RELIGIOUS POWER IN IRAN: PRE-ISLAMIC ORIGINS
Husaini, Amira
Persons who are not familiar with Islam may wonder at the meager support of the Islamic and Arab governments for Iran, the self-proclaimed champion of Islam, in the recent war with Iraq,...
...Many derive from preIslamic political and religious, thinking in Iran...
...During most of the 20th century, however, the Iranian clergy did not fare well...
...Pre-Islamic religious texts such as Sad Dar recommended unquestioning loyalty and allegiance to religious authorities and threatened those who disobeyed with eternal hell fire...
...claimed rule by special divine dispensation and, furthermore, that a part of the Godhead's divine majesty was invested in them: their rule was absolute and all-powerful...
...It took the opportunity to ascribe to itself powers over its 220 followers far in excess of those stated in the Koran or by the Prophet...
...The clergy's claim to leadership of the community is also bound to be challenged by the thousands of educated, idealistic youths, who in their disenchantment with solutions of Western origin have turned instead to Islam in the hope of finding their Utopia...
...It is, however, more likely that he has not thought such justification necessary, since as a product of Iranian cultural tradition he would regard such a position for the leader as quite natural...
...However, the close association between clergy and secular power finally undermined the hold of the religious leaders on the masses...
...The 18th century was no less critical for the Safavids, whose last members had deteriorated to degenerate despots who spent their time mainly in the pursuit of pleasure and only held power by their claim to be godly anointed kings...
...This explains the fury that has been unleashed against both the intelligentsia and the Pahlavi kings by the official clergy, who have made masterly use of religious symbolism in denouncing their enemies and in their grab for power...
...In the name of Islam, he and his followers destroyed some of the most capable Muslim leaders at a time when Islamic society needed to pull its resources together to meet the challenge of the Crusades from the West and the Mongol onslaught from the East...
...The clergy used its unique position to gradually amass much wealth as a corporate group in the form of guardianship of religious endowments...
...Although it may be difficult for the masses to throw off a yoke placed upon them in the name of God, they will eventually question why the rewards under this bond are so meager...
...This was a great veneration for the religious class and a tendency to ascribe supernatural power to their leaders beyond that permitted by the Koran and the teachings of the Prophet...
...So, ironically, once more, much as in the days of the Crusades the Islamic world was hurt by fanatical militancy...
...The king claimed Farr-i Izadi or kingly glory...
...He may, of course, know that such justification is nonexistent...
...Finally, when a small group of Afghans challenged their rule, the last member of the dynasty was overthrown...
...it surfaced from time to time among the more extreme and heterodox groups, termed Shi'ite ghulat (extremists...
...the religious leader or Mubad-Mubadan claimed to be the ultimate spokesman for God, or AhuraMazda, to the people...
...It is no wonder that Iranians began to be considered heretics by the Sunni and, especially, by the Arabic-speaking Muslims, who found this and other interpretations totally contrary to the spirit and teachings of pristine Islam...
...The Koran repeatedly forbids the ascription of any supernatural and intercessionary power even to Mohammed the Prophet...
...Obedience to him is incumbent on all members of the Islamic community, since he knows what is best for them...
...This is not to suggest, of course, that Khomeini has consciously tried to tevive this early ideology...
...Like their Sasanian predecessors, they claimed to be upholders of the true religion and the medium through which the individual believer could attain salvation...
...Throughout Islam's 1400 years, the question of the best type of leadership for the community has divided the Islamic world and occasionally has even led to war between dissenting groups...
...With the rise of the Abbasids, whose accession owed much to the assistance and sympathy of their Iranian followers, the view that a secular leader of the community had independent divine sanction and was the shadow of God on earth surfaced once again...
...The most notable early extremist group was led by Hasan al-Sabbah, who adopted assassination as one of his principal doctrines...
...However, few views of leadership have digressed as far from the teachings of the Koran and the tradition of the Prophet Mohammed as have those expressed by Ayatollah Khomeini...
...The blind trust some extremists put in their leaders had disastrous consequences that spread far beyond the immediate group to the rest of the Islamic world...
...The failure of the Ottomans to keep abreast of this transformation, especially in the military field, proved fatal...
...Even here, however, the belief did not entirely disappear...
...Furthermore, this authority is accountable to no one but God...
...Although this term has been applied to diverse groups of extremists, one characteristic united those that appeared or spread among the Muslims in Iranian-speaking regions...
...I enjoy hearing and seeing them" (the Fallaci interview...
...The Ayatollah's style of leadership is also a departure from the example of the Prophet and the Shi'ite Imams...
...The only group to benefit from the century of upheaval within Iran was the clergy...
...6, p. 9), "The spiritual head must be so regarded as the religious lord and obeyed that the ruler and the sovereign should also do nothing without the advice of the spiritual lord, the head-priest...
...The spread of Western education and the rise of a strong central power under the two Pahlavi rulers beginning in 1925 were unfavorable to the clergy...
...The religious class maintained monopoly over the sacred language and texts, and, control over the processes of justice and education...
...However, their direct hold of power now also sets them up for blame as well as praise...
...Many of these youths turn more and more to the source of Muslim ideas, the Koran and the less polluted Islam of the orthodox Muslims...
...Some even went so far as to believe that religious leaders were infallible and must be obeyed without question...
...Even the Qajar rulers, who during the 125 years in power never managed to establish effective control, often grudgingly had to pay homage to them, at least publicly...
...Though the rise of this extreme form of Shi'ism may have eventually helped forge feelings of nationalism among the Persians, it also created much discord in the Muslim world and caused a series of protracted and internecine wars between two leading Muslim powers of the time, the Ottomans and the Safavids...
...Especially striking is his love of public adulation, about which he said, "I enjoy it...
...Sad Dar (chaps...
...These conflicts obscured other vital developments in the West—in economics, science, and technology—at a time when the Ottomans were still in a position to adopt many of the changes that were occurring in the West...
...It is evident also in his sanction of hundreds of thousands of large portraits of himself that may strike the more sober Muslim, even though unintended, as an inculcation of idol worship banned by the Koran...
...As the society of ancient Iran developed, authority was split between a secular leader and a religious leader, both claiming divine dispensation...
...According to ancient Iranian ideas of sacral kingship, religion and royalty were intertwined...
...By the 18th century, when the Safavids were overthrown, the Europeans' advance had gone too far for the Ottomans and other Muslims to emulate...
...8 and 27) admonished believers to follow the advice of the clergy on every aspect of conduct to ensure salvation...
...This process will require time, if outside interference does not bring about an abortive overthrow of the clergy...
...Though their use of shibboleths, such as "The Satan, the Pahlavis, and the U.S.," was effective in solving some problems, they have also to present to their followers a positive balance sheet that will justify their claim to ordination by God as both spiritual and temporal rulers of the people...
...Thus they inadvertently enabled the Europeans to control for two centuries important parts of the Muslim world and the Mongols to do irreparable damage to the society and economy of the central lands of Islam...
...It is interesting that, although as a Muslim he may consciously reject nationality and nationalism, Khomeini is still a product of Iranian cultural traditions, where his all-powerful, infallible, supreme theologian-leader may be found...
...and it is he who can ensure that they act according to God's will...
...Their preoccupation with their Eastern neighbors not only weakened their ability to meet the military challenge of the rising Western powers but also to defend their borders against the fanatical Safavids...
...The kings...
...IF THE AYATOLLAH'S VIEWS On leadership do not derive from early, pristine Islam and have no antecedents in Islamic theories of leadership, where do they originate...
...Reza Shah tried to create a secular state, and his son Mohammed Reza, although at first conciliatory toward the clergy, made similar efforts to dilute their power and eradicate their hold on the masses...
...Persons who are not familiar with Islam may wonder at the meager support of the Islamic and Arab governments for Iran, the self-proclaimed champion of Islam, in the recent war with Iraq, the avowedly socialist state...
...This may seem even more surprising in view of the great rivalry between the Arab states and their fear of Iraqi expansionism...
...Both the use of force and the ignorance of the Iranian majority of the Arabic language of the Koran— according to the Muslims the actual word of God and hence untranslatable—enabled the Safavids to impose their brand of Islam on the population...
...This was achieved easily, since the Koran or the Prophetic tradition contained few direct injunctions regarding secular authority...
...It is right that the supreme religious authority should oversee the work of the prime minister or of the president to make sure they do not make mistakes or go against the law" (Khomeini, quoted from Oriana Fallaci's interview with him published in the Chicago Tribune, October 7, 1979...
...The first Pahlavi, following in Ataturk's footsteps, tried to curb clerical power, and the second attempted to gradually contain their authority...
...The advent of Islam and the conversion of the masses in Iranian lands to Islam temporarily destroyed the religious basis for such claims to authority...
...The Ayatollah appears to imply that this supreme religious authority is infallible when he states, "I do know that during my long lifetime, I have always been right about what I said" (from the same interview...
...But the vacuum left by the destruction of the Zoroastrian religious authority could not be filled as easily, since Islam placed many direct strictures against the rise of a sanctimonious clergy...
...As a consequence, the religious class in 19th-century Iran attained the same kind of unchallenged spiritual power once held by it in pre-Islamic Iran...
...In the meantime, it is interesting to see how history has repeated itself after the passage of nearly 13 centuries...
...Yet the belief in the validity of these claims, both temporal and religious, was not eradicated completely...
...Unfortunately, these wars occurred when the Muslim world could ill afford them...
...This pervasive influence explains why the Ayatollah does not try to explain the source of his supreme religious authority and sanction...
...For many Muslims the world over, at issue here is Khomeini's interpretation of Islam as outlined in his testament Vilayat-i Faqih ("The Rule of the Jurisprudent"), which loosely translates into English as "Islamic Government...
...In the 16th century another militant extremist Shi'i order, the Safavids, brought most of the Iranian-speaking region under its control...
...When this reckoning comes, as the fallen shah discovered, the masses can be fickle...
...During the 16th and 17th centuries, Western Europe was undergoing the multifaceted revolution that gave rise to the modern age and that, for at least two centuries, established its unchallenged hegemony over the non-Western world...
...When diverse social and economic problems brought about the downfall of the extensive Sasanian armies by the armies of the 219 Muslims, the religious class was wiped out...
...Five decades of civil war followed, until the Qajar tribe emerged as victors...
...But Afghan rule lacked indigenous support and a strong army, and did not last...
...With the passage of time, the leaders of the Safavid house became more interested in developing the secular aspect of their power and left the religious sphere to professional theologians, whose use of Shi'ite belief enabled them to gain more power and prestige among the non-Arabic-speaking population...
...The reason is that many Muslims, despite their deep distress over the open hostility between two Muslim nations, do not recognize Ayatollah 218 Khomeini's leadership as in any way binding upon them and consider him a mere political leader, albeit a Muslim, who is using Islam to promote his own power and prestige...
...The foundation of the state envisioned in this work, which has been embodied in the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, rests upon the figure of a powerful, all-knowing, wise, benevolent, supreme religious authority or jurisprudent who acts as the final arbiter of all major or minor decisions, if he so chooses, in society...
...But war had shattered the country's administration and economy...
...Consequently it is to ancient Iran that we must turn to find the origin of Ayatollah Khomeini's faqih and not to the Koran or the Shari'a...
...The Dinkard, another religious text, categorically stated (bk...
Vol. 28 • April 1981 • No. 2
