Becoming Mollah

The role of religion and of clerics in the events leading to and during the Iranian revolution of 1977-79 provides an instructive exercise in formulating a theory of cultural influence. The institution of religious training (the madrasah system) has been in decay and under political pressure throughout this century. That the clergy should have emerged as central actors in the revolution, therefore, says something about their cultural, rather than institutional, centrality. The popular idioms of Islamic protest—deriving from the story of Karbala and from the modernist reformulations associated with Dr. Ali Shari'ati—are elaborated with reference to the learning of the madrasahs. That forms of open, secular, political discourse were suppressed under the Pahlavi monarchy helped ensure that Islamic rhetorics would become the idiom of political debate and helped give clerics (both preachers and teachers) extra leverage. The struggle over the role of the clerics continues, a struggle in which Ayatollah Khomeini himself has intervened by drawing ambiguous distinctions between obfuscatory clerics and revolutionary ones, and by chastising clerics for meddling beyond their competence

Islam · Monarchy · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Education and Islamic Studies · Gender Studies · History · Islamic Studies and History · Law · Religion and Society Interactions

• Popular Entertainment, Media and Social Change in Twentieth-Century Iran

  Open Access•Peter Chelkowski•The Cambridge history of Iran.•1991

  Incluir item

• Iranian Relations With Great Britain and British India, 1798–1921

  Open Access•R W Greaves, Rose Greaves•The Cambridge history of Iran.•1991

  Incluir item

• Iranian Foreign Policy, 1921–1979

  Open Access•Amin Saikal•The Cambridge history of Iran.•1991

  Incluir item

• Iranian Relations With Russia and the Soviet Union, to 1921

  Open Access•Firuz Kazemzadeh•The Cambridge history of Iran.•1991

  Incluir item

• The Pahlavī Autocracy

  Open Access•Gavin R G Hambly•The Cambridge history of Iran.•1991

  Incluir item

• Religious Forces in Eighteenth- And Nineteenth-Century Iran

  Open Access•Hamid Algar•The Cambridge history of Iran.•1991

  Incluir item

• Iran Under the Later Qājārs, 1848–1922

  Open Access•Nikki R Keddie, Nikki Keddie et al.•The Cambridge history of Iran.•1991

  Incluir item

• The Cambridge History of Iran

  Open Access•C P Melville, Stanley I Grossman et al.•The Cambridge history of Iran.•1991

  Incluir item

• Printing, the Press and Literature in Modern Iran

  Open Access•Peter Avery•The Cambridge history of Iran.•1991

  Incluir item

• Shi`i Narratives of Karbalâ and Christian Rites of Penance

  Janet Afary•Radical History Review•2003

  Incluir item

• Minority-State Relations in Contemporary Iran

  Open Access•Patricia J Higgins•Iranian Studies•1984

  Incluir item

• Survey article

  Marica K Hermansen, M Hermansen•Religion•1988

  Incluir item

• Religion and Politics in Contemporary Iran

  John C Campbell, Shahrough Akhavi•Foreign Affairs•1980

  Incluir item

• Flannery O'Connor's South

  Joel Conarroe, Robert Coles•American Literature•1981

  Incluir item

• Iran

  Soraya Noland, M M J Fischer•Anthropological Quarterly•1980

  Incluir item