BOOK REVIEW Dialogue and debate in the Islamic Republic Iran's Intellectual Revolution by Mehran Kamrava
Reviewed by Kaveh L Afrasiabi
Few topics in Iran today are as contentious as the connection between Islam and
modernity in light of an Islamic populist revolution that heralded the rise of
a part-republican part-theocratic political system that, 30 years later,
continues to defy neat categorization and thus baffle historians.
Contrary to the Western stereotype of Iran as a hermetical and closed nation,
post-revolutionary society, in addition to featuring a somewhat vibrant civil
society, has also ushered in a tumultuous intellectual environment dominated by
ongoing dialogue and
debate on the virtues and nuances of various intellectual and political
paradigms.
In Iran's Intellectual Revolution, Mehran Kamrava furnishes a splendid
overview of the burgeoning intellectual discourses in contemporary
post-Ruhollah Khomeini Iran. He meticulously examines the works of various
Iranian intellectuals and their connections to the diverse religious
conservative, Islamic reformist and secular-modernist affiliations, tracing
these strains of thought to the earlier, pre-revolutionary intellectual
movements dating to the constitutional revolution of the early 20th century.
Yet, he sheds light on the important mutations and novelties of the current
trends in Iran’s “discursive field” hothouse.
While mindful of the fair amount of diversity among Iranian intellectuals,
Kamrava nevertheless sees fit to identify three main schools of thought, or
rather worldviews, labeled as religious conservative, Islamic reformist and
secular-modernist, devoting separate chapters to each after a superb
introductory chapter that contextualizes the "quiet" and sometimes not so quiet
"intellectual revolution" within the broader scope of post-revolutionary
changes and transformations in Iran.
Readers interested in the ideological underpinnings of today's Islamic Republic
are apt to appreciate the chapter on traditional or conservative religious
thought that delves into the religio-political perspective of such leading
ayatollahs as the supreme spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as well as
ayatollahs Mesbah Yazdi, Jannati, Amoli, dissident Ayatollah Montazeri, etc,
particularly as it pertains to their rather diverse interpretations of the key
institution of religious leadership, velayat-e fagih. According to the
author, on the whole conservative religious discourse counts as the official
discourse of the regime, although he is careful to add that the political
system "lacks ideological and often institutional cohesion". (pg 61)
This is followed by an in-depth explication of the discourse of religious
reformism which "seeks to fundamentally alter the interpretations on which most
Islamic doctrines and notions are based" (pg 214) and which is sometimes
benefited by "timid backing" from the theocratic political system (pg 6). Led
by such figures as the former moderate president Mohammad Khatami, philosopher
Abdul Karim Soroush, thinker Yusofi Eshkevari and reformist theologian Mojtahed
Shabestari, this is, according to Kamrava, one of the most promising
intellectual trends that has fueled a major political reformist movement from
within the Islamic polity. It is distinguishable from its historical
antecedents by its singular emphasis on Islamic democracy, thus drawing a close
parallel between discourses and social movements.
Next, Kamrava focuses on the secularist Iranian thinkers, such as Daryush
Shayegan and Ramin Jahanbegloo, whose quests to rethink the modern Iranian
identity leads them to a full embrace of the key secularization thesis of
separation of church and state - the return of public religion to the private
realm and, naturally, Western-style democracy unencumbered by religious norms,
values and the like.
Although lacking institutional support, this secularist trend has a sympathetic
ear within the growing urban middle class and Kamrava is rather optimistic
about its rising fortunes, wondering aloud that "time will tell" which of the
last two, religious modernism or pure secularism, will gain the upper hand.
Implicit in such a prognosis is the author's own intellectual predilections
that veer between the religious reformist and secularist.
One of this book's main contributions is its critical analysis of the recent
setbacks for the reformist movement led by Khatami, identifying its weaknesses
in terms of leadership and organization as the main culprits. However,
Kamrava's repeated reference to the “demise" of this movement, simply because
of some election setbacks, is questionable as is his taxonomic close
identification of the fortunes of intellectual discourses with their political
impacts or results.
Kamrava's over-reliance on a dubious and restrictive notion of discourse by
Robert Wuthnow, who overlooks the relative autonomy of intellectual phenomena
from societal institutions and instead emphasizes the importance of the
"institutionalization" of discourses, is responsible for these lacunae
throughout the book.
Another flaw is that the author ultimately does not do justice to the complex,
perpetually self-reforming, intellectual dynamism of the Islamic Republic and
pigeonholes the proponents of the system under the "conservative" rubric, even
though such terminology is highly problematic, partly due to the revolutionary
self-understanding of the system's leaders who envision a Edmund Husserlian
mission for their movement on a global scale. This is with respect to
challenging the global hierarchy and Western-centric status quo, as part and
parcel of their weltanschauung. The fact is, the Islamic Republic is a
historical work in progress and the tall wall drawn between the religious
modernists and the supposedly conservative leaders of the regime is by and
large untenable.
Conspicuously missing in the book is a close examination of how contemporary
Iranian Islamists have embraced, reworked or repelled the elements of Iranian
nationalism. Case in point, Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani's pre-revolutionary
discourse on Iranian nationalist struggles is highly instructive on the Islamic
regime's unique blending of nationalism and Islamism. Yet this somehow evades
Kamrava's radar and, unfortunately, the author opts to endorse the views of
certain expatriate Iranian intellectuals, such as Abbas Milani, who has decried
Iran's founding of an Islamic Republic as symptomatic of an incomplete project
of modernism, or rather "pseduo-modernism".
Such dubious assumptions, operating from a binary tradition versus modernity
dualism and assuming a universal model of modernism, when in fact reference to
alternative modernity makes more sense, tend to obfuscate rather than
illuminate the intellectual landscape in today's Iran, particularly when
Kamrava accepts at face value the stinging criticisms of such towering past
intellectuals as Ali Shariati and Jalal Al-e Ahmad by the likes of Shayegan.
Relatively speaking, today's Iran is not blessed by a fair crop of intellectual
heavyweights as it was in the past, hence talk of the "poverty of Iranian
intellectualism", particularly as it pertains to the input of some third-rate
intellectuals living abroad, is hardly an exaggeration.
Another problem is that, as Kamrava's own discussion of the Heideggerian
thinker Reza Davari clearly shows, sometimes there is a lack of cohesion
between the political and philosophical stance of a particular intellectual,
making it doubly difficult to assign them to this or that intellectual
movement. Unfortunately, Kamrava papers over his own insight and lets his
descriptive taxonomy chip away at his book's value.
In addition to a missing discussion of nationalism, Kamrava is equally silent
on the contribution of feminist discourses, both religious and secularist, and
evinces a male-centered subjectivity that, as a result, omits the role and
input of feminist authors, male and female.
His claims that the Islamic reformist thinkers "tend to be eerily silent on the
question of women" (pg 219) or that in this movement "discourse on women is not
even implicitly apparent" are factually untenable. This is in light of
Khatami's numerous references to the increased participation of women under his
administration, Shabestari's critique of "male-centered subjectivities", and,
prior to that, direct discourses by Ayatollah Muttahari, Shariati, Bazargan,
etc which have as of late been subjected to certain Islamist feminist critique
within Iran.
Finally, Kamrava is simply not critical enough of the secularist thinkers and
his narrative lacks a critical assessment of the applicability of their
secularist paradigm to contemporary Iran, where political religion on the whole
has catapulted Iran onto the world stage (for better or worse).
In conclusion, despite its shortcomings mentioned, this is a highly informative
book that sheds much light on the hot furnace of intellectual discursive
debates in today's Islamic Republic, making it a must-read for those interested
in the subject of modern Iran.
Iran's Intellectual Revolution by Mehran Kamrava. Cambridge University
Press; 1 edition (October 27, 2008). ISBN-10: 0521725186. Price US$29.99, 288
pages.
Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New
Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) . For his Wikipedia entry,
click here. His
latest book,
Reading In Iran Foreign Policy After September 11 (BookSurge Publishing
, October 23, 2008) is now available.
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While mindful of the fair amount of diversity among Iranian intellectuals,
Kamrava nevertheless sees fit to identify three main schools of thought, or
rather worldviews, labeled as religious conservative, Islamic reformist and
secular-modernist, devoting separate chapters to each after a superb
introductory chapter that contextualizes the "quiet" and sometimes not so quiet
"intellectual revolution" within the broader scope of post-revolutionary
changes and transformations in Iran.
