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

8 8Islam i n World Cult u r e ssociologically revolutionary, nor did they bring in religious ideas. Nevertheless,his phrase became a ubiquitous catchword among many of those discontentedwith the shah’s policies.Two other non-clerical thinkers were Sayyid Abdol-Hasan Bani Sadr (b.1933) and Mehdi Bazargan (1907–1995). Bani Sadr added to the Islamic ideologicalrhetoric by discussing the economic problems of the country under thePahlavi regime, using the theological idea of t a w h i d , “divine unity,” to critiquethe already-established modern economy and then to create an “Islamic” onewithin it. Bazargan was an engineer whose political writings and teachings wereinspired by those of Mohandas Gandhi’s movement in India. He was a deputyprime minister in the Mosaddeq government in the early 1950s, founded theFreedom Movement of Iran in the 1960s, and was first interim prime ministerafter the Revolution. Bazargan maintained, as had Shariati, that clergy shouldbe proactive in governmental change, and he wrote on the relationship betweenscientific investigation and Islam, arguing that Islamic ideas are thoroughlygrounded in modern science (Dahlen 2002, 150–151; Esposito 1998,200). Bazargan is noted for being among the earliest thinkers to employ theterm “ideology” for Islam in the political sense, arguing that Islamic ideology isbetter than such secular ones as Marxism (Dahlen 2002, 151).Although the teachings of Shariati and Bazargan enabled Iranians to reinterpretShi’ite teachings in a distinctly modern manner in order to justify politicalaction, it was the presence and teachings of Ayatollah Khomeini that becamethe main catalysts for the Revolution. Being much more learned intraditional Shi’ite thought than the secular thinkers, Khomeini was able topoliticize Shi’ite teachings even more than Shariati was, justifying the creationof a theocratic clerical ruler with unlimited authority within a modern nationstate.Khomeini, a marja-e taqlid from Qom, was the most outspoken clericalcritic of the shah’s policies. In the early 1960s, he argued against the shah onthree counts: (1) that he was an autocratic ruler, ignoring the people’s trueneeds, (2) that he was a pawn of the West, having close ties to the UnitedStates, (3) and that he was corrupting the morality of the country through hissecularizing laws (Arjomand 2000, 86). In 1964, Khomeini’s followers stagedmassive demonstrations, which the shah brutally crushed, culminating inK h o m e i n i ’s exile in 1964 to Iraq and later to Paris. From 1964 to 1979, Khomeinibecame the exiled religious spokesperson for the different anti-shahgroups, providing Shi’ite legitimation for rebellion, revolution, and the creationof a modern state governed by Shi’ite clergy. In 1970, Khomeini wrote abook in Persian entitled Velayat-e Faqih: Hokumat-e Islami [The Guardianship ofthe Jurist: Islamic Government] (Khomeini 1978), in which he argued thatsince the twelfth Imam is hidden, only the clergy, by reason of their religiousknowledge, are qualified to have direct governmental rule over the people,rather than serving as advisers to the rulers, as was the case in premodern