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

Shi’ite Islam in Contemporary Iran 8 1The Clergy in Iranian SocietyThis unsatisfactory situation in Iran arose as a result of the increasing politicizationof the clergy during the modern period, culminating in the maneuveringsof a powerful cleric, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (d. 1989), whobrought about the present Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979. To understand Islamin contemporary Iran necessitates retelling the story of the politicizationof the clergy. The clerical class consists mostly of men educated in traditionalschools ( m a d r a s as) , whose primary pre-Revolution function was the nonpoliticalrole of transmitting all dimensions of Islamic teachings and practices to theless educated. About 140,000 people today have had some degree of m a d r a s atraining. The m a d r a s as’ curriculum focuses primarily on the field of Islamicl a w, but the fields of theology, philosophy, and mysticism may also be studied.Once male students reach a certain stage of learning, they may wear specialclothes in public: a turban, cloak, and slippers. Clergy can be rich or poor, andmany are dependent on alms for their livelihood. The poorer clergy could runmosques and traditional schools, taking fees for teaching and preaching. Otherscould have great wealth, through owning businesses and land. Since theRevolution, about 10,000 clergy are employed in all sorts of government positions,holding the power and drawing the wealth that such occupations offer.In pre-Revolution Iran, no single person, school—whether physical or intellectual—orinstitution controlled what type of Twelver Shi’ism was taught andlived. Thus, no single person had the religious and temporal authority tospeak definitively on and enforce such matters. Rather, rich debate and dialoguecoupled with grassroots consensus among learned and laity determinedthe types of Islamic beliefs and practices of the community. The premoderngovernments of Iran did not enforce Islamic law. Because Islamic law is actuallyethics and morality coupled with a desire for innate sincerity to submit toGod, as well as a means of regulating interpersonal behavior within the commu n i t y, the people themselves, in the form of families and neighborhoods, sawto it that the law was followed; the clerics gained their authority not throughpolitical means but because as a collectivity, they spoke for the Imam while hewas in occultation. However, a cleric could gain greater moral authority thanother clerics by becoming a marja-e taqlid, l i t e r a l l y, “source of emulation,” embodyinga living source of Islamic law. The concept of following a living clericderived from the unique interpretation of Islamic law found only in Tw e l v e rShi’ism. Shi’ites follow the rulings of a living expert on law, called a m u j t a h i d( l i t e r a l l y, “someone who has struggled” in learning and piety), some of whosereputations were so great they become marja-e taqlids .This notion of m u j t a h i d developed out of Shi’ite scholarly debates in the seventeenththrough nineteenth centuries over the role of the clergy in propagatingand interpreting religious teachings. On the one side were the Akhbaris,