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

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

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

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

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

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• Iranian Foreign Policy, 1921–1979

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

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

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

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• The Pahlavī Autocracy

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

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• Religious Forces in Eighteenth- And Nineteenth-Century Iran

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

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• Iran Under the Later Qājārs, 1848–1922

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

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• The Cambridge History of Iran

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

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• Printing, the Press and Literature in Modern Iran

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

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

  Janet Afary•Radical History Review•2003

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• Minority-State Relations in Contemporary Iran

  Open Access•Patricia J Higgins•Iranian Studies•1984

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• Survey article

  Marica K Hermansen, M Hermansen•Religion•1988

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• Religion and Politics in Contemporary Iran

  John C Campbell, Shahrough Akhavi•Foreign Affairs•1980

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• Flannery O'Connor's South

  Joel Conarroe, Robert Coles•American Literature•1981

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• Iran

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

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