The first important point that Tabaar wants emphasized is that in his conception, politics drive Islamic ideologies. Interestingly, he sidesteps Seligman’s concerns in Modernity’s Wager by arguing that authentic Islamic beliefs can be shaped by political concerns. Likewise, belief’s can be shaped to meet political ends without losing their significance and authority. Thus, Tabaar’s implicit argument is that the sacred can be contingent without losing its sacrality. The same principle can be extended to the questions of authority the book raises.

This flexibility is highlighted in Khomeini’s “increasing pragmatism”(189) which Tabaar points to on numerous occasions. The most profound turn for Tabaar was Khomeini’s shift from arguing that an Islamic government is necessary to uphold shari’a to saying Islamic law could be broken in order to protect the state. A fundamentally pragmatic change, which is reminiscent of Machiavelli. Ultimately, though religion is a part of Iranian modernity, it does not define a static and immutable course. Human subjectivity and pragmatism is, for Tabaar, the root of Iranian political development. Though there have been attempts to hide this reality, as when Khomeini issued his famous fatwa against Salman Rushdie, the longer political events follow their practical and somewhat banal patters, the less important Islam will become for Iranian politics.

I think Seligman’s argument in Modernity’s Wager can be brought into better relief by pairing it with the concept of religious nationalism as proposed by Aghaie. While Seligman aims to disprove the claim that religion, specifically religious authority, and modernity are antithetical to each other, Aghaie similarly argues against a view of nationalism which insists on its secularism. Both push back against the desire for increasing secularity and argue for some form of compromise with religion. Where they differ, is in their academic arenas. While Seligman writes in the flighty and incarnate language of philosophy, which is ultimately interested in the modern self, Aghaie points to the physical substantiations of religiosity, writing that “religious nationalism is a symbolic discourse imbued with religious piety, social values, identity, culture, and symbolic referents. This discourse is necessarily substantiated in interpersonal interactions, explaining a cultural conversation around nationalism, but not directly addressing this religiosity’s implications for the modern self. Although their arenas of study are different, Aghaie’s religious nationalism represents the antithesis to the “privatization” of religion which frustrates Seligman. The philosophers who helped craft this public form of religious nationalism have all attempted to resolve Seligman’s problematic in one way or another.

Of these figures, I lean towards Abdolkarim Soroush as being the most successful at achieving Seligman’s aim, but also perhaps the one most precariously leaning towards remaking the wager. Soroush is insistent that Islam should be a part of Iranian nationalism. He tempers this, however, by arguing in favor of a synthesis of three components; national heritage, Islamic heritage, and western culture (Aghaie 190). This argument was fundamentally a refutation of “westoxication” but it also has bearing on Seligman.

Seligman is ultimately interested, not in returning to some previous form of authoritarian religiosity, but in adopting a tolerant and skeptical religious belief that continues to allow the expression of the individual. This is quite similar to the views Secor accredits to Soroush. Of his view on theology, she writes “although faith might be ineffable at its core, the human effort to understand and apply God’s truths was one grounded in the limits, the methods, and the temporality of all human studies” (Secor, 74). Soroush believes firmly in the importance of certain, “ineffable” truths, but he continues to apply reason and skepticism to them, thus creating the tolerance Seligman argues in favor of. There is of course, the danger that in trusting too much in reason, Soroush remakes the wager Seligman has outlined. It seems that the skepticism Seligman desires must always put one perilously close to this edge.

Najmabadi’s account of gender fluidity in Qajar Iran provides an interesting contextual background to contemporary discourses around Itranian women, a background which is rarely talked about or accounted for. While reading Najmabadi I was reminded of Scott’s account of Le Corbusier and his obsession with straight lines. Two quotes particularly stuck out to me: “Reason…is an unbroken straight line” (Scott, 107) and “I insist on right-angled intersections” (Scott, 108). In many ways, the hetero-normalization of gender and sexuality which Najmabadi discusses reflects a similar desire for straight lines and right angles. According to Najmabadi, the erasure of the amrad from the sexual landscape reduced its complexity to one line; “the screening of the ghilman by the hur now made both positions feminized” (Najmabadi, 41).

The straightening of the streets of Iranian sexual mores may have made them legible to western eyes, but they also obscured nuances of Iranian gender politics. Many westerners did not understand the dynamic of homosocialization, which had characterized Iranian culture. To western eyes, homosocialization was seen as a desire to avoid temptation, thus the need for the veil. However, this does not encompass the whole story, because the amrads did not cover their heads and men would therefore be tempted regardless. It is only in light of the reduction in gender fluidity that homosocial spaces can be seen as regressive and anti-modern. The western narrative on women and their position in Iran sees them as objects of desire and temptation. However, knowing the history of Iranian gender fluidity, this simplified account must be rethought. The female figure has not had a monopoly on eroticism and therefore there were other forces at play in the homosocial spaces of Iran.

I came away from The Cow with an ambivalent impression of modernity. I first noticed modernity’s presence in the character of the chief, whom I see as being representative of the village as a whole. Much like his counterpart in The Grocer and the Chief, He sees himself becoming impotent in the face of modernity. The interactions with Saffan’s son and his ceding of authority to Eslam in the Hassan case both represent this loss of power and control. This change is not presented in any negative light. The chief willingly gives over authority to Eslam and everyone seems to agree he is the best man for the job. The Eslam-Hassan dynamic became for me symbolic of the local modernist attempting to pull his compatriots into modernity.

If we take Kapuscinski’s claim that Iranians under the Shah retreated into premodern tradition as a place to “seek shelter” (K, 113), we might take Hassan as undergoing similar psychological trauma with the death of his cow, especially if the Bolouris are thought of as representing the Shah’s regime. Iranians watching The Cow in Tehran would know the feeling of anxiety about losing everything at any moment which induces Hassan to sleep with his cow for fear of the Bolouris. His psychotic break and retreat into animalism would likely garner some sympathy among viewers. However, Hassan’s condition is also wild and terrifying, the dark scenes in the cow shed at once provoke sympathy and disgust.

Eslam, meanwhile, seems to embody local modernist thinkers, who both harbor deep faith in the source of modernity (i.e. the city) but also empathize with their compatriots and see them as modern individuals. Eslam’s continual entreaties to Hassan to remember his name and identity as an individual reflect this. But there is ambivalence around Eslam. In the scene when he whips Hassan, the film shows the temptation Eslam feels to view Hassan as beneath him or even subhuman. There seems to be both support for modernist thinkers and concern.