The New York Times on Iranian Religion
Jan. 18th, 2003 01:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldPolitical Fervor of Iranian Clerics Begins to Ebb
By NAZILA FATHI
QUM, Iran — While recent pro-democracy demonstrations on Iranian campuses have attracted widespread attention, a potentially more explosive movement has quietly been taking shape here in one of the leading religious centers of the Islamic world. The Shiite clergy who a generation ago called for the establishment of a fundamentalist, religious government are having second thoughts. Religion, many are now saying, belongs in the mosque.
Qum, home to more than 30,000 clerics and spotted with dozens of golden- and turquoise-domed mosques and seminaries, was the intellectual birthplace of the Islamic revolution that swept the clergy to power in Iran in 1979. The godfather of the revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, sent missionaries from here to spread the message of the revolution through the country's mosques.
But more than two decades later, many clerics here are openly questioning the wisdom of that earlier generation. The foray into politics, they say, has stained the image of the Shiite clergy. It will not be restored, they insist, until the clergy withdraws from government.
"The political performance of clerics in the past two decades has caused a lot of problems for all clerics," said Abolfazl Moussavian, 47, a middle-ranking cleric who teaches at Mofid University in Qum. "First of all, those in power do not tolerate any ideas other than their own. Secondly, people have become skeptical toward clerics and blame them and religion for the current problems."
The majority of clerics in Iran increasingly avoid talking about politics, said Mostafa Izadi, a journalist and researcher. Most significant, he says, they rarely side with the government, even when specifically asked to lend support.
"Clerics want to stay on the side of the people," he said, "and they fear that if they approve the government's performance they might lose the support of the people."
In fact, he said, among the clerics who make up the "Forty Sources of Emulation" — an elite group of, as its name suggests, 40 clerics whose members hold a rank roughly equivalent to that of a bishop in the Roman Catholic Church — only a handful support the government.
Mirroring Iranian society as a whole, pro-reform clerics hold very little political power. That lies with a minority of hard-line conservative clerics who control most of the important levers of the state.
Conservative clerics dominate the crucial positions in Iranian government and society, from internal security to the judiciary and the powerful foundations that control much of the economy. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country's supreme religious leader, wields far-reaching powers. As the Iranian economy has weakened and a new generation has risen in an era of the Internet and satellite television, the clerics have become the focus of popular frustrations.
In addition, the fundamentalist Islamic tradition that was encoded into law after the Iranian revolution — with its strict segregation of the sexes, obligatory veiling of women and the Islamic penal code known as Shariah — has been a source of discontent among many Iranian people.
In recent years the Qum clerics have become convenient targets of public anger with the Establishment, many of the clerics say. One appeared for an interview without his clerical robe and turban, explaining that the few taxi drivers who would pick him up in his clerical garb would do so only to rant at him about politics.
Another, Muhammad Ali Ayazi, said he found himself faced with hostile and angry questions from students every time he volunteered to speak at a university. "They see every single cleric as the representative of the Establishment and responsible for the failures," he said. "But I choose to confront them and speak out about these things rather than avoiding them."
The Special Court of Clergy, which is controlled by hard-line clerics and is responsible for dealing with dissident clerics, has been a powerful deterrent against public protests from within the clergy. Many dissident clerics have been jailed or defrocked by the court.
A former interior minister, Abdollah Nouri, was jailed for two years by the court. Another, Hossein Youssefi Eshkevari, was sentenced to five years after he said at a conference in Berlin that women should not be forced to cover their heads.
"The fear of defrocking clerics is very serious because a cleric's identity is intertwined with his clerical robe," said Hadi Ghabel, a middle-ranking cleric who is a member of the reformist Party of Participation Front.
Just as many of the revolutionary clerics of 1979 were former students of Ayatollah Khomeini, so most of the pro-reform clerics today are students of Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, a dissident cleric who has been under house arrest since 1997, when he challenged Ayatollah Khamenei's power.
Ayatollah Montazeri was a deputy to Ayatollah Khomeini and was expected to succeed him. But he was forced to resign a few months before Ayatollah Khomeini's death in 1989 over differences about the direction of the revolution.
Ayatollah Montazeri has his own Web site and communicates with his followers either via e-mail or in messages sent out through his sons.
In the meantime, pro-reform clerics have set up the Association for Researchers and Teachers, which meets once a week to discuss politics. The association began its work in 1998 and was registered eight months ago as a clerical union, parallel to the conservative Society of Teachers.
At their seminaries these clerics discuss most topics freely, and take on formerly taboo subjects in their publications and books. For example, Mr. Ayazi warned in one of his books, titled "The Limits of the Shariah Law in the Islamic Government," that the most dangerous form of despotism was a religious one. "It expands its military and social power and tries to justify it under a religious pretext," he wrote.
Recent pressure from the European Union to end discriminatory laws against women and non-Muslims in exchange for greater foreign investment also seems to be having some effect. The government has revised the legal code to equalize the value of Muslim men and non-Muslim men.
In Qum, several institutions have been set up to begin to examine the delicate issue of women's rights. It is common now for clerics to speak out against the practice of stoning women to death, a customary punishment under Islamic law for women who commit adultery.
"If a punishment becomes a source for hatred toward religion, then that type of punishment becomes unacceptable," said Hossein Moussavi Tabrizi, a ranking cleric and former prosecutor who was once a student of Ayatollah Khomeini and who has favored the abolition of the punishment.
With the support of some clerics, female members of the Iranian Parliament have put together a bill that would eliminate stoning from the penal code.
Although the bill cannot become law until it gains the assent of the Guardian Council, the support of leading pro-reform clerics at least offers hope among reformists that the bill will be approved.
By NAZILA FATHI
QUM, Iran — While recent pro-democracy demonstrations on Iranian campuses have attracted widespread attention, a potentially more explosive movement has quietly been taking shape here in one of the leading religious centers of the Islamic world. The Shiite clergy who a generation ago called for the establishment of a fundamentalist, religious government are having second thoughts. Religion, many are now saying, belongs in the mosque.
Qum, home to more than 30,000 clerics and spotted with dozens of golden- and turquoise-domed mosques and seminaries, was the intellectual birthplace of the Islamic revolution that swept the clergy to power in Iran in 1979. The godfather of the revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, sent missionaries from here to spread the message of the revolution through the country's mosques.
But more than two decades later, many clerics here are openly questioning the wisdom of that earlier generation. The foray into politics, they say, has stained the image of the Shiite clergy. It will not be restored, they insist, until the clergy withdraws from government.
"The political performance of clerics in the past two decades has caused a lot of problems for all clerics," said Abolfazl Moussavian, 47, a middle-ranking cleric who teaches at Mofid University in Qum. "First of all, those in power do not tolerate any ideas other than their own. Secondly, people have become skeptical toward clerics and blame them and religion for the current problems."
The majority of clerics in Iran increasingly avoid talking about politics, said Mostafa Izadi, a journalist and researcher. Most significant, he says, they rarely side with the government, even when specifically asked to lend support.
"Clerics want to stay on the side of the people," he said, "and they fear that if they approve the government's performance they might lose the support of the people."
In fact, he said, among the clerics who make up the "Forty Sources of Emulation" — an elite group of, as its name suggests, 40 clerics whose members hold a rank roughly equivalent to that of a bishop in the Roman Catholic Church — only a handful support the government.
Mirroring Iranian society as a whole, pro-reform clerics hold very little political power. That lies with a minority of hard-line conservative clerics who control most of the important levers of the state.
Conservative clerics dominate the crucial positions in Iranian government and society, from internal security to the judiciary and the powerful foundations that control much of the economy. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country's supreme religious leader, wields far-reaching powers. As the Iranian economy has weakened and a new generation has risen in an era of the Internet and satellite television, the clerics have become the focus of popular frustrations.
In addition, the fundamentalist Islamic tradition that was encoded into law after the Iranian revolution — with its strict segregation of the sexes, obligatory veiling of women and the Islamic penal code known as Shariah — has been a source of discontent among many Iranian people.
In recent years the Qum clerics have become convenient targets of public anger with the Establishment, many of the clerics say. One appeared for an interview without his clerical robe and turban, explaining that the few taxi drivers who would pick him up in his clerical garb would do so only to rant at him about politics.
Another, Muhammad Ali Ayazi, said he found himself faced with hostile and angry questions from students every time he volunteered to speak at a university. "They see every single cleric as the representative of the Establishment and responsible for the failures," he said. "But I choose to confront them and speak out about these things rather than avoiding them."
The Special Court of Clergy, which is controlled by hard-line clerics and is responsible for dealing with dissident clerics, has been a powerful deterrent against public protests from within the clergy. Many dissident clerics have been jailed or defrocked by the court.
A former interior minister, Abdollah Nouri, was jailed for two years by the court. Another, Hossein Youssefi Eshkevari, was sentenced to five years after he said at a conference in Berlin that women should not be forced to cover their heads.
"The fear of defrocking clerics is very serious because a cleric's identity is intertwined with his clerical robe," said Hadi Ghabel, a middle-ranking cleric who is a member of the reformist Party of Participation Front.
Just as many of the revolutionary clerics of 1979 were former students of Ayatollah Khomeini, so most of the pro-reform clerics today are students of Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, a dissident cleric who has been under house arrest since 1997, when he challenged Ayatollah Khamenei's power.
Ayatollah Montazeri was a deputy to Ayatollah Khomeini and was expected to succeed him. But he was forced to resign a few months before Ayatollah Khomeini's death in 1989 over differences about the direction of the revolution.
Ayatollah Montazeri has his own Web site and communicates with his followers either via e-mail or in messages sent out through his sons.
In the meantime, pro-reform clerics have set up the Association for Researchers and Teachers, which meets once a week to discuss politics. The association began its work in 1998 and was registered eight months ago as a clerical union, parallel to the conservative Society of Teachers.
At their seminaries these clerics discuss most topics freely, and take on formerly taboo subjects in their publications and books. For example, Mr. Ayazi warned in one of his books, titled "The Limits of the Shariah Law in the Islamic Government," that the most dangerous form of despotism was a religious one. "It expands its military and social power and tries to justify it under a religious pretext," he wrote.
Recent pressure from the European Union to end discriminatory laws against women and non-Muslims in exchange for greater foreign investment also seems to be having some effect. The government has revised the legal code to equalize the value of Muslim men and non-Muslim men.
In Qum, several institutions have been set up to begin to examine the delicate issue of women's rights. It is common now for clerics to speak out against the practice of stoning women to death, a customary punishment under Islamic law for women who commit adultery.
"If a punishment becomes a source for hatred toward religion, then that type of punishment becomes unacceptable," said Hossein Moussavi Tabrizi, a ranking cleric and former prosecutor who was once a student of Ayatollah Khomeini and who has favored the abolition of the punishment.
With the support of some clerics, female members of the Iranian Parliament have put together a bill that would eliminate stoning from the penal code.
Although the bill cannot become law until it gains the assent of the Guardian Council, the support of leading pro-reform clerics at least offers hope among reformists that the bill will be approved.
