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

Shi’ite Islam in Contemporary Iran 8 5clear separation between the religious teachings of the clerics and the politicalfunctions and actions of the monarchy. In the premodern system, the rule ofIslamic law was local, and the clergy as a whole guided people religiously andprovided checks to the monarch’s power through their moral influence overthe population. However, the governments of modern nation-states extendtheir control to take over and eliminate such systems of grassroots local rule.Unlike earlier states, whose power was checked by an autonomous class outsidethe government, a modern nation-state’s all-encompassing rule hastended to internalize mechanisms of checks and balances. In some streams ofmodern Western political traditions, the solution to the problem of checkingthe state was to be found in a constitution that provided for three branches ofa democratic government, the judicial, executive, and legislative, as checks toeach other’s power. However, in some Muslim societies, this model was complicateddue to the issues relating to the authority of Islamic law. New questionsarose in these contexts: Since the modern government is so all-encompassing,should it thus incorporate the enforcement of Islamic law? Or should there bea de facto separation, as was found in premodern polities? Is such a separationeven possible? In the premodern system such a separation worked because lowlevels of technology and personal institutions prevented total state controlover people’s lives. However, with a modern nation-state that has fixed borders;all-encompassing, impersonal institutions; enforced law; and ability tocontrol people’s behavior, how is Islamic law to be implemented? Indeed, are“modern” state systems and Islamic law even compatible?The Pahlavi DynastyAfter the Constitutional Revolution, due to fighting among the clergy andother groups over this and other issues, the government became impotent,and Russia and Great Britain stepped in and divided the country into twospheres of influence, Russian in the north, British in the south. For the nextten years, the Qajar constitutional monarchy was under Russian influence, andduring this time various tribal factions were warring with each other throughoutthe country, and little centralized authority was in place. Iran’s first experimentin Western democracy failed to either keep out imperial influence orprevent national divisiveness. These crises of centralized authority ended in1921 when an Iranian military leader of the Russian Cossack Brigade, RezaKhan, seized power. Through a series of deft moves to gain control of the armyand the sources of government wealth, he eventually had the Qajar dynastyended by parliament in 1925 and had himself proclaimed shah (from the Persianfor “king”), taking on a new name, Pahlavi, that was reminiscent of thepre-Islamic empire of Persia. Reza Shah Pahlavi had the support of many of