In Khomeini’s arguments, the source of modernity, indeed the source of everything is undoubtedly Islam. There is no need for an individual to look further, because the Qur’an and its interpreters will provide the answers. However, this does leave out how modernity might be achieved by those tasked with adapting the Qur’an to the modern era. A point Tabaar repeatedly raises is the constant fluidity of Khomeini’s Velayat-e Faqih as his political needs adapted and changed. An example of this follows the Green Movement, which left many of Khomeini’s advisors in a negative public light. They had all committed some wrong in the view of Khomeini’s doctrine, and thus were demonized by the conservative populace. As is reviewed in Chapter 10, Khomeini was forced to reform his ideas, replacing strict rigidity with a fluid doctrine that allowed for a rapidly changing world. This then means, at least for a few individuals, there must be some external source of modernity. There must be something outside of the sacred text that guides its interpretation. This begs the question, what is that source?

Following the same example, it could be argued that this new source is the collective will of the people. If they are angry, change the doctrine to please them. But, then it would have been easier to simply punish those they were angry at, rather than alter a supposedly fixed text. I think the source is something much more complicated than that. A cynic might argue that Khomeini and his supporters had no belief in a “fixed truth” and that they were simply acting in whichever way is most fitting of their agenda, but I don’t think that’s the case. I think that, for the leaders of the Islamic Republic, there exists a sort of in between. Their source of modernity draws from a mixture of the sacred, of the will of the people, of their own personal agendas. For them, modernity is as fluid as Velayat-e Faqih.

I don’t think Tabaar’s text equips us to make generalized claims about modernity’s basis as a phenomenon broadly, especially because it’s so difficult to speak in terms of necessary/ sufficient preconditions. In the case of Iran, though, I think one of the answers to the question of “on what basis” that Tabaar implies is that there is always a negotiation between these two sources of modern truth (which echoes the needs of each of the competing promises of modernity), to borrow the phrasing of the question. His book clearly presents the idea that the divine/ governmental aspect, the imposed modernity, was essential for actually enacting reforms, making decisions, and for shaping the will of the people (for which Islam and religious arguments were used), but was imbued with power through its claim to legitimacy, which was affirmed through the assent of the people.

This dynamic surfaces in his discussion of Khomeini’s influence being derived from the support of the people as well as the way Khomeini later draws upon this to remind the people of their role in giving him power. In responding to his critics and attempting to delegitimize their critiques– particularly clerics– following the issuing of the fatwa against Rushdie, for example, he emphasized that they used to support the separation of politics and religion (a model opposite that which Khomeini advocated and the people had supported), and that he had made the “‘slogan of overthrowing the Shah’ a reality”– he had realized the vision of the future supported by the people (195). By arguing that “the imperialists were using these pseudo-religious-nationalist figures to sow doubt in the society,” he is reaffirming his position as the legitimate voice, reminding the people that they, though possibly now doubting their initial position, had once fully supported it and brought it into being– it was theirs, not just Khomeini’s (ibid). By taking the modern position of the representative of the people’s will, he is also invoking ‘modern’ notions of legitimate power being rooted in the consent of the governed.

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.

In his work, Religious Statecraft: The Politics of Islam in Iran, Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar traces half a century of shifting Islamist doctrines to demonstrate that religious narratives in Iran can change in accordance with elite attempts to consolidate and augment power. In this account, Tabaar explains that competing political actors strategically develop Shi’a-inspired ideologies to gain credibility and raise mass support. Taken as a whole, Tabaar’s work depicts Iranian politics as a system in which power drives Islamist ideology.

Using this work as a framework for analyzing the posited question, it is clear how elites derive and construct authority to achieve modernity. In Tabaar’s account, Islam is used as means of gaining authority for political ends, including the attempt to achieve modernity. To the extent that the public views these uses of Islam as authentic, they can be said to be legitimized in the eyes of the public. The elites here, or faqih, guide and shape the opinions of the masses in order to achieve their ends. Note, this is not to say that these elites do not believe in Islam or that their statuses as Muslims are purely ploys for power. Instead, the argument is that the ways in which Islamist ideology are articulated are driven by power and political necessity.

In this depiction, the will of the public is used to mobilize and effectuate change, such as the attempt to achieve modernity. The consent of the people is necessary as modernity cannot be achieved without it, but this consent is ultimately guided and constructed by elites through Islamist ideologies.

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.

In determining “on what basis, modernity?” through the context of Tabaar’s text, I am not convinced that the answer lies “with the cleansing influence of the sacred” (as represented by the faqih) or “the consent of the ruled.” There has to be some force mediating between the two; in the Iranian case this is the complex bureaucratic state apparatus that, as discussed in class, would be exceedingly difficult to undermine even in the event of a leadership coup or crisis.
Did Khomeini use power as a tool for implementing religion or religion as a tool for attaining and maintaining power? Tabaar clearly illustrates that it is the latter, most forcefully through his explanation of how Khameini rose to leader despite his lack of religious qualifications. On page 200, Tabaar tells us that “Velayat-e Faqih followed politics as opposed to the other way around.” If modernity is a curve, to me this is a natural step in said curve’s progression. It is not the blind following of religion (which “Westoxified modernity” so scorned) nor is it trust in a realm of pure reason not anchored in any religious or moral virtue. Instead it represents the use of human rationalization to pragmatically combine religion with a modern political system to satisfy various factions and consolidate power. “The cleansing influence of the sacred” was manipulated to manufacture the “consent of the ruled,” thus creating a functioning system ostensibly rooted in religious values yet also considered a republic. This, of course, is very Machiavellian.
The power of the Iranian regime perhaps lies in the fact that there is not just one “reasoning individual” who has seen the light outside the cave and disperses the knowledge it provided. Rather, there are multiple leaders (e.g. Rafsanjani and Khameini and the members of various Councils) who derive their legitimacy from different sources and thus, when united in a given message, can be very difficult to refute. For example, the Assembly of Experts, Rasfajani, and certain Ayatollahs all used Islam in justifying the choice of a Supreme Leader that could be seen as breaking with recent Islamic tradition in the country. Through a concentrated campaign to publicly perpetuate Khameini’s legitimacy, they were able to effectively “re-craft” the state in Khomeini’s absence.

In one of our first blogs, I asked you, “On what basis, modernity?”  Religious Statecraft gives us an opportunity to revisit the question, but with a sharper empirical focus on the relationship between sources of legitimacy, authority, and modern outcomes.  Take the questions below about Machiavelli and apply them to Tabaar’s text:  How is Iran, as a matter of practice and of policy, becoming modern?

On what basis, modernity—through the cleansing influence of the sacred, via the guidance of a faqih, or jurisprudent?  Or is modernity to be achieved by the consent of the ruled, the “flock,” as it were, the ummah?  Or is there a balance or negotiation between these two sources of modern “truth?”  What is the balance between the sacred, the fixed, and the contingent, and could it be that the public will embodies both of these, as we discussed in class?   You don’t need to answer all of these questions, but please use specific answers and examples drawn from Religious Statecraft.

From September 18, 2018:

The fragility of control plays a prominent if under appreciated role in Machiavelli’s The Prince.  In contrast to Lerner’s triumphalism (“I had it on top authority that during the summer of 1950 they had entered History”) or the harrowing implacability of “the Party” in Darkness at Noon, Machiavelli describes a world of constant variability and uncertainty.  No prince, no matter how savvy or cruel, can rest easy on his throne, circumstances and the variability of being his constant and insuperable foes.

Machiavelli leads us to the conclusion that there are no universal solutions, no easy recipes or checklists to follow in pursuing “the modern,” however defined.  Origins, the circumstances of coming combine with unforeseen events to make modernization a project forever uncertain and under siege.

We might ask, then, On what basis modernity?  The matter of legitimacy and authority has been at stake these past two weeks, whether of the Shah, of the multitude who comprise “the many,” or of the reasoning individual, who having adjusted his or her sights to the light outside of the cave, comes back to dispense capital-T Truth.  What or who is the source of modernity?  Might it be the individual, reaching for truth in the realm of the profane?  Or does modernity require the ballast of “fixed truths,” of a sacred authority that lies outside of the will and reason of the individual?  Might History be that source, or religion itself?  How might authority be reconciled to the individual will?

At its simplest, modernity’s wager is that religion can be replaced with rationality and reason. Seligman says the wager has been lost: this transition cannot be made. His proposed solution is to return to a kind of unquestioned religious belief, but a religion characterized by tolerance.

Shariati, while not articulating the same rationale, presents a similar conclusion. Following in the legacy of Al e Ahmad, who mourned what he saw as Iran’s self-loathing love of the West, Shariati called for “a return to an authentic Islam as an answer to modern problems” (Secor, 13). This solution built upon Al e Ahmad’s ideas by claiming that liberal, ‘modern’ ideas of the West were authentically Islamic— because these ideas did not belong to the West, but were born of Islam. Shariati advocated for a “limited freedom,” where the “liberated” Iran could “subordinate their will to the will of God.” In this way, Shariati’s claim seems to replicate at least part of Seligman’s: humans are liberated, but with (and even through) constraints placed upon them by a higher authority.

I think there is, however, a marked difference between Shariati and Seligman. Shariati argues against a need for clerics, taking the stance that there was no need for mediation between God and man. His claim that Islam was “open to multiple, competing orientations” seems at first take to mirror the ‘tolerance’ prescribed by Seligman. More deeply, though, this undercuts the main basis of Seligman’s proposition– that what is needed is unquestioned belief in a set of basic tenets— as Shariati’s solution still places man as the ultimate arbiter of right/ wrong, as each person can interpret the will of God in their own way. For Shariati, then, the problem is one of authenticity; his utilization of Islam allows for modernity to be ‘claimed’ as Iranian. Shariati’s wager, it seems, would be that without this claim to authenticity, ‘modernity’ would destroy Iran, leading to a similar consequence as that posed by Seligman— the people would be left ‘placeless’ and would become inheritors of an anomic condition.

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.

Ali Shariati’s works effectively corroborate Seligman’s thesis that modernity’s wager was lost, or, perhaps better put, Seligman’s book provides justification for the ideologies and strategies that Sharihati used in helping to craft a new Iranian political consciousness. Seligman thought that modernity had failed society; while Shariati was not convinced that modernity in its generally accepted form had failed the world, he was certain that it did not provide the proper solutions for Iran.

Shariati, when viewed through a Seligman lens, was looking to reclaim modernity through surrendering individual or “rational” control over all decisions and creating a more centered populace capable of applying both logical thought and religious principle to events in their day-to-day lives. Just as Seligman viewed humanity as inherently based in some set of commonly accepted notions of “divinity,” Shariati saw Iran as naturally grounded in Islamic principles and having been tempted away from those principles by the West’s “violent road to modernity.” Shariati did not seek to wholly eradicate this modernity, recognizing that his people had reached a certain point of enlightenment at which it would be impossible for them to govern their lives solely on trust in Allah. However, he did envision a society in which the political intellectual freedoms protected and espoused by a republic would be counterbalanced by the fundamental code of Islam. Shariati’s writings can be seen as galvanizing a practical application of Seligman’s theory.

Regarding Vahdat, I see both Seligman and the Iranian thinkers we have studied as providing evidence for the possibility of a harmonious co-existence between universality and subjectivity.  Philosophy is not reality however, and modern Iran (including events during the revolution that effectively created it) provides evidence that undermines the potentiality of said harmonious co-existence in its originally imagined form.