Iran is in the middle of an ongoing conflict: the conflict between reform and clerical conservatism. President Khatami, elected for his promise of reform, is continually resisted by the orthodox judiciary and other hardliners who enjoy a hegemony over what constitutes the ‘correct ideology’. In short, the question is whether westernisation is making a comeback through reform or not? This being so the book under review is very important because it helps us understand what ideas prevailed in Iran before the Revolution.
The author, an Iranian academic working in the United States, has offered fresh insights into the nature and status of westernisation in Iran which explains the final triumph of the clergy.
Boroujerdi begins with the phenomenon of ‘othering’ which refers to treating other social groups as so different from one’s own that the former is hardly thought to be human. The phenomenon involves creating stereotypes and reducing the complexity of human beings to a single dimension in which good and evil could be painted in black and white. He points out that this phenomenon is explained by the French philosopher Michel Foucault and the Arab-American intellectual Edward Said. Said’s argument is that ‘orientalism’ was a way of ‘othering’, misrepresenting, and finally subjugating the East.
From this analysis, the author moves to his central hypothesis that Iranian intellectuals used ‘nativism’---which is a kind of orientalism in reverse --- to confront the West. Nativism is based on resisting acculturation, privileging one’s ‘authentic’ identity and desiring to return to a state of cultural purity. The problem, however, is that this ‘authentic’ identity is constructed and this construction is as political in nature as the construction of similar categories by western orientalists. Anyway, nativism is the primary source of inspiration among Iranian thinkers and often it is expressed in Islamic terms. In short, at least for intellectuals, it was not Islam which was the major source of inspiration but the compulsions of nativism.
To prove these assertions, the author looks at the lives and the ideas of some prominent Iranian intellectuals---both of the secular and the Islamic type. Providing a who’s who of Iranian intelligensia, he places these intellectuals in the dominant milieu of their time. He begins with the argument that the Shah of Iran created a ‘rentier state’ which derived most of its revenue as rent from foreigners. This meant that while the state was flush with petro-dollars, it had not developed just systems of distribution of wealth. There was much dislocation and as young Iranians got educated they became more and more alienated from the repressive state. Militant organisations, such as the Feda‘iyan and the Mujahedin, were formed in the late sixties and early seventies. Universities, print media and even religious seminaries became hotbeds of revolutionary ideas. The state’s response was to unleash Savak, the secret police, on the dissidents but even barbarity could not contain them. The intellectuals continued ‘othering’ the alien state of the Shah.
The Shah’s enforced westernisation perhaps increased the intellectuals’ alienation from the West. In 1962, Jalal Al-e-Ahmad wrote Gharbzadegi (Westoxication) which came to be regarded as a canonical work regarding the blind aping of the West which the Shah was supposed to be promoting. Another intellectual, Fakhroddin Shadman, believed that the West should be appropriated but in Persian so as to retain a sense of one’s Iranian Identity. Yet another intellectual, Ahmed Fardid (1912-1994), advocated understanding the core of western civilisation by understanding its philosophy.
Meanwhile, a number of politically minded clergymen---Motahhari, Beheshti, Bazargan and, above all, Khomeini---became active in the sixties. They wanted to confront the state as well as the West but to do so they also wanted to reform the clergy first which was preoccupied with theological debates of the medieval era. Khomeini’s Valeyat-e-Faqih (1971) was one such effort and the most successful one at that to establish the theoretical basis of creating an Islamic government. The clergy also opened a network of schools which proved very valuable for Khomeini in his struggle for power against all his rivals.
Then there were religious intellectuals of whom Ali Shariati and Sayyad Hoseyn Nasr are very well known. Both were born in religious families but later took degrees in the social sciences. Shariati tried to reinterpret Islam so that it became the source of anti-Shah inspiration. Hoseyn Nasr turned to mysticism. He, too, reinterpreted Islam in a new light. Both were critical of modernity and thus strengthened nativist thinking.
Chapter six of Boroujerdi’s book deals with more nativists, especially those from the academia. Ehsan Naraqi, Hamid Enayat and Durush Shayegan are discussed in some detail here. Naraqi emphasized indigenous social research. Enayat suggested that the Iranian intellectuals were alienated from their Islamic heritage and, therefore, unauthentic. Durush Shayegan argued that nihilism is the outcome of western technology. He too, believed that Islam was the primordial source of identity in Iran.
After the 1979 Revolution the intellectual debate took another form. The questions which now came to the forefront were as to how Islam was to be defined as a law and how the state was to be run on its basis. Among the debaters were Raza Davari and Abdolkarim Sorush. They discussed the philosophical arguments in Karl Popper’s The Open Society and Its Enemies, which had just been translated into Persian then. Sorush took the position that knowledge is being constantly transformed so Islamic law (fiqh) is also open to new interpretation. He was supported by Mojtahed-Shabestari, a clerical intellectual. Davari, on the other hand, opposed the application of the scientific methodology to fiqh. The debate continues.
The major achievement of Boroujerdi’s book is that it provides understanding of the complex process through which intellectual viewpoints and discourses were articulated. Crucially significant is the argument that nativism rather than Islam was the real major inspiration for most of the intellectuals but it came to be expressed in a religious idiom. This is worth critical attention, not only because this is a new insight into Iranian intellectual history but also because it helps us understand Islamic revivalist movements elsewhere in the world. In Maulana Maudoodi’s work, too, there is much that is inspired by his reaction to the West. Maudoodi’s revivalist work also has the nativist element since it is not a continuation of the old medieval Islamic debates which preoccupied the traditional ulema of his time.
The epilogue tells us how nativism emerged as the sole ideological candidate which united most segments of the intellectual polity. However, now in the hands of the clergy, it has become a sacerdotal device to suppress other discourses. Moreover, nativism, like orientalism, is itself based on wrong theoretical premises. And yet it flourishes because of being a response to the West’s overwhelming power.
The book is very valuable for both theoretical insights as well as empirical information about Iranian intellectual and political life. I recommend it to scholars and informed non-specialist readers alike. It is a book which Pakistanis interested in Islam and modernity should read and understand in the light of their own society. In other words it is perhaps more relevant for Pakistan, which has a high development of intellectual discourse like Iran, than most other Muslim countries where the level of discourse is lower.