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Iran: A Clash of Religion and Nationalism
08 April 2013
By Amir Taheri
Over the past year or so, the choice between two
adjectives has developed into an important theme of
the power struggle within the Khomeinist ruling elite
in Tehran.
The adjectives are "Iranian" and "Islamic".
Under the Pahlavi shahs who promoted a nationalist
narrative, the adjective "Islamic" was quietly set
aside in favor of "Iranian". Official discourse
presented "Iranian" as synonymous with excellent and
sublime.
Having seized power in 1979, the mullahs were uneasy
about the words Iran and Iranian from the start.
Ayatollah Sadeq Khalkhali, one of Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini's sidekicks, even suggested that Iran be
renamed "Islamistan".
The Khomeinist sect tried to scrap Nowruz, the Iranian
New Year and, for years, banned pre-Islamic Iranian
names for new-born children. Khomeinists insisted on
attaching the adjective "Islamic" to everything under
the sun. Thus, we got "Islamic" physics, biology,
mathematics, cuisine, and, more interestingly, even
music and cinema. The mullahs claimed that love of
Iran was a form of "shirk" or association with the
Unique God.
The constitution imposed by Khomeini cast the "Supreme
Guide" as leader of the Islamic ummah of which the
Iranian nation formed only a part.
Over the years, thousands of "hidden graves" of
supposed descendants of imams were discovered across
the country. The title "Sayyed", denoting Arab
descent, began to appear in front of more and more
names. Khomeinists wished to hide their Iranian origin
to emphasize Islamic credentials.
The mullahs' leftist allies shared their hatred of
"Iran" because they, too, saw nationalism as an
ideological threat. To Marxists, people should not be
defined by national background but by class
affiliation.
However, just as the downgrading of the adjective
Islamic under the Shahs did not script Islam out of
Iranian life, the mullahs and Marxists hatred for the
very concept of Iran has failed.
Khomeini and his successor Ali Khamenei failed to stop
Iranians from celebrating Nowruz and ended up by
acknowledging it as the national New Year with an
official message. Also, they did not manage to stop
Iranians from jumping over the purifying fire on the
last Wednesday of the Iranian year. Nor could they
force Iranians not to use pre-Islamic names for their
children.
By adopting an anti-Iranian posture, Khomeinists ended
up encouraging Iranian nationalism. Last autumn more
than 6,000 poets participated in the Annual Festival
of Poetry organized by the government. A selection of
their poems published by the Ministry of Islamic
Guidance shows that almost all were inspired by
nationalistic, rather than Islamist, themes.
This does not mean that Iranians have become
anti-Islamic. But it means that, as might have been
expected, they are trying to defy a narrative imposed
by the rulers. Being tempted by the forbidden fruit is
an old-established trait of human character.
Conscious that the Khomeinist ideology is bankrupt,
some younger members of the ruling elite have for
years tried to find alternative themes to a moribund
discourse.
In the 1980s, then Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi
tried a version of North Korea's ideology of
self-sufficiency and anti-Imperialist defiance. The
mélange didn't work. In the 1990s, Hashemi Rafsanjani,
as President and "strongman, promoted the Guizotesque
formula of "getting rich quick". His model was
Communist China, with its mix of capitalist economy
and totalitarian politics. That formula, too, proved a
failure.
When first elected President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and
his ideological guru Esfandiar Masha'i, tried to
imitate Hugo Chavez's petro-populism. Their slogan
was: "Oil money on the dinner table of families."
That, too, failed.
Starting a couple of years ago, the
Ahmadinejad-Masha'i tandem started talking of Iran and
Iranian-ness. The famous "Cyrus Cylinder", on which
the founder of the first Iranian empire had engraved
his "Charter of Human Rights", was brought to Tehran
on loan from the British Museum in London. Ahmadinejad
and a guard of honor went to welcome the "cylinder".
The president described Cyrus as "equal to Prophets".
In the sequence that followed, Masha'i spoke of the
"Iranian school". He claimed that it was Iran that had
transformed Islam, a mere creed, into a civilization.
According to him only the "Iranian school" offered an
alternative to Western civilisation.
Last week, the government announced it was organizing
2,500 feasts across the country to mark Nowruz. The
figure 2,500 recalled festivities organized under the
Shah in 1971 to mark the 25th centenary of the empire
founded by Cyrus.
To hammer in the nationalist theme, the planned
festivities are called "The Voice of Spring" a
reference to Iran's pre-Islamic cult of Anahita, the
Goddess of Fertility.
Khamenei's initial reaction to the "Iranian School"
slogan was one of outrage. The media, under his
control, launched bitter attacks against Ahmadinejad
and Masha'i for supposedly falling for the siren song
of nationalism.
Last week, however, in a surprising volte-face
Khamenei announced the creation of something called an
"Islamic-Iranian" model of civilization, as "an
alternative to Western civilization."
To develop that model, Khamenei ordered the creation
of a special organization and appointed Sadeq
Vaez-Zadeh to lead the program.
Khamenei's implicit message is: Since the adjective
"Iranian" cannot be discarded, what about giving it
second place to the adjective "Islamic"?
Will Ahmadinejad accept the compromise or will he
continue peddling "Iranian-Islamic", a model in which
religion plays second fiddle to nationalism?
Amir Taheri was born in Ahvaz, southwest
Iran, and educated in Tehran, London and Paris. He was
Executive Editor-in-Chief of the daily Kayhan in Iran
(1972-79). In 1980-84, he was Middle East Editor for
the Sunday Times. In 1984-92, he served as member of
the Executive Board of the International Press
Institute (IPI). Between 1980 and 2004, he was a
contributor to the International Herald Tribune. He
has written for the Wall Street Journal, the New York
Post, the New York Times, the London Times, the French
magazine Politique Internationale, and the German
weekly Focus. Between 1989 and 2005, he was editorial
writer for the German daily Die Welt. Taheri has
published 11 books, some of which have been translated
into 20 languages. He has been a columnist for Asharq
Alawsat since 1987. Taheri's latest book "The Persian
Night" is published by Encounter Books in London and
New York.
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