Creeping Secularis

8/2/2019 Creeping Secularis

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Creeping Secularism

Daryoush Ashouri

The Islamic revolution in Iran at the closing decades of the twentieth

century was a shocking, unexpected phenomenon in the context of modern

history. Its religious emblem, the presence of the Shiite clerics as

it's mobilizing motor for mass demonstrations and, eventually, the

bizarre composition of Islam and revolutionan amalgam of two

conceptually alien elements, with unprecedented ideological claims

created a new peculiar model of state and statecraft. The substitution

of a fundamentalist regime for a semisecular monarchy replaced the crown

with the turban as the paramount symbol of the Iranian national

sovereignty, under the fundamentalist formulation of the "governance of

the canonist" (velayat-e faqih). This new state manifesting itself

through specific signs, symbols, slogans, discourses, and behaviors, as

well as by appropriation of modern means of ideological propaganda, the

use of revolutionary violence, and organized terror, embodied in the

very structure of a state, addressed itself to the world as a new

militant ideological and political power aiming, once again, to change

the world. How could this extremely unexpected event happen?


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Explanations are various and they focus either on the dictatorial

manners and erroneous actions of the shah, alongside the role played by

the Western powers, specifically the United States, or on the presence

and the political role of Shiism and its clergy in Iranian history.

However, a few fundamental questions remain unanswered. How could a

radically traditionalist religious establishment, which was normally

marked by modern revolutionaries as reactionary, merge with the most

radical revolutionary groups and views? What are the universal results

of such a "chemical" composition for both the otherworldly religionism

and secular revolutionism? How do they essentially differ in action and

discourse from what they had been previously? What were the innermost

historical forces that made possible this seemingly impossible

phenomenon?

The question, "retreat of the secular?" as the main title of this

conference, reflects a latent anxiety about what has been going on in

our contemporary world in recent decades, that is, the assault of

religious fundamentalism on worldly values. This unforeseen event,

seemingly, has invaded and invalidated prospects of an entirely

secularized world as imagined by modern intelligentsia everywhere. The

Islamic revolution in Iran as forerunner of the revolutionary Islamism

around the world, was one of the most unexpected events from a secular

historical point of view. Because, in contrast to all other political

revolutions in modern historyspearheaded around the world by

intelligentsiathis one, the last historic revolution with universal


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echoes and claims, carried religious slogans and was led by clerics of a

certain religious denomination from the Islamic world.

The "Islamic Revolution" as Contradiction in Terms

The blending of the concepts of Islam and revolution, astonishingly,

produced an amalgam of two apparently incompatible terms. The revolution

that overthrew a semisecular royal regime only officially got the

attribution "Islamic" after its victory and under this descriptor

created a peculiar model of a theocratic state. By copying the slogans

of internationalist secular revolutionary movements, this new

formulation of state power, under the unyielding leadership of a tough

religious personality, addressed itself to the world as a new

ideological challenge and state power, resolved not only to reshape

Iranian society by its own supposed "Islamic" model of governance and

Islamic social norms and values, but also to export its revolutionary

model to other Islamic countries, and even to the whole world. However,

there were many shared elements between this new revolutionary

phenomenon and other similar movements with secular emblems in the

modern world. Their most common characteristics were populist behaviors

and slogans, and, in practice, the employment of confiscated state power

and modern means of propaganda, alongside the violence and organized

terror.


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How could this entirely unexpected event happen? From the immediate

perspective of political analysis, it can be explained by pointing out

the dictatorial methods and political mistakes of the overthrown shah

and the role played by the Western powers, specifically the United

States, in this relationship. More in-depth research from a larger

historical perspective includes, as another decisive factor, the

political role of Shiism and its clergy in Iranian history. Undoubtedly,

these factors had definite roles in preparing the ground for an event

named Islamic revolution.

However, it seems to me that a fundamental problem remains unexplained

in a mere sociopolitical approach to the matter: that is, how a

radically traditionalist religious establishment, normally marked by its

critics as extremely conservative, could absorb the most radical secular

revolutionary views and practices of modern times. How could Islam

become revolutionary and the revolution "Islamic"? Is there a

historical possibility for union between secularism and religionism? In

other words, is the Islamic revolution, politically, socially, and

culturally, a forceful return to a medieval way of life and thought or,

on the contraryunder the pressure of the dominant economic, political,

and social forces in both domestic and global scalesa painful, costly

creeping toward the realization of a modern, secular form of state and

society in Iran?


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Alchemy of Ideas

From a purely logical point of view, ideas as abstract representations

of the things, or reflections of their essences in the human mind,

apparently stand eternally constant and self-identical. However, in real

historical life, ideas, as constitutive elements of ideologies and

discourses, tend to change and merge with each other, even with what

normally are considered their opposites or, in Hegelian terms, their

antitheses. Historically, there are innumerable examples of the mixture

of ideas and ideologies of the same nature, such as religious or

philosophical precepts, even when they are of different geographical and

historical origins. The influence of Iranian pre-Islamic elements of

faith on Judaism, of Judeo-Christian elements on Islam, or of Buddhism

on Taoism, are classic examples worthy of note. Yet, as mentioned, at

times the process of influence and mixture happens between elements of

apparently incompatible or opposite natures. The influence of Greek

philosophical outlook and its radical rationalistic way of thought on

the submissive, god-fearing spirit of Judaism, and then on Christianity

and Islam, is one of the most distinguished examples. This mixture

greatly changed the primitive cultural atmosphere of these religions by

contributing to the development of the theological, philosophical, and

even mystical systems of each of them. Such processes generally happen

unconsciously under the pressure of circumstantial historical forces.

Ironically, such convergences, under certain conditions, happen while

opposing sides are ideologically and practically engaged in violent

struggle for power. Ideological rhetoric, as a strong social catalyst,


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plays a great role in the process of merging apparently incompatible or

opposing ideas. Rhetorical argumentation, according to the situation,

uses different means of agitation, including quoting forgotten,

marginalized, or depreciated verses of a sacred text or essential

reference sources of a faith, or taking citations out of context,

touting selected aphorisms from highly authoritative figures. Also

dragging, arbitrarily, selected materials from marginal to central

positions and reinterpreting them in the context of the new social and

political atmosphere, and, finally, endorsing them as the main articles

of a faith or its very essence are factors. All these ways of engaging

people are devices used to transform old persuasions into something

compatible with the spirit and demands of the time, or as efficient

weapons in the arena of the struggle for power. The social position and

image of the rhetorician and his or her strategic skills for winning

power in political warfarehaving by nature the combined characteristics

of both fox and lion, as Machiavelli puts itare other distinctive

attributes of a great social catalyst for ideological transmutation.

Religionism normally is defined by viewing its metaphysical and

eschatological tenets as the most central elements in its constitution,

while theoretical secularism, in contrast, is defined by its

antimetaphysical convictions and denial or disregard for all

eschatological claims. Both of them, in their mild forms, show

toleration toward each other and can coexist in common scenes of social

life. But in its radical forms, religion, in certain social conditions,

manifests its strong, aggressive sociopolitical dimensions, while


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radical secularismas historical experiences have demonstratedis

capable of being transformed into a semireligious, historical

eschatology. The case of Marxism-Leninism, the most radical form of

philosophical secularism, and its fateful implementation with an

eschatological historical approach in Soviet Russia, could be mentioned

as the most manifest example. As Nicolas Berdyaev and other observers of

Russian history have related abundantly, Bolshevism was an adaptation of

Marxism to the Russian spirit, reared, historically, in the atmosphere

of the native religion of orthodoxy.

The definition of human beings as "political animals," inherited from

Aristotle, expounded itself in modern times as a basic concept of

philosophical humanism. Therefore, final liberation of humanity from

chains of servility by political action, highest of all by revolutionary

uprising, has become a central ideological element since the eighteenth

century. This very concept, which interprets the whole historical life

of humanity as thoroughly political, has become a fundamental secular

notion in modern times. In Western Europe, the eclipse of the medieval

theocentric community and its eschatological prospects for human life

witnessed its replacement by a secular, humanistic society with a vision

of historical teleology. However, eschatological views never deserted

the scene, but revived themselves in the form of historical teleology.

Pure secularism, like pure religiosity, is something that doesn't belong

to this mundane world. Mixtures of the two always exist in varying

degrees according to cultural and historical contexts. In their


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extremist forms, in many aspects, they correspond to each other more

resolutely.

Keeping this point in mind, I would say that the unconscious mixture of

the most radical secularist ideas in the Russian mind with the

eschatological tenets of Orthodox Christianity, which led to a

revolution with unexpected results, probably can shed a light on its

contrasting example and make it historically more understandable. That

contrasting example, which emerged in a certain favorable condition in

Iranian history, is the unconscious convergence of Islamic creeds and

eschatological mythical beliefs of Shiism, on one hand, and modern

secular utopian convictions, on the other.

The monotheist religions, especially Islam, because of their belief in

the sovereignty of the Almighty God as supreme universal power, contain

a strong element of political theology in their makeup that by its

impetus strives for total social and political dominance in certain

historical circumstances. However, in their ancient and medieval

historical contexts, with their basic otherworldly and eschatological

attitudes, they never merged totally into ephemeral politics. In the

case of Islam, until encountering the modern world and its secularism,

the historically autonomous Islamic world showed considerable capability

in developing a multidimensional culture with a vast spectrum of

visions. Obviously, a certain essential element for such competence is

the great innate hermeneutical potency at the core of every text,


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discourse, and tradition, especially religious ones, in the extended

span of their historical life. Islamic culture, among other things,

developed a great tradition of esoteric and mystical discourse preaching

hermetic forms of nonpolitical life and, at least in its Persianate

version, side by side of it, developed an individualistic and hedonistic

manner of life and thought based on mystical views, labeled asmazhab-e

rendi (the way of the libertine), for which Persian mystic poets, mainly

Hafiz and Saadi, were its greatly influential propagators.

The total politicization of Islam, which could be interpreted as its

semi secularization, is an event of recent times born out of the womb of

the political theology contained in certain religious hermeneutics. By

narrowing the horizon of religious vision to political life and

political struggle through populist movements led by fanatics, in recent

times a stubborn militant Islam was born that has challenged modern

civilization's form of social life in the name of their own original

"Islamic" version. This militant Islamism condemns the modern way of

life as a paganish threat to the so-called true Islamic way of life,

while, paradoxically, employs every available means of terror and mass

destruction created by modern civilization to make their own Islam

dominant. It imposes its political presence by aggrandizing certain

traditional norms of behavior and social values as original and eternal

Islamic norms and values through demonstrating in public life certain

"Islamic" signs and symbols, such as growing beards on men or putting on

the chador by women.


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However, fundamentalist Islam is basically a reactive phenomenon reared

in the atmosphere of the dominance of modern secularism and universal

prevalence of modernized forms of social life originating from Western

Europe. Overall, the fundamentalist Islam is a revolutionary phenomenon

of modern times that uses "tradition" selectively and instrumentally for

conquering political power. A classic example of the development of the

totally political hermeneutics of Islam is frankly expressed in

Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini's writings. In this discussion I want

briefly to review Khomeini's discourse directed to the thorough

politicization of Islam by total integration of Islamic creed into the

corpus of the state. This is a manifest example of such a transformative

action made possible, among other means, by rhetorical devices.

Khomeini's Political Reading of Islam

Kashf-e asrar(Discovery of Mysteries) is a book written by Khomeini in

the early 1940s. Originally, it was designed to respond to the anti-

Shiite claims of an unnamed critic, apparently a follower of Ahmad

Kasravi. However, far beyond that purpose, reading it in the light of

the realization of its political dream by Islamic revolution reveals its

fundamental significance from a retrospective historical point of view.

From this perspective, the book could be considered a manifesto of

political Islam, presumably, a Mein Kampf of its own genre. Pursuing

this idea, the writer claims the existence of a complete design for a

theocratic state in the Koran and Sharia and describes basic Islamic


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doctrines for organization and functions of such a state by extracting

and interpreting related materials from the Koran and other

authoritative sources. He was thinking and writing about this idea at a

time when nobody, including the writer, could imagine the feasibility of

such a dream. Here, with a fiery tongue, he not only refutes claims made

by the critic, or critics, against Shiism and fallacies of its

discourses, but also expounds his thorough political reading of Islam

and the Koran with the utmost self-confidence of a religious authority.

Khomeini claims that Islam is the absolutely right religion, destined by

divine will to establish its own government on the Earth for enforcing

God's decrees as revealed in the laws of Sharia. By his rhetorical

method of argumentation based on Shiite theology, which tries to be

entirely logical on that base, he attempts to demonstrate that "Islamic

laws," as God's eternal decrees, are comprehensive, flawless rules

designed for the prosperity of humanity of all times. As such, he

states, this government should be ruled, as a theocracy, by

knowledgeable authorities, that is, high-ranking mullahs well versed in

Islamic law. To this end, he makes abundant references to verses of the

Koran, but the great emphasis is on the verses ordering jihad and the

killing of heretics and infidels. For him, violence against infidels and

heretics, as prescribed by the Koran, is one of the essential

instruments for establishing an Islamic state on the basis of Islamic

law.


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He believes that Sharia, as a comprehensive body of laws issued, not by

feeble human minds, but through divine omniscience, must replace the

flawed secular legislation adopted from Europe. In the design of his

ideal state, he also projects the total incorporation of religious

institutions into the corps of the state. Although the idea of Islamic

government and the existence of "Islamic laws" as a comprehensive system

was not unprecedented among Shiite mullahs, never had it been expounded

with such persistence and prospect of feasibility in the context of the

modern world. But such a project, willy-nilly, overlooks the most

fundamental element in the eschatological articles of faith in Twelve-

Imamite Shiism, that is, expectation for the advent of the absent

immaculate twelfth imam, which is believed to make eternal justice

prevail on the Earth by thorough extermination of sinners and evildoers.

In this way, by disregarding the prevalent Shiite beliefs in

predestination, Khomeini projects a view of radical, voluntary activism

for realization of such a state by the communal will of courageous and

sacrificing men of faith. He goes on to depict his concept of Islamic

government by saying that, unlike contemporary pagan governments, it

would be not a dictatorial government but a government ruled by the

pious people and true believers under the supervision of the highest

religious authority, responsible for implementation of the divine laws.

Following his project, he goes so far into detail as to adopt an

essential structural element of the modern state, that is, the triadic

separation of powers.


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In spite of the profound moralistic pessimism of the Koran and

traditional Islam for this worldly life, Khomeini addresses the Koran,

in Kashf-e asrar, to say that "it is regrettable that your laws never

have been implemented. Otherwise this dark house [of worldly life] and

haven of wild ferocious animals, which call themselves civilized people

of the world, would become a place enviable to paradise, and the bride

of happiness would be embraced by all people even in this world."1 In

another place he uses the traditional term for utopian state in Islamic

philosophy, madina-ye fazela, to explain such a state of affairs

achieved by the execution of "Islamic laws."

As a young mullah, Khomeini developed severe sympathy for the Islamic

mysticism ('erfan) through a fascination with Sufi literature,

especially the speculative mysticism of Ibn Arabi and Mulla Sadra. The

views and writings of these great figures of Islamic theosophy were the

subjects of lectures in the seminary he attended at Qom. His mystical

views are expressed in his other works through esoteric interpretations

of the daily prayer and other religious matters. But in emerging

directly in the arena of political struggle with the shah in the early

1960s, he never approached mystical topics publicly, but rather clung to

his status as ayatollah in the religious establishment, trying to

consolidate his position in the highest rank of ayatollahs as an

"authority for imitation" (marja'-e taqlid) and attempting to achieve

the highest position among them. In this stage, especially after a

religious riot instigated by him in 1963, which led to his banishment,

his rhetorical strategy was unhesitatingly directed toward propagating
http://muse.jhu.edu.ezproxy.soas.ac.uk/journals/comparative_studies_of_south_asia_africa_and_the_middle_east/v031/31.1.ashouri.html%23f1http://muse.jhu.edu.ezproxy.soas.ac.uk/journals/comparative_studies_of_south_asia_africa_and_the_middle_east/v031/31.1.ashouri.html%23f1


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the idea of religious government by knowledgeable mullahs. His ideal

political life for the nation, as described in Kashf-e asrar, was a

Spartan type with austere norms for social life directed to the

mobilization of military forces to make jihad for expanding the

territory of Islam or defending Islamic land against encroachments by

the pagans.

As mentioned before, when Khomeini was writing Kashf-e asrar in the

atmosphere of the social and political turmoil caused by the downfall of

Reza Shah Pahlavi, during the occupation of Iran by the Allies in the

Second World War, the prospect of an Islamic revolution leading to the

establishment of Islamic government was absolutely not in sight.

However, the occupation, by releasing mullahs and intellectuals from the

constraints of the dictatorship, gave them an opportunity for free

speech. This situation brought Khomeini, still an obscure young mullah,

to the arena of the ideological struggle with his version of the cause

of Islam. Although there was apparently no organized bond at the time,

there are signs of a probable secret relationship between him and the

extremist group the Fedayeen of Islam. This group played a determining

role in the political developments of that decade by political

assassination.

A considerable feature of Khomeini's discourse in his book is its

linguistic style, which keeps a deliberate distance from the traditional

vernacular of mullahs and madrassa. The traditional spoken and written


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language of the clergy was laden with strange Arabic wording and

labyrinthine syntax, almost totally incomprehensible to laypeople, even

educated ones coming out of the modern education system. Yet the heavy,

obscure, traditional linguistic style of the madrassa lacked the

qualities of expression needed for modern political rhetoric and

polemic. Therefore he consciously adopted a more simplified style of

writing, by using fewer Arabic-origin words and replacing some with

Persian-origin words, which was current in the writings of ideological

rivals among the intelligentsia. He also shows a talent for inventing a

sensational, stimulating prose style. This point also could be taken as

a meaningful sign for his crafty political talent and determination.

The courage and determination of Khomeini for his cause showed itself in

his rise against the shah in 1963. Thereafter, he was the indisputable

guiding figure at the top of a clandestine religious movement that in

the stormy atmosphere of the Third World in the 1960s and 1970s

accumulated its forces for an indefinite future action. In this

historical period the appearance of an energetic rhetorician, Ali

Shariati, was a great contribution to the process of using self-made

hermeneutical devices for remolding Shiism and its holy figures and

myths into a thoroughly new political and revolutionary configuration by

combining traditional religious beliefs with modern liberal and leftist

social and political ideals and values. Shariati represented a new

phenomenon in the social and political atmosphere of Iran, which was

later referred to as "religious intellectuals." His attempts to

interpret "ideology" as a dynamic revolutionary historical force for


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promoting spiritual life of humanity, depicting prophets as supreme

ideologues, had a fundamental role in refashioning Shiite Islam as a

revolutionary ideology after the model of extreme leftist ideologies.

His skill in rhetorical speech and writing was a strong motivator for

mobilizing younger educated generations of religious origin to rise up,

under the leadership of Khomeini, against the discredited secular regime

to realize the fantasy of an Islamic utopia.

A great factor in the maturing of this amalgam of Shiite beliefs,

combined with eschatological expectations and modern revolutionary

dreams, was the rise of revolutionary enthusiasm in the Third-Worldly

political atmosphere of the 1960s and 1970s, which, like other parts of

the world, had great appeal to the growing young population of Iran. The

"Islamic" version of the Third-Worldly revolutionary ideas, as outlined

by Shariati, in combination with Khomeini's utopian vision of Islamic

government, finally was successful in conquering total political power

in the revolution of 1978.

Transmutation of the Utopian Dream into Political Realism

Khomeini was a knowledgeable man of scholastic Islamic sciences, but

completely a layman in matters related to the highly complicated

structure of the modern state and its political, economic, social, and

cultural functions. However, in his dreams for reviving the political


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might of Islam, as mentioned before, he imagined Sharia as a

comprehensive body of laws responding more than sufficiently not only to

the material and spiritual needs of an Islamic community but also to the

administration of a modern state. In practice, through the victory of

the revolution, the establishment of the so-called Islamic state started

with the annulment of a part of previous legislation adhering to modern

European style, such as family laws and criminal laws, and their

replacement with the so-called "laws"(qavanin) of Sharia, instead of

ahkam, orders, as used traditionally for more than a thousand years.

By ratification of a constitutional law with a supposed "Islamic"

framing, Islamization of the state and society started. But the

experience in the context of a completely modernized structure of state

and partly modernized society, very soon revealed the incompatibility

and insufficiency of the canonical civil codes, the primitiveness and

brutality of its penal codes, and, most important, the almost total

absence of a system of public law responding to the needs of the

administration of a modern society and state. However, the idea of the

legalization of the "Islamic Republic" by a popular referendum, and

later endeavors to mold it into constitutional law based on the

separation of powers and universal suffrage, defined its organization as

an adoption of the modern structure of a republic. Notwithstanding that

characterization, the concept of velayat-e faqih (governance of the

highest canonist) in a subsequent stage was introduced into the

constitutional law, which later was reinforced by the principle of the

absolute authority of the "supreme leader" for surveillance and exertion


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of the nearly total political power. This development planted the seed

of severe tension at the heart of a willfully invented political entity

a tension, as is well known, between its outwardly republican framework

and its inwardly autocratic system ruled by a mullah as a theocracy.

Khomeini's dream of creating a utopia on the basis of the supposed

existing divine system of laws, like all utopian dreams, proved to be

illusory and impractical. But the great will to power behind this

imagination was lucky enough to find its favorable historical

circumstances to establish a theocratic state with a caste like system

for distribution of the political power and economic privileges. The

system, obviously, left the lion's share in the hands of the clergy,

their immediate relatives, and their military and security entourages.

However, in the early years of his governance, Khomeini became aware of

the impassable gaps between his utopian Islamic state, based on "divine

laws," and the realities of administrating a modern apparatus of

government with its complicated organization of internal functions and

international relations. And so, with his Machiavellian instinctual

dexterity for capturing and preserving power, he formulated a hardly

imaginable principle to solve the problem. This principle, as the

highest principle for governance of the Islamic Republic, regards

preservation of the "Islamic government" as an absolute necessity prior

to the implementation of the laws of Sharia. The downright priority of

staying in power frankly authorizes government to overlook, or suspend,

even the primary commandments of the religion, whenever necessary, for

that purpose.


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This strategic formulation, in reality, negates the raison d'tre of the

Islamic government, which originally never had been supposed as a goal

in itself, but essentially an instrument for the exertion of the laws of

Sharia. In this formulation the Islamic Republic, as an apparatus of

power, although nominally representing the sovereignty of Islam and its

Sharia, is spontaneously justified by its very existence as a sovereign

power, without being axiomatically an instrument at the service of

Sharia. In other words, Sharia, by its partial, arbitrary, and almost

theatrical implementation, is reduced to a mere instrument, among other

means, for exertion of power, whenever deemed formally usable.

For putting this dictum into practice, the Council of Recognition of

Expediency, the highest legislative body of the Islamic Republic, was

invented. The council is the supreme authority governing the Council of

the Guardians of the constitutional law. The second body is an authority

that can nullify ratifications of the Islamic Parliament whenever

discerning them to be incompatible with Sharia or constitutional law,

while the first one is authorized to reestablish them, in spite of their

incompatibility with Sharia, in the name of the "expedience of the

system of power" (maslehat-e nezam).

Postrevolutionary realpolitik, at the service of the new ruling elite,

commands the priority of political expediency and the preservation of

power by all imaginable means and reduces all prerevolutionary


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idealistic and utopian aspirations and dreams to a mere means of

propaganda. This old story, experienced in almost all modern political

revolutions, was naturally repeated in the Islamic revolution of Iran.

The Islamic Republic, by its ideological claims in the name of religion,

from its early days severely restricted the circle of political and

administrative nomination. Then, passing through its revolutionary stage

of the reign of terror, it created a more strictly closed system of

power dominated by certain high-ranking mullahs and administered by

enclosed circles of civil, military, and security authorities. This

monopolistic system of power, emerging out of a revolution with

"Islamic" emblem, as we saw, has only an instrumental relationship with

Sharia almost as a facade for ruling.

However, among educated Iranians, who try to evaluate the "positive"

aspects of the Islamic revolution, there is a widespread saying that, in

spite of all the showy religiosity dictated by the regime, the side

effects of its actions and style of administration have involuntarily

made a great contribution to the secularization of the Iranian mentality

and social behavior, leading to strong demand for a secular state. The

demythologization of Shiism for a considerable number of its followers,

and the gradual downgrading and laicization of its clergy in the eyes of

the majority of the Iranian people, attests to the process of creeping

secularization in this country.

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Creeping Secularis