The Persian Night: Iran Under the Khomeinist Revolution Read online

  In the official calendar of the Islamic Republic, the imams are celebrated or mourned for 64 days each year, including a 40-day mourning period for Hussein bin Ali, the third imam, who was martyred in 680 in a struggle for power against the Umayyid Caliph Yazid. The Prophet Muhammad, by contrast, is remembered on just one day. Even his birthday is not a public holiday, while the birthday of the Hidden Imam is the most important feast in the Shiite calendar.

  Shiite theological tradition rejects virtually all positions taken by Sunni scholars. Until a school of divinity was opened at Tehran University in the 1930s, no Sunni theologians were studied at Shiite seminaries in Iran. Shiites also refuse to pray alongside Sunnis. Although the text of the prayer itself is only slightly different, the divergence in style is instantly noticeable. Shiites complete the mandatory Islamic prayer with special incantations peculiar to themselves, known as du’a, addressed to the imams rather than God. More significantly, Shiites have modified the original text of the Azan (call to prayer) by adding two verses that fundamentally reorient its message.10

  Because non-Shiite Muslims are not regarded as true believers, the Islamic Republic does not allow Sunnis to build and maintain mosques or other places of worship in any part of Iran where they do not constitute a majority of the population. In Tehran there are some three million Sunni Muslims, but not a single Sunni mosque. One of the last acts of the shah’s regime in 1979 had been to grant a license for a Sunni mosque in the Tehran suburb of Yussuf-Abad, along with 5,000 square meters of land and a sum equivalent to $300,000 for building the mosque. A few weeks later, the mullahs seized power, and the mosque was never built. In 1992, the only Sunni mosque in the Shiite “holy” city of Mash’had was burned down. Efforts to rebuild it have been vetoed by the authorities.

  The Khomeinist regime also refuses to allow Iranians who do not share its narrow religious creed to hold positions of authority in the public sector. Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians are excluded as a matter of course, but Sunni Muslims fare no better. no Sunni could become the “Supreme Guide” or the president of the Islamic Republic; nor does one find any Sunni cabinet minister, provincial governor, or senior diplomat in Iran. Over the three decades of the Khomeinist domination of Iran, scores of Sunni scholars and clerics have been murdered or executed on trumped-up charges. The latest wave of executions came in the spring of 2008 when three Sunni prayer leaders in southeast Iran were hanged in public.11

  The Islamic Republic has imposed a ban on names that most Muslims regard as quintessentially Islamic. Iranian parents are not allowed to name their children after Abu-Bakr, Omar, or Osman, collectively branded as the “Dirty Three” (Thulatha al-Mulawwatha). The name of Ayesha, Muhammad’s only virgin bride and favorite among his twenty-five wives, is also banned, as are a host of other names associated with the first three caliphs. Mullah Muhammad Baqir Majlisi (1616-1698), the foremost authority on Shiite doctrine, claims that Ayesha poisoned Muhammad because she wanted her father, Abu-Bakr to become caliph instead of Ali. Among Shiites, Ayesha is vilified as a scheming, witchlike figure of loose morals and evil designs. To say a woman is “like Ayesha” means she is both dangerous and seductive in a femme fatale style. Ayesha joins Abu-Bakr, Omar, Osman, and Muawyyah, the founder of the Umayyid dynasty, to form the “Evil Five” (Khamseh Khabitheh).

  Shiites have designated the ninth day of the month of Rabi al-Awwal on the Arab lunar calendar as the “Sweetest Day” because it marks Omar’s murder by an Iranian war prisoner. Known as Omar Koshan (the Killing of Omar), it is a day of festivities when crowds of believers stream to the mausoleum of Firuz, the man who killed the second caliph, near the central Iranian city of Kashan. People gather in village and city squares to burn effigies of Omar, cursing the man who sent his invading armies to Iran. The caliph’s name is used as an adjective denoting extreme ugliness and the height of evil. Saying that something or someone is Omari (Omar-like) indicates utmost revulsion.

  Many Sunni Muslims wonder how anyone could pretend to be a Muslim while equating three of the four Well-Guided Caliphs and the Prophet’s favorite wife with absolute evil. Because they regard the Khomeinist system as doctrinally suspect, many Muslim spiritual leaders, both Sunni and Shiite, will not even travel to Iran; some now regard it as part of the infidel realm. Despite offers of large bribes and other enticements by the Islamic Republic, no major Sunni theological figure has agreed to visit Iran since the mullahs seized power in 1979. A grand conference organized in Tehran in the spring of 2008 to work for a “convergence of Islamic schools” attracted only junior Sunni theologians from a few countries. Worse still for the Khomeinist regime, the Sunni theological establishment, represented by the Al-Azhar Academy in Cairo, has all but reneged on an agreement signed with the Iranian clergy on a mutual recognition of Sunni and Shiite schools as legitimate expressions of Islam. The concordat had been negotiated throughout the 1940s with support from the Iranian and Egyptian states when they were linked at the top through the marriage of the shah of Iran to Fawziah, a sister of King Farouq of Egypt. It was ratified in 1949 by Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Hussein Borujerdi, then the primus inter pares of the Shiite clergy in Qom. Most Sunni-majority nations today persecute their Shiite minorities. For example, Shiites are not allowed to build a mosque in Cairo or to organize mourning processions in Saudi Arabia.

  Pursuing a tradition known as tabarra (exoneration), Shiites are asked to do whatever they can to distinguish themselves not only from the infidels but also from Sunnis. The mullahs make sure that none of the important Islamic days on the Shiite calendar coincide with those on the calendars of Sunni Muslims. Thus, the fasting month of Ramadan, common to all Muslims, always starts and ends a day earlier or later in Iran than in other Muslim countries. Where they are in a minority, and thus likely to be in danger, Shiites are advised to practice taqiyyah (dissimulation) to hide their faith. On such occasions, they may even present themselves as ardent Sunnis. Where Shiites are a majority and face no risks, however, they ought to do whatever possible not to look and behave like Sunnis. They must sport distinctive beards, wear special styles of clothing, and, in the case of women, adopt their own form of hijab. The necessity for Shiites to mark themselves out from Sunnis is explained by one of the younger apologists of Khomeinism thus:

  Our prophet is different from the prophet of the Sunnis, the reason being that our historical profile of the prophet is fundamentally different from that held by Sunnis. . . . Our image of the imams and even of the Koran is different from that current among Sunnis. There are many Shiite traditions about the imams that our ulema [i.e. clerics] regard as a significant commentary on specific Koranic verses.12

  Shiite efforts to mark themselves out from other Muslims could also be witnessed in the architecture of Iranian mosques and other edifices related to the cult. Mosques throughout the Muslim world where Sunnis are a majority have only one minaret, a symbol of Allah’s uniqueness. In Iran, mosques have two minarets: one symbolizing Allah, the other the principle of imamate. The tile work in Sunni mosques depicts abstract shapes or the name of Allah in stylized calligraphy. In Shiite mosques, however, the tile work presents stylized names of the “Five Immaculate Ones”: Muhammad, his daughter Fatima, his cousin and son-in-law Ali, and the prophet’s two favorite grandsons, Hassan and Hussein. Often, the slogan Ya Ali (“O Ali!”) takes precedence over the more broadly Islamic one of Ya Allah! All this represents a substantial dilution of Islam’s militant and uncompromising monotheistic message.

  While it is clear that the overwhelming majority of Muslims do not consider the system created by Khomeini to be Islamic, it is not at all certain that Shiites would regard it as a true reflection of their faith either. Khomeini started playing fast and loose with Shiite doctrine almost immediately after his supporters, backed by armed Communist and Islamic-Marxist gangs, had seized power in 1979. He orchestrated a campaign to call himself “the imam” rather than a mere ayatollah as he was according to the Shiite clerical hierarchy. Thus Twelve
r Shiites suddenly found themselves with thirteen imams rather than twelve, a development that created confusion about the role that the twelfth imam, the Awaited Mahdi (of whom more later), was supposed to play.

  If it is neither Islamic in the eyes of most Muslims nor even properly Shiite in the eyes of other Shiites, could we at least consider the Khomeinist system a theocracy, as some commentators have suggested? If theocracy means a system of government based on the claim that all power emanates from a divine source, the answer is yes. Khomeini and his successor as Supreme Guide, Ali Khamenehi—a mid-ranking mullah elevated to the position of ayatollah by his supporters—have claimed to represent divine power on earth. Both have also claimed the supreme leadership of all Muslims, Sunni as well as Shiite, throughout the world, a claim enshrined in the Constitution of the Islamic Republic.

  If, on the other hand, theocracy means a system of rule by the clergy, the Khomeinist “republic” would not qualify. One reason is that Shiism, like Islam in general, has never had an organized “church” with an easily recognizable clerical hierarchy. Almost anybody could grow a beard, don a turban and flowing robes, and claim to be a mullah. A survey by the Iranian Endowments Office in 1977 revealed that over 250,000 men claimed to be mullahs at the time.13 An astonishing 20 percent were categorized by the survey as “illiterate” or “semiliterate.” Moreover, men could switch from a clerical career to other pursuits and back again at any time. Ali-Akbar Bahremani, better known as Hashemi Rafsanjani, was a small building contractor and pistachio grower in southeastern Iran in the 1970s. Then in 1978 he donned a turban, shed his European-style suit for an Arab-style robe and mantle, or aba, and asked his friends to call him Hojat al-Islam (Proof of Islam), a clerical title for mid-ranking mullahs. Just over a decade later, he was president of the Islamic Republic and reputed to be the richest man in Iran. Another example: Muhammad Khatami-Yazdi also started adult life as a civilian, including a spell as director of a travel agency in Tehran. With the gathering of the revolutionary storm in the late 1970s, he grew a beard, donned a turban, and exchanged his suit for a mullah’s gear, claiming the title of Hojat al-Islam. A quarter of a century later, he was president of the Islamic Republic, and subsequently a frequent guest at interfaith conferences around the globe.

  Rafsanjani and Khatami were not the first to become mullahs for the occasion. In the sixteenth century, as the Safavid shahs imposed Shiism on Iran by the sword, thousands of opportunists cast themselves as mullahs to profit from the new regime. Because there were no Shiite clerics in Iran at the time, the Safavids had to import mullahs from Lebanon. But these Lebanese imports did not speak Persian and could not communicate with newly Shiified Iranians. Eloquent Persians filled the gap in the market, becoming mullahs with the blessing of the Lebanese newcomers and splitting the profits with them.

  There has been a reverse traffic also, with mullahs leaving the cloth for a range of reasons, not always opportunistic. When Reza Shah, the founder of the Pahlavi dynasty and the first architect of modernization in Iran, launched his anticlerical campaign in the 1930s, many mullahs shaved their beards and cast off their turbans to join his administration. Some former mullahs—including Ali Dashti, Muhammad Sajjadi, and Allameh Vahidi—became chief theoreticians of Pahlavi’s secularist vision for Iran.

  After the Khomeinist revolution, some mullahs were so disgusted with the cult of personality built by the ayatollah that they decided to abandon the cloth and, in some cases, go into exile. Yahya nassiri, a mullah who had played a key role in the early days of the revolution, suddenly disappeared from the scene in what his relatives jokingly described as his “Grand Occultation.” Among those who went into exile were such prominent mullahs as Abbas Mohajerani and Ali Tehrani.14 Some leading Iranian mullahs who happened to be abroad during the revolution refused to return home even for brief visits because they regarded the Khomeinist system as heretical. Among them were Grand Ayatollah Abol-Qassem Mussavi-Khoei, Grand Ayatollah Ali-Muhammad Husseini Sistani, and Ayatollah Mahmoud Hojat Qomi.

  Inside Iran, a majority of grand ayatollahs opposed the doctrinal bases of the proposed Khomeinist system from the start. Ayatollah Mahdi Rouhani declared the Khomeinist system to be “neither Islamic nor Shiite, but despotic.” Hojat al-Islam Kamaleddin Ganjeh’i went further. To him, the Khomeinist system was a creation of Taghut (the Rebel), an Islamic designation for Satan.

  With the liberation of Iraq by a U.S.-led coalition in 2003, the main Shiite “holy” cities of najaf and Karbala, which had been isolated from the outside world by Saddam Hussein for three decades, became accessible to Iranians once again. This enabled thousands of Iranian mullahs to leave Qom, Mash’had, and Tehran for Baghdad, najaf, and Karbala. In most cases, they explained their move by saying that the system Khomeini had imposed on Iran was “un-Islamic.” Khomeini’s own grandson, Hussein Mussavi Khomeini, a mid-ranking mullah who in 2003 moved to najaf, the city of his childhood and early youth, told a press conference in Baghdad that the system created by the late ayatollah “had no right to be described as Islamic.”

  More recently, a younger generation of mullahs has opposed the Khomeinist system on both doctrinal and political grounds. They include Hassan Yussefi Eshkevari, Hadi Qabel, and Mohsen Kadivar. Even some of Khomeini’s most prominent early associates have become opponents of a system they regard as un-Islamic if not anti-Islamic. The best known among them is Grand Ayatollah Hussein-Ali Montazeri, who had been Khomeini’s heir-designate as Supreme Guide until their doctrinal quarrel and separation in 1986.

  In fact, the opposition of the Shiite clergy to Khomeini’s Islamic Republic has been consistent and widespread. While individuals dressed as mullahs occupy many of the highest positions in the system, including that of Supreme Guide, clerics also account for a large number of the regime’s opponents. Over the past three decades, mullahs and students of theology have been jailed by the regime in higher proportions than people from any other social stratum. At times, the clash between Khomeinism and the Shiite clergy has become so intense that the regime has ordered the execution of some mullahs—something that no previous Iranian government dared do. Among the mullahs executed are Hojat al-Islam Muhammad Daneshi, a member of parliament; Hojat al-Islam Fakhreddin Hejazi, a popular preacher and televangelist; and Hojat al-Islam Mahdi Hashemi, an aide to Grand Ayatollah Montazeri.

  Perhaps the most important clash between the clergy and the Khomeinist establishment came in 1982 when the regime arrested Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Kazem Shariatmadari, one of the six major “sources of emulation” for Shiites. In an unprecedented act of interference by the state in clerical affairs, the Khomeinist government announced that Shariatmadari had been “defrocked,” a Christian term that had no parallel in either Shiism or Islam. The grand ayatollah, who had millions of “emulants” or religious followers, was kept under house arrest until his death four years later. Another grand ayatollah kept under house arrest until his death, in 2006, was Hassan Tabatabai-Qomi of Mash’had. Ironically, Shariatmadari and Qomi had saved Khomeini’s life in 1963 by interceding with the shah on his behalf. Shariatmadari had gone even further and issued a fatwa (religious edict) promoting Khomeini from Hojat al-Islam to Ayatollah.15

  The Shiite clergy includes some of the bitterest critics of the Khomeinist system. Ayatollah Hassan Sane’i has repeatedly ruled that the regime calling itself Islamic Republic is “as removed from Islam as the moon from earth.” Ayatollah Kazemeini Borujerdi has labeled the Islamic Republic “a conspiracy against God and believers.”16 Ayatollah Mahmoud Tabatabai-Qomi has charged the Khomeinist leadership with “total and systematic betrayal of Islam.” In an interview he asserted: “no one should call this regime Islamic. Trying to understand what these people [leaders of the regime] are doing by referring to Islam would only cause confusion.”17 Ayatollah Jalaleddin Taheri Khorramabadi, once an ardent Khomeinist and head of the notorious Imam Committee in Isfahan, turned against the regime in 1998, branding it “the rule of the corrupt, by the cor
rupt, for the corrupt.”

  The Khomeinist regime was never accepted as an “Islamic republic” even by Shiite organizations that had long fought for greater influence in shaping Iranian politics. The most important of these in terms of membership and financial resources was the so-called Mahdavieh Charitable Society, founded and for almost fifty years led by Ayatollah Ali-Akbar Halabi.18 The society included a secret organization known as Hojatieh, devoted to fighting the Baha’i faith. By 1980, however, it had become clear that Halabi would not support the strange “Islamic” soup that Khomeini was cooking with ingredients borrowed from Marxism-Leninism and fascism. Halabi objected to Khomeini’s “innovative” tendencies and specifically to his claim of imamate. Others took issue with Khomeini’s militant anti-Sunni posture. One such critic was Ayatollah nematallah Salehi najafabadi, who wrote a book calling on Shiites to tone down their extremist views as a step towards pan-Islamic reconciliation. Written in the 1970s, the book was published and then immediately banned in 1985, six years after its author’s assassination by killers allegedly linked to Khomeini.19

  Before the Khomeinist revolution, Iran was already a Muslim nation and had been so for almost fourteen centuries. It had a constitution under which no legislation that contravened Islamic principles could be enacted. non-Muslims could not attain high positions in the civil or armed services. Every year, Iran sent the single biggest contingent of pilgrims to Mecca, and more than ten million pilgrims went to the “holy” city of Mash’had. All children at secondary school had to take religious education and study classical Arabic in order to read the Koran. The state-owned radio and television networks allocated countless hours to religious programs. There were more than eighty high-level theological seminaries, plus full faculties of divinity offering courses up to and including the Ph.D. level. Iran also ranked high in the number of books published on Islam and produced some of the most beautiful Korans. In short, no one could deny Iran’s existential reality as a Muslim nation.