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"The religious revival and political turmoil and revolution in 1978-79 which saw the overthrow of the Shah and elevation of Ayatollah Khomeini has been fomenting for the past decade…. Religion and politics in Iran offer an intriguing exploration into the concepts and practices of theocracy, religious pluralism, and freedom of religion."

Iran And Islam
By George W. Braswell Jr.

BETWEEN 1968-1974, I lived and traveled in the Middle East, particularly Iran, as a professor on the Faculty of Islamic Theology, the University of Teheran, and as a Christian missionary and cultural anthropologist. I heard the voices of thousands of men and women as they worshipped, prayed, and cried to Allah, cursing hated oppressors. As a friend, I drank hundreds of cups of tea in courtyards, homes, mosques, and neighborly little teahouses.

From time to time we have all probably voiced a prayer or request for some miracle of peace and tranquility in the Middle East. The Middle East is a land filled with prayers and dreamers, both ancient and contemporary. Iran especially has been a land of dreamers, giving birth to King Cyrus, the first great King of the Persian Empire, who freed the Jews from the Babylonian Captivity and gave them refuge in Persia. The Wise Men, known as Magi or Zoroastrian priests, dreamed and saw a star in the east and followed it to Bethlehem to place gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh at a baby's crib. The Shah of Iran, who ruled for thirty-eight years on the Peacock Throne, dreamed of old Persia becoming the fifth most powerful nation in the world over night. At the present time, the Ayatollah Komeini dreams of an Islamic Republic modeled after the Prophet Mohammed's theocracy in Arabia some thirteen hundred years ago. In the lineage of Persians and their national symbol of a lion, I too have dreamed a dream.

In my dream a lion was chasing me at full speed. The faster I ran, the closer the lion pawed at my heels. I could not outrun the lion, and so I prayed for assistance, "God, grant me a miracle; please convert this lion into a Christian." I stopped running, glanced back, and the lion was lying prostrate

George W Braswell, Jr., is Professor of Missions and World Religions, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Wake Forest, North Carolina. For several years, Dr. Braswell has lived in Iran as missionary and teacher. He served under the Southern Baptist Conference at the Armaghan Institute and as a professor at Damavand College, both in Teheran. He has written extensively on the relation between religion and politics in the Middle East.

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at my heels. And in my dream I heard the lion praying, "God, I thank thee for this bountiful provision of which I am about to eat." Miracles are a tricky business to come by anywhere, but especially in religion and politics in the Middle East. It is a complex mosaic of peoples, politics, and religions.

I

From Morocco to Pakistan, the mosaic of the Middle East is like a finely woven Persian tapestry, colorful, tightly knotted, intricate in detail and design, and reminiscent of a long and proud historical consciousness. Great civilizations have arisen and fallen and remain in the area. The scars and coatings of Alexander the Great's march remain. The struggles between the Byzantine Christians and the Persian Zoroastrians are still remembered. The rise of Islam from the desert-oasis of Arabia and its rapid spread in one hundred years to dominate Mesopotamia, Palestine, North Africa, Spain, Persia, India, and even its far away arrival to China, remains a phenomenal and intriguing explosion and advancement on the world scene.

The three great world religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, all sprang up within a stone's throw of each other, and their intricate involvement in and around the city of Jerusalem today demonstrates the explosive nature of the mixture of religion and politics especially when there is emotional attachment to religious real estate founded upon the religious dreaming of Jews and Muslims.

There are several movements sweeping across the Middle East, playing havoc with the religious-political dimension. First, there is secularization. The Ottoman Empire with its base in Islam ruled for four hundred years in a theocratic caliphate. Then, in 1925, Kemal Ataturk came to power in Turkey, completed the dismantling of the Empire, and headed Turkey in the direction of a secular state. Kemal Ataturk closed the mosques, silenced the Muslim clercis, stopped Islamic education in religious schools, and instigated Western concepts and practices of education, law, and courts which supplanted the Islamic institutions. An Islamic theocracy was turned into a modern secular state. Religion was suppressed, and anti-clericalism and antireligious establishment became the ideal and practice of the new politics.

At the same time, Reza Shah the Great in Iran was modeling his politics after the Ataturk. He was confiscating Islamic endowments of land and monies, antagonizing Islamic leadership, and supplanting Islamic education and law with ideas from the West. Turkey and Iran stand out today as arenas in the Middle East where political leaders allowed secularization to storm the bastions of Islamic religion. In Turkey, secularization won many battles, but now there is a beginning of resurgence within Turkish Islam. In Iran, the events of the last several months have reversed the process of secularization, and Islam appears to have gained a new foothold on the life of the nation.

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Another movement affecting religion and politics is geo-politics, especially the contemporary confrontation between the Western powers and the Middle East nations, as well as the entanglements among the Middle Eastern nations themselves. Western nations have used Middle East nations as buffer zones to prevent the spread of communist influence into the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean Basin, and to establish the security of religious sectarianism within the boundaries of countries. Lebanon was created by France, distinct from Syria, to protect the Christian population within Islamic majority areas, and also to give the French leverage in the area. The constitution of Lebanon declares that the President shall be a Christian and that the prime minister shall be a Muslim. In this way religious pluralism is acknowledged in the legal structures of the nation.

The nation of Israel was nurtured into existence with the assistance of Western powers. Its intention was the founding of a homeland for the Jews. Israel developed in the midst of Christian and Muslim Arabs. This development initiated violent tensions within the religious-political dimensions of the area populations: Palestinian Arab Muslims and Arab Christians against Israeli Jews both within the confines of the state of Israel and outside of them; also other Arabs (Egyptian, Syrian, Jordanian, Lebanese, Iraqi) were against Israel.

The city of Jerusalem became the symbol of religious rights and privileges and the politicization of religion by both Jews and Muslims. The wailing wall on the foundations of King Solomon's Temple became the sacred territory for the nation of Israel where politics and religion were wed into a strong unity. The Dome of the Rock, adjacent to the wailing wall, became the Muslim symbol for sacred territory because the prophet Mohammad had ascended to heaven from that very spot. And when the late King Faisal of Saudi Arabia vowed to use his holy oil in a holy war to gain entry to the Dome of the Rock and Jerusalem for the hundreds of millions of Muslims of the world, the gesture demonstrated in rhetoric and in geo-politics the strong alliance between religion and politics. The pressures by the Rabbinate and the religious parties upon Israeli leadership to become a theocratic state based upon the Torah have been strong. Recently, the Knesset enacted laws restricting the activities of the religious minorities which raise serious questions about Israeli intentions toward religious liberties and the continuation of religious pluralism.

A third movement which affects the relationship of religion and politics is the revival and resurgence of ethnic-religious minorities. The status of the Kurdish tribal peoples within and along the borders of Iran, Iraq, and Turkey demonstrates the complexity of geo-politics and ethnic-religious minorities. The Kurds are Sunni Muslims, numbering some twelve million. For years they have fought against the Iraqi army which is also Sunni Muslim. At one juncture, Iran, which is Shi'ah Muslim, supplied the Kurds with American aid, and arms to fight for their freedom against their brother Muslims. Then Iran abruptly left

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the Kurds to fight the Iraqis without arms assistance. Now in Iran, the Kurds are fighting the Iranians for territorial rights and their freedom to live independently as an ethnic-religious community.

Iran, itself, serves as an outstanding example of a politicized expression of a minority religion within the world of Islam which faced the threats of secularization and geo-political intrigues to abort its strength. Nevertheless, through its revivalism and resurgence, the Islam of Iran borders on becoming what some would describe as a theocratic state.

Throughout the Middle East, there is constant tension between religion and politics. Some nation-states border on a theocratic religious-political expression in which the laws of divinity from a holy book project the order of society. Religious pluralism is allowed, but the minorities often live under restrictions, and have fear for their religious rights of faith and community. Some nation-states have diverse ethnic-religious minorities which wage struggles among each other for legitimation or power or survival or the opportunity to become the dominant ethnic-religious body. In the Middle East, ethnicity, nationalism, tribalism, secularization, and geo-politics affect the relationship of religion and politics, the status of religious pluralism, and the freedom of religious choices.

II

Iran's rich religious history covers millennia of civilizations. I have already referred to King Cyrus who brought the Jews out of captivity to reside in Persia where up to recent times they have been granted religious freedom and have assumed a vital role in the economic progress of the nation. Zoroastrianism was the dominant religion during the Sassanian period (220-651 A.D.) until the Arab Muslims overcame Iran. Nestorian Christians entered Iran during the fourth century. Since that time Christian communities of Assyrians, Armenians, Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholics, and Protestants have founded their churches. Jews, Zoroastrians, and Christians have been considered by Muslims as People of the Book, that is, as religious compatriots under the divine revelation of the same deity, and have been granted official recognition and religious freedom within the nation. In fact, in recent times they have been allowed to elect from their own religious communities representatives to the Iranian parliament.

The Baha'i religion arose in Iran mid-way in the nineteenth century. Baha'ism was officially considered as a heresy and a political threat to the Iranian government, and its leadership was exiled. Mention has been made of the Sunni Muslim Kurds who have waged battles against the Iranian government demanding their own autonomy. One must not overlook the Sunni Arab population in southern Iran (Khuzistan) who have agitated against the government for years.

Iran offers a mosaic of rich history of the major religions of the Middle East, co-existing in a country which is monolithically Muslim

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but which has allowed a pluralism of religious communities and freedom of beliefs and practices within ethnic-religious categories.

III

The constitution of Iran, implemented in 1907, defined Jafarite Ithna 'Ashari Shi'ism as the state religion which the Shah must profess and propagate. It stipulated that parliament cannot contradict the holy Islamic prescriptions or laws made by the Prophet Muhammed. The Shah, before his accession to the throne, must swear on the Qur'an to propagate the Shi'ah faith. The Constitution also required that a committee of five of the most learned Ayatollahs, selected by the parliament and given full and equal rights as parliament members, must oversee all laws passed by that body in order to ensure that they be in accord with Islamic law (Shari'ah). Present day Ayatollahs flatly state that the Shah ignored this constitutional requirement since its inception.

The question of the government's legitimacy has been a chronic one among Iranian Shi'ites. In fact Shi'ah Islam developed around the problem of political succession and religious authority. Shi'ites separated from Sunni Muslims at the very point of legitimate power, claiming that the ruler must be in direct lineage to the Prophet and that the Ayatollahs were to mediate the divine revelation of Allah to the people. In fact, Shi'ah Islam has elevated the Ayatollahs (Imams) to be the perfect spokesmen for Allah in the affairs of state and in the religious sciences. Hence, we have the classic stage set for the life and death struggle for legitimacy between the Shah and the Ayatollahs.

Since 1925, the clash within the arena of religion and politics has been between the Pahlavi dynasty established by Reza Shah and continued by his son, Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, and the Ayatollahs and their followers. Reza Shah, a commoner without royal lineage, crowned himself in the lineage of Persian kings like Cyrus, Darius, Artaxerxes, and Shah Abbas. He launched a vast program of reform which included an attack upon and a rearrangement of the powers and structures of the Ayatollahs and traditional Shi'ah Islam. He placed the vast wealth in monies and lands of religious endowments under government control, subsumed religious education under governmental control, supplanted Islamic law with Western interpretations and government courts, demanded that Iranian women shed the wearing of the traditional veil (Chador) and adopt Western-styled dress, and established a modern equipped army to back the implementation of his modernization of the country. The Ayatollahs' power was curtailed, and resentment was deepened between them and the Shah.

Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi inherited the throne from his father in 1941. In the first decade of his rule the young Shah faced the crises and intrigues of communism, nationalism (under Prime Minister Mossadeq), and the religious dissent of the Ayatollahs. The Shah

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overcame these difficulties, and by the mid 1960s he was in control of his country. By this time he was developing proficient armed forces and a powerful secret police force (Savak) which reinforced his power in every corner of the nation. Also, he had cast his die with American technology, armaments, and advisors, and his dream was well under way to bring Iran into the elite of modern nations.

The Shah rallied as many of his compatriots around him as possible. The ethnic-religious minorities especially prospered under his reign. Indigenous Jews, Zoroastrians, and Christians felt more secure as minority communities. Western missionaries gained easier access into Iran. The Shah elevated Baha'is into positions of leadership in government and in the military. While he was granting a reality of religious identity and freedom to segments of the Iranian populace, he was deeply alienating the great majority of the Shi'ah Muslims who composed over ninety percent of the population.

IV

By the early 1960s the Shah had launched his White Revolution for the modernization of Iran and the demise of traditional Shi'ah Islam. He was on the way to establishing himself as the guardian of Shi'ah Islam with his own civil religion as opposed to the religion of the Ayatollahs. The Shah began to lay claim to the powerful and dynamic symbols of Shi'ah Islam in order to legitimate his rule and authority within the boundaries of Islam. In his autobiography, the Shah referred to his dreams of Allah's claims upon him, protection of him, and deliverance of him from assassination attempts. He stated that his father named him after Imam Reza, the eighth Shi'ah Imam. The Shah constantly referred to his White Revolution in the context of the "redemption of Iran." In his speeches to inaugurate parliament, in addresses over the mass media of radio and television, and in newspapers, he couched his words in phrases such as "by the grace of Almighty God." The Shah capitalized on the symbols of religion to play the role of a prophet who would establish justice and righteousness in the land. The expectation of a Prophet-Imam lay deep in the consciousness of the people. Islam may be expressed as an imperial cult, a state religion, and/or a theocracy, and the Shah attempted to capitalize on all these expressions.

The lands and monies which pious Muslims had donated to their religious institutions under the authority of the Ayatollahs were confiscated by the Shah's government and placed under control of the Religious Endowments Organization (Awqaf). This organization became the second wealthiest institution in Iran, second only to the National Iranian Oil Company. It controlled and regulated the reconstruction and building of new mosques; it undertook the training of young clerics to send them into the cities and villages to propagate the civil religion of the Shah (they were the sepaeh-e-dini, religious corps, like the peace corps); it oversaw, together with the secret police, the

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activities that occurred in the mosques as well as the messages preached by the Muslim clerics and the pronouncements of the Ayatollahs.

The organization also published books and pamphlets distributed to the masses expounding the ideology and institutions of the Shah's civil religion. The Shah's family was granted sacred status; for example, after describing the principles of the White Revolution, the propaganda referred to the names of their majesties' children which were taken from the revered names of the blessed saints, the Imams. Even the Imperial Majesty Shahbanou Farah Pahlavi was described as a descendant of "Her Holiness Fatemah Zahra" (daughter of the Prophet Mohammed) and ancestress of all the Shi'ah Imams except Ali. The publications also asserted that the Shah's White Revolution was completely based on the tenets of the Qur'an and the teachings of the Prophet and the Imams.

The Shah also had his own mosques (the Shah's Mosque, maesjide-Shah), co-opted his own clerics to preach and lead prayers, patronized his own seminaries which included the Sepaehselar, and the Faculty of Islamic Theology of the University of Teheran, and proclaimed his own "holy days" to celebrate his birthday and other key dates in his civil religion.

One of the most poignant expressions of the civil religion was the location of the tomb of the Shah's father. The Shah had brought the body of his father, who had died in exile in South Africa, to be buried in the very complex of traditional Shi'ah Islamic shrines near the capital, Teheran. He annexed the title, "Great," to his father's name. Each week a group of the Shah's religious clerics, under direct royal patronage, performed a ritual of prayer and thanksgiving at the tomb of Reza Shah the Great in view of the traditional Shi'ah shrines. This was perhaps one of the most intense attempts of the civil religion to associate the Pahlavi family with the Imams and saints of Shi'ah Islam and to lay claim to their authority and heritage.

V

The civil religion of the Shah was not to be uncontested. Religion and politics was also the agenda of the Ayatollahs. The 1963-64 uprisings led by the Ayatollahs brought bloody riots to the streets of Teheran and to Qum, the stronghold city of traditional Islam. The issues of conflict between the Shah and the Ayatollahs as voiced by the Ayatollah Khomeini were: land reforms which deprived the mosques and religious communities of their wealth and influence; dependency on the "imperialistic" forces of the U.S.; and the granting of voting rights to women. One of the leading Ayatollahs of the day said to the Shah, "It is not you who decides what is right; it is I and the Ulama (Ayatollahs)." Another Ayatollah protested to Ayatollah Khomeini, the leading cleric of the times, saying, "National interests are threatened and violated by the corrupt Ruling Body."

In the riots, thousands were killed and Ayatollah Khomeini was sent into exile. With strong-arm tactics the government began its crusade

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against the enemy. Through house arrests and imprisonment of Muslim clerics, through the prohibition of the clerics to speak in the mosques, through travel restrictions upon them and censorship upon their writings and publications, the regime began to curtail the opposition. The battle lines were obvious between the Shah and his civil religion and the forces of the Ayatollahs and their traditional religion.

The religious revival and political turmoil and revolution in 1978-79 which saw the overthrow of the Shah and the elevation of Ayatollah Khomeini have been fomenting for the past decade. In his frantic effort to modernize Iran, the Shah had unleashed powerful forces of secularization interpreted by the Ayatollahs in these visible ways: movie houses with marquees depicting violence and sex overshadowed the mosques in cities and towns; young women wearing chadors but with a gust of wind raising them to reveal hot pants beneath; women being admitted into the Faculty of Islamic Theology of the University of Teheran; automobile and steel industries supplanting emphasis on agriculture; billions spent on arms and weapons; and Western values imported into the fabric of the nation at the expense of Islamic teachings.

I have attended dozens of prayer meetings in mosques, in private homes, both open to the public and in secret, in which Ayatollahs led their people to think and plan and pray for the liberation of their loved ones from the political prisons of the Shah, for the liberation of Jerusalem from the Israelis, for the establishing of a just and righteous life for the Iranian nation.

Religion and politics entered its most critical phase in contemporary Iran from the autumn of 1977 through early 1979. The Carter administration's pressure for human rights across international borders had found a brief outlet in Iran. The Shah had eased censorship of the press, and certain voices from traditional religion were critical, not directly of the Shah for this was still forbidden, but of his government. Anti-Shah forces were briefly encouraged with the hope that American foreign policy would play an important role in the human rights issue in Iran. However, the die was cast with the Shah's visit to the White House in November, 1977, ostensibly to gain access to more sophisticated weapons. This resulted in the worst riots since Vietnam, and tear gas floated across the White House lawn to interrupt the tributes between the two leaders. And again the die was cast with President Carter's visit to Teheran on New Year's Eve, 1977, and his toast to the Shah at the Niavaran Palace proclaiming the Shah as the beloved leader of his people. Secularization had run rampant, and geo-politics had not gone far enough in the human rights issue, and the traditional religious people were prepared now at any cost to wage a holy war against the Shah, gambling on the people's readiness for Islamic revivalism and their hostility and hatred for what was termed a corrupt and unholy ruling body.

By mid-summer, 1978, Iran was on the verge of a people's revolution in the streets. I spent one month in Iran at this time, criss-crossing the

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country. Ayatollah Khomeini, who had been in exile since 1964 for anti-Shah activities, had been rallying hundreds of thousands of Muslims through his messages on cassette tapes surreptitiously sent into the country, reduplicated by the thousands, and played in the mosques and homes in every corner of the land. The Ayatollah's message was simple: the Shah must be overthrown and an Islamic republic must be established.

By late summer, 1978, the masses had hit the streets. By the millions they marched, they chanted, they demonstrated against the Shah and anyone who supported him. The masses shut off the oil flow, closed the banks, shuttered the marketplaces as the economy slowed, locked the doors of the schools and universities, and decried foreigners and foreign elements in the country which they thought were allies of the Shah. The central government and the armed services were in disarray. The Shah fled and the Ayatollah returned to Iran to a hero's welcome. The revolution continues. The Ayatollah serves as the symbolic head of the nation, but factions along religious, political, tribal, and socio-economic lines abound.

Through the press and mass media we have witnessed the executions of former military, police, politicians, and statesmen under the Shah's regime. Not known through the mass media are the deaths and threats upon various ethnic-religious minorities, namely Christian Iranians who were formerly Muslim. However, spokesmen for the revolution have announced that religious freedom will be respected although no proselytizing is to be allowed.

VI

Religion and politics in Iran offer an intriguing exploration into the concepts and practices of theocracy, religious pluralism, and freedom of religion. During the past thirty years, a primary conflict resided between the Shah and the Ayatollahs. Both the Shah and the Ayatollahs laid claim to be spokesmen in behalf of Allah, to know Allah's will, to be legitimate in their lineages, and to have in hand the roadmap to develop the nation along sound religious guidelines. Both fought night and day for the loyalties and allegiances of the people utilizing the symbols and institutions of Shi'ah Islam. The Shah ultimately relied upon the legitimacy of his theocratic claim, on the backing of his armed services, his secret police, and Western support of his regime through the supply of weapons, technology, industrialization, and tens of thousands of advisors, managers, and workers to implement his modernization dream.

On the other hand, the Ayatollahs relied upon the traditional religious establishments of the Muslim clerics, the mosques, the teachings of the Qur'an, the disenchantment of the intellectuals, middle class entrepreneurs and bazaar merchants, university and high school students, and communist and socialist factions, and especially the deep latent hostility of a huge segment of the population against the Shah

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and his family. At present the Ayatollah's theocratic claims hold the day in Iran.

Religious pluralism was positively supported and protected by the Shah. As long as ethnic-religious minorities acknowledged the Shah and his regime with affirmation and patronage, they were encouraged in their religious communities and expressions. The Jewish community had its synagogues and was among the economic elite of the nation. The state of Israel was recognized to the extent of having consular status in Iran. The Zoroastrian community had received new life under the Shah. He had invited the Zoroastrian Parsees of India, whose ancestors had fled the Muslim invaders, to return to Iran with full citizenship.

This past summer I visited with an old friend, a leader among the Zoroastrians of Iran, who informed me that his community had plans to build a new temple in the northern sector of Teheran. They were on the verge of receiving Muslim converts, and a new day was forecast for the ancient mother religion. Christian churches of all persuasions had flourished under the Shah and some of the churches had gained in membership in converts from Islam. Even the Baha'i religion had found new life. Baha'ism, although not recognized as a legitimate religious expression in Iran, placed its members in prominent positions in business, government, and the military. Missions from Western Christian churches were granted permission to establish their medical, educational, social service, and evangelical work in Iran. But the test of the validity of the Shah's religious pluralism was seen in his battle with the traditional religious forces within his own religion, Shi'ah Islam. The Shah not only suppressed any criticism of his regime by the Ayatollahs and their followers, but he also actively co-opted leaders and followers from traditional religion, confiscated its endowments, imprisoned its leaders, closed its mosques, and elevated himself through his civil religion to be the prophet-statesman of Iranian Shi'ah Islam.

VII

The treatment of religious pluralism under the present government of Iran remains to be seen. Traditional Islam considers Jews, Zoroastrians, and Christians as People of the Book, as compatriots of the revelatory experience from the same god. One might surmise that these religious communities will be encouraged to continue their liturgical rites in their respective churches. However, it is my opinion that these ethnicreligious minorities will be controlled in their political influence and participation. Certainly the Baha'i community will come under closer scrutiny and restriction. And Western mission activities will be approached by the Iranian government in light of its own geo-political concerns. The entire civil religion complex of the Shah will be dismantled.

If one walked the streets of cities and villages in Iran, entered the homes of the affluent and the deprived, conversed with statesmen, politicians, intellectuals, students and merchants, listened to Muslim

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clerics curse the despots and women cry to the saints for liberation, seen the onslaught of Western and Eastern foreigners into job markets, witnessed the rise of multi-storied hotels for foreign guests, calculated the enormity of funding a modern arms machine, and heard the Shah for ten years in address after address to the nation saying that he wanted democracy to come rapidly to his country, then one might behold the complexity of the mosaic of religion and politics in Iran. Then one might realize that there are no simple and easy solutions that either rest in the hands of one man or in the lifeblood of a nation. But most of all, one would probably surmise that the American view is not the Iranian view, nor the American solution the Iranian's health and happiness.