Author Archives: Jay Schroeter

Death of (to?) Dichotomy

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In Chapter 4 of “Religious Statecraft,” “Insitutionalizing Velayat-e Faqih,” there appears a political disagreement which I believe characterizes much of Iranian politics in the surge and wake of Khomeini’s popularity. Mohammad Shariatmadari, an influential Iranian cleric, at first disagrees with Khomeini’s view of the Islamic Government, believing that clerics do not belong in politics. The dichotomous spirit of Shariatmadari – the same thought process which had so long separated the largely “secular” government from the frankly clerical matters of the clerical class – died with the rise of Khomeini. From 1979 on, the sacred and the mundane became inseparable. From 1979 on, to criticize the government was to criticize God, because the government represents God in the velayat-e faqih. When it came down to the March 1979 referendum – Islamic Government or not – Shariatmadari backed down because he could not manage to negotiate his way out of believing, or at least pretending to believe, that the government governed by Islam is the ideal government. In this, the rigidity of Islam rears its head. Even though political Islam is malleable enough to allow for Marxism, governmental Platonism, dictatorship, democracy, or Khomeinism, it is not malleable enough for Shariatmadari, and indeed all devout Muslims (demonstrated by the fact that the new constitution was approved by 98.2% of voters), to believe that these “political Islam”s, or these plural “politics of Islam,” whether Marxist or Khomeinist, do not come from Islam if it is truly the ideal government. In this sense, the schizophrenia of the Islamic public, which ultimately is forced to choose Islam by its own devoutness, still largely believes that the Islamic government of Iran (lowercase g) today does not represent the truly ideal political Islam, which is seen by the continuance of public protests and contemporaneous drop in revolutionary fervor. It would appear that the Iranians are attempting to mold for themselves a subjective objectivity. Iran deeply desires the true Islamic Government (capital g) from on High, but wants just as deeply to define this Islamic Government for themselves, starting with the confessional unmasking of the state as imperfect.

Abdolkarim Soroush

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Abdolkarim Soroush was a follower of the line of thought largely generated by Karl Popper’s distinction between what he called “science” and “pseudoscience,” which revolutionized many rationalist European, American, and Islamic lines of thought, as well as the evolution of the philosophy of science, most notably during the time when the evolution of science itself was causing unforeseen challenges in the world in the technological world, with the rapid development of the atomic bomb occurring contemporaneously with Popper’s popularization. Soroush, like Popper, renounced Iranian Marxism as a result of this extremely calculated stance on ideology and science. Most interestingly, Soroush remained a devout Muslim for the remainder of his life, and wrote many of his books on Islam and religious belief within a philosophical mindset. The existence of “Soroushes” in the world, especially in extremely culturally devout countries like Iran, at least partially shows the ignorance with which the world “accepted to” modernity’s wager. As stated by Secor, Soroush, “as a man of faith, he had been educated to believe that man was immersed in an ocean of certainties, floating from one to the next. But as a student of philosophy, he came to see that instead a person drifted from conjecture to conjecture, doubt to doubt” (Secor 62). Soroush later emphasized the distinction between religion itself, which is perfect and eternal, and religious belief, which is, while well-founded, fallible and incomplete. All this is to say that while the West dove headfirst into a dichotomy between putting one’s belief in the sacred and putting one’s faith in one’s own authority (that infamous wager), Iran wrestled with the epistemological claims of infallibility; of religious belief as a thing to put faith in through the authority of the self, at least partially.

The Veil and its Relation to Premodern Iranian Ideas of Gender

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How does Najmabadi’s account of gender fluidity in premodern Islamic Iran help us to understand the ongoing debate and attention to the status of women in postrevolutionary Iran?

Historically, “modern” nations have placed a great deal of importance on the status of women in the measurement of “modernness.” Especially in Iran, the state of how modern it was becoming could at least partially be seen by the status of women in Iran.

In premodern Iran, women faced the issue of being seen as “unredeemable,” as Najmabadi put it. Women, in men’s eyes, were generally seen as being on the same level of attractiveness as young boys with the beginnings of a mustache. They were also seen as intellectually and physically inferior to men, and thus women were merely a footnote for much of Iran’s history. Having neither incomparable beauty to young men nor intellectual or physical strength in the eyes of men, women generally felt a feeling of resentment and opposition towards the amrad, which, paradoxically, caused much of the large-scale homophobia which became widespread during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Along with this later-problem-causing notion of the relative attractive equality of women and young men, there existed in premodern Iran the lack of a sharp Western distinction between women and men as we see today in Iran. It is very possible that the widespread removal of the veil during the 1960s and 1970s in Iran was caused by women feeling a lack of dignity on account of this lack of distinction. To simplify, what I mean is that since women felt the need to passively “compete” with the relatively fluid amrad for bearded men’s attention in the premodern era in Iran, perhaps the removal of the veil was a rejection of this “competition” and a statement of attractiveness despite men’s opinions otherwise. The rejection of the veil may well have been a bold but subtle reclamation of beauty for Iranian women.

“Moo”dernity

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In my first impression of it and upon further analysis of it, I very much appreciated this film. I love the ambiguously wise nature of it, the loud noises and incoherent shouts followed immediately by literally minutes of complete silence, the blank look on Hassan’s big bovine face as he stares at his neighbors and slowly chews hay.

Without analysis, it would be hard to examine this film as making a statement at all about the Iranian experience of modernity. I do believe that it says quite a bit about modernity though. The experience of the “hospital” as some far-away object capable of healing of the mind and the body very well experiences some of the first interactions between the premodern and the modern: a feeling of distant longing for modern amenities in times of trouble such as this one. I also loved observing the (largely sexist) relationship between men and women in this movie. One quote in particular stood out to me as meaningful, and I paraphrase: “Yes, good. It is not good to leave a young woman home alone.” This quote illustrates one relationship between men and women in rural Iran, after it had been exposed to “modern” ideas of the gender binary (as Afsaneh Najmabadi pointed out in her book) but before it had “modernized” enough to re-normalized the idea of woman as potentially just as dominant as men. The subtle subjugation of women in this film goes hand-in-hand with the illustration in this film of a culture of authority (as opposed to “reason”) and the portrayal of women as the spiritual/religious figures in Iran.

Despite the Chief being the chief of the village, it is clear throughout the film that Eslam is the true brains of the village. When the men talk about what to do with Hassan before they do decide to take him to the hospital, Eslam makes a suggestion, another man objects to the suggestion, and the Chief says “If Eslam suggested it, it must be a good idea.” In this sense, a strong authority culture is portrayed throughout the film, as the idea itself does not matter as much as the authority/ethos of the person suggesting the idea. There is a clear hierarchy of ethos that runs through all the men of the village, starting with the man with a mental disability on bottom, running up from the young troublemaker and irritating, avoidable man in the window all the way up to the Abbas, the Chief, and Eslam.

In the film, there are several occurrences of the whole village going out and engaging in some form of mass panic. In all these scenarios, however, the men do either the action or the reasoning. For example, when Hassan’s (unnamed) wife cries out, the whole village rushes to her rescue, but only the men are able to calm her down, and only the men figure out what to do after an answer is coaxed out of her. But, in the final gathering, which is Hassan’s “funeral” scene, the women run things. They conduct the ceremony, lead the men and children in mourning, etc. In all spiritual/religious events in the story (except when Eslam says that it is a sin to use animal skins), it is the women who are the main focus.

It is hard to tell the extent to which this film is strictly Iranian, since indeed it portrays a rural life that many already view as being typical, rural “pre-modern” life in any country. There is nothing in this film that could distinguish this film as being strictly Iranian, since the men in the village are largely “nationalistic” only for their own village (as distinct from the evil Bolouris), which many would characterize as “tribalism.” Perhaps this film is attempting to say something about the connection between “premodern values” (such as authority culture, the subjugation of women, the femininity of spirituality, the animal nature of mankind, etc.) and the lack of true nationalist fervor in a populace.

Sorry, this ended up being super long. I guess I got a little too excited.

Where Did You Come From; Where Did You Go; Where Did You Come From, [Modernity]?

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This week, I have realized that my definition of modernity is not a common one. I define modernity as being the belief that capital-T Truth is neither universal nor local, but rather individual – that is to say that one person’s Truth might differ from another person’s Truth, and that both can coexist as valid equals. If “modernity” had the complex connotation that it has today in Machiavelli’s day, he likely would have defined it as the belief that one’s own (which is to say, the prince’s own) interests trump all other notions, which contains the belief that the ultimate “good” for oneself as the prince is one’s continuing to rule over one’s principality. Many would define “modernity” as being exposed to and holding as equally valid other cultures and belief systems. Overall, one thing that these definitions have in common is their belief in the individual’s ability to define one’s own purpose and Truth. (According to this definition, I am no modernist.) To be clear, I realize that these definitions are narrow and, perhaps untruthfully or paradoxically, exclude Rubashov because he has little to no care for himself or for any particular individual until his bitter end.

Now that the definition of modernity for the sake of this blog post has been nailed down, I must say that modernity comes from lowercase-h history. The French citizen became a modernist when they realized that they could claim their own destiny and, using their reason, define what the state ought to be and what the individual “Good Life” consists of. The young Chinese farmer became a modernist when they decided that, against their family’s will, they leave to live in the city and design their own life apart from tradition. The cleric’s child became a modernist when they decided that, despite their upbringing, they were going to use their individual reason, as opposed to their family’s authority, in order to chase after Truth on their own accord.

Last Muhtar of Balgat; First Sartre of Balgat

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The idea that most prominently constitutes intellectual “modernity” is the straying from the idea that truth is both objective and local. European and other “Western” countries became ideologically “modern” when these countries strayed from the belief that truth is absolute rather than relative, for example, and that the pre-Enlightenment European model of God is indeed the only true model of God. Today, most Europeans and other “Westerners” do not believe in absolute truth (that is, truth being objective) and the pre-Enlightenment European model of God (that is, truth being local). This personal definition of “modernity” necessitates the existence of a “traditional” or “pre-modern” view because it assumes that before a society believes in subjective, global truth, it believes in the opposite – objective, local truth. Although this definition does create an “other” category, I do not think this is problematic because this category neither uplifts nor downgrades the “traditional” society – it is merely a different mode of thinking, not a less intellectual one.

In “The Grocer and the Chief,” the grocer represents Balgat’s beginning transition into modernity, and the chief represents the traditional view. For the chief, all that needs to be known is inside his village. Any outside view (as projected through the one radio on page 50) must be filtered through the objective and honorable local view of Balgat, which constitutes the chief’s sermon-like commentary after each radio listening session. The grocer’s eagerness to leave Turkey (page 50) says that he believes that truth is not to be found within Balgat, but rather in the outside world at large.