
, and several Grand Ayatollahs the youngest one Mahdi Hadavi). Subsequently, religious fundamentalism in Iran has several aspects that make it different from Islamic fundamentalism in other parts of the world. Finally, fundamentalism in Iran is not limited to religious fundamentalism. In fact, Iranian secular fundamentalists can be just as dogmatic and ideological as religious fundamentalists—-deny that any religious law or social practice can be just or equal. The terms Iranian "conservatism," "fundamentalism" and "neo-fundamentalism" are all subject to numerous philosophical debates. Javad Tabatabaei
Javad Tabatabaei
Dr. Javad Tabatabai is a political philosopher, historian and university professor.Tabatabai studied law at Tehran University. He then shifted to philosophy and did his doctorate works at Sorbonne University. Tabatabai was a professor of philosophy at University of Strasbourg as well as Tehran...
and Ronald Dworkin
Ronald Dworkin
Ronald Myles Dworkin, QC, FBA is an American philosopher and scholar of constitutional law. He is Frank Henry Sommer Professor of Law and Philosophy at New York University and Emeritus Professor of Jurisprudence at University College London, and has taught previously at Yale Law School and the...
and a few other philosophers of law and politics have criticized the terminology and suggested various other classifications in the context of Iranian political philosophy.
According to Bernard Lewis
Bernard Lewis
Bernard Lewis, FBA is a British-American historian, scholar in Oriental studies, and political commentator. He is the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University...
:
"Even an appropriate vocabulary seemed to be lacking in western languages and writers on the subjects had recourse to such words as "revivalism," "fundamentalismFundamentalismFundamentalism is strict adherence to specific theological doctrines usually understood as a reaction against Modernist theology. The term "fundamentalism" was originally coined by its supporters to describe a specific package of theological beliefs that developed into a movement within the...
" and "integrismIntegrismIntegrism is a term coined in early 20th century polemics within the Catholic Church, especially in France, as an epithet to describe those who opposed the "modernists", who sought to create a synthesis between Christian theology and the liberal philosophy of secular modernity. The term was...
." But most of these words have specifically Christian connotations, and their use to denote Islamic religious phenomena depends at best on a very loose analogy."
Some researchers, categorized Iranian thinkers into five classes:
- Anti-religious intellectuals
- Religious intellectuals
- Traditionists
- Traditionalists
- Fundamentalists
Traditionists who account for the majority of clerics keep themselves away from modernity and neither accept nor criticize it. Traditionalists believe in eternal wisdom and are critics of humanism
Humanism
Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, world view or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. In philosophy and social science, humanism is a perspective which affirms some notion of human nature, and is contrasted with anti-humanism....
and modernity
Modernity
Modernity typically refers to a post-traditional, post-medieval historical period, one marked by the move from feudalism toward capitalism, industrialization, secularization, rationalization, the nation-state and its constituent institutions and forms of surveillance...
. Traditionalists believe in a sort of religious pluralism
Religious pluralism
Religious pluralism is a loosely defined expression concerning acceptance of various religions, and is used in a number of related ways:* As the name of the worldview according to which one's religion is not the sole and exclusive source of truth, and thus that at least some truths and true values...
which makes them different from Fundamentalists. Fundamentalists are also against modernity. Contrary to traditionists, fundamentalists openly criticize modernity. Moreover fundamentalists believe that for reviving the religion in the modern era and for opposing modernity, they need to gain social and political power. This makes fundamentalists different from traditionists and traditionalists who are not interested in gaining political power.
As an example of different views on fundamentalism, one can refer to Ruhollah Khomeini
Ruhollah Khomeini
Grand Ayatollah Sayyed Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini was an Iranian religious leader and politician, and leader of the 1979 Iranian Revolution which saw the overthrow of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran...
who is considered as populist
Populism
Populism can be defined as an ideology, political philosophy, or type of discourse. Generally, a common theme compares "the people" against "the elite", and urges social and political system changes. It can also be defined as a rhetorical style employed by members of various political or social...
, fundamentalist and reformer by various observers. In July 2007 Iranian reformist president Mohammad Khatami
Mohammad Khatami
Sayyid Mohammad Khātamī is an Iranian scholar, philosopher, Shiite theologian and Reformist politician. He served as the fifth President of Iran from August 2, 1997 to August 3, 2005. He also served as Iran's Minister of Culture in both the 1980s and 1990s...
said that Ruhollah Khomeini was the leading "reformist" of our time.
Emergence
Navvab Safavi
Navvab Safavi was a cleric responsible for founding of the Fadayan-e Islam group and with them the assassination of several leading Iranians, primarily politicians.-Early life:...
were among the pioneers of religious fundamentalism in Iran and today serve as the Islamic Republic’s foremost heroes and role models.
Iran was the first country in the post-World War II era in which political Islam was the rallying cry for a successful revolution, followed by the new state formally adopting political Islam as its ruling ideology. The grand alliance that led to the 1979 revolution abandoned the traditional clerical quietism, adopting a diverse ideological interpretation of Islam. The first three Islamic discourses were Khomeinism, Ali Shariati
Ali Shariati
Ali Shariati was an Iranian revolutionary and sociologist, who focused on the sociology of religion. He is held as one of the most influential Iranian intellectuals of the 20th century and has been called the 'ideologue of the Iranian Revolution'.-Biography:Ali....
’s Islamic-left ideology, and Mehdi Bazargan
Mehdi Bazargan
Mehdi Bazargan was a prominent Iranian scholar, academic, long-time pro-democracy activist and head of Iran's interim government, making him Iran's first prime minister after the Iranian Revolution of 1979. He was the head of the first engineering department of Tehran University...
’s liberal-democratic Islam. The fourth discourse was the socialist guerrilla groups of Islamic and secular variants, and the fifth was secular constitutionalism in socialist and nationalist forms.
Hassan Rahimpour Azghandi
Hassan Rahimpour Azghandi
Hassan Rahimpour Azghadi ' is a member of Iran's Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution.Azghadi has travelled throughout the world to give lectures, his focus is on social, political, and economic affairs in contemporary Islamic Iran...
offers the following apologia for the emergence of Islamic fundamentalism:
- "It should be made clear that if fundamentalism or terrorism exist, they are a reaction to the colonial militarism of the West in the Islamic world, from the 18th century until today. European armies occupied all of North and South America and Africa, in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, and divided them among themselves. Then they came to the Islamic world in North Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. It is only natural that the Muslims act in accordance with their religious duty, just as you would defend your homes if they were occupied. Why do we call resistance 'terrorism'? When Hitler and the Fascists rolled Europe in blood and dust – would your forefathers be called terrorists if they conducted resistance?"
While some researchers refute explanations of "Islamic fundamentalism" as an anti-imperialist political force directed against Western dominance in the Islamic world, others, such as Moaddel, argue that Islam has been politicized only during the second half of the twentieth century as a discourse of opposition, not to Western domination in the state system, but to the ideas, practices, and arbitrary political interventions of a westernizing secularist political elite. This elite has established ideologically
uniform, repressive states which have imposed a Western model and outlook in Muslim societies by coercive means. Islamism thus emerged as a competing narrative contending for state power against a secularist discourse. Its goal was to seize state power through an Islamization of all aspects of life in a Muslim society.
In May 2005, Ali Khamenei
Ali Khamenei
Ayatollah Seyed Ali Hoseyni Khāmene’i is the Supreme Leader of Iran and the figurative head of the Muslim conservative establishment in Iran and Twelver Shi'a marja...
defined the reformist principle-ism (Osoulgaraiee eslah-talabaaneh) of his Islamic state in opposition to the perceived hostility of the West:
- "While adhering to and preserving our basic principles, we should try to constantly rectify and improve our methods. This is the meaning of real reformism. But U.S. officials define reformism as opposition to Islam and the Islamic system."
In January 2007, a new parliamentary faction announced its formation. The former Osulgarayan ("principle-ist") faction divided into two due to "lack of consensus" on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's policies. The new faction was named "Faction of creative principle-ists" which is said to be critical of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's neo-principle-list policies and to reject conservatism on such matters related to the government. The main leaders of the faction are Emad Afroogh
Emad Afroogh
Emad Afroogh is an Iranian politician and sociologist.He studied at Shiraz University and Tarbiat Modares University. He is currently a member of Iranian parliament.-Positions:...
, Mohammad Khoshchehreh
Mohammad Khoshchehreh
Mohammad Khoshchehreh is an Iranian economist and politician.-Political life:Khoshchehreh is a member of Iranian parliament. A former advisor to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, turned out to be one his outspoken critics in the 7th parliament....
, Saeed Aboutaleb and MP Sobhani.
Viewpoints
There is a lot that is unique about Iranian fundamentalism but it nonetheless must be seen as one of the Abrahamic revivalisms of the twentieth century. As in the course of the Persian Constitutional Revolution nearly a century earlier, the concept of justice was at the center of the ideological debates among the followers of the three Islamic orientations during and after the revolution. The conservatives (principle-ists) adhered to the traditional notion of Islamic justice, one which, much like the AristotelianAristotelianism
Aristotelianism is a tradition of philosophy that takes its defining inspiration from the work of Aristotle. The works of Aristotle were initially defended by the members of the Peripatetic school, and, later on, by the Neoplatonists, who produced many commentaries on Aristotle's writings...
idea of justice, states that "equals should be treated alike, but unequals proportionately to their relevant differences, and all with impartiality." The radicals (neo-principle-ists), on the other hand, gave a messianic interpretation to the concept, one that promised equal distribution of societal resources to all—including the "unequals." And finally, those with a liberal orientation to Islam understood the notion of justice in terms of the French revolutionary slogan of egalité, i.e., the equality of all before the law.
While the principle-ists (conservatives) were generally suspicious of modern ideas and resistant to modern lifestyles at the time of the Iranian revolution, the Islamic radicals (neo-principle-ists) were receptive to many aspects of modernity and willing to collaborate with secular intellectuals and political activists.
Many of the so-called neo-principle-ists (neo-fundamentalists), like Christian fundamentalists, pull out a verse from the scriptures and give it a meaning quite contrary to its traditional commentary. Also, even while denouncing modernism as the "Great Satan", many principle-ists accept its foundations, especially science and technology. For traditionalists, there is beauty in nature which must be preserved and beauty in every aspect of traditional life, from chanting the Qur'an
Qur'an
The Quran , also transliterated Qur'an, Koran, Alcoran, Qur’ān, Coran, Kuran, and al-Qur’ān, is the central religious text of Islam, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God . It is regarded widely as the finest piece of literature in the Arabic language...
to the artisan's fashioning a bowl or everyday pot. Many principle-ists even seek a Qur'anic basis for modern man's domination and destruction of nature by referring to the injunction to 'dominate the earth' – misconstruing entirely the basic idea of vicegerency: that man is expected to be the perfect servant of God.
An example of an environmental
Natural environment
The natural environment encompasses all living and non-living things occurring naturally on Earth or some region thereof. It is an environment that encompasses the interaction of all living species....
problem is the overpopulation of the earth. The Neo-fundamentalists's family policy is to increase the population dramatically. Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's call for increasing Iran's population from 70 to 120 millions can be understood in the same line.
In Mehdi Mozaffan's chapter on a comparative study of Islamism in Algeria and Iran, he says,
- "I define Islamic fundamentalism or Islamism as a militant and anti-modernist movement ... not every militant Muslim is a fundamentalist. but an Islamic fundamentalist is necessarily a militant."
A major difference between fundamentalism in Iran and main stream Islamic fundamentalism is that the former has nothing to do with Salafism. According to Gary Legenhausen
Gary Legenhausen
Gary Carl Legenhausen is an American philosopher who teaches at the Imam Khomeini Education and Research Institute, which is directed by Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi....
: "The term Islamic Fundamentalism is one that has been invented by Western journalists by analogy with Christian Fundamentalism. It is not a very apt term, but it has gained currency. In the Sunni world it is used for groups descended from the Salafiyyah movement, such as the Muslim Brotherhood
Muslim Brotherhood
The Society of the Muslim Brothers is the world's oldest and one of the largest Islamist parties, and is the largest political opposition organization in many Arab states. It was founded in 1928 in Egypt by the Islamic scholar and schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna and by the late 1940s had an...
." It is worth noting that the concept of "Salaf" (السلف) does not exist in Shia theology
Theology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...
in contrast to Sunni Islam as well as Christianity (a similar concept referred to as "original Christianity").
Political Islam consists of a broad array of mass movements in the Muslim world, which share a conviction that political power is an essential instrument for constructing a God-fearing society. They believe that Muslims can fulfill their religious obligations only when public law sanctions and encourages pious behavior. To this end, the majority of these movements work to take control of state power, whether by propaganda, plebiscite, or putsch.
A look through several generations of clerics in seminaries shows significant differences in viewpoints and practical approaches. When young Ruhollah Khomeini
Ruhollah Khomeini
Grand Ayatollah Sayyed Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini was an Iranian religious leader and politician, and leader of the 1979 Iranian Revolution which saw the overthrow of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran...
urged his mentor Ayatullah Husain Borujerdi, to oppose the Shah more openly. Broujerdi rejected his idea. He believed in the "separation" of religion from politics, even though he was Khomeini's senior in rank. However just before his death Hossein Boroujerdi (d. 1961), expressed his opposition to the Shah’s plans for land reform and women’s enfranchisement. He also issued a fatwa for killing Ahmad Kasravi
Ahmad Kasravi
Ahmad Kasravi , was a notable Iranian linguist, historian, and reformer.Born in Hokmabad , Tabriz, Iran, Kasravi was an Iranian Azeri Initially, Kasravi enrolled in a seminary. Later, he joined the Iranian Constitutional Revolution...
. Khomeini remained silent till his seniors Ayatollah Haeri or Ayatolla Boroujerdi's, were alive. Then he was promoted to the status of a Grand marja
Marja
Marja , also known as a marja-i taqlid or marja dini , literally means "Source to Imitate/Follow" or "Religious Reference"...
and started his activism and established his Islamic Republic
Islamic republic
Islamic republic is the name given to several states in the Muslim world including the Islamic Republics of Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, and Mauritania. Pakistan adopted the title under the constitution of 1956. Mauritania adopted it on 28 November 1958. Iran adopted it after the 1979 Iranian...
eventually. Among Khomeini's students, there were notable clerics whose ideas were not compatible with their mentor. As examples of the prototypes of his students one can mention Morteza Motahhari
Morteza Motahhari
Ayatollah Murtaza Motahhari was an Iranian scholar, cleric, lecturer, and politician.Motahhari is considered among the important influences on the ideologies of the Islamic Republic, and was a co-founder of Hosseiniye Ershad and the Combatant Clergy Association...
, Mohammad Beheshti and Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi
Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi
Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi is a hardline Iranian Twelver Shi'i cleric and politician who is widely seen as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's spiritual advisor. He is also a member of Iran's Assembly of Experts, the body responsible for choosing the Supreme Leader, where he heads...
. Criticizing Mesbah Yazdi and Haghani school Beheshti said: "Controversial and provocative positions that are coupled with violence, in my opinion...will have the reverse effect. Such positions remind many individuals of the wielding of threats of excommunication that you have read about in history concerning the age of the Inquisition, the ideas of the Church, and the Middle Ages". Morteza Motahhari
Morteza Motahhari
Ayatollah Murtaza Motahhari was an Iranian scholar, cleric, lecturer, and politician.Motahhari is considered among the important influences on the ideologies of the Islamic Republic, and was a co-founder of Hosseiniye Ershad and the Combatant Clergy Association...
, the most notable student of Khomeini, was widely known as the main theoretician of Iranian revolution (next to Ali Shariati
Ali Shariati
Ali Shariati was an Iranian revolutionary and sociologist, who focused on the sociology of religion. He is held as one of the most influential Iranian intellectuals of the 20th century and has been called the 'ideologue of the Iranian Revolution'.-Biography:Ali....
). While Mesbah Yazdi was an advocate of expelling secular University lecturers, Motahhari insisted that the philosophy of marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
or liberalism must be taught by a marxist and liberal respectively. Both Motahhari and Beheshti were assassinated by terrorist groups early after the revolution. Motahhari also introduced the concept of "dynamism of Islam".
After the triumph of the revolution in February 1979, and the subsequent liquidation of the liberal and secular-leftist groups, two principal ideological camps became dominant in Iranian politics, the "conservatives" (fundamentalists) and the "radicals" (neo-fundamentalists). The radicals' following of Khomeini of the revolution rather than his incumbency of the office of the Supreme Jurist (Vali-eFaqih) or his theocratic vision of the "Islamic Government." Today, Mohammad Taqi Mesbah Yazdi clearly rejects Khomeini's "Islamic Republic" and supports the idea of "Islamic government" where the votes of people has no value.
Contrary to Iranian traditionalists, neo-fundamentalists as well as Iranian liberals have been under the influence of western thinkers. The Islamic neo-fundamentalists have also borrowed from Western countercurrents of populism
Populism
Populism can be defined as an ideology, political philosophy, or type of discourse. Generally, a common theme compares "the people" against "the elite", and urges social and political system changes. It can also be defined as a rhetorical style employed by members of various political or social...
, fascism, anarchism
Anarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
, Jacobism, and Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
without the welfare state
Welfare state
A welfare state is a "concept of government in which the state plays a key role in the protection and promotion of the economic and social well-being of its citizens. It is based on the principles of equality of opportunity, equitable distribution of wealth, and public responsibility for those...
.
During 1990s, Akbar Ganji
Akbar Ganji
Akbar Ganji is an Iranian journalist and writer. He has been described as "Iran’s preeminent political dissident", and a "wildly popular pro-democracy journalist" who has crossed press censorship "red lines" regularly...
had discovered crucial links that connected the chain murders of Iran
Chain murders of Iran
The Chain Murders of Iran , or Serial Murders, were a series of murders and disappearances from 1988-1998 by Iranian government operatives of Iranian dissident intellectuals who had been critical of the Islamic Republic system in some way.The victims included more than 80 writers, translators,...
to the reigning neoconservative clergymen (Ali Fallahian, Gholam Hossein Mohseni-Ejehei, Mohammad Taghi Mesbah-Yazdi) who had issued the fatwas legitimizing assassinations of secular humanists and religious modernists. In May 1996, Akbar Ganji presented a lecture at Shiraz University
Shiraz University
Shiraz University , formerly known as Pahlavi University, is a public university located in Shiraz, Iran. It is one of the major universities of Iran....
entitled "Satan Was the First Fascist." He was charged with defaming the Islamic Republic and tried in a closed court. His defense was later published under the title of "Fascism is one of the Mortal Sins." (Kian, Number 40, February 1997.)
Another important issue is the concept of "insider-outsider" introduced by Ali Khamenei
Ali Khamenei
Ayatollah Seyed Ali Hoseyni Khāmene’i is the Supreme Leader of Iran and the figurative head of the Muslim conservative establishment in Iran and Twelver Shi'a marja...
, the supreme leader of Iran. Accordingly, in his administration outsiders have less rights compared to insiders and cannot have any administrative posts. He stated that "I mean, you [to his followers] must trust an insider as a member of your clique. We must consider as insiders those persons who are sympathetic towards our revolution, our state and Islam. The outsiders are the ones who are opposed to the principle of our state."
In another speech Ali Khamenei
Ali Khamenei
Ayatollah Seyed Ali Hoseyni Khāmene’i is the Supreme Leader of Iran and the figurative head of the Muslim conservative establishment in Iran and Twelver Shi'a marja...
compared what he called "American fundamentalism" and "Islamic fundamentalism":
- "We can see that in the world today there are nations with constitutions going back 200 to 300 years. The governments of these nations, which occasionally protest against the Islamic Republic, firmly safeguard their own constitutions. They clutch firmly to safeguard centuries old constitutions to protect them from harm. [...] However, when it comes to us and as we show commitment to our constitution and values, they accuse us of fundamentalism or describe us as reactionaries. In other words, the American fundamentalism is viewed as a positive virtue, whereas Islamic fundamentalism – based on logic, wisdom, experience and desire for independence – is condemned as some sort of debasement. Of course, they no longer use that term fundamentalism to describe us, instead they refer to us as conservatives."
He also made a clear distinction between what he called "extremism" and "fundamentalism": " There may be a handful of extremists here and there, but all the elements serving in various departments of our country are fundamentalists in essence."
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a declaration adopted by the United Nations General Assembly . The Declaration arose directly from the experience of the Second World War and represents the first global expression of rights to which all human beings are inherently entitled...
and disparage the people and their views. In particular Mesbah Yazdi is an aggressive defender of the supreme leader's absolute power, and he has long held that democracy and elections are not compatible with Islam. He once stated that:
- "Democracy means if the people want something that is against God's will, then they should forget about God and religion ... Be careful not to be deceived. Accepting Islam is not compatible with democracy."
In contrast to neo-principle-ists, principle-ists accepts the ideas of democracy and UDHR. During his lifetime, Ayatollah Khomeini expressed support for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a declaration adopted by the United Nations General Assembly . The Declaration arose directly from the experience of the Second World War and represents the first global expression of rights to which all human beings are inherently entitled...
; in Sahifeh Nour (Vol.2 Page 242), he states: "We would like to act according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We would like to be free. We would like independence." However, Iran adopted an "alternative" human rights declaration, the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam
Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam
The Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam is a declaration of the member states of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference adopted in Cairo in 1990, which provides an overview on the Islamic perspective on human rights, and affirms Islamic Shari'ah as its sole source...
, in 1990 (one year after Khomeini's death).
There exists various viewpoints on practice of controversial Islamic criminal codes like stoning. Ayatollah Gholamreza Rezvani states that the Quran sanctions stoning unequivocally and since it is the word of God, it must be carried out in real life as if Rezvani is the Prophet on Earth tasked by God to carry forward this message. This is in contrast to principle-ist point of view. In December 2002, Hashemi Shahroudi, the principle-ist Head of Judiciary ordered a ban on the practice of stoning. In 2007, the Shahrudi directive, Mohammad Javad Larijani
Mohammad Javad Larijani
Mohammad Javad Ardashir Larijani is an Iranian politician, cleric and academic. Larijani is the head of the human rights council in the judiciary and a top adviser to the supreme leader. Additionally Larijani has been the Director of Institute for Studies in Theoretical Physics and Mathematics in...
called stoning "a feature of Shari'a law," "original and respectable punishment" and claimed that "Mr. Shahrudi is not opposed to the principle of a...verdict that is based on Islamic Sharia." He also said:
- "We will never surrender Islam in the face of human rights concerns … During the adoption of these (human rights) laws, the world of Islam was in complete ignorance while liberals and secular parties formulated and imposed these laws onto the entire world ... We must elucidate punishment by stoning clearly to those who denounce it. We had a revolution so that Islamic laws would be implemented ... We will never give up Islam in the face of these challenges" (State-run news agency ILNA, 30 May 2007).
Fabrication of fake history and use of propaganda is common among neo-fundamentalist circles. A good example is spread of superstitions over and fabricating a fake history for Jamkaran
Jamkaran
Jamkaran is a village in Qanavat Rural District, in the Central District of Qom County, Qom Province, Iran. At the 2006 census, its population was 8,368, in 1,747 families....
mosque, a small ordinary mosque suddenly turned out to be the holiest place in Shia Islam. The issue has been harshly criticized even by conservative circles. Some of Iran's ayatollahs say the legend of Jamkaran is superstition. During Khatami
Khatami
-Politicians:* Mohammad Khatami , Iranian reformist President, former President of Iran * Mohammad Reza Khatami , Iranian reformist politician, Vice Speaker of Iranian Parliament and brother of Mohammad Khatami...
's presidency, Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi claimed that an unnamed former CIA chief had visited Iran with a suitcase stuffed with dollars to pay opinion-formers. "What is dangerous is that agents of the enemy, the CIA, have infiltrated the government and the cultural services," he was quoted as saying. On top of its official budget for Iran, the CIA had given "hundreds of millions of dollars to our cultural officials and journalists," he added. "The former head of the CIA recently came here as a tourist with a suitcase full of dollars for our cultural centres and certain newspapers. He made contact with various newspaper chiefs and gave them dollars." Nasser Pourpirar for instance believes that a significant portion of Iranian history are baseless fabrications by Jewish orientalists and Zionists. The whole existence of Pre-Islamic Iran is no more than a Jewish conspiracy and the most important key for analyzing today’s world events is the analysis of ancient "Jewish genocide of Purim
Purim
Purim is a Jewish holiday that commemorates the deliverance of the Jewish people in the ancient Persian Empire from destruction in the wake of a plot by Haman, a story recorded in the Biblical Book of Esther .Purim is celebrated annually according to the Hebrew calendar on the 14th...
." Another neoconservative theorist, Mohammad Ali Ramin believes that contemporary western history (e.g. Holocaust) are all fabrications by Jews. He also claimed that Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
was a Jew himself. M.A. Ramin, Hassan Abbasi, Abbas Salimi Namin and others have been giving speeches about Jewish conspiracy theory, Iranian and western history intensively all over the country since the establishment of Ahmadinejad government in 2005.
Currently, Abadgaran described itself as a group of Islamic neo-principle-ist, have the control over current Iranian government. However it lost the 2006 city council election.
The problem with identity
Identity (social science)
Identity is a term used to describe a person's conception and expression of their individuality or group affiliations . The term is used more specifically in psychology and sociology, and is given a great deal of attention in social psychology...
is at the heart of fundamentalism, no matter it is Islamic, Jewish or Christian. If people's religious identity becomes more prominent than the national identity, fundamentalism will rise. In other words, fundamentalism can be seen as "identity-ism." Many of the religious remarks that are made in Iran, especially from official platforms, basically rest on identity-oriented thinking and the inculcation of an identity known as a religious identity.
Under Ahmadinejad, neo-conservative forces are determined to make the Islamic Republic more Islamic than republican. Whether they will succeed is another matter. Power in Iran is a complicated matter, and various factions exist even among conservatives, who run the gamut from hard-liners to pragmatists. Some among Iran’s leadership would accept accommodation with the West in exchange for economic and strategic concessions, while others are content to accept isolation from the West. Others favor a "Chinese model," which in Iran would mean opening the economy to international investment while maintaining the clergy’s dominance. It is these complex internal forces that will decide the future of Iranian politics.
Fadayan-e Islam
Fadayan-e IslamFadayan-e Islam
Fadā'iyān-e Islam , was an Iranian Islamic fundamentalist secret society founded in 1946, by a 21 year-old theology student named Navvab Safavi. Safavi sought to purify Islam in Iran by ridding it of `corrupting individuals` by means of carefully planned assassinations of certain leading...
was founded in 1946 as an Islamic fundamentalist organization. The founder of the group was Navab Safavi, a neo-fundamentalist cleric. The group's aim was to transform Iran into an "Islamic state." To achieve their objective, the group committed numerous terrorist acts. Notable among these was the 1946 assassination of Ahmad Kasravi
Ahmad Kasravi
Ahmad Kasravi , was a notable Iranian linguist, historian, and reformer.Born in Hokmabad , Tabriz, Iran, Kasravi was an Iranian Azeri Initially, Kasravi enrolled in a seminary. Later, he joined the Iranian Constitutional Revolution...
, an intellectual who had criticized the Shia Islamic clergy. The group also assassinated two prime ministers (Ali Razmara and Hassan Ali Mansour, 1951 and 1965) and an ex-prime minister (Hazhir, 1949).
Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK)
People's Mujahedin of Iran
The People's Mujahedin of Iran is a terrorist militant organization that advocates the overthrow of the Islamic Republic of Iran....
philosophy mixes Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
and Islam. Formed in the 1960s, the organization was an attempt in bridging Islam and Marxism to offer a revolutionary brand of Islam. It was expelled from Iran after the Iranian Revolution in 1979, and its primary support came from the former Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein starting in the late 1980s. The MEK conducted anti-Western
Anti-Western sentiment
Anti-Western sentiment refers to broad opposition or hostility to the people, policies, or governments in the western world. In many cases the United States, Israël and the United Kingdom are the subject of discussion or hostility...
attacks prior to the Revolution. Since then, it has conducted terrorist attacks against the interests of the clerical regime in Iran and abroad. The MEK advocates the overthrow of the Iranian regime and its replacement with the group’s own leadership.
During the 1970s, the MEK killed US military personnel and US civilians working on defense projects in Tehran and supported the takeover in 1979 of the US Embassy in Tehran. In 1981, the MEK detonated bombs in the head office of the Islamic Republic Party and the Premier’s office, killing some 70 high-ranking Iranian officials, including Chief Justice Mohammad Beheshti, President Mohammad-Ali Rajai, and Premier Mohammad-Javad Bahonar. Near the end of the 1980–1988 war with Iran, Baghdad armed the MEK with military equipment and sent it into action against Iranian forces. In 1991, the MEK assisted the Government of Iraq in suppressing the Shia and Kurdish uprisings in southern Iraq and the Kurdish uprisings in the north.
In April 1992, the MEK conducted near-simultaneous attacks on Iranian embassies and installations in 13 countries, demonstrating the group’s ability to mount large-scale operations overseas. MKO is recognized as a terrorist group by both US and EU.
The MKO maintains fascistic behaviour with all those who do not share its views and positions and routinely attacks Iranian intellectuals and journalists abroad. For instance, MEK agents attacked Iranian journalist Alireza Nourizadeh
Alireza Nourizadeh
Alireza Nourizadeh is an Iranian scholar, literary figure, journalist and an expert on Iranian contemporary history.Nourizadeh is a political refugee from Iran. After fleeing to Great Britain, he obtained his PhD from the University of London in International Relations. Nourizadeh has been active...
and injured him seriously.
Haghani school
Haghani CircleHaghani Circle
Haghani school is a Shi'i school of thought in Iran by a group of hardliner right-wing clerics based in the holy city of Qom and headed by Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi, an influential theologian. The Haghani Circle has its origin in the Haghani seminary, founded in 1964, which previously...
is a neo-fundamentalist school of thought in Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
founded by a group of clerics based in the holy city of Qom
Qom
Qom is a city in Iran. It lies by road southwest of Tehran and is the capital of Qom Province. At the 2006 census, its population was 957,496, in 241,827 families. It is situated on the banks of the Qom River....
and headed by Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi
Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi
Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi is a hardline Iranian Twelver Shi'i cleric and politician who is widely seen as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's spiritual advisor. He is also a member of Iran's Assembly of Experts, the body responsible for choosing the Supreme Leader, where he heads...
, an influential cleric and theologian.
The school trains clerics with both a traditional and modern curriculum, including a secular education in science, medicine, politics, and Western/non-Islamic philosophy (the topics that are not taught in traditional schools). It was founded by Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati
Ahmad Jannati
Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati Massah is a hardline Iranian politician, fundamentalist Shi'i cleric and a founding member of Haghani school with close ties with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Mesbah-Yazdi...
, Ayatollah Dr. Beheshti
Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti
Ayatollah Dr. Seyyed Mohammad Hosseini Beheshti , was an Iranian scholar, writer, jurist and one of the main architects of the constitution of the Islamic Republic in Iran. He was the secretary-general of the Islamic Republic Party, and the head of Iran's judicial system...
and Ayatollah Sadoughi.
Many famous theologians and influential figures in Iran's politics after the revolution were associated (as teacher or student) with the Haghani Circle or follows its ideology.
Combatant Clergy Association
The association is composed of right wing conservative elements of Iran’s political culture, including the nation’s foremost politicized clerics, the Friday prayer leaders in most of Iran’s metropolitan areas, the bazaar merchants, and the Supreme Leader. Not surprisingly, members of this faction support a continuation of the status quo, including strict limits on personal freedoms and the continued primacy of the clergy in the nation’s day-to-day governance. Important constituents of the Militant Clergy Society include the Islamic Coalition Society and the Coalition of Followers of the Line of the Imam.The Combatant Clergy Association was the majority party in the 4th and 5th parliaments after the Iranian revolution
Iranian Revolution
The Iranian Revolution refers to events involving the overthrow of Iran's monarchy under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and its replacement with an Islamic republic under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the...
. It was founded in 1977 by a group of clerics with intentions to use cultural approach to overthrow the Shah. Its founding members were Ali Khamenei
Ali Khamenei
Ayatollah Seyed Ali Hoseyni Khāmene’i is the Supreme Leader of Iran and the figurative head of the Muslim conservative establishment in Iran and Twelver Shi'a marja...
, Motahhari, Beheshti, Bahonar
Mohammad Javad Bahonar
Hojatoleslam Mohammad Javad Bahonar was an Iranian scholar, Shiite theologian and politician who served as the Prime minister of Iran from 15 to 30 August 1981 when he was assassinated by Mujahideen-e Khalq MEK, also known as PMOI and KMO...
, Rafsanjani and Mohammad Mofatteh
Mohammad Mofatteh
Mohammad Mofatteh was an Iranian philosopher.Dr. Mohammad Mofateh, the skillful philosopher, was born in 1928 in Hamedan.- Education :He had attended Akhund Mullah Ali Hamedani’s school in Hamadan...
and its current members include Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani
Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani
Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is an influential Iranian politician and writer, who was the fourth President of Iran. He was a member of the Assembly of Experts until his resignation in 2011...
, Ahmad Jannati
Ahmad Jannati
Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati Massah is a hardline Iranian politician, fundamentalist Shi'i cleric and a founding member of Haghani school with close ties with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Mesbah-Yazdi...
, Mahdavi Kani, Reza Akrami and Hassan Rohani.
As the foremost advocates of the Iranian status quo that has left millions disenfranchised, the Militant Clergy Society is exceedingly unpopular among rank-and-file Iranians.
Ansar e Hezbollah
Ansar-e-HezbollahAnsar-e-Hezbollah
Ansar-e-Hezbollah is a militant conservative Islamic group in Iran. Its ideology revolves around devotion to upholding the principles of the revolution, especially the belief in Valiyat al-faqih....
is a militant neo-fundamentalist group in Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
. Mojtaba Bigdeli is a spokesman for the Iranian Hezbollah. Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Its headquarters are in New York City and it has offices in Berlin, Beirut, Brussels, Chicago, Geneva, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Moscow, Paris, San Francisco, Tokyo,...
strongly condemned the brutal assault on students at Tehran University
Iran student riots, July 1999
Iranian Student Protests of July, 1999 were, before the 2009 Iranian election protests, the most widespread and violent public protests to occur in Iran since the early years of the Iranian Revolution.The protests began on July 8 with peaceful demonstrations in Tehran against the closure of the...
halls of residence in the early hours of Friday 9 July 1999 by members of the Ansar-e Hezbollah.
Basij
Basij
The Basij is a paramilitary volunteer militia established in 1979 by order of the Islamic Revolution's leader Ayatollah Khomeini. The force consists of young Iranians who have volunteered, often in exchange for official benefits...
is a military fundamentalist network established after the Iranian revolution. In July 1999, Ezzat Ebrahim-Nejad was shot dead in Tehran University dormitory by a member of Basij military force. The event initiated a huge demonstration
Iran student riots, July 1999
Iranian Student Protests of July, 1999 were, before the 2009 Iranian election protests, the most widespread and violent public protests to occur in Iran since the early years of the Iranian Revolution.The protests began on July 8 with peaceful demonstrations in Tehran against the closure of the...
. In 2001, a member of the Basij, Saeed Asgar attempted to assassinate Saeed Hajjarian
Saeed Hajjarian
Saeed Hajjarian is an Iranian intellectual, prominent journalist, pro-democracy activist and university lecturer. He has been an intelligence official, a member of Tehran's city council, and advisor to president Mohammad Khatami...
a leading reformist and political advisor to reformist Iranian President Mohammad Khatami
Mohammad Khatami
Sayyid Mohammad Khātamī is an Iranian scholar, philosopher, Shiite theologian and Reformist politician. He served as the fifth President of Iran from August 2, 1997 to August 3, 2005. He also served as Iran's Minister of Culture in both the 1980s and 1990s...
. Asagar was arrested and sentenced to spend 15 years in jail, but was released after spending only a short term in prison. Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Its headquarters are in New York City and it has offices in Berlin, Beirut, Brussels, Chicago, Geneva, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Moscow, Paris, San Francisco, Tokyo,...
informs that the Basij belong to the "Parallel institutions" (nahad-e movazi), "the quasi-official organs of repression that have become increasingly open in crushing student protests, detaining activists, writers, and journalists in secret prisons, and threatening pro-democracy speakers and audiences at public events." Under the control of the Office of the Supreme Leader
Supreme leader
A supreme leader typically refers to a figure in the highest leadership position of an entity, group, organization, or state, who exercises strong or all-powerful authority over it. In religion, the supreme leader or supreme leaders is God or Gods...
these groups set up arbitrary checkpoints around Tehran, uniformed police often refraining from directly confronting these plainclothes agents. "Illegal prisons, which are outside of the oversight of the National Prisons Office, are sites where political prisoners are abused, intimidated, and tortured with impunity." On 8 March 2004 the Basij issued a violent crackdown on the activists celebrating the International Women's Day
International Women's Day
International Women's Day , originally called International Working Women’s Day, is marked on March 8 every year. In different regions the focus of the celebrations ranges from general celebration of respect, appreciation and love towards women to a celebration for women's economic, political and...
in Tehran. On 13 November 2006, Tohid Ghaffarzadeh, a student at Sabzevar University was murdered by a Basij member at the University. The murderer reportedly said that what he did was according to his religious beliefs. Tohid Ghaffarzadeh was talking to his girlfriend when he was approached and stabbed with a knife by the Basij member.
Theories of state based on divine legitimacy
Various theories of state based on immediate divine legitimacy have been proposed over the years by IranIran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
ian clerics. One can distinguish four types of theocracies
Theocracy
Theocracy is a form of organization in which the official policy is to be governed by immediate divine guidance or by officials who are regarded as divinely guided, or simply pursuant to the doctrine of a particular religious sect or religion....
. Typology of the types of government adumbrated in Shiite jurisprudential sources can be summarized as follows (in chronological order):
- "Appointed Mandate of Jurisconsult" in Religious Matters (Shar’iat) Along with the Monarchic Mandate of Muslim Potentates in Secular Matters (Saltanat E Mashrou’eh)
- Proponents: Mohammad Bagher Majlesi (Allameh Majlesi), Mirza ye Ghomi, Seyed e Kashfi, Sheikh Fadl ollah Nouri, Ayatollah Abdolkarim Haeri Yazdi.
- "General Appointed Mandate of Jurissonsults" (Velayat E Entesabi Ye Ammeh)
- Proponents: Molla Ahmad Naraghi, Sheikh Mohammad Hassan Najafi (Saheb Javaher) Ayatollahs Husain Borujerdi, Golpayegani, Khomeini, (before the revolution)
- "General Appointed Mandate of the Council of the Sources of Imitation" (Velayat E Entesabi Ye Ammeh Ye Shora Ye Marje’eh Taghlid)
- Proponents: Ayatollahs: Abdollah Javadi-AmoliAbdollah Javadi-AmoliGrand Ayatollah Abdollah Javadi-Amoli is an Iranian Twelver Shi'a Marja. He is a conservative Iranian politician and one of the prominent Islamic scholars of the Hawza in Qom.-Early life:He was born in 1933 in Amol, north of Iran...
, Beheshti, Taheri Khorram Abadi
- Proponents: Ayatollahs: Abdollah Javadi-Amoli
- "Absolute Appointed Mandate of Jurisconsult" (Velayat e Entesabi ye Motlaghe ye Faghihan)
- Proponent: Ayatollah Khomeini (after revolution)
Islamic republic versus Islamic administration
Since the election of pro-reform president Mohammad KhatamiMohammad Khatami
Sayyid Mohammad Khātamī is an Iranian scholar, philosopher, Shiite theologian and Reformist politician. He served as the fifth President of Iran from August 2, 1997 to August 3, 2005. He also served as Iran's Minister of Culture in both the 1980s and 1990s...
in 1997, there have been two basic approaches, two outlooks, toward the achievement of reform in Iran: "Reformists" within the regime (in-system reformers) essentially believe that the Constitution has the capacity—indeed, the positive potential—to lead the "Revolutionary" government of Iran toward "democracy." By contrast, secularists, who remain outside the regime, basically think that the Constitution contains impediments profound enough to block meaningful reform.
On the other hand, fundamentalists and in-system reformers on one side and neo-fundamentalists on the other side are struggling over "Khomeini’s Islamic Republic" versus "Mesbah’s Islamic administration." Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi
Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi
Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi is a hardline Iranian Twelver Shi'i cleric and politician who is widely seen as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's spiritual advisor. He is also a member of Iran's Assembly of Experts, the body responsible for choosing the Supreme Leader, where he heads...
and Ansar-e-Hezbollah
Ansar-e-Hezbollah
Ansar-e-Hezbollah is a militant conservative Islamic group in Iran. Its ideology revolves around devotion to upholding the principles of the revolution, especially the belief in Valiyat al-faqih....
call for a change in the Iranian constitution from a republic to an Islamic administration. They believe the institutions of the Islamic Republic, such as the Majlis
Majlis
' , is an Arabic term meaning "a place of sitting", used in the context of "council", to describe various types of special gatherings among common interest groups be it administrative, social or religious in countries with linguistic or cultural connections to Islamic countries...
(Iran's Parliament), are contradictory to Islamic government which is completely centered around Velayat-e Faqih and total obedience to him.
Ali Khamenei
Ayatollah Seyed Ali Hoseyni Khāmene’i is the Supreme Leader of Iran and the figurative head of the Muslim conservative establishment in Iran and Twelver Shi'a marja...
, himself, has remained silent on the issue of whether Iran should have an Islamic Republic or an Islamic Administration. However, he clearly rejected the supervision of Assembly of Experts
Assembly of Experts
The Assembly of Experts of Iran , also translated as Council of Experts, is a deliberative body of 86 Mujtahids that is charged with electing and removing the Supreme Leader of Iran and supervising his activities.Members of the assembly are elected from a government-screened list of candidates by...
on the institutions that are governed directly under his responsibility (e.g. Military forces, Judiciary system and IRIB).
Neo-fundamentalists believe that the supreme leader is holy and infallible and the role of people and elections are merely to discover the leader. However, the legitimacy of the leader comes from God and not the people. In January 2007, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani
Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani
Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is an influential Iranian politician and writer, who was the fourth President of Iran. He was a member of the Assembly of Experts until his resignation in 2011...
who won the 2006 election for Assembly of Experts
Assembly of Experts
The Assembly of Experts of Iran , also translated as Council of Experts, is a deliberative body of 86 Mujtahids that is charged with electing and removing the Supreme Leader of Iran and supervising his activities.Members of the assembly are elected from a government-screened list of candidates by...
, clearly rejected this idea and emphasized on the fact that the leader and the cleric members of the Assembly of Experts may make wrong decisions and the legitimacy of the leader comes from the people not the God.
Beyond these theoretical debates, elements of the "Islamic Administration" are (in practice) slowly replacing those of the "Islamic Republic".
Exporting Islamic Revolution and Islamist diplomacy
Upon establishment of Islamic RepublicIslamic republic
Islamic republic is the name given to several states in the Muslim world including the Islamic Republics of Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, and Mauritania. Pakistan adopted the title under the constitution of 1956. Mauritania adopted it on 28 November 1958. Iran adopted it after the 1979 Iranian...
, the two factions (conservatives and radicals) differed on foreign policy and cultural issues. The radicals (neo-cons) adamantly opposed any rapprochement with the United States and, to a lesser extent, other Western countries, while seeking to expand Iran’s relations with the socialist bloc
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
countries. They advocated active support for Islamic and liberation movements, so called "export of the revolution," throughout the world. The conservatives favored a more cautious approach to foreign policy, with the ultimate aim of normalizing Iran’s economic relations with the rest of the world, so long as the West’s political and cultural influence on the country could be curbed.
According to Iranian scholar Ehsan Naraghi
Ehsan Naraghi
Ehsān Narāghi, PhD is an Iranian sociologist and writer.-Biography:During his high school he went to Dar ol-Fonoon in Tehran. Then he studied sociology in the University of Geneva and received his Ph.D at Sorbonne University in Paris....
, anti-Western attitude among Iranian Islamists has its root in Marxism and Communism rather than Iranian Islam. Iran and the West had good relations with mutual respect after the Safavid era. However with the emergence of Communism in Iran, anti-Western attitudes were taken up by some extremists. As Naraqi states, anti-Western attitude in other parts of the Muslim world has a different root than the one in Iran.
After the end of the Iran–Iraq War in 1988 and the death of Ayatollah Khomeini, pragmatists (under the leadership of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani
Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani
Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is an influential Iranian politician and writer, who was the fourth President of Iran. He was a member of the Assembly of Experts until his resignation in 2011...
) sought to normalize Iran’s relations with other countries, particularly those in the region, by playing down the once-popular adventurist fantasy of "exporting the Islamic revolution" to other Muslim lands. After the victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the 2005 elections and the defeat of pragmatists/reformists (under the leadership of Mohammad Khatami
Mohammad Khatami
Sayyid Mohammad Khātamī is an Iranian scholar, philosopher, Shiite theologian and Reformist politician. He served as the fifth President of Iran from August 2, 1997 to August 3, 2005. He also served as Iran's Minister of Culture in both the 1980s and 1990s...
), the Neoconservatives who gained full control of both parliament and government for the first time since the Iranian Revolution again recalled the idea of exporting the revolution after years of silence.
Since the Iranian Revolution
Iranian Revolution
The Iranian Revolution refers to events involving the overthrow of Iran's monarchy under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and its replacement with an Islamic republic under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the...
, the new Islamic Republic of Iran has pursued an Islamic ideological foreign policy that has included creation of Hezbollah, subsidies to Hamas
Hamas
Hamas is the Palestinian Sunni Islamic or Islamist political party that governs the Gaza Strip. Hamas also has a military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades...
, opposition to Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
and Zionist leaders, and aid to Iraq's Shiite political parties. Hamas leaders verified in 2008 that since Israel pulled out of the Gaza strip
Gaza Strip
thumb|Gaza city skylineThe Gaza Strip lies on the Eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. The Strip borders Egypt on the southwest and Israel on the south, east and north. It is about long, and between 6 and 12 kilometres wide, with a total area of...
in 2005 they have sent their fighters to Iran to train in field tactics and weapons technology. In an interview in 2007, Hezbollah Deputy Secretary-General Naim Kassem told the Iranian Arabic-language TV station al-Qawthar that all military actions in Lebanon must be approved by the authorities in Tehran; in 2008 Iran issued a stamp commemorating a recently-killed Hezbollah leader.
Realism (international relations)
In the study of international relations, Realism or political realism prioritizes national interest and security over ideology, moral concerns and social reconstructions...
are diplomatically incompatible. It is believed that the most evident characteristic of diplomacy is flexibility. The reason Iran’s diplomacy has encountered many shortcomings and lost numerous opportunities provided by international or regional political developments is the country’s focus on fundamental values and neglect of national interests. Fundamentalism is always accompanied with idealism
Idealism
In philosophy, idealism is the family of views which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Epistemologically, idealism manifests as a skepticism about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing...
while diplomacy always emphasizes realities. Therefore, the model of realistic fundamentalism will not work in the diplomatic arena.
Muslim thinkers in the world generally believe in a sort of "religious internationalism
Internationalism (politics)
Internationalism is a political movement which advocates a greater economic and political cooperation among nations for the theoretical benefit of all...
." Even religious modernists in Iran have still some inclinations towards religious internationalism, and the concept of nation-state
Nation-state
The nation state is a state that self-identifies as deriving its political legitimacy from serving as a sovereign entity for a nation as a sovereign territorial unit. The state is a political and geopolitical entity; the nation is a cultural and/or ethnic entity...
is not firmly established in their mind. These kinds of beliefs are mainly rooted in traditional thinking rather than postmodernism
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
. There are however some religious intellectuals like Ahmad Zeidabadi
Ahmad Zeidabadi
Ahmad Zeidabadi is an Iranian journalist, academic, writer and political analyst and the secretary general of Office for Strengthening Unity. He is one of the notable figures of the Iranian reform movement....
who are against religious internationalism.
Meanwhile, Western countries have adopted various different strategies with respect to fundamentalists. The attitudes of these countries have been mainly driven by geopolitics and the oil market rather than religious extremism itself. According to Graham Fuller of the RAND Corporation and a former Vice-Chairman of the National Intelligence Council at CIA, "United States had no problem with Islam or even Islamic fundamentalism as such. [...] one of the closest American allies in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, is a fundamentalist state."
Also Maryam Rajavi
Maryam Rajavi
Maryam Rajavi is an Iranian politician who is President elect of National Council of Resistance of Iran, a front group for People's Mujahedin of Iran, since 1993. She is the wife of Massoud Rajavi, a founder of the People's Mujahedin of Iran...
, the leader of an Islamist-Marxist group, has been invited several times by EU parliament members to address the assembly. In 2004 Alejo Vidal Quadras, European Parliament
European Parliament
The European Parliament is the directly elected parliamentary institution of the European Union . Together with the Council of the European Union and the Commission, it exercises the legislative function of the EU and it has been described as one of the most powerful legislatures in the world...
’s first Vice President, met Maryam Rajavi whose group is listed as a terrorist group by EU and USA.
Mehdi Noorbaksh, a professor at the Center for International Studies, University of St. Thomas in Texas, believes that the perceived threat of Islamic fundamentalism to world peace and security is based on politically and ideologically motivated misinterpretation of the reformist nature of Islamic revival. The portrayal of Iran as a radical Islamic terrorist state by the US has strengthened the extremists and weakened democratic, reformists groups in Iran. According to Professor Noorbaksh, "The spread of democracy and the introduction of socio-political reforms in the Middle East, especially in Iran, will undermine US domination over the region."
Seminary-University conflicts
One of the main clarion calls raised within the geography of events known as the Cultural Revolution was the call for seminary-university unity. The original idea was a reconciliation between science and religion. In other words the meaning of seminary-university unity was a resolution of the historical battle between science and religion. Resolving this battle is a scholarly endeavour, not a political and practical one. However after the revolution, since clerics came to rule over the country, the idea of seminary-university unity, which meant understanding between seminary teachers and academics, gradually turned into submission by academics to clerics and seminary teachers, and it lost its logical and scholarly meaning and took on a political and practical sense. Appointment of Abbasali Amid ZanjaniAbbasali Amid Zanjani
Ayatollah Abbasali Amid Zanjani was an Iranian politician and cleric. He was the only cleric president of University of Tehran, served from 2005 to 2008. -Early life:...
as the only cleric president of University of Tehran
University of Tehran
The University of Tehran , also known as Tehran University and UT, is Iran's oldest university. Located in Tehran, the university is among the most prestigious in the country, and is consistently selected as the first choice of many applicants in the annual nationwide entrance exam for top Iranian...
in 27 December 2005 can be understood in the same line. Tehran University is the symbol of higher education in Iran. Abbasali Amid Zanjani hold no academic degree and was appointed by Mohammad Mehdi Zahedi
Mohammad Mehdi Zahedi
Mohammad Mehdi Zahedi is an Iranian politician and was the former minister of science and technology in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's first cabinet from 2005 to 2009. He was approved by Iran's parliament with the least number of supporting votes possible....
, the minister of Science, Research, and Technology in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's cabinet.
There was a journal in 1980s, by the name of "University of Revolution" which used to include some material written by neofundamentalists. They wrote many articles to prove that science is not wild and without a homeland, that it is not the case that it recognises no geography, and that it is therefore possible for us to create "Islamic sciences."
In 2007, Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi, a well-known cleric, attacked the University people calling them the most indecent people. In April 2008, four leading clerics namely Abdollah Javadi Amoli, Ebrahim Amini , Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi and Mohammed Emami-Kashani
Mohammed Emami-Kashani
Ayatollah Mohammed Emami-Kashani is a member of the Assembly of Experts of the Islamic Republic of Iran. He has been the Interim Friday Prayer Leader of Tehran....
criticized Iranian Universities, University students and Iranian Higher education system as being secular, non-Islamic, indecent and cheap.
Islamist art and literature
Masoud Dehnamaki
Masoud Dehnamaki is a conservative Iranian activist and one of the founders of Ansar-e Hezbollah. Dehnamaki was also involved in journalist and film making. For decades he has been considered as one of the most extremist members of the ultra-conservative circles.-Early life:Massoud Dehnamaki took...
. Dehnamaki, a famous neo-principle-ist, made his first documentary film "Poverty and Prostitution" in 2002. His next documentary was "Which Blue, Which Red," a film about the rivalry between the Iranian capital’s two football teams, Esteqlal and Persepolis, and their fans. He is now making his debut feature-length film "The Outcasts".
Iranian journalist turned documentary filmmaker Masud Dehnamaki was formerly the managing director and chief editor of the weeklies "Shalamcheh" and "Jebheh," which were closed by Tehran’s conservative Press Court. These journals were among the main neo-principle-ist publications. The rightist newsweekly "Shalamcheh" under the editorship of Masoud Dehnamaki, one of the strongest opponents of President Khatami and his
policies, has been closed down by the press supervisory board of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, presumably for insulting or criticizing the late Grand Ayatollah Kho'i, who had called the "velayat-e faqih" position unislamic, prior to his passing away.
Perhaps the most influential neo-conservative newspaper during the 1990s and 2000s was Kayhan
Kayhan
Kayhan is an influential newspaper in Iran. Directly under the supervision of the Office of the Supreme Leader, it is regarded to be "the most conservative Iranian newspaper."...
daily. Hossein Shariatmadari
Hossein Shariatmadari
Hossein Shariatmadari is the managing editor of Kayhan, a conservative Iranian newspaper.Before the Iranian Revolution in 1979, Shariatmadari was allegedly tortured by Iranian Shah's Police or SAVAK .Hossein Shariatmadari is the managing editor of Kayhan, a conservative Iranian newspaper.Before the...
and Hossein Saffar Harandi (who later became a Minister of Culture) were the main editor and responsible chief of the newspaper. In 2006, the British ambassador to Tehran met Hossein Shariatmadari and acknowledged the role of Kayhan in Iran and the region.
To promote art and literature, Islamic Development Organization was founded by Ayatollah Khomeini. In 1991, Ali Khamenei revised the organization's structure and plans. The plan is to promote religious and moral ideas through art and literature. According to the Minister of Culture, Hossein Saffar Harandi, the funds for Qur'an
Qur'an
The Quran , also transliterated Qur'an, Koran, Alcoran, Qur’ān, Coran, Kuran, and al-Qur’ān, is the central religious text of Islam, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God . It is regarded widely as the finest piece of literature in the Arabic language...
ic activities would increase by fourfold in the year 2007. "All of the ninth governments' cultural and artistic activities should conform to the Holy Book," he declared.
While promoting their own art and literature, principle-ists are against the development of art and literature that has no "valuable content." In late 1996, following a fatwa
Fatwa
A fatwā in the Islamic faith is a juristic ruling concerning Islamic law issued by an Islamic scholar. In Sunni Islam any fatwā is non-binding, whereas in Shia Islam it could be considered by an individual as binding, depending on his or her relation to the scholar. The person who issues a fatwā...
by Ali Khamenei
Ali Khamenei
Ayatollah Seyed Ali Hoseyni Khāmene’i is the Supreme Leader of Iran and the figurative head of the Muslim conservative establishment in Iran and Twelver Shi'a marja...
stating that music education corrupts the minds of young children, many music schools were closed and music instruction to children under the age of 16 was banned by public establishments (although private instruction continued).
Khamenei and his followers believe that "Nihilism
Nihilism
Nihilism is the philosophical doctrine suggesting the negation of one or more putatively meaningful aspects of life. Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value...
and Beatle-ism" have ravaged Western youth. According to the renowned novelist and the first president of Iranian Association of Writers after the revolution, Simin Daneshvar
Simin Daneshvar
Simin Dāneshvar is an Iranian academic, novelist, fiction writer and translator of literary works from English, German, Italian and Russian into Persian. Daneshvar has a number of firsts to her credit. In 1948, her collection of Persian short stories was the first by an Iranian woman to be...
, Islamic Republic has been generally hostile toward Iranian writers and intellectuals. This is contrary to the attitude of the Pahlavi regime, Daneshvar added in an interview with Etemaad Daily in 2007.
In 2007, Javad Shamghadri, artistic advisor to president Ahmadinejad, publicly stated that: "Like many other countries in the world, Iran too can get along without a film industry." "Only 20 percent of people go to the cinema, and their needs can be provided through the national radio and television network," he added.
Islamic-neoclassical economy
In the early times of 1979 revolution Ayatollah Khomeini declared that what mattered was Islam and not the economy. In one of his comments, he dismissed the concerns of his first prime minister, Mehdi BazarganMehdi Bazargan
Mehdi Bazargan was a prominent Iranian scholar, academic, long-time pro-democracy activist and head of Iran's interim government, making him Iran's first prime minister after the Iranian Revolution of 1979. He was the head of the first engineering department of Tehran University...
, about the economy by simply noting that "Economics is for donkeys!" However Khomeini in many occasions advised his followers about justice and giving priority to the rights of the deprived and the oppressed members of the community.
Market system
A market system is any systematic process enabling many market players to bid and ask: helping bidders and sellers interact and make deals. It is not just the price mechanism but the entire system of regulation, qualification, credentials, reputations and clearing that surrounds that mechanism and...
and neoclassical economics
Neoclassical economics
Neoclassical economics is a term variously used for approaches to economics focusing on the determination of prices, outputs, and income distributions in markets through supply and demand, often mediated through a hypothesized maximization of utility by income-constrained individuals and of profits...
. They emphasize economic growth against social equity and declare the quest for profit
Profit (economics)
In economics, the term profit has two related but distinct meanings. Normal profit represents the total opportunity costs of a venture to an entrepreneur or investor, whilst economic profit In economics, the term profit has two related but distinct meanings. Normal profit represents the total...
as a legitimate Islamic motive. According to ALQRS, attaining "maximum welfare" in a neoclassical sense is the aim of an Islamic economic system. However, the system must establish the limits of individual rights. In accordance with this ideological-methodological manifesto of the ALQRS, in February 1984, the council for cultural revolution proposed a national curriculum for economics for all Iranian Universities.
The concept of "Islamic economics" appeared as a rainbow on the revolutionary horizon and disappeared soon after the revolutionary heat dissipated (the end of 1980s and after the death of Ayatollah Khomeini). It disappeared from Iranian political discourse for fifteen years. In the June 2005 presidential elections, neither the populist-fundamentalist
winning candidate, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, nor any of his reformist or conservative opponents said a word about Islamic economy. However, after the establishment of Ahmadinejad's government, his neoconservative team opened the closed file of Islamic economy. For instance, Vice-President Parviz Davoudi said in 2006:
- "On the economic field, we are dutybound to implement an Islamic economy and not a capitalistic economy. [...] It is a false image to think that we will make equations and attitudes based on those in a capitalistic system".
Factional conflict dominated Iranian economic politics under the Ayatollah Khomeini from 1979 to 1989. The two principal factions were a statist-reformist group that favored state control of the economy and a conservative group that favored the private sector. Both factions claimed Khomeini's support, but by 1987, he clearly had sided with the statist-reformists because he believed state capitalism to be the best way of heading off any threat to Islam. Khomeini's death on 3 Jun 1989 left the factions without their source of legitimation.
Iranian identity versus religious identity
Since the establishment of Islamic RepublicIslamic republic
Islamic republic is the name given to several states in the Muslim world including the Islamic Republics of Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, and Mauritania. Pakistan adopted the title under the constitution of 1956. Mauritania adopted it on 28 November 1958. Iran adopted it after the 1979 Iranian...
, principle-ists have initiated the policy of de-Iranianization of the Iran, by replacing the notion of Iranian Identity and Nationality with Moslem Identity, both inside and outside Iran. Ayatollah Khomeini has emphasized this goal in several of his speeches, for example, on Dec 1980 (as published in Kayhan
Kayhan
Kayhan is an influential newspaper in Iran. Directly under the supervision of the Office of the Supreme Leader, it is regarded to be "the most conservative Iranian newspaper."...
):
- "Those who say that we want nationality, they are standing against Islam....We have no use for the nationalists. Moslems are useful for us. Islam is against nationality...."
- "These issues that exist among people that we are Iranian and what we need to do for Iran are not correct; these issues are not correct. This issue, which is perhaps being discussed everywhere, regarding paying attention to nation and nationality is nonsense in Islam and is against Islam. One of the things that the designers of Imperialism and their agents have promoted is the idea of nation and nationality."
Mehdi Bazargan
Mehdi Bazargan
Mehdi Bazargan was a prominent Iranian scholar, academic, long-time pro-democracy activist and head of Iran's interim government, making him Iran's first prime minister after the Iranian Revolution of 1979. He was the head of the first engineering department of Tehran University...
, the first Prime minister of Islamic Republic, once said: "Imam [Khomeini] wants Iran for Islam and we want Islam for Iran." Due to the commitment to Pan-Islamism inherent in Iranian Islamic revolutionary ideology, the Islamic Republic's attitude toward Sunni Islam is positive.
At the beginning of the Islamic Revolution, one of the most-notorious clerics in Iran, Sadeq Khalkhali known as the hanging judge, who was renowned for his brutality and mass executions in post-revolutionary Iran, tried to destroy 2500-year-old Persepolis
Persepolis
Perspolis was the ceremonial capital of the Achaemenid Empire . Persepolis is situated northeast of the modern city of Shiraz in the Fars Province of modern Iran. In contemporary Persian, the site is known as Takht-e Jamshid...
, and after that the mausoleum of Ferdowsi
Ferdowsi
Ferdowsi was a highly revered Persian poet. He was the author of the Shahnameh, the national epic of Iran and related societies.The Shahnameh was originally composed by Ferdowsi for the princes of the Samanid dynasty, who were responsible for a revival of Persian cultural traditions after the...
. He was stopped by the efforts of the locals.
Iranian government in several occasions constructed dams and rail roads in the vicinity of ancient archeological sites that date back to pre-Islamic era. In January 2007, the Minister of Energy, Parviz Fattah
Parviz Fattah
Parviz Fattah is an Iranian politician, former member of Revolutionary Guard and former Iran's Minister of Energy in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's cabinet -Biography:...
directly ordered the opening of the Sivand Dam. Referring to the critics, he said: "I will make a museum next to the dam with my own money!" Sivand dam project has been one of the most condemned projects in post-revolution Iran due to its potential to destroy Iranian archaeological sites. Some Iranians are furious about the construction of the dam and argue that there is no objective in the world worthy to justify the construction of a dam, so close to Pasargadae. Hossein Marashi
Hossein Marashi
Seyyed Hossein Marashi is an Iranian politician who was the Iranian Vice President for Cultural Heritage and Tourism. Prior to that, Marashi represented Kerman in the Iranian parliament. He strongly backed opposition candidate Mousavi in the 2009 Iranian election...
, the Iranian Vice President for Cultural Heritage and Tourism said: "We can not sacrifice the dam for cultural and historical sites." Sivand Dam
Sivand Dam
Sivand Dam is a planned dam in Fars Province, Iran. Named after the nearby town of Sivand located northwest of Shiraz, it has become the center of worldwide concern due to the flooding it will cause in historical and archaeologically rich areas of Ancient Persia and possible harm it may cause to...
became operational in 2007. Ahmadinejad's government, however, refused to buy the detectors needed for monitoring humidity of the Pasargadae. Also "Karun-3 dam
Karun-3 dam
The Karun-3 dam is a hydroelectric dam on the Karun river in the province of Khuzestan, Iran. It was built to help meet Iran's energy demands as well as to provide flood control. The Karun has the highest discharge of Iran's rivers....
" was constructed during Rafsanjani's presidency which led to destruction of ancient archeological site in Izeh
Izeh
Izeh is a city in and the capital of Izeh County, Khuzestan Province, Iran. At the 2006 census, its population was 103,695, in 20,127 families....
.
Defaming Cyrus the Great
Cyrus the Great
Cyrus II of Persia , commonly known as Cyrus the Great, also known as Cyrus the Elder, was the founder of the Achaemenid Empire. Under his rule, the empire embraced all the previous civilized states of the ancient Near East, expanded vastly and eventually conquered most of Southwest Asia and much...
, Islamist negationist Sadeq Khalkhali wrote an article entitled "Kourosh-e Doroughin" (Impostor Cyrus) shortly after the revolution. In 2001, Nasser Pourpirar wrote two books entitled "Twelve centuries of silence" and "A bridge to past", claiming that the Sassanid empire
Sassanid Empire
The Sassanid Empire , known to its inhabitants as Ērānshahr and Ērān in Middle Persian and resulting in the New Persian terms Iranshahr and Iran , was the last pre-Islamic Persian Empire, ruled by the Sasanian Dynasty from 224 to 651...
and Parthian Empire
Parthian Empire
The Parthian Empire , also known as the Arsacid Empire , was a major Iranian political and cultural power in ancient Persia...
s never existed, and are the fabrications of Jewish and American orientalists.
Abbas Salimi Namin attributed Persepolis
Persepolis
Perspolis was the ceremonial capital of the Achaemenid Empire . Persepolis is situated northeast of the modern city of Shiraz in the Fars Province of modern Iran. In contemporary Persian, the site is known as Takht-e Jamshid...
to Russian
Russians
The Russian people are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Russia, speaking the Russian language and primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....
civilization. Islamist negationists Abbas Salimi Namin and Purpirar were coworkers for the hardline "Kayhan Havaei" (a weekly review of the daily Keyhan in English) after the revolution. Namin, a computer engineer and former member of Haghani circle
Haghani Circle
Haghani school is a Shi'i school of thought in Iran by a group of hardliner right-wing clerics based in the holy city of Qom and headed by Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi, an influential theologian. The Haghani Circle has its origin in the Haghani seminary, founded in 1964, which previously...
is a close ally of Ali Khamenei
Ali Khamenei
Ayatollah Seyed Ali Hoseyni Khāmene’i is the Supreme Leader of Iran and the figurative head of the Muslim conservative establishment in Iran and Twelver Shi'a marja...
, the leader of the Islamic Republic. Ignored by Iranian scholars, such figures managed to enter and influence traditional clerical circles and the policy makers of the Islamic Republic. Interestingly several of these Islamist negationists were formerly associated with Marxist groups before acting as agents of Islamic Republic.
Ruling clerics sought to stamp out many traditions, like Nowruz
Nowruz
Nowrūz is the name of the Iranian New Year in Iranian calendars and the corresponding traditional celebrations. Nowruz is also widely referred to as the Persian New Year....
, a celebration with some Zoroastrian links that stretches back thousands of years to the pre-Islamic era, to mark the arrival of spring. The celebration is considered by many here the most Iranian of holidays.
Several proposals have been made by conservatists to replace or shorten Norouz celebrations but rejected because of public protests. Ayatollah Khazali, a member of the powerful Guardians Council and the Experts Assembly for Leadership, has proposed that the celebration of Ghadir (Shiites commemorate these festivities as the day prophet Mohammad is recorded to have named disciple Ali to be his successor) should replace the traditional Iranian celebration of Norouz.
Ali Khamenei in many occasions attacked the Iranian fire festival Chahar Shanbeh Suri and also called for shortening Norouz
Norouz
Nowrūz is the name of the Iranian New Year in Iranian calendars and the corresponding traditional celebrations. Nowruz is also widely referred to as the Persian New Year....
, claiming that the holidays are seriously damaging Iranian economy. Following an order by Ali Khamenei the fire festival has been banned by the regime since it is of Zoroastrian origins and is not Islamic. However, due to internal opposition, the government had to step back.
Arabic vs Persian
The most detailed and explicit statement about Arabic was made by Akbar Hashemi RafsanjaniAkbar Hashemi Rafsanjani
Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is an influential Iranian politician and writer, who was the fourth President of Iran. He was a member of the Assembly of Experts until his resignation in 2011...
in 1981 in an important Sermon linking the fate of Persian language directly to that of Persian nationality: "both shall vanish as soon as Islamic unity is attained".
The tradition of banning names dates to the beginning of the Islamic Revolution in the early 1980s, when Iran's conservative leaders sought to purge the country of both Western culture and its own Persian, pre-Islamic past. Fundamentalists consider it unfortunate that Iranians used to be Zoroastrians, or that the ancient Persian empire achieved its greatest triumphs before Islam's arrival. To that end, they compiled a long list of forbidden names that included Zoroastrians gods and goddesses, commanders of ancient Persian armies, and other such tainted, best-forgotten figures. Indeed, Arab
Arab
Arab people, also known as Arabs , are a panethnicity primarily living in the Arab world, which is located in Western Asia and North Africa. They are identified as such on one or more of genealogical, linguistic, or cultural grounds, with tribal affiliations, and intra-tribal relationships playing...
ic names, except for a handful of Sunni villains, were fine. Persian ones, despite originating from the language actually spoken in Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
, had to be checked against the official list. Along the way, other politically inconvenient realities were fought on the baby name terrain. Wishing to quell an uprising by ethnically Kurd
Kürd
Kürd or Kyurd or Kyurt may refer to:*Kürd Eldarbəyli, Azerbaijan*Kürd Mahrızlı, Azerbaijan*Kürd, Goychay, Azerbaijan*Kürd, Jalilabad, Azerbaijan*Kürd, Qabala, Azerbaijan*Qurdbayram, Azerbaijan...
ish Iranians in the north, the government banned Kurd
Kürd
Kürd or Kyurd or Kyurt may refer to:*Kürd Eldarbəyli, Azerbaijan*Kürd Mahrızlı, Azerbaijan*Kürd, Goychay, Azerbaijan*Kürd, Jalilabad, Azerbaijan*Kürd, Qabala, Azerbaijan*Qurdbayram, Azerbaijan...
ish names. Street names had changed from old Persian names to Arab
Arab
Arab people, also known as Arabs , are a panethnicity primarily living in the Arab world, which is located in Western Asia and North Africa. They are identified as such on one or more of genealogical, linguistic, or cultural grounds, with tribal affiliations, and intra-tribal relationships playing...
ic and Muslim names .This whole shift of the Iranian identity toward a more Islamic one created a kind of crisis.
Iranian society on the other hand, identify itself as Iranian. In Iran-Iraq war
Iran-Iraq War
The Iran–Iraq War was an armed conflict between the armed forces of Iraq and Iran, lasting from September 1980 to August 1988, making it the longest conventional war of the twentieth century...
for example, all Iranians irrespective of their religions and ethnic groups defended the country. Abdolkarim Soroush
Abdolkarim Soroush
Abdolkarim Soroush , born Hosein Haj Faraj Dabbagh , is an Iranian thinker, reformer, Rumi scholar and a former professor at the University of Tehran. He is arguably the most influential figure in religious intellectual movement in Iran. Professor Soroush is currently a visiting scholar at the...
, foremost Iranian religious intellectual, once suggested to adapt the religion to Iranian culture by organizing Ashura and other Islamic festivals according to Iranian calendar
Iranian calendar
The Iranian calendars or sometimes called Persian calendars are a succession of calendars invented or used for over two millennia in Greater Iran...
instead of Islamic calendar
Islamic calendar
The Hijri calendar , also known as the Muslim calendar or Islamic calendar , is a lunar calendar consisting of 12 lunar months in a year of 354 or 355 days. It is used to date events in many Muslim countries , and used by Muslims everywhere to determine the proper day on which to celebrate Islamic...
to avoid conflicts between Iranian identity and religion.
Principle-ists and Women issues
Delaram Ali
Delaram Ali is a leading Iranian women's rights activist.In July 2007, she was charged with "participation in an illegal gathering", "propaganda against the system," and "disturbing the public order". Iran's Revolutionary Court sentenced her to 39 months of jail and 10 lashes...
was sentenced to 34 months of jail and 10 lashes by Iran's judiciary. Iranian judiciary works under the responsibility of the Supreme Leader and is independent from the government.
Principle-ists in Iran forced Islamic dress on Iranian women soon after the revolution of 1979. Since then Iranian police, governed under the responsibility of the Supreme Leader, have continuously attacked women who do not adhere to the dress code. Fighting such women is considered "fighting morally corrupt people" by principle-ists. In 2007 a national crackdown was launched by the police in which thousands of women were warned and hundred were arrested. Violators of the dress code can be given lashes, fines and imprisonment. Sae'ed Mortazavi, Tehran's public prosecutor, made this clear when he told the Etemad newspaper: "These women who appear in public like decadent models endanger the security and dignity of young men". Mohammad Taqi Rahbar, a fundamentalist MP, agreed, saying, "Men see models in the streets and ignore their own wives at home. This weakens the pillars of family."
In October 2002, Ali Khamenei asked the Iranian women to avoid feminism and sexism
Sexism
Sexism, also known as gender discrimination or sex discrimination, is the application of the belief or attitude that there are characteristics implicit to one's gender that indirectly affect one's abilities in unrelated areas...
in their campaigns for better female rights. "In the process of raising women's issues and solving their problems, feminist inclinations and sexism should be avoided," he told a group of female parliamentarians.
Like many other Grand Ayatollahs, Ali Khamenei believes that women should be wives and mothers. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has publicly stated: "The real value of a woman is measured by how much she makes the family environment for her husband and children like a paradise." In July 1997 Khamenei said that the idea of women’s equal participation in society was "negative, primitive and childish."
Fundamentalist scholars justify the different religious laws for men and women by referring to the biological and sociological differences between men and women. For example, regarding the inheritance law which states that women’s share of inheritance is half that of men, Ayatollah Makarim Shirazi quotes the Imam Ali ibn Musa Al-reza who reasons that at the time of marriage man has to pay something to woman and woman receives something, and that men are responsible for both their wives' and their own expenses but women have no responsibility thereof. Women, however, make up 27% of the Iranian labor force, and the percentage of all Iranian women who are economically active has more than doubled from 6.1% in 1986 to 13.7% in 2000.
In terms of health, life expectancy went up by eleven years between 1980 and 2000 for both Iranian men and women. With respect to family planning, "levels of childbearing have declined faster than in any other country," going from 5.6 births per woman in 1985 to 2.0 in 2000, a drop accomplished by a voluntary, but government-sponsored, birth control program. The fact that these changes have occurred within an Islamic legal regime suggests that formal legal status may not be a key factor determining women’s well-being.
Women in Iran are only allowed to sing in chorus. Also women are not allowed to attend Sport stadiums. In 2006 Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, surprisingly, ordered the vice president to allocate half of the Azadi Soccer Stadium to women. Six Grand Ayatollahs and several MPs protested against Mr. Ahmadinejad's move, and finally the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei ordered the president to reconsider his order and follow the clergy.
Tolerance and Civil rights
Dividing Iranians into Insider and Outsider was first introduced by Ali Khamenei. "Kayhan", which is governed by Ali Khamenei, editorialized on 5 August 1999 that an Insider is "someone whose heart beats for Islam, the revolution and the Imam," while Outsiders are those who have "separated their path from the line of the Imam, the system, and the people who, by relying on citizens' rights, want to introduce themselves as equal partners."
Irreligious people in Islamic Republic of Iran are not recognized as citizens and do not enjoy any civil rights. While Jews, Christians and other minorities have the right to take part in University entrance exams and can become members of parliament or city councils, irreligious people are not granted even their basic rights. Most irreligious people, however, hide their beliefs and pretend to be Muslims. Non-believers – atheists under Islam – do not have "the right to life." Non believers such as those supporting communist ideologies have been executed purely for being non-believers. The charge against them has been made as "corrupters on earth." In an attempt to disguise the Islamic attitude to apostasy, some Muslims often quote the Koranic verse: "There shall be no compulsion in religion." For a Muslim wishing to leave Islam in Iran this is simply not true and is punishable by death. "Any newspaper or writer wanting to renounce the fundamental principles of Islam or questioning the vengeance law is an apostate and liable to the death penalty," Ali Khamenei told a gathering of several thousand troops in the northeastern town of Mashhad
Mashhad
Mashhad , is the second largest city in Iran and one of the holiest cities in the Shia Muslim world. It is also the only major Iranian city with an Arabic name. It is located east of Tehran, at the center of the Razavi Khorasan Province close to the borders of Afghanistan and Turkmenistan. Its...
.
In one occasion, Persian daily "Neshat" published an article which called for abolishing the death penalty, claiming that the capital punishment is no cure for maladies afflicting modern society. In reaction to this article, conservative "Tehran Times Daily" stressed that writers of such articles must remember that the Iranian Muslim nation will not only never tolerate such follies but that the apostates will be given no opportunity to subvert the religion. Neshat's article drew severe criticism from the theologians and clerics, particularly the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, who in clear words warned that apostate journalists will be liable to the death penalty, noted the article in the opinion column of the paper adding that the judiciary also promptly warned against any acts or words that undermine the pillars of the Islamic revolution.
In 2002, Ansar e Hezbollah, a hard-line group best known for disrupting reformist gatherings and beating up students, declared a "holy war" to rid Iran of reformers who promote Western democracy and challenge the country's Supreme Leader. Masoud Dehnamaki
Masoud Dehnamaki
Masoud Dehnamaki is a conservative Iranian activist and one of the founders of Ansar-e Hezbollah. Dehnamaki was also involved in journalist and film making. For decades he has been considered as one of the most extremist members of the ultra-conservative circles.-Early life:Massoud Dehnamaki took...
, an ideologue with the group, also said that Iranians who try to appease Iran's enemies such as the United States "should be stopped."
During Mohammd Khatami's presidency, minister Ataollah Mohajerani launched a tolerance policy ("Tasahol va Tasamoh"). This policy was criticized harshly by conservatives and ended in resignation of the minister.
while some conservatives like Emad Afrough support the idea of Civil society, some like Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi are opposed to the idea of civil rights
Civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...
for citizens. Emad Afrough stated: "If we do not actively seek cultural change, our national and ethnic cultures get destroyed. We must consciously choose to answer the questions confronting us. Today's question is civil society ... I believe we can easily reconstruct civil society here (in Iran) based on our own values and cultural characteristics. Civil society is a necessity, and the growing complexity of society requires it. Our historical past also supports it. In reality, in Iran, as in elsewhere in the Middle East, the only obstacle to civil society is the state." Mesbah Yazdi, however, stated: "It doesn’t matter what the people think. The people are ignorant sheep."
In February 2004 Parliament elections, the Council of Guardians, a council of twelve members, half of whom are appointed by Ali Khamenei, disqualified thousands of candidates, including many of the reformist members of the parliament and all the candidates of the Islamic Iran Participation Front
Islamic Iran Participation Front
The Islamic Iran Participation Front is a reformist political party in Iran...
party from running. It did not allow 80 members of the 6th Iranian parliament (including the deputy speaker) to run in the election. Apart from Ali Khamenei, many conservative theorists as Emad Afrough supported the decision of Guardian council and accused the reformist parliament members of "being liberal, secular and with no Iranian identity". Referring to 7th parliament members, Ali Meshkini
Ali Meshkini
Ayatollah Ali Akbar Feyz Meshkini was an Iranian hardline cleric and politician.-Life:Meshkini was an Iranian Azerbaijani born in a village near Meshkinshahr and the Sabalan mountain. He was born as Āli, but preferred the pronounciaton, Ali during his career. He succeeded Ayatollah Montazeri as...
said that the list of candidates had signed by Imam Mahdi: "...I have a special gratitude for Honorable Baqiyatullah (aj), whom when seven months ago during the Night of Power the Divine angels presented him with the list of the names and addresses of the members of the (new) parliament, His Eminency signed all of them...".
Hossein Noori Hamedani
Grand Ayatollah Hosein Nuri-Hamadani is an Iranian Twelver Shi'a Marja. Nuri-Hamadani has been called a "hard-line cleric," who has expressed his strong disapproval of Sufis and dervishes, Jews, the intellectual Abdolkarim Soroush and the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of...
advocates fighting the Jews in order to prepare the ground and to hasten the advent of the Hidden Imam, the Messiah according to Shiite belief.
In 2007, Ali Khamenei
Ali Khamenei
Ayatollah Seyed Ali Hoseyni Khāmene’i is the Supreme Leader of Iran and the figurative head of the Muslim conservative establishment in Iran and Twelver Shi'a marja...
claimed that "Today, homosexuality is a major problem in the western world. They [Western nations] however ignore it. But the reality is that homosexuality has become a serious challenge, pain and unsolvable problem for the intellectuals in the west." Khamenei, however did not mention any names of western intellectuals.
While Iran has been quick to condemn attacks on Shia mosques and Shia holy places all over the world, it has been intolerant toward other religions. For instance in 2006, authorities in the city of Qom
Qom
Qom is a city in Iran. It lies by road southwest of Tehran and is the capital of Qom Province. At the 2006 census, its population was 957,496, in 241,827 families. It is situated on the banks of the Qom River....
arrested more than 1,000 followers of the mystical Sufi tradition of Islam. Iran's hard-line daily "Kayhan" on 14 February 2006 quoted senior clerics in Qom as saying that Sufism should be eradicated in the city, while the Reuters news agency reported that in September one of Iran's hard-line clerics, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Noori Hamedani
Hossein Noori Hamedani
Grand Ayatollah Hosein Nuri-Hamadani is an Iranian Twelver Shi'a Marja. Nuri-Hamadani has been called a "hard-line cleric," who has expressed his strong disapproval of Sufis and dervishes, Jews, the intellectual Abdolkarim Soroush and the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of...
, called for a clampdown on Sufis in Qom. In 2006, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad launched a plan to suppress what he called "indecent religious associations that work under the cover of spirituality and Sufism". Morteza Agha-Tehrani
Morteza Agha-Tehrani
Morteza Agha-Tehrani is a hardline Iranian shia cleric and politician who is widely seen as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's moral advisor and the ethics mentor of his cabinet. He has been selected as a member of Iranian Parliament representing Tehran in 2008 legislative election...
, one of the closest disciples of Mesbah-Yazdi and moral advisor to President Ahmadinejad was the leader of a raid on Sufi mosques in Qom.
Iran does not allow a single Sunni mosque to be built in Tehran
Tehran
Tehran , sometimes spelled Teheran, is the capital of Iran and Tehran Province. With an estimated population of 8,429,807; it is also Iran's largest urban area and city, one of the largest cities in Western Asia, and is the world's 19th largest city.In the 20th century, Tehran was subject to...
. Although President Mohammad Khatami
Mohammad Khatami
Sayyid Mohammad Khātamī is an Iranian scholar, philosopher, Shiite theologian and Reformist politician. He served as the fifth President of Iran from August 2, 1997 to August 3, 2005. He also served as Iran's Minister of Culture in both the 1980s and 1990s...
promised during election times to build a Sunni mosque in Tehran, he refused to do so after taking office. After winning the election he was reminded of his promise, but he came up with the excuse that the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had not agreed to the proposal. Shias make up roughly 30 percent of the Islamic world, with Sunnis and other branches making up the rest. In Iran, Shias constitute almost 90% of Iran's population
Although the Iranian government invests funds for the promotion and spreading of Islam, it does not tolerate active promotion of other religions by its believers. Maryam Rostampour and Marzieh Amirizadeh Esmaeilabad were two Iranian women, both converts from Islam to Christianity, who were active in church activities and distributing Bibles. Both were arrested and kept in Evin prison in 2009.
Criticism of Islamist interpretation of Islam in Iran
Islamic scholarship in Iran has a long tradition of debate and critique. This tradition has come to pose a challenge to the constitutional order of the Islamic Republic of Iran, as a number of seminary-trained scholars have applied their critical methods to basic issues of state legitimacy, in particular the state’s right to insist on interpretive closure. For example, Dr. Mehdi Ha’iri Yazdi, the son of the late Shaykh Abdolkarim Haeri, the founding member of the Qom Theology School, has written a book about criticism of velayat-e faqıh. The regime has responded with force, convening special clergy courts to silence and imprison scholars, in violation of seminary norms of scholarly debate. These conspicuous acts of discipline seem to have backfired, as each escalating punishment has generated new critics within.In Iran, unlike most countries, epistemological debates have political implications. Because the Islamic Republic stakes its legitimacy on the scholarly authority of its jurist-ruler, the regime takes such debates quite seriously. Through the Special Clergy Court, the regime has tried to clamp down on relativism, calling it self-defeating. The dissident seminarians, too, have
distanced themselves from relativism, calling themselves legitimate religious authorities. It is unclear how the dissidents will reconcile the two seminary norms of open debate and scholarly authority, or what political ramifications might follow from such a reconciliation. It is already clear, though, that the dissidents are creating an unprecedentedly rich documentary record of
Islamic critique of the Islamic state.
Future of fundamentalism in Iran
Abdolkarim SoroushAbdolkarim Soroush
Abdolkarim Soroush , born Hosein Haj Faraj Dabbagh , is an Iranian thinker, reformer, Rumi scholar and a former professor at the University of Tehran. He is arguably the most influential figure in religious intellectual movement in Iran. Professor Soroush is currently a visiting scholar at the...
, advocate of Islamic pluralism, believes that fundamentalism in Iran will self-destruct as it is afflicted with an internal contradiction, which will shatter it from within.
Similar ideas have been put forward by Iranian scholar Saeed Hajjarian
Saeed Hajjarian
Saeed Hajjarian is an Iranian intellectual, prominent journalist, pro-democracy activist and university lecturer. He has been an intelligence official, a member of Tehran's city council, and advisor to president Mohammad Khatami...
. Abdolkarim Soroush
Abdolkarim Soroush
Abdolkarim Soroush , born Hosein Haj Faraj Dabbagh , is an Iranian thinker, reformer, Rumi scholar and a former professor at the University of Tehran. He is arguably the most influential figure in religious intellectual movement in Iran. Professor Soroush is currently a visiting scholar at the...
, Mohsen Kadivar
Mohsen Kadivar
Mohsen Kadivar is an Iranian philosopher, University lecturer, cleric and activist. A political dissident, Kadivar has been a vocal critic of the doctrine of clerical rule, also known as Velayat-e Faqih , and a strong advocate of democratic and liberal reforms in Iran...
, Saeed Hajjarian
Saeed Hajjarian
Saeed Hajjarian is an Iranian intellectual, prominent journalist, pro-democracy activist and university lecturer. He has been an intelligence official, a member of Tehran's city council, and advisor to president Mohammad Khatami...
and Seyyed Hossein Nasr
Seyyed Hossein Nasr
Seyyed Hossein Nasr is an Iranian University Professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University, and a prominent Islamic philosopher...
are among most notable critics of fundamentalism in Iran. Today Iranian neofundamentalists are a very strong minority in Qom seminaries. However they enjoy support from two Grand Marja
Marja
Marja , also known as a marja-i taqlid or marja dini , literally means "Source to Imitate/Follow" or "Religious Reference"...
s, namely Nasser Makarem Shirazi and Hossein Noori Hamedani
Hossein Noori Hamedani
Grand Ayatollah Hosein Nuri-Hamadani is an Iranian Twelver Shi'a Marja. Nuri-Hamadani has been called a "hard-line cleric," who has expressed his strong disapproval of Sufis and dervishes, Jews, the intellectual Abdolkarim Soroush and the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of...
as well as direct support from supreme leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei
Ali Khamenei
Ayatollah Seyed Ali Hoseyni Khāmene’i is the Supreme Leader of Iran and the figurative head of the Muslim conservative establishment in Iran and Twelver Shi'a marja...
.
Iran as a victim of Islamic fundamentalism
There was a handful of Iranian victims among the thousands of innocent dead of 11 September 2001 attacks. Behnaz Mozakka was among the victims of 7 July 2005 London bombings7 July 2005 London bombings
The 7 July 2005 London bombings were a series of co-ordinated suicide attacks in the United Kingdom, targeting civilians using London's public transport system during the morning rush hour....
.
In 1943, a Saudi religious judge ordered an Iranian pilgrim beheaded for allegedly defiling the Great Mosque
Masjid al-Haram
Al-Masjid al-Ḥarām is the largest mosque in the world. Located in the city of Mecca, it surrounds the Kaaba, the place which Muslims worldwide turn towards while performing daily prayers and is Islam's holiest place...
with excrement supposedly carried into the mosque in his pilgrim's garment.
In 1987, Saudi Arabia's fundamentalist regime attacked Iranian pilgrims who were doing a peaceful annual demonstration of Haj and killed some 275 people. 303 people were seriously injured. For years, Iranian pilgrims had tried to stage peaceful political demonstrations in the Muslim holy city of Mecca
Mecca
Mecca is a city in the Hijaz and the capital of Makkah province in Saudi Arabia. The city is located inland from Jeddah in a narrow valley at a height of above sea level...
during the hajj
Hajj
The Hajj is the pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia. It is one of the largest pilgrimages in the world, and is the fifth pillar of Islam, a religious duty that must be carried out at least once in their lifetime by every able-bodied Muslim who can afford to do so...
. Iran sees the 1987 massacre of Iranian pilgrims as the first major attack by Sunni extremists like Osama bin Laden and the emerging Al-Qaeda on Shia Iranians. A few days before the massacre of Iranian pilgrims by Saudi police, USS Vincennes
USS Vincennes (CG-49)
The fourth USS Vincennes is a U.S. Navy Ticonderoga class Aegis guided missile cruiser. On July 3, 1988, the ship shot down Iran Air Flight 655 over the Persian Gulf, killing all 290 civilian passengers on board, including 38 non-Iranians and 66 children.The ship was launched 14 April 1984 and...
shot down Iran Air Flight 655
Iran Air Flight 655
Iran Air Flight 655 was a civilian jet airliner shot down by U.S. missiles on 3 July 1988, over the Strait of Hormuz, toward the end of the Iran–Iraq War...
, killing 290 civilians.
In March 2004 (Ashura
Day of Ashura
The Day of Ashura is on the 10th day of Muharram in the Islamic calendar and marks the climax of the Remembrance of Muharram.It is commemorated by Shia Muslims as a day of mourning for the martyrdom of Husayn ibn Ali, the grandson of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad at the Battle of Karbala on 10...
), Al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda is a global broad-based militant Islamist terrorist organization founded by Osama bin Laden sometime between August 1988 and late 1989. It operates as a network comprising both a multinational, stateless army and a radical Sunni Muslim movement calling for global Jihad...
killed 40 Iranian pilgrims at the Shia holy places in Iraq. Many others were injured in the blasts. Ashura commemorates the killing of the revered Imam Hussein at the battle of Karbala
Battle of Karbala
The Battle of Karbala took place on Muharram 10, in the year 61 of the Islamic calendar in Karbala, in present day Iraq. On one side of the highly uneven battle were a small group of supporters and relatives of Muhammad's grandson Husain ibn Ali, and on the other was a large military detachment...
in the seventh century AD. It is the event that gave birth to the Shia branch of Islam which predominates in Iran. Ashura is by far the most significant day in the Iranian religious calendar, and it is commemorated as a slaughter of innocents by traitors and tyrants.
Justifying the attack on Iran, Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...
accused Iranians of "murdering the second (Umar
Umar
`Umar ibn al-Khattāb c. 2 November , was a leading companion and adviser to the Islamic prophet Muhammad who later became the second Muslim Caliph after Muhammad's death....
), third (Uthman
Uthman
Uthman ibn Affan was one of the companions of Islamic prophet, Muhammad. He played a major role in early Islamic history as the third Sunni Rashidun or Rightly Guided Caliph....
), and fourth (Ali
Ali
' |Ramaḍān]], 40 AH; approximately October 23, 598 or 600 or March 17, 599 – January 27, 661).His father's name was Abu Talib. Ali was also the cousin and son-in-law of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, and ruled over the Islamic Caliphate from 656 to 661, and was the first male convert to Islam...
) Caliph
Caliph
The Caliph is the head of state in a Caliphate, and the title for the ruler of the Islamic Ummah, an Islamic community ruled by the Shari'ah. It is a transcribed version of the Arabic word which means "successor" or "representative"...
s of Islam". In March 1988, Saddam Hussein killed about 20,000 Iranian soldiers immediately using nerve-gas agents. According to Iraqi documents, assistance in developing chemical weapons was obtained from firms in many countries, including the United States, West Germany
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
, the United Kingdom, France and China.
Iraq also targeted Iranian civilians with chemical weapons. Many thousands were killed in attacks on populations in villages and towns, as well as front-line hospitals. Many still suffer from the severe effects. In December 2006, Saddam Hussein said he would take responsibility "with honour" for any attacks on Iran using conventional or chemical weapons during the 1980–1988 war but he took issue with charges that he ordered attacks on Iraqis.
Leaders
- Navvab SafaviNavvab SafaviNavvab Safavi was a cleric responsible for founding of the Fadayan-e Islam group and with them the assassination of several leading Iranians, primarily politicians.-Early life:...
- Sheikh Fazlollah Nouri
- Ruhollah KhomeiniRuhollah KhomeiniGrand Ayatollah Sayyed Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini was an Iranian religious leader and politician, and leader of the 1979 Iranian Revolution which saw the overthrow of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran...
(subject to controversies: initially populist/reformer) - Ali KhameneiAli KhameneiAyatollah Seyed Ali Hoseyni Khāmene’i is the Supreme Leader of Iran and the figurative head of the Muslim conservative establishment in Iran and Twelver Shi'a marja...
- Mohammad Taghi Mesbah YazdiMohammad Taghi Mesbah YazdiAyatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi is a hardline Iranian Twelver Shi'i cleric and politician who is widely seen as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's spiritual advisor. He is also a member of Iran's Assembly of Experts, the body responsible for choosing the Supreme Leader, where he heads...
- Maryam RajaviMaryam RajaviMaryam Rajavi is an Iranian politician who is President elect of National Council of Resistance of Iran, a front group for People's Mujahedin of Iran, since 1993. She is the wife of Massoud Rajavi, a founder of the People's Mujahedin of Iran...
(leader of MKO, an Islamist-Marxist group) - Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
- Hossein Noori HamedaniHossein Noori HamedaniGrand Ayatollah Hosein Nuri-Hamadani is an Iranian Twelver Shi'a Marja. Nuri-Hamadani has been called a "hard-line cleric," who has expressed his strong disapproval of Sufis and dervishes, Jews, the intellectual Abdolkarim Soroush and the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of...
- Naser Makarem ShiraziNaser Makarem ShiraziGrand Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirazi is an ayatollah in Iran. He is a spiritual guide for many Shia Muslims.-In Iran:He started his formal Islamic studies at the age of 14 in the Agha Babakhan Shirazi seminary....
Theorists and think tanks
- Amir MohebbianAmir MohebbianAmir Mohebbian , is an Iranian politician, journalist and political analyst.Dr. Mohebbian has Ph.D in western philosophy and he is Assistant Professor of University and a faculty member of Azad University as well ....
(neo-principalist and founder of The Modern Thinkers Party of Islamic Iran) - Mahdi HadaviTehrani http://www.hadavi.infohttp://www.dr-hadavi.ir (neo-fundamentalist also an Islamic activist in human rights and interreligious dialogue)
- Mohammad Taghi Mesbah YazdiMohammad Taghi Mesbah YazdiAyatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi is a hardline Iranian Twelver Shi'i cleric and politician who is widely seen as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's spiritual advisor. He is also a member of Iran's Assembly of Experts, the body responsible for choosing the Supreme Leader, where he heads...
(neo-fundamentalist) - Ahmad AhmadiAhmad Ahmadi (philosopher)Ahmad Ahmadi is an Iranian cleric, Islamic philosopher and politician. As of 2007, he is a member of the Iranian Majlis and the Islamic Cultural Revolution Council....
(also involved in cultural revolution) - Jalaleddin FarsiJalaleddin FarsiJaleleddin Farsi , born as Hekmatollah Baaraan-Cheshmeh, was the presidential candidate for the Islamic Republic Party in the first presidential election in Iran. He was chosen because Ayatollah Khomeini had personally forbidden the party from running Mohammad Beheshti, a cleric, for president...
(also involved in cultural revolution) - Mehdi GolshaniMehdi GolshaniMehdi Golshani is a contemporary Iranian theoretical physicist and philosopher and Professor of physics at Sharif University of Technology. He received his B.Sc. in Physics from Tehran University in 1959 and his Ph.D. in Physics with a specialization in particle physics in 1969 from the University...
(also involved in cultural revolution) - Hossein ShariatmadariHossein ShariatmadariHossein Shariatmadari is the managing editor of Kayhan, a conservative Iranian newspaper.Before the Iranian Revolution in 1979, Shariatmadari was allegedly tortured by Iranian Shah's Police or SAVAK .Hossein Shariatmadari is the managing editor of Kayhan, a conservative Iranian newspaper.Before the...
(neo-fundamentalist) - Hassan AbbasiHassan AbbasiHassan Abbasi is an Iranian political analyst doctrinologist & strategist, the head of the Center for Doctrinal Analysis, an independent political strategic think-tank in the Islamic Republic and also counter-terrorism advanced study center....
(neo-fundamentalist) - Mohammad Javad LarijaniMohammad Javad LarijaniMohammad Javad Ardashir Larijani is an Iranian politician, cleric and academic. Larijani is the head of the human rights council in the judiciary and a top adviser to the supreme leader. Additionally Larijani has been the Director of Institute for Studies in Theoretical Physics and Mathematics in...
(fundamentalist) - Ali Akbar VelayatiAli Akbar VelayatiAli Akbar Velayati is an Iranian politician, academic and diplomat. He was the Foreign Minister of Iran from 1981 to 1997...
(fundamentalist) - Mohammad-Reza Mahdavi Kani (the Secretary General of the Combatant Clergy Association)
- Hamid MowlanaHamid MowlanaHamid Mowlana is an Iranian-American advisor to the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad whom he has warned against a "soft war" against Iran launched by the United States.-Education and academic career:...
(fundamentalist) - Hassan Rahimpour Azghadi (neo-fundamentalist)
- Masoud DehnamakiMasoud DehnamakiMasoud Dehnamaki is a conservative Iranian activist and one of the founders of Ansar-e Hezbollah. Dehnamaki was also involved in journalist and film making. For decades he has been considered as one of the most extremist members of the ultra-conservative circles.-Early life:Massoud Dehnamaki took...
(neo-fundamentalist) - Mohammad Ali Ramin (neo-fundamentalist)
- Sadegh Larijani (neo-fundamentalist)
Notable victims
- Dariush ForouharDariush ForouharDariush Forouhar was a founder and leader of the Hezb-e Mellat-e Iran , a pan-Iranist opposition party in Iran and served as Minister of Labor in the Provisional Revolutionary Government of Mehdi Bazargan in 1979...
(Minister of Labor) - Saeed HajjarianSaeed HajjarianSaeed Hajjarian is an Iranian intellectual, prominent journalist, pro-democracy activist and university lecturer. He has been an intelligence official, a member of Tehran's city council, and advisor to president Mohammad Khatami...
(Political scientist and advisor to Iranian president) - Ahmad TafazzoliAhmad TafazzoliDr. Ahmad Tafazzoli was a prominent Persian Iranist and master of ancient Iranian literature and culture. Professor Tafazzoli was a faculty member of Tehran University....
(Prominent linguist) - Ahmad KasraviAhmad KasraviAhmad Kasravi , was a notable Iranian linguist, historian, and reformer.Born in Hokmabad , Tabriz, Iran, Kasravi was an Iranian Azeri Initially, Kasravi enrolled in a seminary. Later, he joined the Iranian Constitutional Revolution...
(Literary critic and linguist) - Mohammad Ali RajaiMohammad Ali RajaiMohammad Ali Rajai was the second elected President of Iran from 2 to 30 August 1981, after serving as Prime Minister under Abolhassan Banisadr. He was also Minister of Foreign Affairs from 11 March 1981 to 15 August 1981, while he was Prime Minister...
(President of Iran) - Mohammad Javad BahonarMohammad Javad BahonarHojatoleslam Mohammad Javad Bahonar was an Iranian scholar, Shiite theologian and politician who served as the Prime minister of Iran from 15 to 30 August 1981 when he was assassinated by Mujahideen-e Khalq MEK, also known as PMOI and KMO...
(Prime minister of Iran) - Mohammad Beheshti (Head of Judiciary of Iran)
- Shapour BakhtiarShapour BakhtiarShapour Bakhtiar was an Iranian political scientist, writer and the last Prime Minister of Iran under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi...
(Prime minister of Iran) - Amir-Abbas Hoveida (Prime minister of Iran)
- Ali Sayad ShiraziAli Sayad ShiraziAli Sayad Shirazi was chief-of-staff of the Iranian forces during Iran's 8-year war with Iraq. He was assassinated in 1999. Prior to that, he had a central role in suppressing the armed rebellion in Kordestan province in 1979.-Background:...
(Chief commander of Iranian Army) - Zahra KazemiZahra KazemiZahra "Ziba" Kazemi-Ahmadabadi was an Iranian-Canadian freelance photographer, residing in Montreal, Canada, who died in the custody of Iranian officials following her arrest....
(Notable journalist) - Parvaneh Forouhar (member of Party of the Iranian Nation)
- Zahra Bani Ameri (An Iranian medical doctor)
Notable figures
- Sadegh Khalkhali (neo-fundamentalist)
- Reza OstadiReza OstadiAyatollah Reza Ostadi Moghadam is a member of the Expediency Discernment Council and the Assembly of Experts of the Islamic Republic of Iran...
(neo-fundamentalist) - Ghorbanali Dorri-NajafabadiGhorbanali Dorri-NajafabadiAyatollah Ghorbanali Dorri-Najafabadi is an Iranian politician and cleric, previously the Minister of Intelligence of Islamic Republic of Iran...
(neo-fundamentalist) - Ahmad JannatiAhmad JannatiAyatollah Ahmad Jannati Massah is a hardline Iranian politician, fundamentalist Shi'i cleric and a founding member of Haghani school with close ties with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Mesbah-Yazdi...
(neo-fundamentalist) - Ahmad KhatamiAhmad KhatamiAyatollah Seyyed Ahmad Khatami is a senior Iranian Ayatollah, as well as a senior member of the Assembly of Experts. In December of 2005, Ali Khamenei appointed him as Tehran’s substitute Friday prayer leader.He was born in the town of Nīr, Northern Iran...
(neo-fundamentalist) - Mohammad YazdiMohammad YazdiAyatollah Mohammad Yazdii is an Iranian cleric who served as the head of Judiciary System of Iran between 1989 and 1999, following Ayatollah Abdolkarim Mousavi Ardebili and succeeded by Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi....
(neo-fundamentalist) - Ali FallahianAli FallahianHojatoleslam Ali Fallahian, is an Iranian politician and cleric. He has served as a member of the 3rd Assembly of Experts of the IRI and as the Minister of Intelligence of Islamic Republic of Iran in cabinet of President Hashemi Rafsanjani...
(neo-fundamentalist) - Ruhollah HosseinianRuhollah HosseinianHojatoleslam Ruhollah Hosseinian is an Iranian Principalist politician.He served in the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and National Security as deputy to Ali Fallahian and in April 2007 was appointed by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the security advisor to the president.He is a member of...
(neo-fundamentalist) - Gholam Hossein Mohseni-EjeheiGholam Hossein Mohseni-EjeheiHojjatol-Islam Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje'i was the head of the Ministry of Intelligence in Iran from 2005 to July 2009, when he was abruptly dismissed. On August 24, 2009 he was appointed prosecutor general of the country by new judiciary chief Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani. He has also held a number...
(neo-fundamentalist) - Mostafa Pourmohammadi (neo-fundamentalist)
- Abbasali Amid ZanjaniAbbasali Amid ZanjaniAyatollah Abbasali Amid Zanjani was an Iranian politician and cleric. He was the only cleric president of University of Tehran, served from 2005 to 2008. -Early life:...
(neo-fundamentalist) - Mohammad Reza BahonarMohammad Reza BahonarMohammad-Reza Bahonar was the conservative First Deputy Speaker of the Parliament of Iran. He is a representative from Kerman.In previous parliaments, he has been elected as a representative from Kerman and Tehran...
(neo-fundamentalist) - Hossein Saffar Harandi (neo-fundamentalist)
- Morteza Agha-Tehrani (fundamentalist)
- Mohammad Mehdi ZahediMohammad Mehdi ZahediMohammad Mehdi Zahedi is an Iranian politician and was the former minister of science and technology in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's first cabinet from 2005 to 2009. He was approved by Iran's parliament with the least number of supporting votes possible....
(neo-fundamentalist) - Fazel Lankarani (fundamentalist)
- Kamran Bagheri LankaraniKamran Bagheri LankaraniKamran Bagheri Lankarani M.D., was Iran's Minister of Health and Medical Education.Born in 1965, he finished medical school at Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, and attained an advanced fellowship degree in Medicine from the same university. He specializes in gastroenterology.Baqeri-Lankarani...
(neo-fundamentalist) - Parviz FattahParviz FattahParviz Fattah is an Iranian politician, former member of Revolutionary Guard and former Iran's Minister of Energy in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's cabinet -Biography:...
(neo-fundamentalist) - Lotfollah Safi GolpayganiLotfollah Safi GolpayganiGrand Ayatollah Lotfollah Safi Golpaygani is an Iranian Twelver Shia Marja. He was born in Golpaygan, Iran. He has studied in seminaries of Najaf, Iraq under Grand Ayatollah Borujerdi. He currently resides and teaches in the Seminary of Qom, Iran....
(fundamentalist) - Ahmad Ahmadi (philosopher)Ahmad Ahmadi (philosopher)Ahmad Ahmadi is an Iranian cleric, Islamic philosopher and politician. As of 2007, he is a member of the Iranian Majlis and the Islamic Cultural Revolution Council....
(neo-fundamentalist) - Mohsen GhorourianMohsen GhorourianMohsen Gharavian is an Iranian fundamentalist cleric who has openly advocated nuclear weapons to achieve Islamic objectives.He is a student of Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi.-References and notes:...
(neo-fundamentalist) - Shahabuddin Sadr (fundamentalist)
- Saeed EmamiSaeed EmamiSaeed Emami was the Iranian deputy minister of intelligence under Ali Fallahian, and an intelligence officer under Ghorbanali Dorri-Najafabadi. The Islamic government accused him of having independently organized the assassinations of dissidents shortly after he allegedly committing...
(neo-fundamentalist) - Allah Karam (neo-fundamentalist)
- Mohammad MomenMohammad MomenAyatollah Mohammad Momen is a Faqih and a very influential member of the Guardian Council of the Islamic Republic of Iran.- Influence in government :...
(fundamentalist) - Mohammed Emami-KashaniMohammed Emami-KashaniAyatollah Mohammed Emami-Kashani is a member of the Assembly of Experts of the Islamic Republic of Iran. He has been the Interim Friday Prayer Leader of Tehran....
(fundamentalist) - Ali MeshkiniAli MeshkiniAyatollah Ali Akbar Feyz Meshkini was an Iranian hardline cleric and politician.-Life:Meshkini was an Iranian Azerbaijani born in a village near Meshkinshahr and the Sabalan mountain. He was born as Āli, but preferred the pronounciaton, Ali during his career. He succeeded Ayatollah Montazeri as...
(fundamentalist) - Ayatollah Khoshvaght (neo-fundamentalist)
- Abbas Salimi Namin (neo-fundamentalist)
- Saeed MortazaviSaeed MortazaviSaeed Murtazavi is a controversial Iranian jurist and former prosecutor of the Islamic Revolutionary Court, and Prosecutor General of Tehran, a position he has held from 2003 to 2009. He has been called as "butcher of the press" and "torturer of Tehran" by some observers...
(neo-fundamentalist) - Gholamreza RezvaniGholamreza RezvaniAyatollah Gholamreza Rezvani is a member of the powerful Council of Guardians in the Islamic Republic of Iran. He believes in literal interpretation of Quran, hadith, and sunnah and has argued that there is "no substitute" for stoning adulterers.-See also:...
(fundamentalist) - Ahmad Reza Radan (fundamentalist and military commander)
- Hamid Rasaee (neo-fundamentalist)
- Members of the Council for Spreading Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's ThoughtsCouncil for Spreading Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's ThoughtsThe Council for Spreading President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Thoughts is an official high-council, established by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government in order to spread the philosophy, ideology and sociology of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.The aim of the council "to define and guard over the thought...
Timeline of political Islam in Iran
- 1909: Sheikh Fazlollah Nouri was hanged.
- 1946: Fadaeeyan-e Islam was founded; Ahmad Kasravi was killed in the court.
- 1970: Ruhollah Khomeini's lecture series on Velayat-e faqih.
- 1979: establishment of Islamic Republic; Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps was founded.
- 1980: Cultural revolution started; Basij was founded.
- 1981: Mohammad Beheshti and many other high ranking politicians were killed in a terrorist attack.
- 1988: executions of Iranian political prisoners.
- 1996: Hovyiat TV series was screened by IRIB; Ayatollah Khamenei issued a fatwa against music education.
- 1998: Dariush Forouhar and his wife were killed.
- 1999: Attack on Tehran University dormitories.
- 2000: Assassination of Saeed Hajjarian; Ali Khamenei wrote a letter to Iranian parliament and vetoed revision of Iranian press law.
- 2004: Guardian Council disqualified thousands of candidates, including 80 members of parliament for 7th parliamentary election.
- 2005: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected as Iran's president; Abbas-Ali Amid Zanjani was appointed as the first cleric president of Tehran University.
- 2006: Several Grand Ayatollahs including Ali Khamenei issued fatwas for banning women of attending soccer stadiums.
- 2007: Crackdown on women activism; Moralization plan was launched by the police.
See also
Iran:- History of the Islamic Republic of IranHistory of the Islamic Republic of IranOne of the most dramatic changes in government in Iran's history was seen with the 1979 Iranian Revolution where Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was overthrown and replaced by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini...
- Hovyiat TV series
- 1988 executions of Iranian prisoners
- Chain murders of IranChain murders of IranThe Chain Murders of Iran , or Serial Murders, were a series of murders and disappearances from 1988-1998 by Iranian government operatives of Iranian dissident intellectuals who had been critical of the Islamic Republic system in some way.The victims included more than 80 writers, translators,...
- Cinema Rex Fire
- Iran's Cultural Revolution of 1980-1987
- Iran student riots, July 1999Iran student riots, July 1999Iranian Student Protests of July, 1999 were, before the 2009 Iranian election protests, the most widespread and violent public protests to occur in Iran since the early years of the Iranian Revolution.The protests began on July 8 with peaceful demonstrations in Tehran against the closure of the...
- Religious intellectualism in IranReligious intellectualism in IranReligious intellectualism in Iran reached its apogee during the Persian Constitutional Revolution . The process involved philosophers, sociologists, political scientists and cultural theorists.-Summary:...
- Religious traditionalism in IranReligious traditionalism in IranToday there are basically three types of Islam in Iran: traditionalism , modernism, and a variety of forms of revivalism usually brought together as fundamentalism....
- Liberalism in IranLiberalism in IranThis article provides an overview of liberalism in Iran. It is limited to the Iranian liberal movement and liberal parties with substantial support, mainly proved by having had a representation in the majlis ....
- PersianizationPersianizationPersianization or Persianisation is a sociological process of cultural change in which something non-Persian becomes Persianate. It is a specific form of cultural assimilation that often includes linguistic assimilation...
- Terrorism in Iran
External links
- Dreams of Mesbah Yazdi (RoozRoozRooz is a Persian and English news website. It is mostly staffed by exiled Iranian journalists including Masoud Behnoud, Ebrahim Nabavi and Nikahang Kowsar with occasional articles by activists and journalists inside Iran, including Shirin Ebadi and Ahmad Zeidabadi...
in Persian) - Conservatism, totalitarianism and traditionalism in Iran (An interview with Javad TabatabaeiJavad TabatabaeiDr. Javad Tabatabai is a political philosopher, historian and university professor.Tabatabai studied law at Tehran University. He then shifted to philosophy and did his doctorate works at Sorbonne University. Tabatabai was a professor of philosophy at University of Strasbourg as well as Tehran...
in Persian) - Khomeini: Fundamentalist or Populist? (in English)
- Fundamentalism, Religious Nationalism, or Populism? (in English)
- A model for the Muslim world? Islam confronts Islam in Iran (in English)
- Iran's neo-conservatives (New Internationalist, Nov, 2004) (in English)
- Iranian neo-conservatives strive to cement control over key religious institution (in English)
- Iran's neo-conservatives poised to take charge of political agenda (in English)
- Iran's Conservative Revival (in English)
- The Iranian reform and its permutations: How fundamentalism gave birth to its opposite (in English)
- Ahmadinejad: A Dilemma For The Conservatives (in English)
- Expect the Unexpected: A Religious Democracy in Iran