Islam in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives - Islamic Books ...

8 0Islam i n World Cult u r e sschools, dozens of acres of beautifully tiled squares, a major library of Shi’itestudies, bookstores, and two large museums of art and cultural history. Peoplefrom all segments of Iranian society visit the Mashhad site. 1 The area aroundthe tomb has become a central tourist site, where people, when coming to visitthe Imam, buy clothes, jewelry, and specialty foods as part of a vacationpilgrimage.Hundreds of hotels do brisk business, especially during the summerpilgrimage season, when as promotions they provide their guests withgifts—prayer carpets, prayer stones, and rosaries with the hotel logo on thepackaging—and supply small instructional books on how to properly visit theshrine, the history of Shi’ism, the life of Imam Reza, and the complex itself.Thus, a “sacred vacation” mixes together a family holiday atmosphere with theblessedness of the Imams. This mixing is embodied by the mile-long twostoriedcovered Reza Bazaar that stands right next to the shrine complex.Public and Private IslamDespite the widespread practice of these religious rituals, Iranians today arealso very much affected by non-Islamic beliefs and practices. Like many Muslimcountries that have modernized using European secular values and institutionsas models, Iran, until the Revolution of 1979, had a diversity of religiousand nonreligious ways of life derived from Western secular philosophies andEastern religions in addition to Shi’ite Muslim worldviews. Since the Revolution,much of this multiplicity is still very much alive, but it has been greatlyprivatized and limited to people’s homes, where the government control ofthe clerics cannot reach. For the past twenty-two years, the regime, as a moderntotalitarian police state, has publicly enforced a single, extremist brand ofShi’ite Islamic law in the form of political ideology.In Tehran nowadays we find a modern industrial society with stores, industries,occupations, and institutions like those in any contemporary Europeanc o u n t ry, but with people in public behaving and dressing according to strictstate codes of behavior. Inside people’s homes, especially among young people,there is defiance against the regime-enforced public Islam, and so somepeople drink alcohol, watch satellite television with Western movies and programs,have Internet connections, dress in thoroughly Westernized fashions,enthusiastically discuss popular Western culture and music, and in general livea life that rejects the state’s version of Islam (Yaghmaian 2002). Many Iranianslove God, the Prophet, and the Imams but see that their government hasfailed to combine Islamic ideas and values with the realities of the modernworld in a just, harmonious, peaceful, and loving way. They demand from thegovernment moderating reforms, which conservative forces are currently doingtheir utmost to prevent.