Hijab

Three Modern Iranian Seminarian Perspectives

Lloyd Ridgeon

• Publisher: Gingko
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781909942578
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

This book provides an overview of the range of seminarian thinking in Iran on the controversial topic of the hijab. During the modern period, Iran has suffered a great deal of conflict and confusion caused by the impact of Western views on the hijab in the 19th century, Riza Shah Pahlavi's 1936 decree banning Islamic head coverings, and the imposition of the veil in the wake of the Islamic Revolution in 1979. ?ij?b addresses the differences of opinion among seminarians on the hijab in the Islamic Republic of Iran, focusing on three representative thinkers: Murtaza Mutahhari who held veiling to be compulsory, Ahmad Qabil who argued for the desirability of the hijab, and Muhsin Kadivar who considers it neither necessary nor desirable. In the first chapter, the views of these three scholars are contextualized within the framework known as 'new religious thinking' among the seminarians. Comprehending the hermeneutics of this new religious thinking is key to appreciating how and why the younger generation of scholars have offered divergent judgements about the hijab. Following the first chapter, the book is divided into three parallel sections, each devoted to one of the three seminarians. These present a chronological approach, and each scholar's position on the hijab is assessed with reference to historical specificity and their own general jurisprudential perspective. Extensive examples of the writings of the three scholars on the hijab are also provided.

Part 1

1

Sharia, Fiqh, and the New Religious Thinkers

Introduction

The challenges of day-to-day life in Iran in the wake of the Islamic Revolution of 1978–79, which instituted a legal system based on many of the accepted norms of the early years of Islam in 7th–9th centuries, threw into sharp relief the contrast between early medieval standards established in Arabia and the Near East with the requirements of a modern society that was evolving and developing politically, economically and socially at an unprecedented rate. This apparent discrepancy is not a new problem when seminarians are concerned. For a hundred years, Shiʿi scholars have been criticised for being unable to bridge adequately the laws derived from sacred scripture to pressing, modern questions. One of the most famous advocates of political and social reform in Iran and the Middle East, Jamal al-Din al-Asadabadi (known popularly as al-Afghani [d. 1897] and famous for promoting ‘pan-islamism’) commented on the deficiencies of seminarians in his age:

The science of principles consists of the philosophy of the sharia, or ‘philosophy of law’. In it are explained the truths regarding right and wrong, benefit and loss, and the causes for the promulgation of laws. Certainly, a person who studies this science should be capable of establishing laws and enforcing civilization. However, we see that those who study this science among the Muslims are deprived of understanding the benefits of laws, the rules of civilization, and the reform of the world.¹

Afghani may have been saying what his audience wished to hear, considering how in other letters and addresses he reflected on the potential that jurisprudence holds for Islamic societies. But he clearly despaired of the ability of the mujtahids (or the faqīhs) to carry out the ideal role he envisaged for them. Since Afghani’s criticisms, there has been a frequent and regular call for reform, or a demand to modernise the way of thinking in the seminaries. At this point it is useful to define some recurring terminology in order to avoid confusion. There is a subtle difference between sharia and fiqh. The former is ‘the utopia, the immutable, the normative, and the ideal Islam’.² In contrast, fiqh (or jurisprudence) is substantive law, and ‘the changing and mutable domain of legislation because it is only an approximation of the sharia arrived at by the use of the human cognitive process’.³ Many individuals who have been vocal in seeking changes to sharia have actually been speaking about fiqh. The appeal to make jurisprudence ‘relevant’ has come from senior figures within the seminaries and political structures of Iran, such as the former Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini (d. 1989), who in November 1988 said:

Today, fortunately, owing to the Islamic Revolution, the words of the jurists and opinion holders are heard on the radio and television [and read] in the newspapers because there is a practical need for these discussions on the [following] matters: on the issue of ownership and its limit; on the issue of land and its division; on governmental property the profits of which must be distributed to the public and public wealth; on complicated financial issues and foreign exchange and banking; on taxation, on internal and foreign trade; on share cropping and silent partnerships, and rent and mortgages; on Islamic punishments and blood-money; on civil laws; on cultural issues and artistic encounters with public spirituality, including photography, painting, sculpture, music, theatre, cinema, calligraphy, and others; on environmental issues and the care of nature and preventing the cutting down of trees even on private lands; on issues of food and drink, prevention of childbirth in necessary situations or establishing a period of time between births; solving medical complications such as the grafting of human limbs and other bodily parts like this to other humans; on the issue of subterranean and open mines, and national [mines]; the changing of what is prohibited and permitted, and the expansion and contraction of specific commands (aḥkām) at various times and places; on legal issues and international laws and their conformity with Islamic commands, the constructive role of women in Islamic society and their destructive role in corrupt and non-Islamic societies; the limits of individual and societal freedom, the encounter with unbelief (kufr) and associating gods with God (shirk) and selective interpretation (intiqāt) by the block of followers of kufr and shirk, and how to perform [Islamic] duties in the air or in space, and make movement contrary to the direction of the Earth, or in conformity with it, with a velocity more than its speed, or in rising up and neutralising the Earth’s gravity; and most important of all of these, the delineation and establishment of rulership of the vilāyat-i faqīh in the government and society, because all of these are one among thousands of issues of concern to the people and the government which the great jurists have discussed.⁴

The complexity of modern life demands answers to all these problems. The difficulty of providing answers to such daunting questions is typified in the simplistic claim that Islam offers solutions to the issues that the contemporary world presents. However, more sophisticated responses argue that the belief that sharia is immutable and unchanging does not mean that Islam cannot respond to these changes, because fiqh offers a human interpretation of divine law, comprehended as a general and ethical ideal. Problems arise, however, if fiqh is understood as inflexible, fixed and invariable, and thereby unable to provide an adequate answer to the ever-evolving demands and needs of modern life.⁵ A problem facing scholars, indeed, all concerned, is that sharia and fiqh are often conflated by Western observers and by Muslims themselves.

The attempt to use fiqh in responding to the challenges that are thrown up by modern life has not proved an easy matter in modern Iran, in spite of the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979. Some thirty years later, Hasan Yousefi Eshkevari, a modern reformist member of the ulama, listed ten different methods that have been offered as fiqh-based solutions to such challenges that have been formulated during this same period.⁶ The ten-fold taxonomy that Eshkevari presented can be simplified into two groups: the first includes interpretations that encourage reform and which are open to debate and discussion, while the other group does not promote or encourage alternative views.

The first kind of interpretation is typified in a PhD thesis held at Glasgow Caledonian University, submitted by Hassan Rouhani (the President of the Islamic Republic since 2013), titled ‘The Flexibility of Shariah (Islamic Law) with Reference to the Iranian Experience’. The main argument of the thesis is that ‘Islamic law enjoys a series of dynamic features and judicial instruments which objective analysis would define as liberal, progressive and broad-minded’.⁷ Rouhani’s conception of flexibility has been advanced to a far greater degree by the so-called New Religious Thinkers (naw-andīshān-i dīnī) among Iranian ulama. Indeed, some advocate a separation of religion from the state, what others have called ‘religious secularity’,⁸ a term that does not necessarily remove religion from politics or society. A common feature in the writings of these ulama is a plea for an open and tolerant society that engages in unrestricted discussion of religion and politics.⁹ The ideas of New Religious Thinkers are a direct challenge to those established in state institutions, and it is for this reason that many of the reformists have faced virulent criticism, incarceration and exile.

In this chapter, some of the methods advocated by several members of the ulama among the New Religious Thinkers are described and assessed, concentrating on the thought of four of the most radical and well-known ulama, namely Hasan Yousefi Eshkevari, Muhsin Kadivar, Ahmad Qabil, and Muhammad Mujtahid-Shabistari. As mentioned above, many of the reformists have encountered opposition and campaigns of intimidation aimed to silence them. Eshkevari was arrested in 2000 and faced charges such as ‘waging war against God’,¹⁰ and after spending a long time in jail, he now resides in Europe.¹¹ Muhsin Kadivar was arrested in 1999 and spent 18 months in prison before he was able to leave Iran and take up teaching posts in the US. He is currently a Research Professor of Islamic Studies at Duke University. Ahmad Qabil, a student of Ayatollah Montazeri, was also arrested and served prison sentences between 2001 and 2012 for his criticisms of the Iranian regime before he died of a brain tumour in 2012. Shabistari, a seminarian, had also been professor at Tehran University but in 2006 he ‘fell victim to the purges of the Ahmadinejad regime … [and] was forced into retirement’.¹² It might have been possible to describe the views and philosophies of other individuals who are often included among the new generation of thinkers, such as Abdolkarim Soroush or Mustafa Malikiyan. However, the former has no formal seminary training, and indeed his writings do not focus on jurisprudential questions. The latter was associated with the Madrasa Radhawiya seminary in Mashhad in 1984 where he taught elementary Arabic,¹³ and has found a considerable following, especially among university students, as a philosopher who does not utilise ‘Islamic’ argumentation. Indeed, his works have become ‘increasingly devoid of anything that might be deemed exoterically Islamic, let alone identifiably Shiʿi’.¹⁴ And Soroush’s influence in Iran on the topic of religious reform cannot be denied, and reference is made to his contributions to the debate on reform when appropriate.

The second kind of interpretation to appreciate or discover the sharia opposes that of the New Religious Thinkers. It advocates a method that accepts the codification and reification of traditional ways of understanding law, to the extent of regulating minute aspects of the lives of believers through such means as ‘the reinforcement of compulsory hijab, obligatory prayer observance in the work-place, the official prohibition of eating and drinking during Ramadan, and various methods of rewarding those who effect a religious mien such as wearing a beard or wearing one’s shirt outside of one’s trousers’.¹⁵ Shabistari classifies such an approach under the rubric of the ‘official reading of religion’, and maintains that ‘the supporters of this reading say … the religion of Islam has permanent and eternal political, economic and legal structures. The form of government is deduced from the book [i.e. the Qurʾan] and Sunna, and [the form of government] is not a rational matter. The duty of the government is to execute the Islamic commands among the Muslims’.¹⁶ Shabistari further argues how the official reading has been entangled in a crisis because it has opposed democratic methods and utilised violence which it justifies as a way to both enforce Islamic commands and protect Islam. Moreover, it can lay no claim to scientific learning and its whole raison d’être has been disliked.¹⁷ Another common criticism of such ‘official readings’ is the claim of its irrelevance to the practical problems encountered in modern life. One of the new class of reformist mujtahids, Kadivar has observed that, ‘Constantly rehearsing fatwas that have been issued in the past and glorifying constantly-recurring opinions as the best amounts to nothing more than the imitation of our predecessors in formulating opinions.’¹⁸

In summary, the official reading of religion is criticised by the New Religious Thinkers on two very basic counts. The first is its rigid hermeneutical approach, which denies any kind of legitimacy to views other than its own. The New Religious Thinkers have advocated the use of a range of methods to address the ‘crisis’ that jurisprudence faces, and these methods are the focus of the present chapter. The second criticism, related to the first, is that the official reading of religion promotes only...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Frontmatter
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Transliteration
• Introduction
• Part 1
• Part 2: Hijab as Mandatory (vājib): The Views of Murtaza Mutahhari
• Part 3: Hijab as Desirable (mustaḥabb): The Views of Ahmad Qabil
• Part 4: Hijab Depending on Time and Place: The Views of Muhsin Kadivar
• Conclusion
• Appendix
• Bibliography
• Index