Not Everybody’s Darling
October 3, 2009
The original sources for the detailed descriptions of legends and fairy tales which circulate among both ordinary people in the Islamic world and, for example, Sufis since Muhammad’s and his followers’ conquest of much of the world have never been described in a scientific way. When reading, for instance, Eliot Weinberger’s Muhammad (Verso, London 2006), which is, according to the author, mainly based on the Holy Qur’an and ahadīth, or the traditions of the Prophet, one may ask the question how many generations of people have, over the centuries, embellished so nicely the historical facts (?) so that an attractive legend was created which fascinates even sober, contemporary Westerners, the main target audience of Weinberger’s nice booklet.
Allah’s Darling (or Allahs Liebling, the original title of the book which has, so far, been published only in German) is the attempt of the renowned German Orientalist Tilman Nagel, a professor emeritus of the University of Göttingen, to explain the origins and manifestations of the belief in the founder of Islam, Muhammad. The book is sort of a spin-off of Nagel’s opus maximum, his voluminous biography of the Prophet, mainly praised but also heavily criticized by others.
When having read the subtitle of “Allah’s Darling” (“Ursprung und Erscheinungsformen des Mohammedglaubens”), I was wondering whether the author wants to make the point that Islam is not an extreme form of monotheism, as claimed in particular by Sunni Muslims, but rather that Muslims are “Mohammedans”, a pretty frivolous, Orientalist, conception. He frankly admits that everyone who would undertake the task of highlighting the circumstances under which a faith could emerge which was essentially based on prefabricated “eternal” knowledge, ever-valid for any area of life; a faith in an ever-competent messenger of Allah, would inevitably face the “foolish” charge of Orientalism or Essentialism. He may be right, but whether the charge is in fact foolish was not clear to me after having read the book.
The seemingly sound construction of what one may describe as the House of Islam is, however, not different from that of other, older, world religions. That, after the Age of Enlightenment, fundamentalist Christianity, for instance, has largely (unfortunately not entirely, though) been repelled in modern, determined secular, societies may have something to do with the foundation of Christianity as the author correctly claims, but not with its Church(es), as it (they) developed in century-long processes, with its (their), for example, heated arguments regarding the “nature” of Jesus, the World’s Redeemer; or strange beliefs in the Virgin Mary. There is no difference in overall absurdity. It is self-evident that, in order to write a credible, in particular scientific, treatise or even book on one of the world religions authors should make clear in the very beginning that they are not religious! That is unfortunately not the case here.
Several times Nagel points to the huge problems of Integrationspolitik, i.e. how Muslims may be integrated in Western societies. He stresses that the time and again overpowering (erdrückende) majority of Muslims still live their fatalism due to strong beliefs in the believer’s general inability of getting hold of his own lives. For Nagel it seems to be clear that Mohammedanism should be regarded the main reason for the widely observed (in comparison) developmental retardation in Islamic societies. His plenty arguments, however, are taken from medieval authors commenting on ahadīth [1]; notoriously unreliable, as it becomes clear time and time again in Nagel’s narrative. The realm of medieval Islam (note, that the Middle Ages describe the dark ages of European cultures and societies when, at the same time, the Islamic world was bright and pretty enlightened) was huge, though, and spanned from Spain to Central Asia, from North Africa to parts of India. Islam, as Nagel describes it using accounts of numerous medieval authors, Andalusian, Cairene, Damascene, or Iranian [2], is not, and never has been, a monolithic entity. There are four prominent Sunni schools of fiqh, or Islamic jurisprudence, and two schools for the Shi’a, which are not covered in Nagel’s book.
In his epilogue, Nagel concludes with the description of his pretty unjustified dismay about the publication of now, since in 1981, eight volumes of Muhammad. Encyclopedia of Seerah (The Muslim Schools Trust, London, 2nd ed. 1985), clearly a sort of personality cult. He might not even be aware of comparably voluminous works of contemporary authors about Shi’a Imams with a similar, of course questionable, approach [3]. That currently by the majority of the faithful practiced Islam won’t fit into a rapidly changing, now again flat, world with its traffic, world wide web, demands of intercultural competence etc, is commonplace. Professor Nagel acknowledges, in the preface of Allahs Liebling, one of his co-workers for introducing him to and solving emerging problems with electronic data processing. So, even he might not have arrived yet in modern times.
Notes
[1] When introducing the reader to his text, Nagel describes the pretty bizarre “fly” hadīth: The Prophet once narrated: “If a fly falls into one of your containers (of food or drink), immerse it completely (falyaghmis-hu kullahu) before removing it, for under one of its wings there is venom and under another there is its antidote.” The purpose here is clearly defamatory, not realizing that Christian salvation history is full of similar absurdities, not mentioning the Jewish Tanakh.
[2] As regards the latter, I am not even sure. Iran, a center of medieval Islam, seems not to be covered at all. Moreover, Nagel rarely informs the reader about the specific background of the authors he extensively quotes: the historical circumstances during the periods they lived when they created their scriptures. That, of course, raises questions about the targeted audience. Is it politicians, a lay audience? The book is not a reference text. In contrast to his claims, I would not even regard it a sound scientific study. Too copious, even biased, in its descriptions of absurdities (see [1]) which may have led eventually to his (or our) perceived totalitarian Mohammedanism of the Islamic world.
[3] I own, for instance, an English translation by Jasim al-Rasheed of the 1926 book by Baqir Sharif al-Qarashi’s The life of Imam Ali bin Musa al Rida; Ansariyan Publications, Qum 2001, which was a personal gift by Kuwaiti Shi’ites on the occasion of their pilgrimage to the Holy Shrine of Imam Ridha in Mashhad in 2006, when I was invited to join the group. Much of Nagel’s descriptions of the Prophet’s reported excellence, for example of his physics, his manners, his generosity etc., which elevated him from ordinary people, may be found in the description of Imam Ridha as well. It would have been even more interesting to study the deeply rooted piety of ordinary, say, Iranian people in rural areas, including their legends and personality cults as regards Ali, Husayn, the numerous Imami Shi’a Saints, etc. In particular ahadīth related to Ali, the Nahj al-Balagha, may prove that Allah may have just another darling besides Muhammad.
Afghan Hinterland
July 19, 2009
The country is 30 years at war, more or less continuously. Landlocked Afghanistan is not really Central Asia, and definitely not the Middle East. It has always been in-between. Its history may be described as a series of failed attempts of conquest. Maybe one early somewhat successful campaign had actually been that of Alexander the Great (after 330 BCE) who married Roxane, a Bactrian noble from Balkh.
In July 1960, a group of three diplomats who were working at embassies in Kabul, dared to set off to a passage to small and remote valleys in the southern parts of the Hindu Kush, Nuristan. The curious reader of their report: A Passage to Nuristan. Exploring the Mysterious Afghan Hinterland, only published 46 years after the arduous hike, has, honestly, never heard about the region and the people who had once been considered the last surviving native kafirs, or infidels, in the vast Islamic realm. Thus, the country had been called Kafiristan. When it was conquered by Emir Abdurrahman Khan in 1895, Islam was enforced. His armies brought the light (an-nur) to the polytheists. So, eventually the country became enlightened by Islam, Nuristan.
It is a story of the lost paradise, blooming meadows and woods, torrents, daring mountain hiking; of dwarfs and fairy-tales, beautiful girls and cheerful lads, honorable maleks, great hospitality of proud people and, of course, post-colonial attitudes of White Man’s supremacy, including mild Islam phobia.
The three diplomats are Sir Nicholas Barrington who had served in the British Embassy in Kabul from 1959 to 1961; Joseph T. Kendrick, political officer in the American Embassy in Kabul in the late 1950s; and Reinhard Schlagintweit, who was working at West Germany’s Kabul Embassy between 1958 and 1961. These young men were adventurous enough to encounter the still almost unknown Afghan hinterland for which, at that time, even reliable maps were missing. They were not dependent on themselves. After having got approval for the passage from governor of Jalalabad and the Eastern Province they were even assigned a police escort to safeguard the whole trip. Anyway, what they describe in this very uncommon book is amazing.
While Barrington provides the narrative of the 10 days in Nuristan, written shortly after the adventure, Kendrick (JT) gives a more ethnologic account on the different tribes in partly isolated villages of two major valleys, the Pech and the Waigel, which are separated by a rugged mountain ridge. Several passes permit, at least in summer, communication of the people in the two valleys. While the Wamaites are generally tall with long and thin faces, and proud of descending from Arabs, Kendrick compares the short people of the Presuns (“below five feet”) with Nordic fishermen, while Barrington calls them simply dwarfs. “The Waigelis resembles southern Europeans, particularly Italians.” It is amazing to read about his comparisons with Mexican or American Indian clothing here.
Kendrick reports that Islam is not visibly being practiced among the Sefid Posh, and “[p]aganism in all its manifestations is not yet stamped out.” “[T]he stories of old gods and legends are still known among the older men and held in respect,” much to the mullah’s discontent. Dancing, songs, festivals, even wine making and consumption, seemed to be possible in this remote region of Afghanistan in the 1960s. It is unfortunately not very clear, what kind of polytheism had been (and in last century’s sixties, was?) practiced from Kendrick’s account.
The third part of the book provides reflections of the authors almost 45 years after their passage to Nuristan. While the notes were made shortly after the adventure, when the three authors were in their twenties or thirties, it is most interesting to read the memories of now worldly-wise and experienced men, all three having had gorgeous careers as diplomatic envoys. Their post-colonial attitude of White Man’s supremacy had vanished in the meantime. The country had been devastated with a terrible proxy of the Cold War when Barrington had been appointed British Ambassador in Islamabad. He concludes:
“Sadly, as this book was going to print, the situation in Afghanistan was becoming increasingly infected by the disastrous events in Iraq. The ill-planned and illegal (in UN terms) invasion of Iraq by US and coalition forces increased support for Al Qaeda-type extremists round the world, as some of us had warned. London and Madrid suffered. Karzai’s task in Kabul was made more difficult. Remote Nuristan was not immune. In a high-profile incident in July 2005 an American Special Forces helicopter trying to rescue servicemen on the ground was shot down by missile, killing all 16 men on board – America’s greatest casualty toll in Afghanistan so far. The press reported that this took place in the Waigel Valley, which had seemed so peaceful years before.”
And Kendrick concludes in 2002 (he had deceased in January 2003):
“In my view, relations between Islam and the Western world are also at a precarious stage, and now need sensitive handling. To add to the internal difficulties, the situation in Afghanistan has intensified Muslim hatred of the Western world. The West must make clear to the Muslim world that there is respect for Islam, although not acceptance of the actions of an extremist minority. The United States, for its part, cannot afford to take unilateral political actions that will inflame the Muslim world even further and lend credibility to the terrorists.”
In East Anatolia
July 8, 2009
Rebel Land [1] is the story about the ethnic and religious conflicts in East Anatolia in the 20th century. It is remarkable as it blends known and largely unknown historical facts with personal experiences of an investigative journalist and very emotional descriptions of a largely forgotten, harsh and dramatic region and its mainly inhospitable people(s). It is from the borders between civilization and notorious unrest, West and East, Europe and, well, something in-between. Let’s describe it as a country gradually developing into (or from) Central Asia, from where the various Turkish tribes have once colonized the Anatolian highlands. Willingly or not, Rebel Land provides excellent evidence for denying modern Turkey’s desire of eventually joining the European Union in the near future.
The author, Christopher de Bellaigue, is a likeable writer. He has lived in Turkey in the 1990s for five years and speaks the language fluently. At first encounter he is usually considered a Turk, as he writes not without some pride. I have become curious after having read his two books about Iran [2], a country which also fascinates me for a long time. He went farther. He has got married to an Iranian woman and even converted to the Shi’a branch of Islam. Rebel Land is written in a century-long tradition of a traveling reporter who wants to tell a true story about history.
De Bellaigue’s first and main intention to travel to Varto in the East Anatolian province of Mus was definitely to figure out the truth about the Turkish genocide of the Armenian people in 1915. It is the most disturbing part of the book and portrays well the problems of modern Turkey, which officially denies the very facts and threatens with prosecution everybody who is telling what actually had happened. It is also about Turkish ‘historians’ counterfeiting the dark chapters of Turkish history in the last century [3]. There is an unfortunate melting pot there made of Armenians, Ottoman Turks and Kurds, Sunnis and Alevis. The struggle for forced modernity in remote regions hopelessly stuck in medieval traditions, numerous military coups, etc.
De Bellaigue visited and interviewed also Turks from Eastern Anatolia now living in by and large xenophobic Germany, who seemed to have lost their real identity as Armenians, or Alevis, even Kurds. Lost identity, another sad aspect of this book. It may culminate in the epilogue, when de Bellaigue describes a visit in Armenia’s capital Yerevan and an afternoon in an unforgiving Armenian friend’s home. Armen, so his name, told him that once he met, in a tea house in Anatolia, a Kurdish man wearing a silver belt heavily embossed with detachable sections and with Armenian inscriptions of 1902. He managed to buy the belt after some bargaining. Men are not wearing this kind of belts, he said. Armenian girls are given these belts when they got married. For his friend, still full of hatred, it was clear that this belt had been stolen from an Armenian family which had been killed in the massacres. Now, ridiculously, a man was wearing it! De Bellaigue confesses:
“I think these things in a neat, well-ordered terraced house in London, where I have belts of my own – my family; the nice reassuring things that I inherited from my mother. Supposing these people, these things, were wrenched away from me by an ancestral enemy, supposing that I were robbed of everything in a matter of minutes – I suppose that I too would disregard those principles, of love and forgiveness, that were instilled in me painlessly as a child, and abandon myself to insatiable rage.”
The book is at best when its author entertains with sad and poetic stories about the people there, somewhat disclosing their soul. “Tell me about the Armenians”, de Bellaigue asks an Alevi from Varto, who narrates the following story about the pepukh, the yellow-winged cuckoo.
“There were once a sister and a brother. Their mother had died and their father had married again. The stepmother was wicked and she was cruel to the children, who were scared of her. When spring came, and the cardoon started to sprout across the meadows, the stepmother gave the children a saddlebag and told them to fill it with cardoon. When they had filled it, they set out for home, the little boy carrying the saddlebag over his back. As they approached home, the girl noticed that the saddlebag was empty and she accused her brother of eating the cardoon. ‘It’s almost dark! What will our stepmother do to us now?’ Her brother was distraught. ‘I didn’t eat the cardoon. I only took one stalk, and that was with your permission. Open up my stomach and look; you’ll find one stalk inside.’ So the girl split open her brother’s stomach and saw that he was telling the truth; there was only one cardoon stalk inside. Then she was filled with remorse, for her brother would never rise again, and after washing and burying him she prayed: ‘God! Turn me into a bird that will forever mourn my brother.’ And this is what God did. And she sang:
‘Pepukh! Oh woe! Who slew him? I slew him! Who washed him? I washed him! Who buried him? I buried him!’”
“We and the Armenians were like brother and sister,” the Alevi said sadly. “Only we didn’t have the decency to bury them.”
Notes
[1] Christopher de Bellaigue C. Rebel Land. Among Turkey’s Forgotten Peoples. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. London 2009.
[2] C. de Bellaigue. In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs. A Memoir of Iran, HarperCollins Publishers 2005; and The Struggle for Iran, NYRB collections 2007
[3] De Bellaigue describes with bitterness his discussions in the 1990s with Professor Yusuf Halacoglu, author of Ermeni Tehciri, or Armenian Deportation, who estimates a ridiculous 30’000 casualties among the Armenian people during the 1915 deportations, rather than the one or one and a half million commonly assumed.
Najasat-e Ahl-e Kitab
March 12, 2009
When Cyrus the Great freed the Jews from Babylonian Captivity in 539 BCE, some of them did not return to Jeruslaem but eventually settled on the banks of the Zayandeh Rud in Central Iran, possibly founding the city of Esfahan [1]. This is the beginning of Jewish life in Iran which thus started two-and-a-half-thousand years ago. While Cyrus is betoken as ‘the anointed’ [2] in the Book of Isaiah, Jews seem to have lived for centuries in peace with the indigenous Persian populace. Persian religious tolerance was legendary as long as Zoroastrianism was the state religion. The alarming rhetoric in particular of the current President of Iran, who had openly questioned the Holocaust of the Jews by the Nazi’s terror regime in the early 1940s and the very right of Israel to exist, has caused considerable new concern about the safety of the Jews in the Islamic Republic. It raises again the question, what do we actually know about the relationship of Shi’a Muslims and other ‘people of the book’, or Ahl al-Kitab?
Daniel Tsadik is an Assistant Professor at Yeshiva University, New York. He has earned a PhD from the History Department at Yale University. Apparently, Tsadik’s family is still living in Iran. In his new book he tries to illuminate the more than difficult situation of the Jews under the rule of the Shahs of the Qajar-Dynasty, in particular the second half of the 19th century. Iran has seen the Constitutional Revolution (1905-1911), the reign of the Pahlavis afterwards and, most significant, the Islamic Republic with its determined Shi’a fundamentalism as state doctrine. Is it possible to draw a parallel between, as Tsadik describes it, religiously motivated anti-Semitic inhumanity and present days’ threats and persecution [3]? On several occasions in the mid-19th century, so Tsadik, international Jewish organization such as the Alliance Israélite Universelle, the Anglo-Jewish Association or the Jewish Board of Deputies tried to put pressure on the Shah to improve the situation of their brethren in Iran and demanded equal rights as citizens, with fragile, rather transient success, though. Thus, Tsadik traces the debate about the status of religious minorities in Iran, including the Jews, back to the 19th century interplay between intervening foreigners, the Shah, the Shi’a majority and especially the Ulema, or religious jurists, and local non-Muslim minorities.
Tsadik claims that, “[b]eginning with the end of the reign of Shah Abbas I (r. 1588-1629) the condition of the Jews generally deteriorated. This trend became more pronounced under Shah Abbas II (r. 1642-66) and continued in subsequent years.” Abbas the Great, who made Shi’a Islam the Iranian state religion, had even encouraged Jews (and Armenians as well) to settle in his new capital Esfahan. Tsadik stresses that it was largely the legal attitudes of the Shi’i toward the Jews, in particular, considering them (and Christians as well) as impure (najasat-e ahl-e kitab) and inferior as compared to Muslims. It is interesting to see that under the Sunni Muslim Nadir Shah (r. 1736-47) who abolished Shi’a Islam in Iran, Jews experienced a short period of relative tolerance. They were then even allowed to settle in the holy city of Mashhad in Khorasan [4]. But new persecutions emerged with the advent of the Shi’a Qajar dynasty of Shahs (1794-1925).
Precise estimates are actually missing but it is clear that the Jewish populace in Iran underwent considerable changes over the past few centuries. At the beginning of the 20th century, there might have been 40’000 Jews in Iran, roughly 0.4% of the total population [5]. Clearly, with some exceptions, for example traders and physicians, Jews comprised the lowest social status in Iran’s society. They were frequently peddlers or more or less forced to choose vocations usually forbidden to Muslims, such as dyeing, scavenger work, cleaning excrement pits, etc. According to Tsadik, “[S]hi’i (and Muslim, in general) polemic contentions regarded contemporary Judaism as consisting of negative innovations and the Jews as obstinate deviators from their own Torah”.
In the 19th century, afraid of completely loosing its independence, Iran addressed the demands of foreign powers such as Britain, French and Russia, even those regarding minorities in the society. During Shah Nasir al-Din Qajar’s lengthy reign (1848-96) Western powers (particularly British and French) intervened on behalf of the Iranian Jews but his overall positive response (in 1873 the Shah granted the Jews in his country equal civil rights as the Muslims, soon after the 1871-72 Great Famine in Iran which had elicited a growing European Jewish concern for Iranian Jews) was not implemented in full by the government, and a Jew was in fact never treated as an equal private citizen but always a member of the Jewish community. It is revealing for the weakness of the Shah’s order that Jews, as most other non-Muslims, had to remit the jizyah, the annual extra tax imposed on members of the Dhimmah, even after 1873, when Nasir al-Din visited several European states and was directly addressed by Jewish organizations. Tsadik argues that, in the latter half of the 19th century, the Muslim (i.e., Imami Shi’a) majority in the country and, in particular, the Ulema, by and large prevented the Shah’s intentions of improving the situation of the Jews in Iran. “Portions of Muslim society strongly resisted the bestowal of a new status on the Jews. They fought for the application and reinforcement of the dhimmah laws.”
Tsadik’s book is an excellent study shedding light on a so far largely unknown relationship between the fundamentalist Imami Shi’a branch of Islam and religious minorities in Iran. It raises concerns that even the currently valid fatwa by the late Ayatollah Khomeini who, after his return from exile in Paris, declared Jews (and Christians and Zoroastrians as well) of being protected under the Dhimmah, might not be implemented in full. In particular the unacceptable rhetoric of the current President of Iran and irresponsible acts such as the so-called ‘International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust’ in 2006 in Tehran might remind us that even fatwas might be abrogated.
Outside of Israel, most holy sites for Jews are found in Iran, for instance Daniel’s tomb in Shush, the ancient Susa, or sites related to Esther and Mordecai in Hamadan, the ancient Achaemenid capital Ecbatana [6]. Self-evidently Jews in Iran consider themselves as Iranians. They regard offers of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) to emigrate to the US an unreasonable demand. Presently, the Jewish population in Iran seems to be safe. It is hoped that their 2500-year-old history in Iran will continue.
Notes
[1] In fact, settlements in what is now called Esfahan are essentially older and may well have their origins in the 5th or 6th millennia BCE, the so-called Zayandeh Rud River Culture with a strong link to Kashan’s Tappeh Sialk, an ancient ziggurat some 200 km north of the modern city of Esfahan.
[2] Cyrus might have been regarded by Jews as the (or one) Messiah. According to (Deutero-)Isaiah (Isa 45:1-8), God would anoint the Persian king Cyrus who would then destroy Babylon and liberate the Jews.
[3] Tsadik does not mention the term ‘anti-Semitism’ in his book a single time. It is obvious that he based anti-Jewish sentiments of Iran’s Muslims entirely on the religious doctrine which is, according to his arguments, especially characteristic for Imami Shi’a Islam.
[4] According to Tsadik, the central government of the Shah in Tehran was in essence not able or willing to prevent persecutions in the impassable countryside which were mainly due to the zeal of the Ulema, who were implementing stricter Shi’a laws dooming Jews and other minorities as impure and inferior. How could the new Sunni leader Nadir Shah reverse deeply rooted resentments of his people?
[5] Although generally a tiny minority in a large Muslim country, due to the severe restrictions implemented by the Shi’a laws on the Dhimmah, or people of protection, Jews concentrated in the greater urban centers such as Shiraz, Esfahan, Hamadan, Urumiyah, Tehran etc. where they were more visible and could make up even 5-10% of the inhabitants. At the time of the foundation of the State of Israel, more than 100’000 Jews lived in Iran, but since then, their numbers have dropped, especially after the Islamic Revolution. Presently, 20’000 to 25’000 have stayed there, still (as ever) the largest Jewish population in the Middle East outside Israel. According to Iran’s Constitution, they are equal to Muslim. Jews have a representative in the Iranian Majlis, or parliament. Currently seen emigrations to, for instance, the USA are due to economical strain rather than persecution.
[6] One major pilgrimage site is the huge Jewish cemetery in Lanjan, 20 km south of Esfahan. The small synagogue contains the shrine of Sarah bat Asher, son of the Patriarch Jacob. Tzadik writes that “[a]ccording to the midrash […]Sarah never died, and popular Iranian Jewish tradition held that she arrived in Isfahan with the exiled Jews from the tribe of Judah. Miraculous stories and legends surrounding this figure were common in Jewish circles. Although her veneration site drew pilgrims every month, it constituted a pilgrimage center for Jews mainly during the month of Elul and in the days preceding Day of Atonement, in the following month of Tishrey. Near the Jewish site there was also a Muslim tomb, Pir Bakran, named after a religious figure who was believed to be buried there. A stream that flowed from the Zayandih Rud River separated the two shrines. The Islamic tomb also functioned as a school for the children of the nearby village, similarly named Pir Bakran.” Some recent pictures taken at the sites mentioned above may be found here.
See also on this blog
Begs to Differ. Hooman Majd’s explanations of the Iranian soul.
From Aradan. How the current president of the Islamic Republic of Iran came into power.
Begs to Differ
March 1, 2009
Hooman Majd. The Ayatollah Begs to Differ. Doubleday, New York 2008, 271 pages.
Pointing every now and then at THE DIFFERENCE in our cultures and civilizations is a necessity. Realizing the differences is a first and necessary step in trying to understand. Hooman Majd, an Iranian-American, who has lived for most of his life in the US, makes another attempt to explain us Westerners the Iranian soul. He has been engaged in very diverse fields including the movie and rock music business, and serving as an advisor and translator for the two Iranian presidents, Mohammad Khatami and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. His new book The Ayatollah Begs to Differ which, according to its subtitle, wants to tell about the paradox of modern Iran is regarded a rare and most welcome insider’s report which might explain the still asked question of surprised Americans: “Why do they hate us?” (over 34 million hits in Google, Feb. 27, 2009); and, at the same time, adore Western lifestyle, one might add.
It is a lot about the Iranian custom of ta’arouf. For those who don’t know, this is a form of exaggerated politeness, almost self-humiliation, a sort of white lies in order to get things done in the way one wants them to proceed. Even the book’s title is ta’arouf, playing down the malicious clerical system in Iran. For foreigners, ta’arouf may be a minefield with a high potential of getting completely confused. One of Majd’s central theses is that President Ahmadinejad’s more bizarre public performances in the West might in fact have been ta’arouf. Impossible to comprehend and therefore considered more or less insane. But can or should we forgive him for his frank threats and remarks on Israel, Jews, the Holocaust, not mentioning his scandalous conference about the latter? Or his letters to G. W. Bush, A. Merkel, to whoever? Because of the Iranian custom of ta’arouf (“Don’t get me wrong, but …”)? Certainly not! That this country with its very long history is now ruled by authorities with an incredibly irresponsible and absolutely unacceptable rhetoric [1] should be a shame for any Iranian. Belittling these constant embarrassments, even threats, as cultural peculiarity (ta’arouf) is one of the more negative aspects of Majd’s book.
Majd has or had more or less immediate access to the complicated central administration in Tehran; to both clerics (a grandson of an eminent Ayatollah himself) and politicians. But even he describes (as a writer or sort of journalist) the ever-present, culture-immanent, enormous obstacles with fruitless discussions and endless ta’aroufs of getting some useful information. Anybody visiting the country may have experienced that as well [2].
Another extensively outlined concept is that of haqq, Iranians’ preoccupation with what is considered their natural rights. I cannot follow exactly Majd’s claims that haqq is not pure nationalism [3]. In times when the Iranian nuclear program (for peaceful electricity generating fuel production it seems to be too limited, for producing a nuclear bomb its breakout capability might have been reached already) is becoming again more than obscure, an offered explanation such as haqq, i.e., Iran’s rights, might again be trivializing rather than enlightening.
Majd tells us again some fairy tales about Jamkaran near Qom where the Mahdi had allegedly appeared in 984 CE, and about President Ahmadinejad’s great sympathy for the 12th Imam. Jamkaran, which is visited by crowds of tens of thousands every Tuesday night (the Mahdi’s return is expected on a Tuesday) when the faithful are throwing letters to the Mahdi into two wells, one for men and one for women [4]. Majd is not afraid to hawk that he “was told by one person present at his inauguration that Ahmadinejad told several people there that he was only temporary president, and that the Messiah would relieve him of the burdensome responsibility in a ‘few’ years, at most.” In fact, most of this is known for some time. But Majd retains an inappropriate, ironic tone when describing, for instance, Ashura ceremonies of the masses [5], opium smoking in Qom (shir’e) not to mention joints and Johnny Walker at the more fancy parties of upper class bohemians in Northern Tehran; even indiscreet, albeit serious, official questions by an unmarried female nurse about when having had sex the last time when actually planning donating blood on the occasion of Ashura [6]. But, much worse is Majd’s almost mocking when referring to increasing numbers of scandalous public hangings of delinquents at cranes since 2007 [7].
The lack of critical distance here and in his closeness to the former president of the country, Hojjatoleslam Mohammad Khatami [8], is obvious, and I am afraid that Majd, both an insider and outsider here, is perfectly taking advantage of an inhumane system which is not really criticized in the book in its monstrous perversion of religion.
Notes
[1] For instance, the chairman if Iran’s Guardian Council, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, hand-picked by the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has called for ‘shooting’ Israel’s Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni in his Friday prayers last week. “Every time the picture of this woman is shown, I really wish that somebody would expend a bullet on her,” he dared to say according to Associated Press, conveying an unmistakably message to his Islamic Revolutionary Guards, the Pasdaran. Ta’arouf?
[2] Interesting to note that, in order to get access to the inner circle, growing a beard (he has listed mentioning his beard on 8 pages even in the Index of his book), or showing carelessness in having a working class dress or outfit, had been helpful for Majd. At least he was disguising that he was living in the West, in the United States even.
[3] True, Iranians have, in their millennia-old, at times glorious, history suffered a lot from invasions, manslaughter, wars and revolutions. The ever-made, even by young people, remarks that they are Aryans such as the Germans , constantly embarrasses the visitor, though, who knows that nationalism in its extreme form, namely racism, has caused the holocaust of 6 million Jews and others.
[4] I had visited Jamkaran, actually on a Tuesday, in 2006 before traveling further to Shiraz. The site had already at that time attracted considerable attention in western media when it became known that President Ahmadinejad would support the complex with huge amounts of money. It might in fact differ from other holy sites (tombs or mausoleums) in Iran as it relates to a specific belief in Shi’a Islam, the return of the Messiah at the end of times (who is, according to Twelver Shi’a, the hidden 12th Imam Muhammad al-Mahdi). It may render, according to some western appraisals, the whole branch as irrational. Many of my rather religious friends and colleagues in Iran have admitted that they had never visited the site.
[5] One would in fact rather like to know whether these rites and ceremonies on the occasion of Tasua and Ashura experience a revival under the present Islamic regime with its hardliner president, or whether they have in fact been conducted for centuries. It would also be informative to read whether the Pahlavis had effectively banned Ashura ceremonies. I have been impressed by the diligent preparations of Ashura processions and the enthusiasm of especially young people when recently visiting Iran on the first days of Muharram. I have also noticed that public gatherings and husseiniyyas were largely organized by hardliners, with Basij and chador-wearing women outnumbering other participants by far.
[6] The most explosive power which finally might bring this regime to an end is hopelessness of the youth. Those who have been born after the Islamic Revolution (in fact, the majority of the population) do not see any opportunities any more of getting married. Unemployment is extremely high among young people and marriage became unaffordable in recent years. When visiting Iran last month, I was told by several youngsters that young people have to find ways of having ‘illicit sex’, a ‘crime’ which has relentlessly been prosecuted in the Islamic Republic, I have thought at least.
[7] Iran is, sad to say, second on the list of execution frequencies, only after China, which has 18 times more people and other problems. Majd is certainly wrong when mentioning that the slow strangulation of the convicts in Iran is due to the hangmen’s incompetence in facing “mathematical challenges” in order to quickly break the neck of the delinquent. He is annoyingly wrong when mentioning that Shari’a “deems that death must come to the condemned quickly and painlessly.” He frivolously even compares executions with “halal regulations [mandating] the same for animals destined for the dinner table.” In fact, suffering is expected and desired by the crowd. A typical example is, of course, lapidation (stoning to death) for ‘crimes’ such as adultery which, by intention, should exert as much as pain as possible before the person dies. Besides the sheer number of executions, the way victims are executed, in particular in Iran or Saudi Arabia is an endless scandal.
[8] The former ‘reformer’ Mohammad Khatami (Majd calls him ‘President’ even when describing his private New York visit in 2006 when he accompanied him), who is supposed to run in June for presidency again, is not the ‘redeemer’ as some of the western media want to stylize him right now. Apart from largely failing to pursue more liberty in the country, a promise he had made in the 1997 campaign and which had granted him a landslide victory, under his presidency (1997-2005) Iran had, according to US American intelligence, a military nuclear program ‘with high confidence’. That the country had been put on the infamous ‘axis of evil’ together with North Korea and Iraq by President G. W. Bush in his State of the Union address on January 29, 2002 was a direct consequence of the Israeli navy interception of the Karine-A in the Red Sea earlier that month, exposing Iran’s illicit support of Palestine via Lebanese Hisbollah. That the president is in fact ultimately powerless and all final decisions are made by the Supreme Leader, or Rahbar-e Enqelab, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is one of Majd’s numerous omissions when describing the paradox of modern Iran.
See also on this blog
From Aradan. How the current president of the Islamic Republic of Iran came into power.
Islamic Geometric Patterns
November 16, 2008
It is clear that medieval artisans used a compass and a straightedge. According to modern theories the production of a rather limited set of girih tiles is considered, too. Broug makes it easy on one hand to comprehend the construction step by step. But he also gives an immediate impression of the incredible skills necessary to really create a piece of art. The CD provides further examples and also shows the real buildings in the Islamic world where these marvels can be found.
Lacking compass and straightedge nowadays, I immediately tried to use Powerpoint for the first few squared patterns; and succeeded within minutes.
First published at Salmiya.
From Aradan
September 16, 2008
Kasra Naji. Ahmadinejad: The Secret History of Iran’s Radical Leader. University of California Press, Berkeley 2008, 312 pages
There is an urgent need for an unbiased and more detailed analysis of the origins of this son of a blacksmith from Aradan. And, a personality profile might in fact explain his incredible rise, from humble homes to the centers of power in Tehran. Fast, determined, scary to much of the rest of the world. Paralyzing, even nullifying, the already initiated little progress under former ‘reformist’ President Seyyed Mohammad Khatami.
Who is this man who has almost become a hero, even a kind of pop star, of the underdogs in Muslim societies; those (incredibly poor) who are sitting beneath the table of the rich? And those who are related in one or the other way to what has been called by George W. Bush as the axis of evil?
De-demonizing the Iranian President? Not really a purpose of the present book. The Secret History of Iran’s Radical Leader by Kasra Naji contains, from the very beginning, a lot of bitterness. The author was well-advised, or even more or less forced, leaving the country after having finished his book. Anyway, the book is a most welcome treatise with plenty of pieces of new information gathered mainly in interviews done between late 2005 and November 2007, when Naji had to leave Iran. It is also obvious that many interview partners had to be protected and stay anonymous.
I’ve got the impression that Naji, while not really glorifying the Shah, he rather demonizes the late Ayatollah Khomeini (and maybe he even deserves it), who was long residing in the holy city of Qom and forced to leave the country in 1963 [1].
The way how young Mahmoud had been socialized is not becoming very clear in the book. Maybe it is really not known. His role as a student of Tehran’s conservative Elm-o Sanat University and struggles (or battles) with left-wing activists in the tumultuous aftermath of the Islamic Revolution when Khomeini safeguarded his grip on power seems still to be blurred. His role in the American Embassy hostage crisis, alleged participation in executions in the notorious Evin prison; and even his contributions in the following Iraq-Iran war with the build-up of close contacts with the Pasdaran, remain rather enigmatic. Is this the typical carrier of a decided opportunist? Ahmadinejad’s first-time administrative task as governor general in the northwestern province of Ardabil, has it been quite a failure as the author wants us to believe?
Apparently, there was, especially after ‘reformist’ President Muhammad Khatami’s re-election in summer 2001, a political antagonism between him and Ahmadinejad who was, at that time since 1997, an Assistant Professor for transportation engineering and planning at his old Elm-o Sanat University in Tehran. But can it really be described as a power struggle eventually leading to Khatami’s defeat and much disappointment among Iran’s youth? Nobody in the West, I suppose, had ever heard about the young ‘right-wing’ activist teaching at one of Tehran’s Universities engineering before, say, May 3, 2003 when he was elected mayor of Tehran. Kaji draws, at least for me in too colorful shades, a picture of mayor Ahmadinejad as a driven activist, by religious fervor and political ambitions; busy with fulfilling promises of previous election campaigns but also very much involved in the rise of corruption in Tehran. Anyhow, it is interesting to read that the financial irregularities during his term accounted to that of the past several mayors of Tehran put together.
Why did the largely unknown man who was deliberately discouraged to continue in the election campaign of 2005 finally win the race? Naji writes, on page 63, without reference:
“Quietly, Ahmadinejad enjoyed the support of some of the most influencial backers in Iranian politics. These included important sections of the Revolutionary Guard and the Basij, as well as the Guardian Council. He was also supported by the Imam Khomenei Education and Research Institute in Qom, which was led by his spiritual mentor, Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi. Most significantly of all, it later transpired that Ahmadinejad was the preferred candidate of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. Amazingly, the outsider and no-hoper was secretly the first choice of the ruling religious class, their institutions and militia.”
Given that this impression was true also before the first round of the election, why and when had he gained that much support? Naji vividly describes the quagmire consisting of top clerics (involving even Iran’s Supreme Leader), the Basij and Revolutionary Guard, who apparently conducted an urgently needed massive election fraud in order to get Ahmadinejad into the second round in 2005. He then won the run-off in a landslide with a more than 61% vote.
How did and does religion influences Ahmadinejad and his acts and speeches, his connection to certain Shi’a movements devoted to revering the 12th Imam and his fast return from occultation? His alleged spiritual mentor, Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi, is introduced on page 46, but his ideological impact on Ahmadinejad’s politics, his apocalyptic visions, are rather obscured. Unfortunately, Naji entertains some notorious prejudices spread already about Amadinejad. Jamkaran, about 10 km east to the center of the Holy City of Qom, and its growing numbers of pilgrims are described in a rather denouncing way. Soon after his election, Ahmadinejad had supported the small complex of Jamkaran where the Mahdi allegedly had appeared in 984 CE with comparatively huge amounts of money. According to Naji, Ahmadinejad managed to “elevate the Missing Imam from an undifferentiated element in Shia Islam to a clear presence in the minds of many Iranian,” within only one year in office [2]. But the simple fact that the western audience has never heard about, I would tell it central, beliefs in the Shi’a branch of Islam does not mean that it is a marginal aspect only.
Iran’s nuclear issue with the United Nations, the US, Israel, and the EU gathered new momentum under Ahmadinejad. It is amazing to read how the President is constantly using Iran’s nuclear pride for detracting the people’s attention from serious domestic problems. However, 16 national intelligence services had reported in November 2007 that, with reasonable confidence, an atomic bomb program had been abolished already under President Khatami. Naij’s book went to print before the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) report [3], and may reflect, therefore, the overall impression of feverish activity to put Iran into the capabilities. Much of this was and is a mere show-off, of course [4]. The cat-and-mouse game will go on, I am afraid. In its very recent report the IAEA said Iran was failing to co-operate with its investigators, raising the old concerns about Iran’s allegedly peaceful nuclear program.
While Naji makes sure that the widely known misinterpretation of Ahmadinejad’s tirades on the occasion of the infamous 25 October 2005 Tehran conference ‘A World without Zionism’ are put into the right perspective, one should not hesitate for a second assuming bad intentions of the entire Iranian leadership here. The former President Rafsanjani was even more frightening in his radical demands of erasing Israel from the map. It is important what is meant, the respective wording is secondary. Naji’s corrections seem to be a bit apologetic. He suggests that the outrageous proposals of Ahmadinejad as, for example, moving Israel to Europe or Alaska, and his abhorrent denial of the Jewish Holocaust (an insult of every single Jew in the world, including the small community of 25’000 Jews left in Iran) may be part of an intentional Third Revolution in the Islamic Republic [5]. I rather got the impression of a completely inexperienced, indeed naïve, politicial amateur who was, sad to say, only overstrained with his tasks of responsibly leading a nation with such a great history of several thousand years. And, there were (and are there?) apparently no control mechanisms. I am sure that the Iranian establishment was more than irritated about Ahmadinejad’s solo attempts in 2005. And, for example, the two never answered letters to Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel and President George W. Bush in 2006 [6]? Doesn’t Iran’s President have any diplomatic advisors? And why did the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, keep silent? When Naji entertains Ahmadinejad’ network within the inner circle of Iran’s multilevel leadership, relations with ultra-conservative Ayatollahs Ahmad Jannati (Chairman of the Guardian Council), or Mohammad Taqi Mezbah-Yazdi (his alleged spiritual mentor) remain blurred in a way [7].
It is Naji’s meritoriousness delivering at least some insights into the bizarre so-called Holocaust conference in Tehran, which took place in December 2006. The invited by the organizers assembly of frank racists, European Nazis, white supremacist Americans, ultra-orthodox anti-Zionist Jews and fundamentalist Muslims was rightly more or less ignored in western media. It is a shame for a grand nation like Iran to have come down to such disgrace. A shame that some of the Iranian leaders aligned with the offscourings of this kind.
There are a great number of traditional denominations in the book about left- and right wing politicians and attitudes which might confuse the reader. In the traditional meaning, ‘revolutionaries’’ fighting for the abolishment of the social order is considered extreme leftists. Revolutionaries are usually fundamentalist in a very dogmatic sense. Those who uphold the traditional authorities and liberties of the society, frequently with a determined nationalistic view, are considered right-wing. Thinking in left- and right-wing categories is about to vanish in the Western societies, in a widely perceived ‘global’ World, a pleonasm, of course [8]. The inflationary use of these rather unclear denominations in pre- and post-revolutionary Iran (definitely a counter-revolution of the clergy) by Naji may in fact be questioned. Secular liberalism or Marxism vs. fundamentalist Islam or Islamism would have done better, but what the members of the very heterogeneous political and religious groups in Iran are really thinking is too complex, I suppose, to assign ‘traditional’ labels on them. Other examples for graphic and, for my taste, too imprecise assignments are ‘radical’, ‘radical reformist’, ‘hardliner’, ‘conservative’ and ‘neo-conservative’, even ‘ultra-conservative’, and ‘pragmatic’ whenever it comes to Rafsanjani.
The questions remains: Do we have to fear the man or rather the system appointing such a figure [9]? After having read the book, I am still not sure. Ahmadinejad is in no way portrayed here as a responsible politician dedicated to lead a great nation. His origins are, at least to me, still unclear. My immediate questions whether he was actively involved in the US Embassy hostage crisis and, maybe more important, in executions during the immediate turbulent events of the Revolution remain largely unanswered.
His acts before and after his election are widely perceived as irrational. He is a populist and political activist, a man deeply mired in his fundamental religious faiths which are not so much different from those of the rest of the religious people in Iran. Having learned his lesson that it was frank populism which has swept him to the levers of power in Iran has resulted in his daring and unacceptable attitude of a reckless and irresponsible zealot and baiter. Today’s news about the new IAEA report may be a portent for Iran’s near future.
Notes
[1] When reading the few paragraphs in the first chapter about the youth of Iran’s leader under the Shah regime, I remember the strong opposition, even detestation, of left-wing intellectuals in the West regarding Reza Pahlevi, who was sitting on the Peacock Throne (which I have seen very recently in Tehran’s walkable bank-safe, the mind-boggling Royal Jewelry Museum). I remember the day of June 1, 1967, when Benno Ohnesorg, a German student, had been shot dead by a policeman during a demonstration in Berlin against the Shah’s visit to Germany. SAVAK, Iran’s intelligence and security organization (definitely a terrorist organization by today’s standards) was frankly operating in Germany, more or less tolerated by Chancellor Kiesinger’s grand coalition government.
[2] I earnestly doubt. Again (after Saddam Hussein’ was toppled in 2003), hundreds of thousands if not millions of pilgrims have participated very recently in the Sha’abaniya festival in Kerbala, southern Iraq, commemorating the birthday of the 12th Imam on the 15th of Sha’aban. They were predominantly Iraqis, I suppose, completely unrelated to the Iranian President’s fervor. Most of my Shi’a colleagues in Kuwait were well aware of the 12th Imam and earnestly observed holidays in relation to the Mahdi. Some of them even claimed keeping a closer spiritual contact with him, something that also Ahmadinejad had mentioned. A kind of mild irrationality is, of course, a characteristic of any religiosity, cf. the current visit of Pope Benedict in Lourdes where legend has it that the Virgin Mary had appeared to a 14-year-old girl in 1858.
I had visited Jamkaran in 2006. I didn’t find anything special there, apart from being different than the probably dozens of holy sites of commemoration of Iran’s ‘National Saint’ Imam Reza and his relatives.
[3] National Intelligence Estimate. Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities. November 2007. Former US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton even called the NIE “a quasi-coup of the intelligence services” … “intended to have political and policy effect.”
[4] But what are ordinary people thinking? I went, by taxi, to Abyaneh and Natanz in November 2005, a couple of months after Ahmadinejad’s election, when the taxi driver showed my, from the highway, “our atomic bomb project” with considerable pride.
[5] I am afraid, I missed the Second Revolution. Maybe he refers to the US Embassy hostage crisis in 1980/81.
[6] I still hold that it was bad style not to respond, in a sober diplomatic way, to Ahmadinejad’s initiative when he wrote his letters to Merkel and Bush. Apart from naïve attempts to convert the American President to Islam, there might have been issues worth for resuming an overdue dialogue. Naji stresses that Bush, found it in public ‘interesting’ and refrained of talking negatively about the letter and its contents. Merkel rightly betokened views on Israel and Germany as completely unacceptable.
[7] When Ayatollah Ali Khamenei recently praised Ahmadinejad and predicted that he might retain office for a second term, many considered this not really an accolade but an admonition of taking his present tasks as Iran’s President very seriously.
[8] In fact, right- and left-wing denominations mainly abolish because the world is becoming flat. See Thomas L. Friedman. The World Is Flat. A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century 3.0. Picador Macmillan, New York 2007.
[9] I am hesitant using ‘having been elected’ here.
