Reformist Voices of Islam

Mediating Islam and Modernity

Shireen Hunter, Shireen T Hunter

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317461234
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Économie
• Subtopic: Macroéconomie

In recent years, Islamic fundamentalist, revolutionary, and jihadist movements have overshadowed more moderate and reformist voices and trends within Islam. This compelling volume introduces the current generation of reformist thinkers and activists, the intellectual traditions they carry on, and the reasons for the failure of reformist movements to sustain broad support in the Islamic world today. Richly detailed regionally focused chapters cover Iran, the Arab East, the Maghreb, South Asia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Turkey, Europe, and North America. The editor's introductory chapter traces the roots of reformist thinking both in Islamic tradition and as a response to the challenge of modernity for Muslims struggling to reconcile the requirements of modernization with their cultural and religious values. The concluding chapter identifies commonalities, comparisons, and trends in the modernizing movements.

1
Islamic Reformist Discourse in Iran

Proponents and Prospects

Shireen T. Hunter

Over the last two decades, a widespread and sophisticated reformist Islamic discourse has emerged in Iran. Those involved in this discourse include both lay intellectuals familiar with Islamic sciences and clerical figures of varying ranks, including senior ayatullahs. This vibrant discourse has produced a vast body of literature on issues ranging from the need to rethink the methodology of examining and interpreting Islamic sources to Islam’s relationship with modernity, democracy, human rights and women’s rights, religious pluralism, and tolerance.

Many of today’s most prominent lay and clerical reformist figures were involved in the struggle against the Shah’s regime. After the establishment of the Islamic Republic, many of them occupied government positions of varying degrees of importance, including the office of the presidency. Some are still active in the political arena, and in the last few years some of them, notably Ayatullah Mehdi Karrubi, have created political parties and participated in electoral politics. Others, either by choice or because of various government-imposed restrictions, have abandoned political activity and limited their contribution to the ongoing debate to writing books and articles and to commentary.

The ultimate goal of Islamic reformist thinkers and activists is the fundamental transformation of the Iranian society, polity, and political culture. They want to make Iran a law-based state within which the following principles prevail: individual freedoms and the rights of various religious and other minorities are respected; competition for political power is open and fair; there are no restrictions on free debate and the press; and popular will is the basis of political legitimacy. They oppose the cult of personality and hero-worship, and favor a system of reward based on merit and service to the common good rather than closeness to centers of power and influence.

In view of the ambitious agenda of Iranian reformists, their success or failure in gaining wide popular acceptance for their views, along with their ability to acquire and retain political power that would enable them to realize their program, will largely determine the trajectory of Iran’s future social, cultural, and political evolution.

The prevalence of reformist interpretations of Islam over its more conservative readings would enable Iran successfully to mediate the requirements of modernity and preservation of the essence of its religious and cultural values and thus, as put by some reformist thinkers, to manage to "nativize modernity," notably one of its key manifestations, democracy.¹

The success of Iran’s reformist discourse and that of its proponents would deeply and positively influence the nature of its relations with the outside world, because Iranian reformists want to make Iran an active and constructive player in the international arena. The reformists believe that Iran has much to offer to ongoing debates regarding the myriad challenges facing the world, and that it could best accomplish this goal through dialogue and cooperation with others rather than through confrontation and self-righteous preaching. Iran’s success in this endeavor might even have a positive impact on the spread of reformist thinking and practices in other Muslim countries.²

Yet despite the significance of the current debate for Iran’s evolution and potentially that of other Muslim countries, beyond the narrow circle of specialists, the bulk of the work of Iranian reformist thinkers is unknown in the West and in the Islamic world. Certainly, there is no body of material that provides an accessible and relatively comprehensive review of the works of the most influential Iranian reformist thinkers.³

This chapter’s principal goal, therefore, is to disseminate to a broader audience the ideas of Iran’s key Muslim reformist thinkers. To that end, this chapter will: (1) examine the reformist literature and its authors; (2) analyze different Islamic reformist trends and identify their points of convergence and divergence; (3) draw some conclusions regarding the potential impact of this trend on Iran’s social, cultural, and political evolution; and (4) assess the prospects for the success of Islamic reformism in Iran on the intellectual and political levels.

Despite its many new features, current reformist thinking in Iran is a product of the country’s social, cultural, and religious evolution over the last century and a half in response to internal and external stimuli. The current discourse also builds on the works and ideas of earlier religious and lay reformist thinkers, as illustrated by the current reformists’ frequent references to earlier works and thinkers. Therefore, analysis of the current thinkers’ ideas and works will be preceded by a discussion of the history of Islamic reformism in Iran, including reasons for its emergence, its various strands, and its lack of success thus far. This discussion will provide a necessary backdrop against which to examine the current discourse. It will also indicate what factors are likely to help or hinder the success of this latest wave of Islamic reformism in Iran.

Tradition and Modernity: The Still-Relevant Paradigm

Hamid Dabashi has observed that the main philosophical and epistemological weakness in the work of Abdolkarim Soroush is his effort to reconcile two constructs—Islam and Western modernity—that no longer exist. Modernity has self-destructed, and globalization has rendered both Islam and the West irrelevant as cohesive geographical and civilizational constructs.⁴ Irrespective of the validity of this opinion, the fact remains that in Iran the dominant intellectual paradigm is still modernity (moderniteh) and its relationship to tradition (sunnat). Even for those who criticize aspects of modernity, or even the entire project of modernity—often citing its Western critics—modernity remains a central paradigm. This reality is reflected in the large number of books and articles that have been written on this and related subjects in Iran in the last two decades.⁵ In short, Iranian intellectualism, Islamic and otherwise, is still mainly preoccupied with the question of how to respond to the challenge of modernity. Islamic reformism is one of these responses. Therefore, the current manifestation of Islamic reformism is best understood within the historical context of Iran’s encounter with modernity and Iranians’ different responses to it.

Iranian Responses to Modernity: Historical Background

The conditions of Iran’s encounter with modernity and its responses to the multidimensional challenges posed by this encounter have been similar to those of other non-European countries.

Iran’s first timid efforts at modernization began in the early nineteenth century in response to its defeat in the Russo-Iranian wars (1804–1813 and 1824–1828).⁶ These defeats opened the country to military, political, and economic penetration by Russia. Shortly thereafter, Britain and other European countries obtained trade and economic concessions and political privileges similar to those obtained by the Russians. Thus from the very beginning, Iran’s reform efforts, like those of other non-European countries, were defensive in motivation and objectives.

In the following decades, too, the relative quickening of the pace of Iran’s modernization was a response to the country’s growing economic and political penetration by outside powers and their devastating economic and political consequences. Thus enlightened and reformist statesmen, notably Mirza Taqi Khan Amir Kabir and Mirza Hussein Khan Mushir al-Dawleh, who worked for reform in the face of internal opposition from the ulema and the court as well as foreign obstruction, were largely motivated by defensive impulses and the desire to retain Iran’s independence.⁷

The modest steps undertaken to modernize Iran’s educational system, coupled with the increasing number of Iranians who studied in Europe (notably France), acquainted a small but growing number of Iranians with the philosophical basis of modernity and ideas of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, especially its French proponents. The emerging intellectuals of the nineteenth-century Iran were particularly influenced by the ideas of the French Revolution.⁸

Other strands of European political philosophies, notably socialism, also influenced the emerging class of Iranian intellectuals. Socialist ideas were transmitted to Iran by Caucasian intellectuals, who had become familiar with the ideology through contacts with Russia, and by the Iranian immigrant workers in the Caucasian oil fields in Baku.⁹

The introduction of various European sociopolitical ideas to the country gradually led to demands by Iranians for a representative form of government, an end to monarchical absolutism (istibdad), and establishment of the rule of law. Efforts to get the government to satisfy these demands culminated in the Constitutional Revolution of 1905–08, the adoption of the 1906 Constitution, based on the separation of the three branches of government and their independence, and the establishment of the first elected parliament.¹⁰ However, Iranian constitutionalists faced formidable challenges from the clerical establishment, the conservative elements of the merchant community, and the religious masses who saw them and their agenda as threatening Islam’s dominant position in Iranian society. It was the influence of these groups that forced the constititionalists to limit the extent of their political reforms, as reflected in the 1906 Constitution. This constitution was a compromise document combining elements of Western constitutionalism—in this case that of Belgium—with Islamic traditions. Article 2 of the Supplement to the Constitution best represents its compromise nature. The article provided for the presence of no less than five high-ranking clerics at the parliament in order to ensure that no legislation contradicted Islamic law.¹¹

The 1906 Con...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Detailed Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1. Islamic Reformist Discourse in Iran Proponents and Prospects
• 2. Reformist and Moderate Voices of Islam in the Arab East
• 3. Reformist Islamic Thinkers in the Maghreb Toward an Islamic Age of Enlightenment?
• 4. Islamic Modernist and Reformist Discourse in South Asia
• 5. Liberal and Progressive Voices in Indonesian Islam
• 6. Reformist Muslim Thinkers in Malaysia Engaging with Power to Uplift the Umma?
• 7. Islamic Reformist Discourses and Intellectuals in Turkey Permanent Religion with Dynamic Law
• 8. Reformist and Moderate Voices in European Islam
• 9. Voices of Reformist Islam in the United States
• Conclusions and Prospects
• Selected Bibliography
• Index of Names
• About the Editor and Contributors