REVOLUTION – Hybrid Learning

REVOLUTION

Batoota — Mon, 17 Jul 2017 15:01:59 +0000

REVOLUTION. In contemporary Islamic discourse, there are various terms that bear on the social-science concept of revolution as a rising up against constituted authority. However, from a classical Muslim point of view, revolution has pejorative connotations, since it signifies impious attempts to overthrow the order established by believers who are following the commands of Allah. Among the terms frequently employed by Islamists to refer to revolution in this negative sense are fitnah (temptation, trial, sedition, dissension against Allah), ma’jiyah (disobedience, insubordination, refractoriness, revolt), and riddah (a turning away or back from, i.e., apostasy from Islam).
Modern Islamists often cite Qur’anic verses condemning the fitnah of the Prophet’s early enemies: “fight those who fight you wherever you find them and expel them who had expelled you, for fitnah is worse than killing” (surah 2.191), and “fight them until fitnah comes to an end and Allah’s religion prevails” (surahs 2.193 and, with a minor variation, 8.39). The term ma’siyah appears twice in the Qur’an (8.58 and 8.59), in both cases in reference to those who are in rebellion against the Prophet. The term riddah is not found as such in the Qur’an, but it does appear in one of its verbal forms (irtaddalyartaddu) in surahs 2.217 and 5.54 (“whosoever among you turns away from his religion”), and in surah 4725 (“and those who have turned back [from Islam] after guidance had been shown them”). For its part, riddah came into use shortly after Qur’anic revelation had ceased, and it referred to the defection of the Arab tribes after the death of the Prophet in 632 and their forcible return to the Islamic fold.
Another term that signifies rebellion against Islam but which only appeared after the end of the revelations is kharij (pl., khawarij; lit., “to go out”), which referred to the first schismatics in Islam during the caliphate of `All ibn Abl Talib (r. 656-661). Kharij, fitnah, ma’siyah, and riddah are employed by Islamists as antonyms for the word jihdd (striving for the sake of Allah). Jihad therefore always appears as a positive value in Islamic discourse.
Until the modern period, those few writers who justified rebellion against the ruler of the ummah (community) (e.g., al-Jahiz [d. 868/69] and Ibn Taymiyah [d. 1328]) did so on grounds of the impiety of that ruler, rather than on the abstraction that he was a bad ruler and his government was bad. But impiety itself is a relative term. Thus, Ibn Taymiyah ruled that Muslims should rise up against the Mongols for their extraordinary abominations against the faith (such as considering Chinggis Khan the son of Allah). Yet Ibn Taymiyah held his counsel in regard to the Mamluk rulers of his time, whose behavior could be considered at least as intolerable as some of the contemporary rulers whom Islamists today declare to be unbelievers.
This reluctance to advocate resistance in all but the most reprehensible instances of misrule is instructive. Resistance could lead to fitnah, creating disorder in the ummah. But the doctrine of salvation requires the integrity of that ummah, for people must not only believe in Allah’s laws but establish and maintain the community which is the institutionalized expression of those laws. Accordingly, most jurists advised against behavior that would put the ummah at risk. Those jurists who served through appointment by putatively wrongdoing rulers have had to be particularly careful in their fatwas (authoritative opinions) in regard to questions of obedience. Thus, in 1981 the grand mufti of Egypt, Shaykh Jad al-Hagq `All Jad al-Hagq, ruled in the wake of the assassination of President Anwar el-Sadat that Muslims were obliged to do everything in their power peacefully and through persuasion to return an unjust ruler to the true path and to abjure violence.
The modern terms for revolution, all of Arabic derivation, are: in Arabic, thawrah (from a root meaning a stirring up [of dust]); in Persian, inqilab (from a Toot meaning overturn); and, in Turkish, ikhtilal (from a root meaning disturbance, confusion) and inqilab They mainly came into use after the French Revolution and generally have positive connotations when used by nationalists resisting the despotism of unjust secular rulers, although some Turkish writers, critical of revolutionary developments in France, did employ inkilab in a pejorative sense. Of these four terms, only thawrah appears to have antedated the French Revolution in its active participial form (tha’ir) to refer to those who had either rebelled against established Muslim rulers or who had replaced them once they had fallen.
In the modern period, beginning with the Wahhabi movement in the mid-eighteenth century and continuing through a variety of revivalist movements in West, North, and East Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, Islamic movements arose to condemn what they perceived to be heretical deviations from Islam. In most cases, these movements were spurred by deep antipathy to Western colonialism and imperialism, which began as armed intervention or economic penetration but inevitably involved political and cultural threats to the integrity of the ummah.
Although disgruntled secular officials of the Husaynid, Muhammad `All, Ottoman, and Qajar dynasties played a major role in coining and elaborating on such terms as thawrah, inqilab/inkilab, and ikhtilal, these terms have also sometimes been appropriated by certain members of the `ulama’, such as Jamal al-Din alAfghani (1838/39-1897).
Interestingly, some Muslim jurists referred not to the Muslims but to the British as the “rebels” in the events known in the West as the great Sepoy Rebellion of 1857-1858 in India, because the British were seen to be violating the terms of the agreements that they had earlier contracted with representatives of the ummah on the subcontinent. Colonel Ahmad `Urabi’s rebellion in Egypt in 1881-1882 was glossed by contemporaries as a thawrah, as were the anti-British uprisings of the Egyptian people in 1919. The insurrection of southern Iraqis in 1920 was viewed as a jihad by that movement’s clerical leaders, but because the Sunni areas did not join, it would be misleading to term it as a general jihdd of Muslims against the infidels.
In Iran during the Constitutional Revolution of 1905-1909, the term inqiliab was in some use, but even more current was the neologism mashrutah, (“to make conditional; i e., to lay down stipulations {on the autocr atic rule of the shah). In other places, the terms qiyamah and nahdah (Pers., qiyam and nihzat; lit. a “rising up”) have acquired currency, as has the more metaphorical word, sahwah (a coming to consciousness, awakening). These three words, along with such terms as ma’rakah and nidal (both of which may be translated as “struggle”), have come into increasing use, frequently to connote fighting on behalf of righteous or progressive causes.
One of the costs of the profusion of terms is a certain diffusion of meaning. The use of thawrah to refer to phenomena as divergent as simple coups d’etat, extensive urban insurrections, and profoundly transformative social revolutions has done little to help provide analytical clarity. In any case, Islamists try to avoid the use of terms like thawrah, because they have been until recently the virtually exclusive preserve of secular nationalists. Islamist Arabs, however, refer to the Iranian Revolution of 1979 as al-thawrah al-Iraniyah, so this generalization about reluctance to employ words closely associated with secular movements must be qualified.
Any discussion of revolution in the Islamic world must account for the prominent role in the nineteenth century of Sufi movements. In North Africa, Sudan, and Egypt, the great Sufi shaykhs, Mustafa ibn `Azzuz (d. 1866), `Abd al-Qadir (d. 1883), Muhammad alMahdi (d. 1885), Abd el-Krim (Muhammad ibn `Abd al-Karim al-Khattabi, d. 1920), `Abd al-Hamid ibn Badis (d. 1940), and Hasan al-Banna’ (d. 1949), all took up the banner of revolt against colonialist rule. Their counterparts in Central and South Asia, often inspired by the examples of their fellow Muslims elsewhere, also followed this pattern. The Qur’anic term jihad suffused the discourse of these leaders in their efforts to mobilize the Muslims in anticolonialist struggles. Also relevant in this connection is the term tajdid (“renewal”), which came increasingly into use, although it designates essentially reformist movements often unaccompanied by widescale collective protest. [See the biographies of `Abd al-Qddir, Abd el-Krim, Ibn Badis, and Bannd’; for alMahdi, see Mahdlyah.]
More recently still, collective protest against ruling regimes became the cri de coeur of Abu al-A’la Mawdudi (1903-1979) in India and Pakistan, Sayyid Qutb (19061966) in Egypt, and `All Shari`ati (1933-1977) and Ayatollah Ruhollah al-Musavi Khomeini (1902-1989) in Iran. In the cases of Mawdudi and Qutb, the key word was jihad, and the point of reference was Ibn Taymiyah’s fatwa against the Mongols. Although Qutb modeled his thinking greatly on Mawdudi’s, Mawdudi stopped short of pronouncing takfir (unbelief) on Muslims, whereas Qutb extended it to those he believed were nominal, hence “false,” believers. [See the biographies of Mawdudi and Qutb.]
Somewhat in contrast to Qutb and Mawdudi are the Shi’! activists, Shari’ati and Khomeini. Although the word jihdd was revered by them both, they (especially Shari`ati) also employed the apparently passive term, intizar (“waiting”), to powerful effect in mobilizing the faithful of the Hidden Imam. In this way Shari’ati called on devotees to take the initiative against injustice and thus prepare the way for the Mahdi. He termed this activism intizar-i musbat (“positive waiting”) and invidiously contrasted it with intizdr-i manfi (“negative waiting”).
Of course, no account of the concept of revolution in Islamic literature would be complete without mention of Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran. He repeatedly used the phrase inqilab-i Islam! (Islamic revolution) to refer to the movement that overthrew the shah in 1979 and established rule by the clergy (Pers., vildyat-i faqih; Ar., wilayat al faqih; led by himself. Khomeini purported to find the doctrinal basis for clerical rule in a hadith attributed to the sixth Shi’! imam, Ja’far al-Sadiq (d. 765) regarding the ex ante appointment of judges to arbitrate technical disputes over debts or inheritance. Deliberately conflating the differences between the role of judges to arbitrate and that of sovereign rulers to govern, Khomeini claimed that the imam’s ex ante appointment was the key legal basis for contemporary jurists to take over executive authority in the modern state. Having come this far, however, it is intriguing that Khomeini demurred from advocating an anticolonial jihad against the United States or the West, for all of his animosity toward them.
Since the execution in 1966 of Sayyid Qutb by the Egyptian government of Gamal Abdel Nasser, a variety of radical groups have emerged among Sunnis, inspired by Qutb’s last book, Milestones (1964). These groups advocate violence to overthrow existing regimes and to apply immediately what they believe to be shari`ah (the holy law of Islam). The radical Sunni movements include various groups in Egypt, such as al-Fanniyah al`Askariyah (The Technical Military Academy Group), Jama’at al-Takfir wa al-Hijrah (Pronouncing Unbelief on Infidels and Emigrating to Islam), al-Jihad, and alJama`at al-Islamiyah (the Islamic Group); and Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
Other groups that began more moderately but have become more radicalized because of suppression include certain supporters of the leader of the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood, Hasan al-Turabi; the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood leader, Said Hawwa; Rashid al-Ghannushi of the Tunisian Nahdah; and `Abbasi Madan-1, the leader of the Algerian Jabhat al-Inqadh al-Islami (Islamic Salvation Front). The Tunisian and Algerian organizations are ironically better known by their French nomenclature, the Tendence Tunisien and the Front Islamien du Salut (FIS), respectively. [See Muslim Brotherhood, articles on Muslim Brotherhood in the Sudan and Muslim Brotherhood in Syria; Hizb al-Nahdah; Islamic Salvation Front; and the biographies of Turdbi, Ghannushi, and Madani.]
In Afghanistan, this form of radicalism among some Islamic groups evolved in the course of the devastating internal war fought against Soviet occupying forces between 1979 and 1989. The Shi’i world also has seen the emergence of revolutionary groups intent on overthrowing the regimes in Iraq and Lebanon, where the groups are called, respectively, Hizb al-Da’wah and Hizbullah.
The common denominator for all these modern movements of collective protest in the Islamic world would appear to be the determination that Islam is both din wa dawlah, both religion and state. If it is true that there is no separation of religion from politics in Islam, then protesting against political injustices becomes a religious duty (fard al-kifdyah). Apart from the Prophet himself and, for Shi’is, Imam Husayn (d. 68o), the authority most often mentioned by contemporary Islamists to justify their actions is Ibn Taymiyah. As he put it: “It must be known that governing the people [wilayat amr alnds] is one of the most important tasks of religion. Indeed, there is no establishment of religion without it. Men’s interests will only be secured by coming together because they need each other. And upon coming together, they must have a leader” (1963, p. 74).
As already noted, Ibn Taymiyah did not protest against the impiety of the Mamlfiks. It is clear, however, that revolution is no longer considered invariably harmful to the interests of the ummah. For some contemporary Islamists, the classic view that fitnah must be avoided at all costs has lost its compelling force and even come to be seen as a recipe for conniving with unjust rulers in their suppression of the Muslims.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Arjomand, Said Amin. The Turban for the Crown. New York, 1988. In-depth study of the religious and political causes of the revolution.
Ibn Taymiyah, Ahmad ibn `Abd al-Halim. Al-siyasah al-shar`iyah ft islah al-ra`i wa-al-ra’iyah (The Politics of the Holy Law of Islam in Reforming the Leader and His Subjects). Cairo, 1963. Inquiry into the relationship between religion and politics in Islam, by the canonical jurist of contemporary Islamists.
Jansen, J. J. G. The Neglected Duty. New York and London, 1986. Important examination of the ideologies and policies of radical Islam in Egypt since the June 1967 war.
Kepel, Gilles. Muslim Extremism in Egypt. Berkeley, 1985. Another significant study of radical Islamic groups in Egypt since the 1970s.
Khomeini, Ruhollah al-Musavi. Islam and Revolution: Writings and Declarations of Imam Khomeini. Translated and edited by Hamid Algar. Berkeley, 1981. Valuable compendium of Ayatollah Khomeini’s major speeches and writings, including his most famous work, Islamic Government.
Lewis, Bernard. “Islamic Concepts of Revolution.” In Revolution in the Middle East, edited by P. J. Vatikiotis, pp. 30-40. London, 1972. Illuminating overview of the evolution of terminology employed by Muslims to refer to collective protest.
Peters, Rudolph. Islam and Colonialism: The Doctrine of Jihad in Modern History. The Hague, 1979. Incisive exploration of the classic formulation of jihad doctrine, and its pertinence to a variety of cases of anticolonial rebellion in the modern period.
Qutb, Sayyid. Milestones. Beirut, 1978. Handbook of contemporary radical Islamists, advocating the creation of countersocieties in the Muslim world which then would overthrow their governments.
SHAHROUGH AKHAVI

IRANIAN REVOLUTION OF 1979

Batoota — Tue, 27 May 2014 06:41:51 +0000

IRANIAN REVOLUTION OF 1979. Like all great social upheavals, the Iranian Revolution of 1979 was many years in the making. Its effects will resound throughout history. In simple terms, the regime of Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi was overthrown by a coalition of opposition forces dominated by Shi’i Muslim fundamentalists. The acknowledged leader of the revolution was Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (1902-1989). The proximate causes of the revolution grew out of a complex interrelationship of social difficulties in Iranian society coupled with a breakdown in the personal health of the shah. However, in the minds of the people of the world the broad-based opposition between religious and secular forces was the central struggle of the revolution.

Although the specific events leading up to the ouster of Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi took place over a period of approximately one year before his departure from Iran on 16 January, 1979, the social conditions underlying the revolution spanned several centuries. An understanding of these social conditions is necessary to fully appreciate the course of events and their historical significance.
Early Religious-Secular Conflict. The Ithna `Ashari (Twelver) branch of Shl’! Islam had been the official state religion in Iran since the founding of the Safavid dynasty in the sixteenth century. Shah Isma’Il, founder of the dynasty, claimed that he was a direct descendant of the prophet Muhammad through the Shi’i line of leaders of the faith, called imams. Almost from the beginning of Safavid rule, religious officials criticized the court for laxity in observance of Islam.
The shahs of the nineteenth-century Qajar dynasty found themselves in difficult military and economic conflict with European powers. They faced growing criticism by the clergy over territorial losses, foreign economic penetration, and incompetent government.
Since there was no constitution in Iran, the public had no direct voice in major public policy decisions. Nevertheless, religious leaders became alarmed at the marketing of Iranian patrimony and launched a series of public protests that forced the shahs to modify their activity. This protest was not limited to Iran. It spread to all Islamic lands owing largely to the efforts of the reformer Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (d. 1897), an Iranian who began to preach Islamic revival and resistance to European powers starting in the 1870s. In Iran, the public protest culminated in the Constitutional Revolution of 19051911, in which the Qajar monarch was forced to accept a constitution and a parliament. About twenty years later the dynasty collapsed. [See Qajar Dynasty and the biography of Afghani.]
The rivalry between the new Pahlavi dynasty (19251979) and Khomeini had a long history. In 1921, Reza Khan, an army officer, emerged as a national leader in the tumultuous years following World War I. Ruhollah Khomeini was then entering theological studies in the shrine city of Qom south of Tehran. In 1926 Reza Khan formally crowned himself Reza Shah and established the Pahlavi dynasty. Khomeini was qualified as a mullah that same year.
Reza Shah ignored the new constitution and continued to rule by decree. Nevertheless, he launched a series of drastic reforms in Iranian life designed to modernize the nation. Reforms in dress, education, and law were far reaching. Many of the most drastic reforms were directed at the religious establishment. Religious institutions were placed under the control of the state, thus depriving the clergy of a major source of power and income. Many public protests, supported by the clergy against these reforms, were ruthlessly suppressed by the government.
In September 1941 Reza Shah was forced to abdicate by the Allied powers for his pro-German sentiments. He was succeeded by his young son, Muhammad Reza. At this time, Khomeini launched his first attack against the Pahlavi regime, denouncing their reforms with a tract entitled Secrets Exposed. Over the next thirty years Khomeini came to espouse the view that the mullahs should not just teach and advise; they should play an active role in governing the country to assure that religion would always serve as the basic guide to public life. In essence, the legitimate rule of the absent twelfth imam would be carried out by a wilayat al faqih (“regency of the chief religious jurisprudent”), who would govern until his arrival on earth. This doctrine was controversial even among religious scholars. [See Wilayat al-Faqih.]
Khomeini continued to oppose the throne at every turn. In 1964 he was exiled by the shah for his public opposition to legislation that would exempt U.S. military personnel and their dependents from prosecution for any crime committed in Iran. He was already acclaimed as grand ayatollah at this time, a fact that prevented his outright execution. After seven months in Turkey, he settled in the Shi’! holy city of Najaf, Iraq. From this location he continued to issue pronouncements against the Pahlavi regime to a growing group of supporters.
The National Front. Other secular oppositionists with claims to leadership also arose in the years following World War II. Chief among these was a coalition of parties known as the National Front, established in 1949 and led by Mohammad Mossadegh. No friend of the Pahlavis, Mossadegh had been a member of parliament at the time Reza Shah came to power in 1926 and had openly opposed ratifying him as shah. The National Front espoused many of the revolutionary ideals of the later Islamic reformers, such as limiting the powers of the shah and ending foreign domination. However, it did not advocate Islamic dominance of government.
The popularity of the National Front brought Mossadegh to power as prime minister in 1951. He came into conflict both with religious leaders and with the shah, who tried to oust him from office. The shah had underestimated his support, however, and was forced temporarily to flee. The United States and Great Britain, which had initiated the attempt to oust Mossadegh, largely because they feared communism in Iran, restored the shah to power two days later. This act established the United States as the chief foreign interventionist in Iranian affairs for all groups opposed to the monarchy.
Another important opposition group was the Mujahidin-i Khalq (“People’s Warriors”), established in 1965 from other similar opposition groups. Their doctrine combined Islamic religious commitment with socialist doctrine. [See Mujahidin, article on Mujahidin-i Khalq.]
Prelude to Revolution. The United States continued active support of the shah. It anointed him as one of the protectors of Western interests in the Persian Gulf and sold Iran large supplies of advanced weaponry to support an increasingly powerful military sector. The shah, for his part, launched in 1963 a massive economic and social reform program known as the White Revolution that was designed to change every aspect of Iranian life. The program was predicated on fashionable Western economic models of the 1960s which promised economic “takeoff if if GNP growth could be sustained at 7 percent or better for a period of years. For Iran this growth was developed through a time-honored tradition: foreign investment in partnership with the throne and other economic elites.
In 1972 Britain withdrew its military from the Persian Gulf, and the United States began to arm Iran even more seriously. Then, in 1973 Iran and Saudi Arabia led the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in a massive price increase in crude oil. This gave Iran far more income to fuel both its military and economic development.
Following the oil price increase of 1973, Iran’s economy began to reel out of control. GNP growth continued unabated, but the profits were limited only to the top echelons of society. The shah finally achieved the elusive goal which had been pursued since the days of the Qajar shahs-financial independence from the population as a whole. In 1959 oil revenues contributed only 9.7 percent of Iran’s total GNP. By 1974, the share had risen to 47 percent, and by some estimates the government was receiving fully 8o percent of its revenues from oil by 1978. Since those in power were not elected, these funds gave them almost unlimited license in the exercise of their power.
Consequently, the shah and his largely technocratic ministries turned the nation into a private economic laboratory. Real advances were made in education and in the development of roads and public utilities. Nevertheless, life became uncomfortable, as the population was poked and prodded in interminable experiments to decrease inflation, increase productivity, and improve social indicators. The traditional population was shocked by the sudden appearance of dress and public behavior that they deemed indecent. One noted social critic, `All Shari`ati (1933-1977), accused the regime of “Westoxication” (gharbzadaga) in the pursuit of Euro-American modernity at any social price. [See the biography of Shari’ati. ]
By 1975 the increase in GNP topped 70 percent in real market prices, but inflation had begun to make itself felt at a rate exceeding 6o percent. In the next year the inflation rate topped the growth rate, causing negative real growth of about 2 percent. Agricultural production, lagging nearly i percent behind the birth rate (2.3 vs. 3.2 percent) went into real decline. For the first time in its history, Iran became a net importer of meat and grains. Ordinary Iranians, particularly those on fixed incomes, or on rigidly limited government salaries, were beginning to suffer. Housing costs were rising at yearly increments exceeding loo percent. As a final blow, the new government of Jamshid Amuzgar (August 1977) cut off the substantial subsidies to the clergy and religious institutions that had been instituted by the former prime minister, Amir `Abbas Huvaydah. It is noteworthy that the shah in exile identified this act as the mistake that caused his downfall.
All of these acts alienated large sections of the traditional population. This gave the religious establishment its opening, and the revolutionary exhortations of Ayatollah Khomeini began to take hold throughout the population.
The Revolution. The beginning of the end for the shah began on 9 January 1978, when theology students in the city of Qom began a protest against a pseudonymous article published in the newspaper Ittila’at accusing Ayatollah Khomeini of licentious behavior and crimes against the state. The author was widely thought to have been Minister of Information Daryush Humayun. The demonstration met with violent confrontation by the police. Several students died. In accord with Islamic custom mourning ceremonies for the dead were held at forty-day intervals. Each of these mourning ceremonies turned into a public demonstration against the government, which was again confronted by the police or the military, resulting in more fatalities. Quite predictably the bulk of the protesters were young unemployed males in the large cities, and the protests were underwritten and financed from the traditional market, or bazaar.
Protests increased throughout the spring and summer. On 7 September 1978, the shah declared martial law and a ban on all demonstrations. Unfortunately, word of this decree had not spread. A demonstration at Jaleh Square in Tehran was confronted by the military, and a large number of defenseless people were shot. The government claimed that under a hundred people had died, but the religious establishment put the figure at over ten thousand. From this point onward, protests spread to every part of the nation. Even the state-controlled press began to report violence on a daily basis.
The shah seemed to have no definite strategy for dealing with the crisis. It was not generally known at the time that he was sick with lymphatic cancer. His illness was seen later as one cause of his irresoluteness in the face of these protests. Even so, he tried a number of tactics to diffuse the revolution. He changed prime ministers and arrested more than 130 former government leaders. Finally, he coerced Iraqi officials to expel Khomeini. The ayatollah eventually settled in a suburb of Paris, Neauphle-le-Chateau. He was better able to communicate with internal revolutionary forces from Paris by way of long-distance telephone than from Iraq.
Khomeini’s central message was the same one that religious oppositionists had been preaching for a hundred years: the shah had conspired with foreign powers-primarily the United States-to once again exploit the Iranian people and undermine Islam. This message proved irresistable to the population as a whole. The revolution in its final months attracted broad-based participation, involving people from all economic classes and all regions of the country. Particularly crippling were strikes in Iran’s oil industry, which brought exports to a near halt.
Eventually it became clear to the shah that he must leave Iran if stability were to be preserved. He attempted to appoint a number of individuals to become prime minister in a caretaker role, but all refused. Finally, Shahpour Bakhtiar (Shapur Bakhtiyar), a venerable National Front politician, accepted the job in order to allow the shah to leave. On 16 January 1979, the shah left Iran. The United States dispatched General Robert Huyser to Tehran to ensure the support of the Iranian military for the Bakhtiar government.
However, the Bakhtiar government was doomed from the start, as Khomeini appointed his own Provisional Revolutionary Government headed by another National Front politician, Mehdi Bazargan. Bakhtiar never had any power. The real power during January and February of 1979 resided in roving komitehs (committees) of revolutionaries organized in mosques. These groups, in conjunction with veteran guerrilla fighters, such as the Mujahidin-i Khalq, ruled the streets of Tehran and other large cities. They engaged in periodic skirmishes with the military and other loyalist groups during this period. [See Komiteh; and the biography of Bazargan.]
Khomeini returned to Iran on i February 1979. His return was greeted with extraordinary enthusiasm throughout the nation. On his return, sections of the military began to defect to the new Khomeini-led government. Tension between military groups climaxed on 9 February 1979, in a clash between air force cadets and technicians who had declared their loyalty to Khomeini and the shah’s Imperial Guards. The cadets tried to take over the air force base at Doshan Tapah on the outskirts of Tehran and were opposed by the Imperial Guard. The cadets won the battle with the help of urban guerrillas in the area. This touched off a series of armed confrontations throughout the capital. On i i February the Supreme Military Council announced that the military would no longer participate in the political crisis. All soldiers were ordered to their barracks. Bakhtiar went into hiding and eventually fled to Paris. The Khomeini-led government was officially in power. February i i is now marked as the anniversary of the revolution.
The Aftermath of the Revolution. February to November 1979 was a transitional period in which the religious leaders fully established themselves in power in Iran. The Provisional Revolutionary Government established by Khomeini consisted largely of noncleric National Front leaders. These leaders envisioned the successor government as a secular democracy based on European models. However, hard-line religionists had a different vision. They favored an outright theocracy based on Islamic law.
On 30-31 March the Provisional Revolutionary Government held a national referendum on the form the new government would take. At Khomeini’s insistence, the public was asked to vote yes or no on whether Iran should become an Islamic republic. Official tallies placed the yes vote at 98 percent.
The nation next decided on a constitution for the new government. In the summer of 1979 two drafts of a constitution were put forth, neither giving power to Khomeini or the clerical leaders. There was great debate between hard-line Islamists and secular nationalists. Eventually as a compromise an Assembly of Experts was elected to draft a third constitution. The assembly had heavy representation from religious hard-liners. This
third draft invested ultimate power in a faqih (chief jurisprudent) along with a five-person religious Council of Guardians. Great dissent over this document raged in Iran throughout the fall. The secular National Front leaders were chief in their opposition, fearing, as Bazargan asserted, a new “dictatorship of the clergy.”
Fate intervened in the ratification process to sway public opinion in favor of the hard-line religious leaders. The former shah, who was now deathly ill, had been traveling from nation to nation looking for a place to live. He appealed to the United States for medical treatment. Despite dire warnings from the U.S. embassy in Tehran of the dangerous consequences of admitting him to America, the Carter administration allowed him to fly to New York on 22 October 1979.
The reaction in Tehran was not long in coming. On 4 November a group of students took over the U.S. embassy and held all personnel hostage. The Americans remained captive for 444 days. The capture of the embassy touched off a huge anti-American reaction in Tehran that lasted for months. Officials of the Provisional Revolutionary Government, notably Bazargan, were blamed for the decision to give refuge to the shah and were forced to resign. These events effectively blunted all secular nationalist opposition to the establishment of a theocratic government with Khomeini at its head. On 2-3 December 1979, the nation accepted the new constitution with a 99 percent approval vote.
In the ten years from the onset of the revolution until Khomeini’s death on 3 June 1989, the new government groped toward stability. Despite continued infighting between political factions, internal political transitions were generally peaceful. A debilitating war with Iraq, begun in September 1980. was fought to a standstill by July 1988. The continued power of the komitehs and their successors, the Sipah-i Pasdaran-i Ingilab-i Islami, were cause for public alarm. These groups continued to enforce a rough-and-ready Islamic morality along with keeping the peace. Those seen as offenders of Islamic codes of modesty and morality, as well as adherents of the former regime, were accosted on the streets and summarily presented before Islamic judges. Many were executed or imprisoned. Eventually the actions of these vigilante groups were curtailed, as they were redirected to fight the war with Iraq. The new government continued to be hostile toward the United States, but it improved relations with most other nations. [See Sipah-i Pasdaran-i Inqilab-i Islami.]
For people throughout the Islamic world, the Iranian Revolution was a symbolically important event. It demonstrated that a Western-influenced secular regime could be overthrown by opposition forces organized under Islamic reformers. Since Islamic revivalists had been advocating just such a change since the late nineteenth century without success, the revolution gave new impetus to their struggle and triggered a rise in Islamic fundamentalist activities from Morocco to Southeast Asia.
It is safe to say that, although the dynamic tensions for opposition to the monarchy had long existed in Iran, no one could have predicted for certain that the final outcome of the revolution would be a theocratic government. For Muslims eager for reform and escape from Western domination, both in Iran and in other nations, the revolution was a deeply inspirational event. For secular nationalists and most of the Western world, the revolution continues to be disturbing. Throughout the entire period, however, the figure of Ayatollah Khomeini dominated the scene. He is correctly identified as the author of the revolution.
[See also Iran; Revolution; and the biography of Khomeini. For biographies of Reza Shah and Muhammad Reza Shah, see under Pahlavi.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Akhavi, Shahrough. Religion and Politics in Contemporary Iran: ClergyState Relations in the Pahlavi Period. Albany, N.Y., 198o. Important work laying out the background leading to systematic clerical opposition to Pahlavi rule in Iran.
Arjomand, Said Amir. The Turban for the Crown: The Islamic Revolution in Iran. New York and Oxford, 1988. One of the most complete accounts of the events of the revolution from an acknowledged expert on Iranian contemporary history and politics.
Bakhash, Shaul. The Reign of the Ayatollahs: Iran and the Islamic Revolution. Rev. ed. New York, 199o. Account of the revolution by a seasoned journalist and historian, highly critical of the religious regime.
Bill, James A. The Eagle and the Lion: The Tragedy of AmericanIranian Relations. New Haven, 1988. Account of relations between the United States and Iran during the Pahlavi era showing how the Iranian government systematically hid its internal political actions from U.S. officials.
Fischer, Michael M. J. Iran: From Religious Dispute to Revolution. Cambridge, Mass., 1984. Now-classic anthropological work showing how the revolution was constructed in Shi`i religious symbolic terms by the militant clergy.
Huyser, Robert E. Mission to Tehran. New York, 1986. The final word by the American general thought to have engineered the Iranian military’s capitulation to the Khomeini-led revolutionary government.
Keddie, Nikki R. Roots of Revolution: An Interpretive History of Modern Iran. New Haven, 1981. See annotation to next item, below. Keddie, Nikki R., ed. Religion and Politics in Iran: Shi’ism from Quietism to Revolution. New Haven, 1983. Two important works by a premier historian of Iran detailing centuries of confrontation between religious and secular officials.
Khomeini, Ruhollah. Islam and Revolution: Writings and Declarations of Imam Khomeini. Translated and annotated by Hamid Algar. Berkeley, 198i. Ayatollah Khomeini’s philosophy of revolution and government in his own words.
Ramazani, Ruhollah K. Revolutionary Iran: Challenge and Response in the Middle East. Baltimore, 1986. Excellent account of government and international relations in postrevolutionary Iran.
Rubin, Barry. Paved with Good Intentions: The American Experience in Iran. New York, 1981. Masterful review of U.S. military and development efforts in the period leading up to the revolution.
Sick, Gary. All Fall Down. New York, 1985. The Iranian Revolution from the standpoint of a U.S. military analyst who saw it all. Wright, Robin. In the Name of God: The Khomeini Decade. New York, 1989. A journalist’s account of Khomeini’s leadership in Iran replete with specific facts and dates.
Zonis, Marvin. Majestic Failure: The Fall of the Shah. Chicago, 1991. The author’s account of the shah’s failure to respond to the revolutionary challenge to his regime is based on his theory that the shah was unable to cope psychologically with a series of personal tragedies in the last years of his regime.
WILLIAM O. BEEMAN

CONSTITUTIONAL REVOLUTION

Batoota — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 06:42:15 +0000

CONSTITUTIONAL REVOLUTION. The Iranian Constitutional Revolution (1905-1911) was one of two major revolutions in modernIranthat, together with several rebellions, madeIranthe most revolutionary Middle Eastern country of the modern era.Iranowed its revolutionary character largely to the country’s semicolonial status (much like revolutionaryChina); the alliance among merchants, `ulama’ (religious scholars), and modern intellectuals; and the central role in revolutions of many cities. The particular causes of the 19051911 movement included dissatisfaction with the growth of Western power and with economic stagnation, as well as the influence of modern ideas and of the results of the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905 and the Russian revolution of 1905.
The immediate cause of revolutionary events was, as is often the case, relatively trivial. In December 1905, the governor ofTehranbeat the feet of a sugar merchant accused of raising prices, after which many mullahs and merchants took bast (sanctuary) inTehran’s royal mosque. After their dispersal, many `ulama’ took bast in a shrine and presented demands to the shah; the crucial one was an undefined “house of justice.” The shah dismissed the governor and in principle granted the house of justice in January 19o6 but did nothing further. There followed preaching by radical preachers, and a sayyid was killed by an officer; as a result, a great mass of mullahs and others took bast in Qom in July 1906. A huge crowd of merchants and tradespeople, estimated at twelve to fourteen thousand, took bast in the British legation inTehranand began to demand a parliament. In August, Muzaffar al-Din Shah accepted this demand, and the first parliament, or majlis, was elected in accordance with a six-class system, which gave more power to the popular-class guilds than they were to enjoy in subsequent parliaments, elected under a nonclass system.
The first Majlis opened in October 19o6, and a committee wrote a Fundamental Law, which the shah signed only when he was mortally ill, in December 19o6. A longer Supplementary Fundamental Law was signed by the new shah, Muhammad `Ali, in October 1907. Together,. these made up the Iranian Constitution that remained, with minor amendments, until the 1979 revolution. It was based largely on the Belgian Constitution of 183o, but on `ulama’ insistence it included references to Islam and a provision that a committee of five mujtahids would pass on the constitutionality of parliamentary laws. This remained a dead letter. The intent of the parliamentarians was to set up a Western-style constitutional monarchy with power held by parliament and its chosen ministers, but this rarely happened.
There was a flowering of liberal and radical newspapers and societies during the revolutionary period. The new shah brought back a conservative prime minister, the Atabak, and the Majlis majority did not insist on itself making this choice. Those opposed to autocracy comprised several groups: merchants and tradespeople; the `ulama’ opposition, led by the liberal sayyid Muhammad Husayn Tabataba’i and the opportunistic sayyid `Abd Allah Bihbahani; and liberals and radicals, such as the then-socialistTabrizdeputy Sayyid Hasan Taqizadah. The far left and the shah were both involved in the killing of the Atabak on 31 August 1907, by coincidence the same date as the signing of the AngloRussian Treaty dividingIraninto spheres of influence. The introduction of Russo-British cooperation inIranhelped doom the revolution.
The shah, with the aid of the Russian-led Cossack Brigade, staged a successful coup against the Majlis and the opposition in June 1908. OnlyTabriz, led by two guerrilla leaders from the popular classes, held out. When Russian troops moved in, in I9o9, the guerrillas moved to Gilan, where the constitutionalist movement was also strong. In the south, the Bakhtiari tribe had its reasons to oppose the shah, and in July I9o9, the Bakhtiaris and the northern revolutionaries converged onTehran. They deposed the shah and installed his minor son, Ahmad Shah, under a regency. Although leftists, including those influenced by Russian social democrats, were strong in the opposition, and in the strong Democrat Party, most power went to a conservative, Bakhtiari-led cabinet.
Severe financial problems led the government to seek a foreign adviser untied toBritainandRussia, and they brought in an American expert, Morgan Shuster, to reform Iranian finances. Shuster wished to appoint a British subject to head a tax gendarmerie, but the Russians said this violated the Anglo-Russian Treaty, andBritainwent along withRussia’s position. In November 1911, the Russians issued an ultimatum and sent in troops, and for several yearsRussiaandBritaincontrolled the government, marking the real end of the revolution, although the constitution and the experience of political participation remained as its legacy.
[See alsoIran; Majlis; Qajar Dynasty.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bayat, Mangol.Iran’s First Revolution: ShNsm and the Constitutional Revolution of 1905-1909.New York, 1991. Questions the usual importance given the `ulama’ and usefully incorporates Russian material, especially on the role of the left.
Browne, Edward G. The Persian Revolution of 1905-1909 Cambridge, 1910. The classic work, a partisan prorevolution book written during the revolution; still useful for its translated and summarized primary sources and as a primary source itself of one perspective. Keddie, Nikki R. Iran: Religion, Politics, and Society.London, 198o. Collection of articles, including “Religion and Irreligion in Early Iranian Nationalism” and others discussing the constitutional revolution.
Lambton, Ann K. S., ed. QajarPersia: Eleven Studies.Austin, 1988. Martin, Vanessa. Islam and Modernism: The Iranian Revolution of 1906.London, 1989. The first of three recent comprehensive books on the revolution, readable and strong in its discussion of Shiism and the role of the `ulama’.
NIKKI R. KEDDIE