Has history ended? Did all countervailing ideologies give up and yield to democracy as the universal form of government and does peace now reign? Apparently not. Indeed, democracy is embattled in many areas as it has not been in decades- even in the US, whose institutions are under sustained attack by a renascent autocratic / plutocratic coalition. Iran has exemplified the contest between the ideals of democracy, human rights, state stability, authority, and religious sentiment in ideologies of government over many centuries. It has been positioned at some remove from, though in durable if not tragic contact with, the European cultures that fostered the Enlightenment in all its aspects. What has been their impact, and what are we to make of the current result?
Amanat provides a magisterial overview of Iran's recent history, (recent meaning since 1500, which leaves out a vast portion going back to antiquity and beyond), focusing on its political systems as they range between autocracy and revolution, growth and decline, consolidation and decadence. Iran was heavily influenced by Europeans starting in the mid-1800's, as the great game got underway. While Russia was unapologetically autocratic, making its menace clearly lineal with previous contests against other invaders, Britain, and later the US, brought a new level of hypocrisy as imperial powers founded on Enlightenment ideals and practices, which were, however, not for foreign consumption.
The Qajar monarchy in the 1800's managed a weak position relatively well, keeping Iran intact and largely sovereign, if also continually corrupt, indebted, and backward. But finally, the modernist winds were too strong, and a constitutional revolution established a constitutional monarchy and parliament in 1906, then again in 1909. This parliamentary system never fully found its footing, however, tussling with the Shah for power, and buffeted through disastrous invasions and occupations during world war 1. It was sort of a Weimar Republic, never attaining full power in military or political terms.
But it embodied the idea of a Western-style, constitutional, democratic system. The addition of an Islamic advisory council was an afterthought and never seriously implemented during this era, since the ulama, or community of clerics, was generally content with its long-standing role of loose collaboration with the secular power, tending to a narrow sector of jurisprudence over religious, business, and personal matters, on a somewhat freelance basis. While the Shi'i clergy had occasionally led protests and fostered limited political activism in the face of gross injustices and suffering from their base among the small merchant class and urban poor, the idea of becoming a full partner in government, or its comprehensive adversary, did not cross their minds, since government was fundamentally unclean and not worthy of theology, short of the return of the twelfth Imam. The clerics were also fully invested in the somewhat corrupt system, having gotten quite rich from their segment of the economy.
But the trauma of the Pahlavi era, broken in the interval between father and son by a hopeful but chaotic constitutional period under Mohammed Mosaddegh, set the clergy- at least some of it- on a more activist path. Both Shahs were dedicated modernizers, dismissive of religion and destructive to the livelihoods and institutions of the clergy. Along with other islamists in the Sunni world like Qutb, they (that is, the less quietist elements, spearheaded by Ruholla Khomeini) started generating a comprehensive critique of modernism, the Pahlavi apparatus, and the West as antithetical to Islam, which it quite obvoiusly was and remains. They found that they still had enormous political power and public sentiment on their side, not among the intelligentsia, but among the common people who had been coming to the mosques, and requesting judgements, and paying their dues all along. All this was seized by Khomeini, who in 1963 gave fiery sermons denouncing the Pahlavi regime, and was duly detained, almost executed, and then exiled to Iraq. The Shah ran an economically successful few decades, but also a brutal secret service and a grandiose view of himself and the dynasty so severely out of step both with native sentiment and with the democratizing / human rights trends in the West, suddenly put on the top of the table by Jimmy Carter.
Faithful Shi'ite Iranians were interested in more spiritual fare than what the Shah offered, and the clerics, through Khomeini, gave them visions of an ideal society, rectified through "dear Islam" to resolve all the injustices and degradations of the Pahlavi era. In return, Khomeini was first elevated to the unprecedented status of "Grand Ayatolla", and then ultimtely to "Imam" status, which had never been done before, the twelfth Imam having been the last of the set, now in occultation. So the revolution rolled on with inexorable power, but also with inexorable revolutionary logic, piling up bodies and hypocrisies as the imperatives of staying in power overwhelmed all other scruples. For example, Amanat mentions with some acidity that, while centuries of Shi'i jurisprudence may not have foreseen the problems of writing a constitution, running foreign policy, or operating a secret service, it had long dealt, and dealt with care and discretion, in contract and property law. But all that went right out the window as the new government "inherited" or expropriated countless businesses and personal properties, took over all major industries of the country, and distributed their management to family members, cronies and loyalists.
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| Diagram of the Iranian government, from the BBC. |
It is through the lens of the constitution and the cobbled institutions that have arisen in Iran that we can see the dialectic between Enlightenment principles and Islamic principles. Khomeini promised a democracy, where power would no longer be monopolized by a somewhat mad Shah. But it also had to be an Islamic democracy, "guided" by the clerics to retain purity and justice. The logic of all this resulted in a thoroughly theocratic state, where there is an interlocking set of instutions all run by the clerics, from the Supreme Leader to the Guardian Council, Assembly of Experts, and Expediency Discernment Council. Each are supervisory, with various veto and appointment powers, leaving the popularly elected parliament with little real power or even representative complexion, since its candidates are routinely disqualified by the Guardian Council for not being conservative enough.
In practical terms, this means that the system maintains just enough democracy to foster some hope and buy-in from some of the populace, while keeping complete control in the hands of the clerics. Will this end in utter corruption of both religion and government? It is difficult to say, but Iran has more of a functional democracy and republican system than many other Muslim countries, which is sadly not saying much. Those who reflect on the very origins of Islam and Shi'ism can readily see that theory of government is not a strong suit of this tradition. I see Khomeini as a demagogue- a Trumpian figure who promised the stars, offered a telling and comprehensive critique of the Pahlavi system, and had a genius for turning a phrase. But he did not promise a coherent and democratic program of governance, rather a messianic dream and relentlessly divisive politics. In the revolutionary process, he always played to the base, favoring extreme positions. A base whose core, there as here, is a religious element of great patriarchial conservatism and dismissive of intellect and compassion. He was fully behind the hostage-taking students, for instance, which solidified support at home while making Iran a pariah abroad. Hate, of course, was and continues to be central to the Iranian theocracy, from the Great Satan (us), to the little Satan (the Iraq of Saddam Hussein), to the communist Tudeh party, to the Baha'i religion, which they particularly revile and persecute.
At first, the clerics worked with liberals to fashion a written constitution (a significant concession to modernity and Western ideas) and a civilian government. But as time went on, the many contradictions of this approach became apparent, since if the people were given real power, the clerics would lose theirs- that was a lesson of the first constitutions of the early 1900's, and again during revolutionary process in the 1970's and 80's, which saw many contestants for power. The clerics only won due to their cohesion and their ability, time and again, to move the masses with demagogic and messianic appeals.
So the Iranian clerics ended up in unknown territory, creating a government that had no Persian or Koranic precedent, other than putting clerics in charge of everything (including at the top, the monarch-for-life Supreme Leader), and hoping that their own formation, training, and institutions will keep them uncorrupted. At one dire point in the revolution, a hanging mullah suggested that his rather under-supported decisions didn't matter that much, since God would sort it all out in the end, sending those who deserved it to heaven. But by that logic, he should have killed himself first. It is always curious how those who supposedly believe in religion and the glories of its afterlife turn out to have a strong regard for their own lives in the here and now. One would think that meeting one's maker would be a more positive goal, rather than being a mere scrim for power politics in this fallen world.
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| Iran gets ranked just above China in the democracy index. |
Anyhow, Iran has ended up with more torture, more executions, more war, a bigger secret service, a more intrusive state, and less freedom, than the Pahlavi era. It turned out that Islam is not a guarantee of good, let alone moral, governance. Islamic countries generally occupy the lower rungs of the democracy index, and other indexes of development and happiness. This while Islam portrays itself as a religion of peace, of mercy, and of the most exacting jurisprudence and scholarship. The revolutionary government of Iran dabbled in liberalism, and wrote up a semi-democratic constitution, and faced a culture of great diversity and intellectual depth. But in the end, authoritarian logic won out over traditional Shi'i quietism and over most Western trends, creating a sort of Shi'i Vatican writ large, with opaque committees of old bearded men running everything, with additional torture chambers and gallows.
Iran offers an object lesson why the interlocking lessons of the enlightenment are so important- why withdrawing religious projections, drama, and righteousness from the state, in favor of civic secularism, yields a more rational and humane way of life. Why even the most long-standing and cherished religious traditions and "scholarship", while they may serve as selective institutions to weed out the stupid and socially unskilled, are not conducive to the search for objective truth or even a marker of moral superiority.
All that said, the French revolution began with enlightenment principles, which did not prevent a similar revolutionary logic from sending it to appalling depths of brutality, injustice, and authoritarianism. Yet it also spread more liberal, anti-monarchical values throughout Europe during the Napoleonic era, and ended up, after decades of historical development, with true democracy in France and Europe. The whole point of political theory in the Enlightenment was to allow such development via a fundamental humanism and humility in the civic sphere and the state. Its antithesis is messianism of various sorts, from communism to Shi'i theocracy, (even atheist enlightenment, when driven to extremes!), which drives polarization, extremism, and totalitarianism. Iran may yet develop in a softer direction, after what is now forty years of theocracy, but that would take a substantial change of heart on the part of the current ruling class, and perhaps a reduced allergy to Western ideas.
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