Introduction[1]

On June 18, 2015 access to the main server of the Iranian Labour News Agency – ILNA – was cut off. Minutes later, the journalists of the Labour Service desk were sacked. These journalists had published a news story on 300 cement workers who were protesting 10 months of wage arrears in front of the Ministry of Labour. Unknown to the journalists, the cement factory’s CEO had just been appointed directly by the Labour Minister to a managerial position at the corporate arm of the Social Security Organization – one of the largest economic vehicles in the country.

Broadcasting this protest could smear not only the reputation of the CEO, but more dangerously, that of the Minister of Labour, whose office ILNA was indirectly dependent on. For the ILNA management, this protest report was therefore the final straw in its long-standing efforts to neutralize this group of contentious journalists. For the Labour Service team this particular story represented their own red line, the trespassing of which would imply a permanent drawback in their autonomy and bargaining power over future reports. Redundancy was thus the most satisfactory outcome for both sides. [2]

Over the course of the preceding half decade, this five-man team of young, ambitious, left-wing journalists had radically changed the publicity, visibility and politics of workers in Iran. Relying on insider accounts, anecdotes and news reports, this essay will narrate and analyse the emergence and development of the ILNA Labour Service as a case study of how Iranian politics has interacted with, what I call, a fragmented labour protest boom penetrating all levels of society since the 2000s. In the process, the article also aims to reflect on the fragile, conjunctural and political nature of working class formation and democratic change in contemporary Iran.

The end of the 2009 Green Movement forced a shift in the composition and discourses of reformist politics. Ironically, the absence of economic and working class demands during the Green Movement contrasted sharply with prior and subsequent efforts by various reformist news outlets to broadcast the workers’ cause. Not as a grand, centralized program, but as a gradual, trial-and-error approach, reformist groups that had since the early 1990s largely promoted a pro-business policy set found themselves in a paradoxical position in which working class visibility and representation turned into one of a potent tool to attract their conservative rival’s self-defined core constituencies.

The majority of reformist media outlets pivoted toward covering the plight of labour as mere political tactic. Within that environment, the post-2010 ILNA Labour Desk had the simple, innovative and radical idea of reporting workers’ resistances directly, relying on a broad network of local workers to produce news about themselves. I will show that this major democratizing innovation in Iranian journalism was only tolerated by reformist elites because it could help in their bid for power. Moreover, I will argue that the fine line ILNA walked between workers’ representation and political strategy helped to normalize, channel and standardize labour protests along discursive, judicial and civil lines. In other words, in the post-2009 period, important sections of the reformist elites acknowledged the tactical benefits of co-opting workers, pensioners and the unemployed as reformist constituents, thus endowing the working class with a degree of visibility, accountancy and public representation unseen in years. By offering an analysis of ILNA’s protest reporting, this essay will make the argument that the particular confluence of widespread labour protests with political competition in post-2009 Iran has provided news agencies and their political patrons with the opportunity to exploit, define and include grassroots social movements, and thus to re-define the broader interaction of state elites with the labour movement.

Conversely, the essay will stress the fragility of democratic initiatives in contemporary Iran. Due to the fate of the Green Movement as well as the imposition of sanctions by the US, EU and UN, state politics in post-Green Movement Iran has not centred on furthering democracy. Using the case of ILNA, I illustrate how endeavours for enhanced free speech and independent, non-factional reporting can come under attack when media patrons become electorally-accountable, as happened with the coming to power of a moderate reformist government in 2013.

The essay is structured as follows. The first section provides a condensed analysis of the socio-economic and political processes behind the transformation of protest visibility in Iran. The section consists first of an explanation of why labour unrest is common in today’s Iran, and secondly, of an analysis of political competition since the 2009 Green Movement. In the second part, I will more concretely narrate the growth of the ILNA Labour Desk, centring the account on several themes that highlight the risky democratizing innovations that the news agency pushed for.

A Recipe for Resistance: Sanctions and the Post-War State

The intensity and spread of labour unrest has been on the rise since the end of the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88) due to welfare reform and the concomitant extension of market relations. I hypothesize that protests have reached a peak over the past decade – engulfing both middle and working classes – as these marketization processes have accelerated and coalesced crucially with the sudden economic shock of trade and financial sanctions.[3]

I follow Beverly Silver’s theoretical model of labour unrest differentiation.[4] Silver defines two main forms of struggles: Marx-type struggles and Polanyi-type struggles. Marx-type struggles, as theorized in Volume I of Capital, react against attempts at increasing profit rates by degrading labour conditions, prolonging working hours, or intensifying production. In other words, these are struggles at the point of production. Although Marx-type struggles are a constant phenomenon in the production process, worsening work conditions might point to their rise in recent years. For example, research has pointed out that work-related accidents have risen in the mining and construction sector between 2009 and 2012.[5]

Secondly, Silver defines Polanyi-type labour unrest as: “the backlash resistances to the spread of a global self-regulating market, particularly by working classes that are being unmade by global economic transformations as well as by those workers who had benefited from established social compacts that are being abandoned from above.”[6] Polanyi-type protests occur in relation to market changes. In practice, Marx and Polanyi-type struggles regularly fuse as the extension of market relations in social life combines with attempts to increase efficiency and profit rates at the point of production.[7]

Three processes have (unevenly and conditionally) intensified Polanyi-struggles in Iran over the past two and half decade. Firstly, privatization has driven resistance against expanding market relations in social life. Efforts to spin-off parts of the bloated war-time state-owned economy started in the early 1990s and accelerated slowly until 2006, when a cross-elite consensus presided over by the Supreme Leader materialized in a constitutional amendment that required up to 80 per cent of the shares of most state-owned enterprises to be sold to the private sector over the next decade.[8]

Privatization has thus been a political process from the start. Depending on the government in power, state-owned enterprises were redistributed among varying networks of political allies, including ‘revolutionary institutions’ (nahad-ha-ye enqelabi), institutions affiliated to the Revolutionary Guard Corps (bonyads), and welfare organizations like the Social Security Organization. These institutions have become the large semi-public ‘parastatals’ of Iranian economic life.[9] Furthermore, these parastatal organizations have tended to pursue profitable strategies that reduce the labour force, wages and job security on the one hand, and production and the re-investment of profit on the other, while sometimes adhering to longer-term feudal strategies that involve selling non-profitable capital assets and speculating with factory land.[10]

Secondly, the expansion of the welfare state before and after the 1979 Revolution had significantly ‘socialized’ individual economic life in the name of collective security, culminating not only in a set of social welfare institutions, but also the 1991 Labour Code, a mostly progressive document that provides protective regulations on contracts and contract termination, minimum wages, working conditions and working hours, but also limits workers’ bargaining and associational rights.[11] The Labour Code was the product of war and revolution during the 1980s, and hence it was politically, not legally, history as soon as it was enacted.[12] Over the next two and half decade, the Labour Code lost much of its relevance as new amendments and exceptions were formulated, leading to the expansion of informal employment.[13] Furthermore, the increasingly profit-geared behaviour of cooperatives and pension funds like the Social Security Organization exacerbated internal contradictions in the workings of these institutions, inciting them to reduce social and financial commitments to their members.[14] Most crucially, the post-2009 period has been marked by unprecedented large-scale subsidy reform, which has sought to take price subsidies down on a range of staple commodities.[15]

A final factor behind intensifying Polanyi-type labour unrest has been deteriorating country-wide draught and overexploitation of natural habitats and resources, uprooting local communities and forcing them to adapt or migrate. While smaller and more fragmented, these protests also tend to be marked by immediate destitution, elevated levels of violence and intense solidarity among those affected.

I argue that these struggles have combined with a third type since the early 2010s to produce a protest boom hitherto unseen in Iran’s post-revolutionary history. While Marx-type and Polanyi-type struggles demand limits to the destructive effects of capitalist production and unregulated market relations respectively, this third type of labour unrest reacts against a sudden, externally-induced rupture in market and production conditions (and not processes). Specifically, the tightening of banking and trading sanctions by the UN, US and EU between 2010 and 2012 has induced this rupture, forcing a significant drop in oil revenues, imports and thus government expenditure.[16] In the Iranian fiscal year 2012/13, real government expenditures dropped by a massive 33 per cent.[17] More than earlier sanction rounds, the 2010-12 sanctions suspended productive activities by cutting off in- and output markets.[18] Put differently, with labour protest boom, I mean the coalescence of workers’ struggles against shifting market and productive relations with the sudden and exceptional introduction of wide-ranging, internationally-enforced sanctions that temporarily choke off the financial lifelines, markets and supply chains of commercial and state institutions.

Although this is not the right place to theorize this type of sanction-induced unrest or determine its spread within the post-2009 protest boom in full detail, a few notes on the content and style of sanction-type struggles will be useful for an understanding of the contradictory politics of the contemporary labour movement. Because sanction-induced labour unrest reacts against sudden changes in conditions, it is fragmented and spontaneous, materializing when social, financial and contextual exigencies unite workers in a moment of desperation. Struggles are thus almost exclusively defensive and rarely put forward demands beyond immediate deprivations. They are constrained to singular work-places, with limited success in organizing trans-local alliances. Not only does unpredictability preclude to a large extent popular theorization of these sanction-induced protests, but they also tend to result in (non-absolute and conditional) workers’ sympathy for the firm, its management, and their strategies for survival. In other words, due to its external and sudden nature, sanction-induced unrest tends to hinder the formulation of a class-based conception of capitalist accumulation, making protest participants more vulnerable to be co-opted into corporatist-nationalist political discourses and mobilized for a political program rooted in pronunciations on foreign policy and international relations.

The most notable consequence of international sanctions in the case of Iran has been widespread and persistent delays in wage payments as firms prioritize other debt commitments.[19] The prime slogan of the post-2009 protest boom is wage disbursement, while converging Polanyi and Marx-type reactions have also fixated demands on low wages and workplace wage hierarchies. The recent Iranian labour movement thus prioritizes salaries, while other issues, like political and associational rights, working hours and environment, have played a less immediate, but not less important, role.

Patronage, Politics and the Media’s Turn to Workers

Scholarly research has shown that the acceleration of political competition in Iran – a result of regime fragmentation since the death of Imam Khomeini– has co-opted new social groups in the political process.[20] Since the early 2000s, workers have organized consecutive protest waves, but their discourses have remained reliant on developments in state politics.[21] In the following section, I will argue that Iran’s patronage system of media plays an important role in influencing the discourses that workers affiliate with. In particular, I hope to show that the recent dynamic of political competition in Iran has led to a paradoxical resurfacing of ‘working class’-based discourses, to an extent including labour in the political process as a definable, bounded and politically certified constituency.[22]

Due to extensive political patronage of the press, Iran’s media plays an important role in formulating political discourses. Amir Arjomand describes the deep relationship between the press and politics in the post-war period as “an extreme case of negative politicization in which the arena of constitutional politics shifts away from the parliament as the main legislative organ to the press and informal channels of protest and even into the streets.”[23]

Mohammad Khatami’s reformist presidency (1997 – 2005) re-configured a set of formerly left-leaning statist elites into a liberal government that favoured international cooperation, private sector involvement and the improvement of cultural/civil rights. However, while his government enhanced press freedoms, reformist media remained largely uninterested in labour.[24] Indeed, newspapers closely affiliated to Khatami’s circle, such as Kian, Sobh-e Emruz and Khordad, remained more interested in themes of corruption, fraud and money laundering in order to legitimize the government’s push for the expansion of civil society (jame’eh-ye madani) and political development (tuse’eh-ye siyasi).

It was only when the conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s came to power on a populist platform of anti-corruption, oil redistribution and social justice that political competition became centred on his government’s self-designated core constituencies of poor (foqara’), workers (kargaran), downtrodden and deprived (mostazafin and mahrumin), and the people and common man (mardom and ‘avam). His conservative-populist discourses, inspired by war and Khomeinist themes, gained a significant social following. Jumping on the bandwagon, reformists confronted his government using Ahmadinejad’s terms. in the process moulding Ahmadinejad’s populist injunctions into a more direct acknowledgment of workers and the working class.[25] While Khatami’s civil discourses remained dominant in reformist circles until the end of the 2009 Green Movement, reformist news outlets increasingly started to allocate space to the plight of workers and other deprived social groups with the aim of delegitimizing the ruling government that ostensibly championed their interests.[26]

While the Green Movement showcased the popularity of civil over economic demands, its suppression also meant a premature end to regime tolerance for popular programs relating to civil rights. In the immediate post-2009 context, parts of the reformist elite sought to (re-) mobilize constituencies by shifting alliances and political orientation by dropping their civil reform program altogether and by embarking on an alternative, multi-thronged attack against Ahmadinejad by focusing on run-away inflation, international isolation, and last but not least, the plight of the working class. The former two reactivated dimensions of earlier reformist programs, namely proud economic technocracy and “dialogue among civilizations,” but the emerging theme of workers as an independent, legitimate and aspiring socio-political unit was new. In other words, the post-2009 co-option of the working class has occurred in a context in which the reformist circles have agreed to reduce public support for democracy, republicanism and civil reform.

I aim to address three interrelated questions. First, why did ILNA turn to labour? Second, how did ILNA – now the most popular reformist news agency – contribute to the making and inclusion of the working class in contemporary Iran, particularly in terms of visibility, public representation and definability? Lastly, how has post-2009 politics interacted with media, freedom of speech and the labour movement?

The Iranian Labour News Agency: Making Inclusive Journalism Work[27]

The Iranian Labour News Agency was named not so much after its subject of investigation as after its political affiliations. Founded by the Workers’ House in early 2003, ILNA emerged as part of the reformist thrust into new media. The Workers’ House, the surprisingly small but bustling central organ for all legal labour associations in Iran, has – since the suppression of the labour and Marxist movement in the early 1980s – functioned on the fringes of the state with relative autonomy from both governmental turn-overs and interference from the Ministry of Labour, to which it is related.[28] Autonomy has been reflected in the long reign of Alireza Mahjoob, a reformist politician who has headed the institution since the end of the War.

The Workers’ House introduced web-based ILNA after realizing that its paper newspaper, Kar va Kargar, could not compete in Iran’s pluralistic media-sphere. Like other reformist media, ILNA included limited analysis on workers’ issues but only as a footnote to technocratic criticism of the Ahmadinejad government’s economic record. The tension between government and ILNA eventually resulted in the news agency being banned for a year between 2007 and 2008.

As a compromise with the judiciary, the new managing director of ILNA was a businessman from working class background who was generally uninvolved in factional manoeuvring. His political neutrality reflected itself on ILNA’s daily working as journalists enjoyed expanded liberties. In 2010, the management invited an experienced labour journalist in his mid-thirties. This journalist was given the space to turn the Labour Desk into an independent reporting unit by re-organizing and expanding its scope. Initially, his only partner was the CEO’s former personal assistant, who was ordinarily addressed as ‘amu – an uneducated, mid-age and inexperienced journalist from a provincial town in the Caspian Sea region. Months later, another ILNA journalist – a former student activist– was encouraged to join.

After brainstorming on how to re-invigorate the Labour Desk, the team came up with the simple, creative and radical plan to distribute their desk’s telephone number directly among workers to cover news on protests, lay-offs and wage arrears. Publicizing was a tedious process. PR departments and local governmental institutions were reluctant to put the news agency in direct contact with workers. Much-needed support arrived when two other journalists were employed, bringing the team to a total of five.

Not more than a year after the team had started calling up factories, the project took on a life of its own. The Labour Service’s phone number was circulating among workers’ neighbours, former and new colleagues, and kin. In no time, the Labour desk’s single phone was ringing off the hook, with journalists taking turns to answer. The Labour team had effectively put itself at the disposal of protesting wage-earners. In the words of one of the journalists, labour media in Iran was henceforth “not just about, but also for workers” (na faqat darbareh-ye balkeh baraye kargaran).[29]

Within Iran’s context of media patronage, broadcasting workers’ struggles could not long remain a neutral affair for ILNA. Soon enough, a range of overlapping corporate and political interests were activated, driving the Workers’ House and ILNA management to control, channel and modify contentious news stories.^[30] Nevertheless, the case of ILNA was rather special given the innovativeness and directness of the journalistic methods it started employing. The Labour Service protest reporting exposed not only ownership structures but also ruthless, selfish and profit-driven practices of state and parastatal institutions, regardless of political affiliation.

It did not take long before the daily functioning of the Labour Service was penetrated by politico-corporate interests. On the one hand, powerful outside forces led the management and Labour team to clash. Unsurprisingly this resulted in the blunting of the Labour Desk’s initial non-factional stance. On the other hand, these new networks also assured the continued survival of labour protest coverage at ILNA. The Workers’ House was able to bank in on corporate elites vexed with the publication of their workers’ plight, strengthening its position as a power broker. In short, ILNA’s protest reporting enabled the Workers’ House to expand its capacity as an independent intermediary between the corporate and the political.

ILNA’s Role in Protest Education and Improving Government Accountability

The failure of politico-corporate interests to decimate and shut down the Labour Service allowed the Labour Desk journalists to pursue their own ambitions of buoying up a politically and legally-conscious working class. To achieve this, the team used protest reports themselves as means of communication with protestors, providing clues on legal procedures, rights and unfolding political developments. Tracking ILNA’s reporting of their own protests, protestors would then occasionally adapt their tactics accordingly. By providing a set publishing format, ILNA was thus able to influence not only the sequence of events, but also helped to create a protest culture and consciousness that turned spontaneous struggles of destitution into standardized and discursive public claim-making for political rights and legal rules. Discursive elements were drawn from existing legal codes (notably the Labour Law). Standardization involved channelling sudden outbursts of workers’ anger via judicial redress and mediation, as well as making protesters more conscious of other forms of public claims, like petitioning and official complaints.

ILNA’s coverage of the winter 2014-15 protests at Wagon Pars illustrate how media can normalize and standardize contentious claim-making, and in turn produce a measure of government accountability. Established half a decade before the 1979 Revolution on the industrial east-side of Arak, Wagon Pars is the main producer of train and railway vehicles in Iran, and one of the largest such manufacturers in the Middle East. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps has been the majority shareholder since the company’s privatization in 2004. Wagon Pars is heavily dependent on government demand. When the government postponed orders in the wake of sanctions, the company’s outstanding debts exploded. In turn, Wagon Pars cut down on labour costs. Resentment came to a head first in the late summer months of 2014, with employees striking about months’ worth of wage arrears.[31] Calling on the management to resign, workers were also angered by what they saw as government complicity.

The experience of protest sparked spontaneous solidarity, eventually radicalizing the official Wagon Pars workers’ union itself, which, like most workers’ associations in Iran, has tended to be weak and influenced by the management. While in earlier protests the union leader had clashed with colleagues over his soft negotiating positions, his bargaining position eventually became less compromising.[32] Uncomfortable with the idea of a well-organized, anti-managerial labour union in such a key factory, the management demanded that the union leader be sacked. The sacking caused immediate ripples amongst workers. On the 24th of December, 900 employees halted production and launched a strike that would last ten days, calling for his immediate release.

ILNA decided to make the protest its daily headline digest as its local contacts provided rich information on new developments. From the start, the Labour Desk both encouragingly educated protestors and put pressure on politicians to intervene. It did this by bombarding news stories with appropriate references to legal clauses. For example, when discussing the union leader’s redundancy, ILNA also repeatedly referred to the Labour Law, which states that official labour representatives have immunity, and thus “the employer does not have the right to fire him.”[33]

The ILNA–protestor alliance frustrated the management. In the first few days of the strike, an IRGC commander entered the factory, openly insulting protestors and threatening them with mass redundancy. While similar employer behaviour might not be unusual in Iran, ILNA did not normally obtain such direct evidence of threat and insult. The Labour Desk decided to broadcast the story, strategically phrased in the most general terms possible but damaging to the management’s political position. Emboldened by the blemished image of the management, provincial politicians successfully convinced the IRGC to re-instate the labour union leader.[34] Additionally, local politicians openly distanced themselves from the IRGC commander’s behaviour. Referring to the insults, the governor’s security advisor explicitly stated that he did not “accept this sort of talk.”[35] In short, ILNA’s “discursive interventions” influenced the protests themselves first by providing workers with a standardized language of redress, derived from existing legal codes, through which claims could legitimately be made, and secondly by influencing public behaviour and interaction with protestors.[36]

Free Speech in Cyberspace and the Limits of Class

In 2012, the last year of Ahmadinejad’s presidency, ILNA became even more involved in workers’ actions when an open comment section was launched to its website. The short existence of the comment section is notable not only because it provided a popular platform for virtual debate among various social groups, but also because it reflected the deep fissures within the labour movement and the fragile nature of free speech initiatives in contemporary Iran.

The comment section quickly became one of the most contentious aspects of the site. Unlike ILNA’s own stories, it had limited restrictions on freedom of speech, soon transforming it into a trusted, much-frequented space where web users could share experiences and debate workers’ issues. There are strong indications to believe that the majority of users had a working class background. For one, users would regularly self-identify as “worker” (kargar). Typos and bad spelling were also rife, indicating that the website attracted many first-time users not acquainted with the medium. Labour union leaders, workers’ activists and politicians also participated actively in discussions. Online debates would occasionally involve hundreds of comments, indicating high user participation and news circulation.

Encouraged by this new social following, the Labour Desk realized that free debate in cyberspace could reshape outcomes of on-going protests and provide polls on policy shifts, working conditions and labour relations. Hence, the Labour team came up with the idea – again radical and simple – to turn these online debates into news stories, thus partially circumventing internal restrictions on free speech. In short, ILNA systemically and actively included workers in textual production: the production of public discourse by themselves.

In what follows, I will discuss two of the most popular online discussions, each representing an example of the divergence and the convergence of working classes in contemporary Iran respectively.

Razi Petro Strike[37]

The Razi Petro Strike is an example of how ILNA’s reporting became a vehicle for the expression of hierarchy, divisions and sectionalism. Following global trends in informalization, and specifically the global South, economic development in Iran has promoted hierarchies among a privileged workers’ cadre and more precarious workers with fewer rights.[38] More recently, contract flexibilization and the unwinding of earlier welfare contracts has sharpened these historical divisions, as an ever smaller labour aristocracy increasingly feels threatened for its continued existence and the masses of temporary workers fantasize about one day obtaining such privileged contracts.

Razi Petrochemical Company, located in Bandar Imam Khomeini on the Persian Gulf, is one of the largest of its kind. As is common practice in the Iranian oil and petrochemical industry, the company used to enforce strict hierarchy between on the one hand workers employed by the Ministry of Labour (kargar), and on the other hand official employees working on privileged contracts at the Petroleum Ministry (karmand-e rasmi). Official employees enjoy additional benefits including higher salaries and pensions, wider insurance coverage, better food and access to local recreational facilities.[39]

When Razi was privatized in 2008, a Turkish fertilizer company became the main shareholder in what was then considered to be the largest ever foreign industrial investment of that country.[40] Privatization facilitated the spread of human resource contractors, who reproduced and exacerbated existing discriminatory practices by making contracts for workers more temporary and insecure, while putting downward pressure on their wages. By 2014, about half of Razi’s 3000 strong labour force was an agency (or contract) worker (kargar-e peymani).[41]

Tensions escalated in early January 2014 when a thousand contract workers staged a strike, demanding equal right with official employees.[42] Under the ILNA report on the protest, an intense, exclusive and polarized discussion followed between Razi’s workers and employees.

From the start, agency workers pitched a religious line, in which active solidarity with the Supreme Leader was sought, and thus one that reminds of revolutionary discourse (see picture). Religious/revolutionary invocations also found their way in the comment section. One user claimed that: “We want the justice of Ali (peace be upon him), and asking this is not too much.” Another agreed: “with the support of our Supreme Leader we want what is our right, not more than that.”

Secondly, contract workers’ main targets were contractors and shareholders. A common theme can be expressed thus: “I have a question for the management and the shareholders. Isn’t your stomach full yet? […] I guess there is a hole in your pocket. Oppression! Enough already! We won’t let you invade on our rights any longer.”

Thirdly, many contract labourers put their faith in privatization, claiming real privatization should balance, not extrapolate differences. The argument was particularly focused on the exclusive contracts with the Oil Ministry. One contract worker stated: “Mister official employee […] It’s no longer the case that the company is state-owned and that you parasites (moft khur-ha) can waste money. The company is private, do you understand, or are you just trying not to?” ‘Worker Farhad’ argued that: “in a private company […] there should be one law and everyone should have the same benefits. […] If you want, go on and work in a state-owned company with the Oil Ministry’s benefits: here it is privatized.” Yet another claimed: “the company is private, so what is the Oil Ministry doing here? […] You are bloodsuckers exploiting us till we have no breath left. […] Who are the rascals? We or you – you who have proudly participated in infidel terrorist groups (monafeqin, reference to the Marxist Mojahedin-e Khalq). Our nation has a leader (sahib) – the Master of Age [may God hasten his reappearance].”

Overall, official employees reacted angrily and reproachfully. ‘Ali’ ridiculed contract workers for resorting to revolutionary speech: saying: “discrimination is everywhere!!!!!! You can say ‘death to America’ as much as you’d like.” Employees also rejected the contract workers’ claim to additional rights. “Interesting… Striking that includes breakfast, lunch, dinner, and transport service. […] and then they say they don’t have any of these benefits. Damn the liar!”

Others resorted to downward hate speech, mostly on the basis that official workers were employed after passing an employment exam, leading to accusations that contract workers were illiterate and lacked education. In response to a comment from a female contract worker, an official employee said: “Ms Sara, you and your husband should perhaps go study and enrol for the Oil Ministry Employment Exam in order to receive the oil employees’ benefits. Of course, it is possible that you study and don’t get accepted because you don’t have the intellectual capacity, but that then is your problem.” Referring to the increasingly exclusive access to the welfare state, another contract worker quickly replied: “well, unfortunately the exam does not take place anymore […], and if it did they would give your [official employees’] children priority access.”

[INSERT RAZI PROTEST PICTURE

Banner reads: “Discrimination has no place in Islamic law. Workers’ rights have roots in religion.”]

A minority of official employees also cautioned against the balancing effects of privatization. One striking comment read: “the problem with you [contract workers] is that instead of saying that your wages are low, you ask why employees’ wages are high. […] We employees agree that your wages are low, but we will fight any of your claims that our wage is too high. A samosa vendor earns 10 times more than me, how is my wage high?”

In short then, the Razi protests show how the ILNA comment section could provide a space for long-divided workers to debate and express their opinions, perhaps uniquely so. Nevertheless, those opinions echo long-held resentments that are reproduced and exacerbated by a combination of local systems of hierarchy, and wider processes of state re-configuration and deregulation. Politically the Razi case shows that contract workers preferred strategies of non-solidarity with their more privileged colleagues, which included reaching out to politico-religious leaders in opposition to fellow workers and management as well as staunch advocacy of privatization.

The 2014-15 Minimum Wage[43]

The 2014-15 (original Iranian year: 1393) minimum wage bill symbolized the reformist government’s approach to social inequality after one year in power. The case exemplifies how democratic platforms can backfire against their initial political proponents when they start occupying the most powerful positions of Iran’s republican system. Indeed, soon after the minimum wage debate in spring 2014, the comment section was closed down – indicative of the limits to democratic initiatives in the current political climate.

Whatever the practical relevance of the minimum wage, its annual rate-setting provides a key occasion during which workers’ rights can legitimately be debated. The 2014-15 minimum wage sparked particular tensions. Reformist President Hassan Rouhani had repeatedly, before and after his election in mid-2013, promised that changes in the minimum wage would follow article 41 of the Labour Code, which pegs increases to at least the rate of inflation.[44] However, the negotiations ended with the decision to increase the minimum wage by 10 per cent less than the average annual inflation rate.

Covering the negotiations in depth, the Labour Desk put particular emphasis on Rouhani’s breach of promise, the inconsistent manoeuvring of the worker representatives involved, and the Minister of Labour. The negotiations played out over two days in a nine-member tripartite committee consisting of employer and worker representatives, and government officials.

The negotiations ended unexpectedly when worker representatives abandoned their own red line in favour of the Minister of Labour’s proposal, which implied a much lower increase. The comment section soon became the main platform of contention. The principle news article on the outcome of the minimum wage negotiations counted 152 comments, later summarized and published by ILNA.

Some reacted to the decline in the real minimum wage in a satiric or humorous way:

Reza (175 likes, 5 dislikes):

What a curious government we have. It tries itself to turn lawlessness (bi qanuni) into law. I’ll also make promises of the President’s kind. I promise I’ll work hard so that that the high-up (aqazadeh) employers and factory owners won’t see their profits decline…

Others had less mercy:

Unknown (39 likes, 11 dislikes)

Long live the government of moderation, death to the government that deceives workers (kargar farib).

Again others ridiculed Iran’s form of Islamic rule generally:

Unknown (56 likes, 7 dislikes)

Ensha’allah Ali’s government of justice (peace be upon him) will reveal itself with the coming of the Master of Time (may God hasten his reappearance). That time, the workers’ cry for six month of wage arrears will not echo like today, ensha’allah. Workers’ wages have been trampled upon over the last year, Mister Rouhani. […] Now come on, hand out food coupons already.

Only a singular case came out in defence of the government’s decision:

Farhadi (3 likes, 33 dislikes)

[…] I know people [employers] who have thrown their whole life in the basket of economic growth, while himself not leading an easy life, and with all his property being confiscated by banks. Please don’t look at the problem from just one side.

Unsurprisingly, the comment was subsequently torn apart by other users.

A comment which I found to represent many others ran as follows:

Mika (21 likes, 3 dislikes)

ILNA, I beg you to get my story out to Mr Rouhani. I work in a factory with around 40 workers (kargar). The absolute 100 per cent of us, together with our families, voted for you [Rouhani] in the elections. Now, in the wake of the promises that you’ve given the worker community (jame’eh-ye kargar), each one of us is cursing himself to not to repeat the mistake of voting for you again. Please change your mind if that possibility exists, and reclaim the confidence of the worker community. Thanks.

Indeed, many users were grateful for ILNA’s reporting style. One user (20 likes, 3 dislikes) stated:

Long live ILNA which at least has endeavoured to truthfully turn the voice of workers from comment into headline.

In sum, these two case studies indicate that the comment section provided a unique and short-lived platform for workers’ discussions in the official Iranian media. While evidence seems to point to both high circulation as well as extensive participation by web users that identified with the working class and their plight, the ILNA cyberspace also constituted a politically dangerous mechanism. The free discussions that it involved, and the Labour Service’s radical idea of turning these into news stories, became unwanted as soon as it ran counter to the prevailing relation of forces and the political interests of ILNA and the Workers’ House. Within Iran’s system of media patronage, the 2013 election of Hassan Rouhani as moderate reformist president put pressure on ILNA and the Workers’ House, which had backed his presidency, to scale back the scope of its labour reporting and become less critical of the government. The comment section was shut down and in the summer of 2015, the Labor Desk’s core journalists were fired.

Coda: The Future of Labour Reporting

This essay argued that since the 2009 Green Movement reformist media has increasingly tried to include workers in the production of news. There were several reasons behind this shift from an apathetic to a sympathetic press attitude towards workers. After the 2009 Green Movement, workers became the most salient social movement in Iran, expressing their grievances in petitions, strikes and demonstrations. Within the context of media patronage and accelerating political competition, some reformist media thus became increasingly keen to attack the incumbent conservative government by including the government’s self-defined constituencies in its own news production.

Specifically, I postulated that due to their unique position at the intersection of state- and labour politics, ILNA and its parent institution, the Workers’ House, have played a central the role in encouraging working class visibility, (limited) representation and formation. ILNA was able to influence not only the sequence of labour-related events through discursive interventions, but also helped to create a protest culture that turned spontaneous struggles of destitution into standardized political and legal claim-making.

Nevertheless, the political nature of labour visibility in contemporary Iran also underpins its fragility. The radical team of the ILNA Labour Desk was tolerated as long as it proved useful in processes of political competition. With reference to the online 2014-15 Minimum Wage debate, I showed that at the moment when media and the labour voice unite against their own dominant political allies, reformist state institutions not determinedly supportive of democratic initiative are tempted to restrict channels of free expression.

Additionally, while the moderators of the ILNA cyberspace were ambitiously lobbying for a united workers’ movement by providing a space for discussion, the ability to talk was only partially effective in solving differences. Discussions reflected entrenched fissures within the labour movement, including those produced by histories of labour hierarchy, welfare reform, and revolution. These fissures help to explain why the contemporary labour protest boom in Iran has remained fragmented and spontaneous rather than systematic and coordinated.

While the Labour Desk has been neutralized after the redundancy of its key activists, it has not been dismantled. The sacked journalists were duly replaced and ILNA continues its direct contact with workers across the country – a practice on which it has largely maintained a monopoly. Moreover, other official news agencies have started to imitate ILNA’s labour reporting, making social movement and protest reporting an increasingly normalized feature of contemporary Iranian media. However, these news agencies do not command their own grassroots network of involved workers, and rely instead on local officials and their own informants. It could be argued that these processes have damped the socially empowering and democratic aspect of labour reporting, turning it into a more singular strategy for political competition.

The large question remains whether workers have learnt enough from their struggles, and whether and how they will align themselves with other and better organized interests of state, parastate, and capital, within a highly competitive as well as limiting and contradictory political-corporate landscape. At the very least, important strides have been made to increase the visibility and normalcy of grievance and protest, and thus the collectively understood right to it.

[1]An adapted version of this article was awarded the Azizeh Sheibani Prize for Best Essay in Persian World Studies at the University of Oxford. The project would not have been possible without the support and enthusiasm of the ILNA Labour journalists.

[2] For the full story see E. Mohammadvali, “Dalayel-e Ekhraj-e Gruh-e Kargari ILNA,” Ofogh-e Roshan, 23 June 2015, www.ofros.com/khabar/mvali_deailna.htm (accessed 26 November 2016).

[3]This is confirmed by the author’s ongoing quantitative research in the number of protests over time.

[4]B.J Silver, Forces of Labour: Workers’ Movements and Globalization Since 1870 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

[6] Silver, 20.

[7]For a recent example, see the Tabas coal miners’ strike: “Kargaran-e Bakhsh-e Estrekhraj M’adanju Dast az Kar Keshidand,” ILNA (27 Farvardin 1394), www.ilna.ir/fa/tiny/news-270771.

[8]“Justice shares,” a voucher program for share distribution among citizens, modeled on similar programs in post-Soviet eastern Europe, was the main mechanism through which privatization was sped up and given an aura of legitimacy. See P. Alizadeh, “The Political Economy of Petro Populism and Reform 1997 – 2011,” in H. Hakimian and P. Alizadeh, eds., Iran and the Global Economy: Petro Populism, Islam and Economic Sanctions (London: Routledge, 2014).

[9]K. Harris, “Rise of the Subcontractor State: Politics of Pseudo-Privatization in the Islamic Republic of Iran,” International Journal for Middle East Studies, 45 (2013): 45 – 70. See also “Aya SHASTA Ghul Ast?,” Qalamru-ye Refah, 6 (Mehr 1394): 10 – 37.

[11]S.E. Araghi, Hoquq-e Kar, two vols. (Tehran: Sazman-e Motal’eh va Tadvin-e Kotob-e ‘Olum-e Ensani-ye Daneshgah-ha, 1393).

[12]A. Schirazi, The Constitution of Iran: Politics and State in the Islamic Republic (London: I.B Tauris, 1998).

[13]M. Maljoo, “Tahlil-e Tabaqati-ye E’tesab-ha-ye Kargaran Petroshimi-ye Mahshahr,” Naqd-e Etesad-e Siyasi (December 2012), pecritique.com/2012/12/12; M. Maljoo, “Wither Iranian Petrochemical Labour,” MERIP, 277 (Winter 2015).

[14]See “Bar-e Geran,” Qalamru-ye Refah, 7 (Aban 1394).

[15]K. Harris, “The Politics of Subsidy Reform in Iran,” MERIP, 254 (Spring 2010): 36 – 39; N. Habibi, “The Economic Legacy of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Middle East Brief,” 74 (June 2013), 1-9.

[16]I will not here produce an in-depth economic analysis of the influence of sanctions on domestic demand. A good reference is the IMF’s Country Report No. 14/93 of Iran (13 March, 2014).

[17]IMF’s Country Report No. 14/93 of Iran (13 March, 2014); CBI.

[18]Research shows that Iran recovered from the 2008 UN sanctions within about a year. See J.I. Haidar, “Sanctions and Trade Diversion: Exporter-Level Evidence from Iran,” VoxEU.org (9 April, 2013).

[20]E.H. Chehabi, “The Political Regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Comparative Perspective,” Government and Opposition, 36/1 (2001): 48-70; A. Keshavarzian, “Contention Without Democracy: Elite Fragmentation in Iran,” in Posusney and Angrist, eds., Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Regimes and Resistance (Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Riener Publishers, 2005).

[21]See introduction to C. Leon, M. Desai and C. Tugal, Building Blocks: How Parties Organize Society (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015).

[22]See D. McAdam, S. Tarrow, C. Tilly, Dynamics of Contention (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) and Z. Lockman, “Imagining the Working Class: Culture, Nationalism, and Class Formation in Egypt, 1899 – 1914,” Poetics Today 5 (1994): 158-9. I do not want to reproduce quantitative measurements of the ‘working class,’ as has often been done, for example by S. Behdad and F. Nomani, Class and Labour in Iran: Did the Revolution Matter? (Syracuse University Press, 2006). It should also be noted that some protest movements, notably by teachers and nurses, have not openly affiliated with the working class, even if its members might participate in labour issues, like the annual minimum wage debate. The essay unfortunately cannot discuss these cases in any depth.

For a discussion on the suppression of the Iranian working class in post-revolutionary years, see E. Abrahamian, Khomeinism: Essays on the Islamic Republic (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 1993).

[23]Arjomand, Said Amir, ed., Constitutionalism and Political Reconstruction (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007), 37.

[24]Related to this is the shift of political attention from masses to middle classes. See F. Sadeghi, “The Politics of Recognition: The Barefoot of the Revolution and Elusive Memories,” MERIP, 277 (2015): 15-19.

[25]C. Leon et al, Building Blocks

[26]Including Etemad, Sarmayeh, Sharq, Qanun and other reformist newspapers. Kalameh Sabz and Rah-e Sabz, the online pro-Mousavi Green Movement mouthpieces have also redistributed worker-related news.

[27]All translations in the following section are the author’s. Fieldwork was conducted in April 2016.

[28]A. Bayat, Workers and Revolution in Iran: A Third World Experience of Workers’ Control (London: Zed Books, 1987).

[29]Personal communication.

[30] For a clear example, see the court complaint levelled against ILNA by the Agricultural Research, Education and Extension Organization for reporting on the workers’ actions against this institute’s management, www.ilna.ir/fa/tiny/news-110441 (accessed October 1, 2016).

[31]“Khatemeh-ye E’tesab-e Wagon Pars pas az Dah Ruz/ Kargaran be Darkhast-e Shura Karr a az Sar Gereftand,” ILNA, 15 Dey 1393, www.ilna.ir/fa/tiny/news-239221;

“E’teraz-e Kargaran-e Vagon Pars beh Ta’viq-e 3 Mah Hoquq,” ILNA, 5 Mehr 1393, www.ilna.ir/fa/tiny/news-208393;

“Kargaran-e Vagon Pars va Karfarma dar Qarargah-e Khatem Ol-Osia’ Mozakereh Kardand,” ILNA, 8 Mehr 1393, www.ilna.ir/fa/tiny/news-209546.

[32]“‘Eteraz-e Kargaran-e Vagon Pars beh Natijeh-ye Mozakerat-e Dishab,” ILNA, 8 Mehr 1393, www.ilna.ir/fa/tiny/news-209606.

[33]See above.

[35]“Ekhraj-e Ra’is-e Nahad-e Kargari-ye Vagon Pars Laghv Shod.”

[36]See Fateh for a similar argument about ISNA. A. Fateh, “The Foregrounding of Homelessness in Iran by a Progressive Media,” Iranian Studies, 46/2 (2013): 149-164.

[37]All of this sections information was retrieved from the following two news articles:

“Tajamo’-e Kargaran-e Peymani Petroshimi Razi dar E’teraz be Tab’iz-e Hoquq,” ILNA, 18 Dey 1392, www.ilna.ir/fa/tiny/news-135274; “Goftegu-ye Interneti-ye Kargaran-e Petroshimi Razi,” ILNA, 26 Shahrivar 1393, www.ilna.ir/fa/tiny/news-205500. While all comments have been removed on the new website, I managed to retrieve them using the fantastic Internet Archive at www.web.archive .org.

[38]Bayat, Workers and Revolution in Iran, 29; J. Beinin, Workers and Thieves: Labour Movements and Popular Uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015).

[39]“On Lines and Fences: Labour, Community and Violence in an Oil City,” Rasmus Christian Elling, in Urban Violence in the Middle East: Changing Cityscapes in the Transition from Empire to Nation-State, ed. Ulrike Freitag, Nelida Fuccaro et al (Oxford: Berghahn: 2015); T. Atabaki, “From ‘Ameleh to Kargar: Recruitment, Work Discipline and Making of the Persian/Iranian Oil Industry,” International Labour and Working-Class History, 84 (2013): 159 – 175.

[40]See Gübretaş website at www.gubretas.com.tr/tr/kategori/34/26/tarihce.aspx.

[41]“Bazkhani-ye Ruz-e e’teraz / 18 Dey dar Petroshimi-ye Razi Cheh Gozasht?” ILNA, 25 Shahrivar 1393, www.ilna.ir/fa/tiny/news-205325.

[42]“Bazkhani-ye Ruz-e e’teraz / 18 Dey dar Petroshimi-ye Razi Cheh Gozasht?”

[43]Comments come from two main articles: “Bang-e ‘Rouhani Motshakerim’: Vakonesh-e Kargaran be Dostmozd-e 93,” ILNA, 24 Esfand 1392, www.ilna.ir/fa/tiny/news-153644; “Dastmozd-e Kargaran 10 Darsad Kamtar az Nerkh-e Tavarom Ta’iin Shod,” ILNA, 23 Esfand 1392, www.ilna.ir/fa/tiny/news-153437.

[44]Zaman-e ‘Amal beh V’adeh-yi keh Ruhani she Bar Tekrar Kard,” ILNA, 19 Esfand 1392, www.ilna.ir/fa/tiny/news-152343.

Introduction – ‘irfān in 20^th century Iran

The importance of ‘irfān for certain key members of the clerical establishment of 20^th century Iran, among them Āyatullāh Khumaynī (d. 1989) himself, has been well established in recent decades.[1] Variously translated as “Islamic theosophy”,[2] “gnosis”,[3] “a kind of mystical philosophy”,[4] speculative mysticism”,[5] and “knowledge of the true world”,[6] ‘irfān, which does not appear to have been used as a technical term until modern times,[7] is the term generally used by modern Shī‘ī thinkers to denote theoretical Ṣūfism, particularly that of Ibn ‘Arabī (d. 1240) and his school, or the “transcendent wisdom” (al-ḥikmah al-muta‘āliyah) of Mullā Ṣadrā (d. 1640), who produced a synthesis of the Neoplatonised Aristotelian philosophy (falsafah) of Ibn Sīnā (d. 1037), the “Illuminationist philosophy” (ḥikmat al-ishrāq) of Shihāb al-Dīn Suhrawardī (d. 1191) and the Ṣūfī metaphysics of Ibn ‘Arabī.[8] ‘Irfān can thus be identified with the “Ṣūfī-philosophical amalgam”, to use Shahab Ahmed’s term, which emerged as perhaps the dominant trend within Islamic thought during Marshall Hodgson’s Middle Period (c. 950-1500).[9] While this synthesis of mysticism and philosophy reached its pinnacle in Iran in the so-called “school of Shīrāz” – that is, among the Safavid-era thinkers Mīr Dāmād (d. 1630), his student Mullā Ṣadrā, and the latter’s students ‘Abd al-Razzāq Lāhijī (d. 1661) and Muḥsin Fayḍ Kāshānī (d. 1680) – it enjoyed a revival in the later Qājār period, beginning with the work of Mullā Hādī Sabzavārī (d. 1872),[10] and continuing into the 20^th century among a group of clerics at the ḥawzahs of Qum. It was one of these clerics, Muḥammad ‘Alī Shāhābādī (d. 1950), who taught ‘irfān to Khumaynī,[11] who in turn began to teach ‘irfān at Qum in the 1940s, first in public at the ḥawzahs, and then in private at his home.[12] Despite the opposition of some clerics, therefore, ‘irfān undoubtedly informed the worldview of many of the intellectual leaders of the 1979 Revolution. Chief among those clerics who studied with Khumaynī, were influenced by his ‘irfānī outlook, and supported him in his political activities against the Shāh was Murtaḍá Muṭahharī (d. 1979), whose thought is the subject of this essay. Specifically, I intend to look at how Muṭahharī developed one of the key concepts in ‘irfānī thought, namely, the theory of “the Perfect Human” (Ar. al-insān al-kāmil, Per. insān-i kāmil), through a study of his work of that title,[13] a collection of lectures given during Ramadan in the year 1974.[14] 

Murtaḍá Muṭahharī: Life, Works and Thought

Muṭahharī was born in 1920 in the provincial town of Farimān in Khurāsān. His father was a noted scholar of Mullā Ṣadrā,[15] which perhaps explains Muṭahharī’s attraction to ‘irfān, which he began to study as a teenager in Mashhad. In 1937 he went to Qum to continue his studies, seemingly motivated by the Qumī clerics’ greater tolerance of the study of philosophy and ‘irfān.[16] After a brief stay in Iṣfahān, where he studied Nahj al-Balāghah with Mīrzā ‘Alī Āqā Shīrāzī Iṣfahānī (d. 1956), he returned to Qum, where in 1944 he began to study Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) with Āyatullāh Sayyid Ḥusayn Burūjirdī (d. 1961), who was soon to become the leading “source of emulation” (marji‘-ul-taqlīd) in Iran and who was known for his hostility towards philosophy and ‘irfān.[17] Muṭahharī subsequently enrolled in Khumaynī’s classes on jurisprudence, ethics (akhlāq) and ‘irfān, which included the study of Sabzavārī’s commentary on his own versification of Mullā Ṣadrā’s most famous work, al-Asfār al-arba‘ah (The Four Journeys) and, later, the Asfār itself.[18] He seems to have been greatly affected by Khumaynī’s ‘irfānī perspective, describing the latter’s ethics classes as being, in reality, lessons in “mystical knowledge and wayfaring” (ma‘rifat va sayr-u-sulūk),[19] and noting how his “teacher” (ustād) “had really tasted Islamic theology and understood its deepest ideas and was explaining it with the sweetest expression.”[20] At the same time, Muṭahharī developed a keen interest in the materialist philosophies of the West, particularly Marxism. In 1951, after finishing his studies in Qum, he moved to Tehran, where he attended the philosophy classes of Muḥammad Ḥusayn Ṭabāṭabā’ī (d. 1981), a cleric who was deeply learned in philosophy and ‘irfān, and who wrote a voluminous commentary on the Qur’ān that is imbued with the ‘irfānī perspective.[21]

In 1954 Muṭahharī took up a teaching post at the University of Tehran in the Faculty of Theology, where the curriculum covered ‘irfān, philosophy and jurisprudence.[22] At the same time, he became involved in religious and political activism and public speaking. The work under discussion in this essay, Insān-i kāmil, is an example of this combination of academic teaching and religious instruction, it being based upon lectures given by Muṭahharī to a group of students at the Javīd Mosque in Tehran, a mosque noted for the political activities of its leaders and attendees.[23] This public preaching, together with his association with Khumaynī, occasionally landed Muṭahharī in trouble with the authorities. In 1963, after public riots against the Shāh following the arrest of Khumaynī, Muṭahharī was briefly imprisoned along with a number of other clerics close to Khumaynī. During the latter’s exile from Iran between 1964 and 1979, Muṭahharī served as his representative within the country, collecting the taxes that were due to Khumaynī in his capacity as marji‘-ul-taqlīd, and distributing money to his followers. On 1^st May 1979, just after the Revolution, Muṭahharī was assassinated by the Islamic-Marxist Furqān group.[24]

Muṭahharī was a prolific writer, whose books and speeches covered a comprehensive range of Islamic and philosophical topics, from traditional Shī‘ī subjects such as the qualities of ‘Alī and Ḥusayn, through to issues of Islamic law, women’s rights in Islam, the weaknesses of materialist philosophy and ‘irfān-oriented topics such as sainthood (valāyat) and the Perfect Human.[25] These writings “have been widely distributed and massively read in the course of the revolutionary period,”[26] reflecting how, despite the seemingly sophisticated and esoteric subject matter of many of his works, Muṭahharī wrote primarily for a general audience, writing in a simplified style and a language unencumbered by much of the abstruse technical terminology of pure ‘irfānī works. Indeed, many of his works, like Insān-i kāmil, are in fact collections of lectures that he gave to students, giving them a didactic quality that makes them good introductions to a certain strand of modern Shī‘ī thinking.

Muṭahharī’s writing style reflects a deeper aspect of his thought, namely his conception of Islam as a “total system” “providing guidance for the contemporary world,”[27] which is to say that he viewed the issues that he was writing about not merely as topics of academic discussion, nor as the preserve of an intellectual, mystical or scholarly elite, but rather as issues with contemporary and practical relevance for the education of Muslims and the building of a flourishing Islamic society. This practically-minded conception of Islam emerges in his discussion of the merits of ‘irfān. As we have already seen, Muṭahharī was drawn to ‘irfān from a young age, and continued to study and write on ‘irfānī topics throughout his life. Nevertheless, he was not averse to criticising what he saw as the tendency within the Islamic mystical tradition towards excessive renunciation of the world and society. Thus he criticises the ‘urafā’, in Insān-i kāmil, for their “absolute inwardness” (darūn-garā’ī-yi muṭlaq), describing how, “in ‘irfān, only the inward dimension is put forward, meaning that the outward dimension (birūn-garā’ī) is very much under the radar; thus the individual dimension (janba-yi fardī) is great, while the social dimension (janba-yi ijtimā‘ī) is effaced or, we should say, obscured.”[28] Underlying this criticism is Muṭahharī’s insistence on the need to acknowledge the societal dimension of Islam alongside the mystical and the spiritual. As we shall see, it is through the prism of this understanding of the role of Islam that Muṭahharī’s conception of the Perfect Human must be viewed, and it is to this that we now turn.

The Perfect Human

1. Pre-Modern Conceptions

The first person to use the term “the Perfect Human”, Muṭahharī tells us at the beginning of his book on the topic, was the Andalusian Ṣūfī metaphysician Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn ‘Arabī, “the well-known ‘ārif” and “father of Islamic ‘irfān”. Indeed, all later Muslim ‘urafā’, including those from the Persian-speaking world, he says, should be considered “disciples of the school of Ibn ‘Arabī (shāgardān-i maktab-i Ibn ‘Arabī).”[29] Muṭahharī is probably correct in this assessment: “The phrase, al-ensān al-kāmel,” Böwering tells us, “was coined by Ebn al-ʿArabī (d. 638/1240, q.v.) in the first chapter of the Foṣūs al-ḥekam.”[30] Subsequent to Ibn ‘Arabī, Muṭahharī goes on to say, ‘irfān – and the concept of the Perfect Human in particular – was developed by his son-in-law, leading disciple and designated successor (khalīfah), Ṣadr al-Dīn Qūnawī (d. 1274), who, together with Ibn ‘Arabī, was responsible for making mystical thought “intellectual” (‘ilmī) and “very, very obscure” (bisyār bisyār ghāmiḍ).[31] Muṭahharī’s reference to Qūnawī reflects the latter’s influence upon ‘irfān-oriented Iranian Shī‘ism: his Miftāḥ al-ghayb (The Key to the Unseen) was considered one of the three most advanced works of ‘irfānī metaphysics – along with Ibn ‘Arabī’s Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam (The Gemstones of Wisdom) and Mullā Ṣadrā’s al-Asfār al-arba‘ah – in the ḥawzah curriculum,[32] while the commentary on the Fuṣūṣ written by Dā’ūd Qayṣarī (d. 1350/1) – a student of Qūnawī’s student ‘Abd al-Razzāq Qāshānī (d. 1329) – was used as a key to Ibn ‘Arabī’s Ṣūfī metaphysics in that same institutional setting.[33]

It is thus in the writings of Ibn ‘Arabī’s school, along with those of Mullā Ṣadrā, who was himself strongly influenced by Ibn ‘Arabī, that we must look for the pre-modern ‘irfānī conceptions of the Perfect Human to which Muṭahharī would have been exposed. As alluded to by Böwering, Ibn ‘Arabī’s understanding of the Perfect Human is perhaps best summed up by his description of Adam in the first chapter of the Fuṣūṣ. In that chapter, Ibn ‘Arabī lays particular emphasis on what he calls “the divine synthetic nature” (al-jam‘iyyah al-ilāhiyyah) of Adam.[34] The meaning of this synthetic nature, he goes on to say, is that Adam “synthesises (jam‘) two forms: the form of the world and the form of the Real” (ṣūrat al-‘ālam wa ṣūrat al-ḥaqq). This dual nature derives from the fact that God “composed his outer form (ṣuratahu al-ẓāhirah) from the realities of the world and its forms (min ḥaqā’iq al-‘ālam wa ṣuwarihi) and composed his inner form (ṣuratahu al-bāṭinah) according to His form (alá ṣūratihi).”[35] It is this synthetic nature, says Ibn ‘Arabī, that enables us to call Adam the Perfect Human.[36] The Perfect Human is thus understood by Ibn ‘Arabī to be the individual who is able, as a “synthetic being” (kawn jāmi‘), to bridge the divide between the divine and the created. To understand how so, we have first to appreciate that the basic insight of Ibn ‘Arabī’s Ṣūfī metaphysics is that the phenomenal world or creation (al-khalq) is nothing but a manifestation (tajallī) of the divine being (al-ḥaqq), and specifically of the divine names and attributes (al-asmā’ wa l-ṣifāt).[37] In keeping with this idea, Ibn ‘Arabī holds that human beings are the phenomenal existents that best manifest the divine attributes within the created world. The Perfect Human, then, is the human being who manifests the divine names and attributes in the most complete manner, thus bringing about the synthesis of God and creation within himself.[38]

This conception of the Perfect Human in terms of the principle of synthesis was taken forward by Qūnawī and other members of Ibn ‘Arabī’s school. In al-Fukūk (The Redemptions), his summary of the Fuṣūṣ, Qūnawī uses the concept of the “isthmus” (al-barzakh), “a term that represents an activity or an active entity that differentiates between two things and (paradoxically) through that very act of differentiation provides for their unity,”[39] to highlight the Perfect Human’s role in synthesising God and creation: “The true Perfect Human (al-insān al-kāmil al-ḥaqīqī),” he writes, “is the isthmus (al-barzakh) between necessity (al-wujūb) [i.e. God, wājib al-wujūd] and possibility (al-imkān) [i.e. creation, al-wujūd al-mumkin], and the mirror that synthesises (al-mirāh al-jāmi‘ah) the attributes of eternity and its connecting principles, and the attributes of originated things, and the intermediary (al-wāsiṭah) between the Real and creation.”[40] Likewise, ‘Abd al-Karīm al-Jīlī (d. 1421/8), whose al-Insān al-kāmil is one of the most important elaborations of the doctrine of the Perfect Human, describes the Perfect Human as both a “copy of the Real [i.e. God]” (nuskhat al-ḥaqq) and a “copy of creation” (nuskhat al-khalq), that is, “a complete, synthetic, perfect copy” (nuskhah kāmilah jāmi‘ah shāmilah),[41] and states that “the Perfect Human is, through his self, the counterpart of all the existential realities (muqābil li-jamī ‘ al-ḥaqā’iq al-wujūdiyyah), for he is a counterpart to the higher realities (al-ḥaqā’iq al-‘ulawiyyah) through his subtle nature, and to the lower realities (al-ḥaqā’iq al-sufliyyah) through his course nature.”[42] Again, the idea is that the Perfect Human is the locus for the synthesis of the created and the divine.

These earlier presentations of the Perfect Human fed into Mullā Ṣadrā’s conception of human perfection. In the Asfār, Mullā Ṣadrā defines the Perfect Human, whom he more often refers to as “the transcendent sage” (al-ḥakīm al-muta‘allih) in similar terms to al-Jīlī. The Perfect Human, he writes, is “[a]n expression of the comprehension of all the divine and existential levels of intellects and universal souls.”[43] In the same work, he describes how the human being, having achieved perfection of the soul (istikmāl al-nafs), “emerges as a mixture (ma‘jūn) of two ingredients – the spiritual form (from the world) of [the divine] command (ṣūrah ma‘nawiyyah amriyyah), and a sensible matter (from the world of) creation (māddah ḥiṣṣiyyah khalqiyyah).”[44] Mullā Ṣadrā develops this conception of the synthetic nature of the Perfect Human via an elaboration of the “four journeys” of the title of his work: “Know that wayfarers among the mystics and the saints (li-l-sullāk min al-‘urafā’ wa l-awliyā’),” he says, “possess four journeys: the first of them is the journey from creation to the Real (min al-khalq ilá al-ḥaqq); the second of them is the journey in the Real with the Real (bi-l-ḥaqq fī l-ḥaqq); the third journey is the opposite of the first because it is from the Real to creation with the Real (bi-l-ḥaqq min al-ḥaqq ilá l-khalq); and the fourth is the opposite of the second in a sense because it is with the Real in creation (fī l-khalq bi-l-ḥaqq).”[45] In delineating the four journeys of the Perfect Human in this fashion, Mullā Ṣadrā attempts to demonstrate how the perfecting of the soul is a process that incorporates all existential levels, both created and divine and, most importantly, how the attainment of perfection carries with it obligations within this world, an idea that seems to reflect the Shī‘ī context in which Mullā Ṣadrā was writing, given its echoes of the doctrine of the return of the Twelfth Imām as the Mahdī. As we shall see, this emphasis on the Perfect Human’s “functions as a religious leader”[46] would prove particularly attractive to Muṭahharī, owing to the latter’s practically-minded conception of Islam.

Before we move on to look at Muṭahharī’s engagement with and elaboration of these earlier ideas, let us briefly consider who the Perfect Humans were, in the view of these pre-modern ‘irfānī thinkers. We have already seen how, in the first chapter of the Fuṣūṣ, Ibn ‘Arabī identifies the Perfect Human with Adam. Since Adam is traditionally conceived of as “the father of humanity” (abū l–bashar), that is, as the archetypal human being, there is perhaps a suggestion here that every human being is inherently perfect. Indeed, ‘Abd al-Karīm al-Jīlī seems at one point to agree with this view, stating in al-Insān al-kāmil that, when God describes how He breathed His spirit (rūḥ), the locus of human perfection[47], into Adam (Qur’an 23:12), what is meant is that He breathed His spirit into “every member of this human race.”[48] This is not to say, however, that every human being can be called the Perfect Human; rather, it underlines the inherent perfectability of every human being, a perfectability that is only realised, however, by those who have undergone the requisite mystical training. In this regard, we find that Ibn ‘Arabī often uses the term Perfect Human to refer to the fully realised mystic or as a synonym for “saint” (walī).[49] Hence it can be said that, for Ibn ‘Arabī and most thinkers of his school, the Perfect Humans are those who have reached the end of the Ṣūfī path and attained communion with God – i.e. the prophets (anbiyā’), prior to Muḥammad, and the saints (awliyā’) or “inheritors” (warathah) after him.

This being said, there is also a sense that, at the metaphysical level, the title Perfect Human is properly speaking reserved for Muḥammad alone, for the term is also synonymous, in the technical lexicon of Ibn ‘Arabī’s school, with “the Muḥammadan Reality” (al-ḥaqīqah al-muḥammadiyyah), a sort of logos-principle through which God brings creation into existence.[50] As the name suggests, this metaphysical principle is identified with the spiritual reality of the Prophet Muḥammad, who according to Islamic tradition was already a prophet while Adam “was still between water and clay.”[51] In this sense, then, “perfection is possessed only by Muḥammad, the ultimate and total manifestation of the ḥaqīqah muḥammadiyyah.”[52] We can therefore say that, for Ibn ‘Arabī and his followers, while perfection is attainable by all those who reach the end of the mystic path, Muḥammad is the archetypal or ideal Perfect Human; hence Ibn ‘Arabī describes him in the Fuṣūṣ as “the most perfect being in this human race,”[53] while al-Jīlī writes of how “no [individual] within existence was designated with the same perfection as Muḥammad, that [degree of perfection] being limited to him in his unique attainment of it.”[54]

While this is undoubtedly the dominant view among the Ṣūfī thinkers of Ibn ‘Arabī’s school, an alternative – and, for our purposes, very significant – conception of the archetypal Perfect Human can be seen in the writings of those Shī‘ī thinkers – such as Ḥaydar Āmulī (d. after 1385), his student Ibn Abī Jumhūr al-Aḥsā’ī (d. 1495/6), and Mullā Ṣadrā and Muḥsin Fayḍ Kāshānī – who attempted to integrate parts of Ibn ‘Arabī’s Ṣūfī metaphysics into their Shī‘ī worldview. One element of these thinkers’ synthesis of Ṣūfī and Shī‘ī metaphysics involved their identification of the Ṣūfī Perfect Humans with the Shī‘ī Imāms, which seems to have resulted from their awareness of the echo of the traditional Shī‘ī view of the Imāms in the Ṣūfī conception of the Perfect Human.[55] Thus Ḥaydar Āmulī, who set in motion this process of synthesis,[56] describes how “the Pole (al-quṭb) [a term used by Ibn ‘Arabī’s school as a near synonym for the Perfect Human[57]] and the Imām are two persons possessing the same meaning and referring to the same person.”[58] Similarly, Āmulī’s leading disciple, Ibn Abī Jumhūr, “believed that ‘Alī was a saint (walī) and the ‘Perfect Man’ (al-insān al-kāmil), and that the Twelver Imāms formed a chain of successive Ṣūfī masters.”[59] These ideas were picked up by Mullā Ṣadrā and his students, who, it should be remembered, were writing in a historical context – early Safavid Iran – in which Shī‘ism was in the ascendant and opportunities existed to recast traditional Shī‘ī doctrines along new lines.[60] For Mullā Ṣadrā, as for Ḥaydar Āmulī, the Imām is “the Pole of poles” (quṭb al-aqṭāb), while “the degree of the Imāmate,” he writes, “signifies the Perfect Human, who is the king of the terrestrial world.”[61] This is not to say, however, that Shī‘ī ‘irfānī thinkers limit the title of Perfect Human to the twelve Imāms; rather, Mullā Ṣadrā and Muḥsin Fayḍ Kāshānī hold, like Ibn ‘Arabī and the majority of thinkers of his school, that the title belongs to the prophets (anbiyā’) and saints (awliyā’), the difference being that while, for the Ṣūfī thinkers, it is the fully realised Ṣūfīs who are the archetypal awliyā’, for the Shī‘ī thinkers it is the Imāms.[62]

1. Muṭahharī’s Conception of the Perfect Human

As already mentioned, despite obviously being drawn to the study of ‘irfān, Muṭahharī also displays a certain ambivalence towards the ‘irfānī legacy. This ambivalence emerges in his presentation of his own understanding of the theory of the Perfect Human, which, on the one hand, is heavily indebted to earlier ‘irfānī ideas, yet, on the other, reflects his own concerns as a 20^th century Iranian Shī‘ī cleric who viewed Islam as a practical system to be implemented in the modern world. Thus, while Muṭahharī adopts the ‘irfānī term Perfect Human (insān-i kāmil), he does not fully identify his position with the ‘irfānī conception; rather, he distinguishes between “the Perfect Human of ‘irfān” and what he calls “the Perfect Human of the Qur’an” and “the Perfect Human of Islam,”[63] the implication being that the latter corresponds to his view.

Muṭahharī’s ambivalent stance towards the ‘irfānī conception of the Perfect Human can best be seen in his use of the concept of synthesis as a key to understanding the Perfect Human. As we saw above, this concept is central to the pre-modern conceptions of the Perfect Human. In keeping with these earlier conceptions, Muṭahharī identifies synthesis and comprehensiveness as the defining attributes of the Perfect Human. He states this very clearly when he says that being the Perfect Human means “being the synthesis of opposites (jāmi‘-ul-aḍdād būdan).”[64] In associating the theory of the Perfect Human with the ancient philosophical principle known as “the union of opposites” or coincidentia oppositorum, Muṭahharī thus utilises an idea that was key to Ibn ‘Arabī’s and his school’s conception of the relationship between God and creation: “The discourse of the school of Ibn ‘Arabī,” says Shahab Ahmed, “…is riven through by coincidentia oppositorum,”[65] a claim supported by the fact that Ibn ‘Arabī often quotes the famous statement attributed to the Ṣūfī Abū Sa‘īd al-Kharrāz (d. 279/890-286/899), “I only knew God through His synthesising of opposites.”[66] For Ibn ‘Arabī and his school, therefore, just as God synthesises seemingly contradictory attributes such as “the First and the Last (al-awwal wa l-ākhir), the Apparent and the Hidden (al-ẓāhir wa l-bāṭin)” (c.f. Qur’an 57:3), so too does the realised mystic or Perfect Human, in becoming a complete manifestation of the divine names and attributes, reconcile these apparent contraries within himself.

Though Muṭahharī thus adopts the terminology of these earlier ‘irfānī thinkers, nevertheless his conception of synthesis differs from their metaphysical conception of the term. Whereas, for Ibn ‘Arabī, the Perfect Human being the synthesis of opposites means that he synthesises God and creation or the divine attributes and created forms, for Muṭahharī, by contrast, being a synthesis of opposites means to synthesise what he calls the “human values” (arzishhā-yi insānī). These values, he tells us, include acts of worship (‘ibādāt), serving people (khidmat bi-khalq), freedom (āzādī), love (‘ishq), reason (‘aql), justice (‘adl), etc.[67] The perfection of the human being (kamāl-i insān), he explains, thus consists in attaining “moderation” (ta‘ādul) and “balance” (tawāzun) in displaying these values,[68] that is, in not allowing for one or two particular values to dominate one’s nature: “What is the state (ḥāl),” he asks rhetorically, “of the human who is the Perfect Human? Is it the state of the one who is only a pure worshipper (‘ābid-i maḥḍ)? Is it the state of the one who is only a purely free man (āzāda-yi maḥḍ)? Is it the state of the one who is only a pure lover (‘āshiq-i maḥḍ)? Is it the state of the one who is only a purely rational man (‘āqil-i maḥḍ)? No! None of these is the Perfect Human. The Perfect Human is that human within whom all the human values have grown, to the highest degree, in co-ordination with one another.”[69] Muṭahharī repeats this idea later in the book:

The Perfect Human,” he says, “means the human who is a champion (qahramān) of all human values, who is a champion in all domains of humanity (dar hama-yi maydānhā-yi insāniyat). What lesson should we learn from this? We should learn from this that we should not make the mistake of obtaining one value alone and forgetting about the other values. Although we ourselves may not be able to be a champion of all values, nevertheless we should possess all the values together to the extent that we can. Even if we are not the Perfect Human, in the end we will become a balanced human (insān-i muta‘ādil). It is then that we will take the form of a true Muslim in every field.[70]

While the pre-modern ‘irfānī thinkers primarily understood synthesis, at least as it applies to the theory of the Perfect Human, as a metaphysical principle, for Muṭahharī, by contrast, we see that it is primarily an ethical principle. It is no use, he argues, to cultivate one particular ethical value or practice alone; rather, what is called for is the cultivation of all practices, worship of God, serving others, loving, using one’s reason, etc., in harmony. Muṭahharī thus humanises the ‘irfānī theory, which is to say that he brings it back down to earth and makes it relevant for all human beings, the harmonisation of values being a goal that all individuals are capable of striving to attain, even if they may not actually attain it. Muṭahharī spells out this difference for us in the section of the book where he presents a critique of ‘irfānī theory, specifically in his aforementioned critique of the inwardness of ‘irfān:

The Perfect Human of ‘irfān.” he writes, “is not a social human (insān-i ijtimā‘ī); he is a human who is wrapped up in himself. As for Islam, however, although it is said to support everything [proposed by ‘irfān] regarding the heart (dil), and love (‘ishq), and spiritual wayfaring (sayr-u-sulūk), and the science of effusions (‘ilm-i afāḍī), and the spiritual science (‘ilm-i ma‘navī), and the refinement of the soul (tahdhīb-i nafs), its Perfect Human is a synthetic human (insān-i jāmi‘). He is turned outwards (birūn-garā) and turned towards society (jāmi‘a-garā). He is never only wrapped up in himself; if he spends the night wrapped up in himself, and forgets the world and what is in it, by day he will place himself within society.[71]

This quotation captures well, I think, Muṭahharī’s ambivalence towards, and development of the ‘irfānī conception of the Perfect Human. While he does not reject the mystical or metaphysical dimensions of the ‘irfānī theory, nevertheless he views the attainment of mystical union and the knowledge that accompanies it as only one dimension of what it means to be the Perfect Human. In concentrating on the mystical dimension of the Perfect Human theory, he argues, the ‘irfānī thinkers do not conceive of the Perfect Human as a truly synthetic being, as does Islam. In particular, they overlook the this-worldly, societal functions of the Perfect Human. This latter dimension is particularly important for Muṭahharī: the Perfect Humans, he says, “are the reformers of their society (muṣliḥān jāmi‘a-yi khud).”[72] This view, it should be noted, fits with his broader conception of Islam as a totalist system: just as Islam should govern how modern society is run, so too should the Perfect Human, who is the archetypal Muslim, be involved in the reform and running of society.

Muṭahharī’s conception of the socio-political role of the Perfect Human reflects, I think, three major elements of his intellectual and religious make-up. Most generally, his conception echoes the traditional Shī‘ī view of the Imām’s rightful role as political leader of the Islamic ummah. This is something that Muṭahharī draws attention to in another of his works, Valā’hā va valāyat-hā (Types of Loyalty and Leadership), where he delineates the different dimensions of the Imām’s leadership (valāyat), which include, so he tells us, political leadership (za‘āmat) of the Muslim community.[73] Secondly, while the pre-modern ‘irfānī theory lays emphasis on the metaphysical dimension of the Perfect Human, nevertheless there is also an acknowledgement of the Perfect Human’s role in this world.[74] This is particularly true, as we have seen, of Mullā Ṣadrā, who, in delineating the four journeys of the Perfect Human, locates his ultimate goal in the return to society and leadership of the community. In this regard, it is noteworthy that Muṭahharī does in fact cite, with approval, Mullā Ṣadrā’s theory of the four journeys,[75] and refers to the Asfār as one of the “books of philosophy inclined towards ‘irfān,” the implication perhaps being that Mullā Ṣadrā does not suffer from the same extreme inward focus as other, more purely ‘irfānī thinkers. Finally, in terms of the immediate historical context in which Muṭahharī was writing, it might also be suggested that his conception of the worldly function of the Perfect Human carries an echo of Khumaynī’s theory of the political leadership of the religious scholar (valāyat-i faqīh), which Khumaynī was formulating from his exile in Najaf around the same time as Muṭahharī was giving his lectures on the Perfect Human.[76] As we have seen, Muṭahharī was in continuous contact with Khumaynī during the latter’s period of exile, which, together with Muṭahharī’s high regard for his teacher, makes it likely that Khumaynī’s thinking at that time would have left its mark on his former student. Certainly, it is not correct to claim, as Hamid Mavani does, that while Khumaynī conceived of valāyat in terms of political leadership, Muṭahharī, treated the same concept “from an exclusively mystical perspective that was free of any contemporary political relevance.”[77] Rather, it is clear that Muṭahharī, though deeply affected by the ‘irfānī perspective, agreed with Khumaynī on the practical, socio-political function of the religious leader, that is, the Perfect Human.

All this is not to say that Muṭahharī limits his conception of the Perfect Human to the socio-political domain. Indeed, as one of the leading Iranian and Muslim critics of Marxism, Muṭahharī was deeply critical of all purely materialist philosophies that divest mankind of his spiritual and metaphysical dimensions. Thus he declares, in Insān-i kāmil, after speaking about the tendency in Islamic societies of the past to focus excessively on ritual practices, “I feel that once again, another wave of extremism (mawj-i ifrātī) is building up, meaning that certain people want to pay attention to the social tendencies of Islam (garāyishhā-yi ijtimā‘ī-yi Islām), while forgetting the divine tendencies (garāyishhā-yi khodā’ī) of Islam. This is a…deviation (inḥirāf) and mistake (ishtibāh).”[78] In the latter part of the book, meanwhile, he goes on to critique the socialist view of the human being, contrasting the materialism of socialism with the asceticism (zuhd, tark-i dunyā) of Islam, which is exemplified in the saying attributed to ‘Alī, “O world! I have divorced you.”[79] Similarly, when discussing Mullā Ṣadrā’s four journeys, he states clearly that the religious-political leader in this world must first undergo the mystical journey to God before he can hope to save others: “If we say that the journey of the human being is from creation towards God, and that here he remains, we have not understood the human being. And if we say that the human, without moving towards God, must go towards other humans (like today’s humanist materialist schools of thought (maktabhā-yi māddī-yi insānī-yi imrūzī)), to save humanity (barāyi najāt-i insān), then this will achieve nothing and is a complete lie (durūgh-i muṭlaq). Only those who have first saved themselves can save humanity.”[80] For Muṭahharī, then, the theory of the Perfect Human cannot be understood solely in a this-worldly sense, just as it cannot be understood solely in a metaphysical sense; each of these positions, when held on their own, is an example of “extremism” (ifrāṭī).[81] Rather, the true Perfect Humans, as he sees it, achieve a synthesis of the metaphysical and the this-worldly, the inward and the outward, the spiritual and the socio-political, etc.: “All the while they are in the world,” he says, “they are not in the world. Whilst they are in this world, they are [also] in another world.”[82] In this way, the Perfect Humans embody Islam, the “synthetic” or “comprehensive” religion (dīn-i jāmi‘).[83]

It remains only for us to ask whom Muṭahharī considered to be historical examples of the Perfect Human. In keeping with his views on the socio-political function of the Perfect Human, Muṭahharī was insistent on the idea that the Perfect Human was not a mere theoretical construct, but rather a living human being: “The Islamic Perfect Human,” he says, “is not just a conceptual, imaginative and ideal human (yik insān-i īdi’āl va khayālī va dhihnī) who never attains outward existence; the Perfect Human attains outward existence, both at the highest level and the lower degrees.”[84] Who, then, are these individuals? At the beginning of the book, Muṭahharī suggests that the archetypal Perfect Humans are the Prophet Muḥammad and ‘Alī b. Abī Ṭālib, the first Imām of the Shī‘ah: “The most noble Prophet himself – May God’s blessings and peace be upon him and his family – was an example (nimūna) of the Perfect Human. ‘Alī was another example of the Perfect Human.”[85] Thus far, Muṭahharī is in agreement with his fellow ‘irfān-oriented Shī‘ī thinker Mullā Ṣadrā, that the Perfect Humans are the prophets and Imāms, Muḥammad being the archetypal prophet, and ‘Alī the archetypal Imām. This being said, throughout the rest of the book, Muṭahharī presents ‘Alī as the model Perfect Human, while hardly mentioning Muḥammad at all. Thus, immediately following the above mentioned quotation, he uses ‘Alī as an example of how, if we wish to learn about the qualities of the Perfect Human, we must look not at his “person” (shakhṣ), i.e. his “identity card” (shināsnāma), the bare facts of his life, but rather at his “personality” (shakhṣiyat), i.e. the qualities that he displayed. In ‘Alī’s case, he explains, we must recognise his “synthetic personality” (shakhṣiyat-i jāmi‘) in order to know that he is “the Perfect Human of Islam.”[86] In taking ‘Alī as a model for the synthetic nature of the Perfect Human, Muṭahharī thus appears to elevate ‘Alī above Muḥammad as the ideal Perfect Human.

This impression is reinforced by the terms in which Muṭahharī describes ‘Alī, and the way he uses the latter’s sayings as proof-texts for his ideas, in the remainder of the book. Thus, in the course of explaining that the Perfect Human is the individual who is able to synthesise all the human values, he declares, “‘Alī is the Perfect Human, because within him all the human values have grown, to the highest degree, in co-ordination with one another,”[87] a statement that he repeats almost verbatim a few pages on.[88] Similarly, he states, “If we consider ‘Alī to be our model (ulgū) and Imām, then we should take him to be a Perfect Human, a balanced human (insān-i mut‘ādil), and a human in whom all the human values have grown in co-ordination with one another.”[89] If ‘Alī is thus the model for the synthesis of human values, then his sayings, collected in Nahj al-balāghah, should similarly embody that synthesis of values, since “speech represents the speaking spirit (rūḥ-i gūyanda) [i.e. al-nafs al-nāṭiqah, the rational soul].”[90] Hence we find that “Nahj al-balāghah contains many elements: when one reads it, sometimes one imagines it is Bū ‘Alī Sīnā that is talking; sometimes that it is Mullā Rūmī or Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn ‘Arabī; sometimes that it is an epic writer like Firdawsī; or a liberal (āzādī-khwāh); or a world-renouncing worshipper (‘ābid-i gūsheh-nishīn) or renunciant ascetic (zāhid-i gūsheh-gīr); or a monk (rāhib).”[91] He repeats the same idea later in the book, explaining that ‘Alī’s sayings embody all of these different elements to the highest degree: “In his speech, there is ‘irfān that is the peak of ‘irfān, philosophy that is the peak of philosophy, liberalism that is the peak of liberalism, an epic that is the peak of epics, ethics that are the peak of ethics.”[92]

In other words, ‘Alī’s sayings, in synthesising philosophical discourse in the manner of Ibn Sīnā, the greatest philosopher, mystical discourse in the manner of Rūmī or Ibn ‘Arabī, the greatest Ṣūfī thinkers, the mythical discourse of Firdawsī, the greatest epic poet, and those who preach freedom of the individual and those who practice ascetic renunciation of the world, reflect how ‘Alī himself manifested the qualities of a philosopher, a Ṣūfī, an epic poet, a liberal, an ascetic, etc. It can thus be said, Muṭahharī concludes, that “‘Alī is a personality who synthesises opposites (‘Alī yik shakhṣiyat-i jāmi‘-ul-aḍdād ast),”[93] i.e. that he is a Perfect Human.

Whereas for Ibn ‘Arabī and the dominant tradition within his school, then, the archetypal Perfect Human is undoubtedly Muḥammad, for Muṭahharī it is quite clearly ‘Alī. This reflects Muṭahharī’s integration of the theory of the Perfect Human into his Shī‘ī worldview, although, as we have seen, there is a pre-modern precedent for this “Shī‘itisation” of the theory in the writings of Ḥaydar Āmulī and, following him, Mullā Ṣadrā and the school of Shīrāz. Moreover, like those earlier Shī‘ī ‘irfānī thinkers, Muṭahharī suggests that being a Perfect Human is a property of the Imāms more generally: the human within whom all the human values have grown to the highest degree and in perfect synthesis, he tells us, “is the individual whom the Qur’an calls “Imām”,”[94] while he cites sayings of the fourth Imām, Zayn-ul-‘Ābidīn (d. 713) and the eighth, ‘Alī b. Mūsá al-Riḍā (d. 818), as proof-texts for his understanding of the theory.[95]

Is all this to say that Muṭahharī confines the title of Perfect Human to the prophets and Imāms? It is true that he only explicitly applies the term to such individuals. At the same time, he clearly leaves open the possibility of other individuals becoming Perfect Humans:

If we want to become Perfect Humans and to reach human perfection under Islam instruction and education,” he says, “we must know what the Perfect Human is like: what kind of spiritual countenance is the Perfect Human’s spiritual countenance? What kind of spiritual appearance is the Perfect Human’s appearance? What kind of characteristics are the Perfect Human’s characteristics? Thus we can build ourselves and our society in that way. If we don’t know the Perfect Human of Islam, we can never become a complete or perfect Muslim (yik musalmān-i tamām va-yā kāmil).[96]

Muṭahharī thus seems to suggest that the believer is capable of becoming, if not a Perfect Human, then at least a perfect Muslim. Indeed, he indicates that the very purpose of his lectures on the Perfect Human is to inculcate within his listeners a sense of what the Perfect Human is like, in order that they might follow the Perfect Human’s example and become perfect Muslims. Later on in the book, he gives an example of individuals having become perfect Muslims via their emulation of the Perfect Human: the companions of the 12^th Imām, Muḥammad al-Mahdī (aṣḥāb-i ḥaḍrat-i ḥujjat), he notes, are described in a widely-circulated ḥadīth as “monks by night and lions by day (ruhbān bi-l-layl wa luyūth bi-l-nahār),”[97] a phrase that indicates their synthesising of the values of worship (‘ibādat) and active struggle (jihād) for the faith. In this way, he suggests that, by following the example of the Perfect Human, believers are capable of emulating the latter’s synthesis of human values.

A notable element of the passage quoted above is Muṭahharī’s connecting of the process of becoming a perfect Muslim with the building of a perfect Islamic society. This fits with what we saw above, regarding the societal dimension of Muṭahharī’s theory. Given the evident desire of Muṭahharī and the other clerical intellectuals of the pre-revolutionary period to build an Islamic society in their own time, the question that follows is whether Muṭahharī thought that there existed a living Perfect Human, or at least a perfect Muslim, who was capable of leading the construction of such a society, and if so, who? Certainly, Muṭahharī does not explicitly describe any living individual as a Perfect Human or perfect Muslim in the book. Nevertheless, at one point in the book, having quoted Zayn-ul-‘Ābidīn in order to demonstrate his insight into the reality of individuals, he does state that, “[i]n our own time, there were and are individuals who can perceive (dark) and see the reality of people,”[98] thus suggesting that certain living individuals do possess the insight of the Perfect Human. Unfortunately, he does not say who these individuals might be. Of course, given Muṭahharī’s obvious closeness to Khumaynī, it does not seem unreasonable to suggest – while bearing in mind the potential for our perspective to be distorted by our knowledge of the fact that, five years after these lectures were delivered, Khumaynī did embark on the construction of an Islamic society in Iran – that he would have included the latter among those who possess this insight. Nevertheless, I have not come across an explicit statement to that effect in those works of Muṭahharī’s that I have consulted. More concretely, it should be noted that, in Valā’hā va valāyat-hā, Muṭahharī states that Mīrzā ‘Alī Āqā Shīrāzī Iṣfahānī, the cleric who taught him Nahj al-balāghah, was among those, like ‘Alī and Zayn-ul-‘Ābidīn, who reached the second stage of perfection, that is, mastery over the soul, bodily desires and the imagination.[99] While Muṭahharī again does not go so far as to explicitly identify Iṣfahānī as a Perfect Human or perfect Muslim, the idea seems to be implied. Certainly, even if such individuals are not explicitly identified, for Muṭahharī, the theory of the Perfect Human remains relevant today.

Conclusion

Muṭahharī’s exposition of the theory of the Perfect Human reflects both the intellectual heritage and worldview of a significant number of 20^th century Iranian Shī‘ī clerics. Thanks to decades of education in the seminaries of Mashhad, Qum and Iṣfahān, Muṭahharī was deeply learned in the traditional Shī‘ī source texts, particularly Nahj al-balāghah and the Shī‘ī ḥadīth books, and in the pre-modern Islamic mystical philosophy known as ‘irfān. He combined this learning, however, with an activist outlook on the contemporary world, wishing to remake Iran in the image of the ideal Islamic society, and conscious of the need to combat what he saw as the malignant influence of the materialist philosophies of the West, particularly Marxism.

All of these aspects of his thought and personality went into his theory of the Perfect Human. His debt to ‘irfān is manifested in his utilisation of the principle of synthesis in his definition of what it means to be a Perfect Human. His Shī‘ī heritage emerges in his identification of the archetypal Perfect Human with the first Shī‘ī Imām, ‘Alī. His activism, meanwhile, is reflected in his emphasis on the socio-political and practical functions of the Perfect Human, in contrast to the more metaphysical conceptions of the pre-modern ‘irfānī thinkers, while his opposition to western materialism comes through in his acknowledgment, in keeping with the original ‘irfānī conception, of the importance of the spiritual dimension of the Perfect Human. In bringing together all of these elements, Muṭahharī’s Insān-i kāmil thus gives us an insight into the richness of 20^th century ‘irfān-oriented Iranian Shī‘ī thought, a richness which undergirded the thinking of many of those clerics who played a leading role in the Revolution.

[1]See e.g. Roy Mottahedeh, The Mantle of the Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran (Oxford: Oneworld, 2009), 135-144; A. Knysh, “‘Irfan’ Revisited: Khomeini and the Legacy of Islamic Mystical Philosophy,” Middle East Journal, 46/4 (1992), 631-653; Vanessa Martin, Creating an Islamic State: Khomeini and the Making of a New Iran (London; New York: I.B. Tauris, 2000), 31-47.

[2]G. Böwering, “‘ERFĀN (1),” Encyclopaedia Iranica (Online Edition, 1998, updated 2012), www.iranicaonline.org/articles/erfan-1 (accessed 9^th May 2016).

[3]Knysh, “‘Irfan’ Revisited,” 632.

[4]Martin, Creating an Islamic State, 31.

[5]Michael Fischer, Iran: From Religious Disputation to Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.; London: Harvard University Press, 1980), 250.

[6]Mottahedeh, The Mantle of the Prophet, 136.

[7]Böwering, “‘ERFĀN (1),” (1998/2012).

[8]See F. Rahman, The Philosophy of Mullā Ṣadrā (Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī) (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1975), 10.

[9]Akbar S. Ahmed, What is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), 31.

[10]See Toshiko Izutsu & Mahdī Muḥaqqiq, The Metaphysics of Sabzavārī (Delmar, N.Y.: Caravan Books, 1977).

[11]Martin, Creating an Islamic State, 32.

[12]Martin, Creating an Islamic State, 33.

[13]Murtadha Muṭahharī, Insān-i kāmil (Tehran: Bunyād-i ‘ilmī va farhang-i Shahīd-i Murtaḍá Muṭahharī, 2004).

[14]Muṭahharī, Insān-i kāmil , 9.

[15]Martin, Creating an Islamic State, 76.

[16]Hamid Dabashi, Theology of Discontent: The Ideological Foundations of the Islamic Revolution in Iran (New York: New York University Press, 1993), 148.

[17]Dabashi, Theology of Discontent, 275.

[18]Dabashi, Theology of Discontent, 148-149.

[19]Muṭahharī, Understanding Islamic Sciences (London: Islamic College for Advanced Studies Press, 2002), 7.

[20]Quoted in Mahmood T. Davari, The Political Thought of Ayatullah Murtaza Mutahhari (London; New York: Routledge, 2005), 19.

[21]See M. Muhit Ṭabāṭabā’ī, Shi‘a, trans. S. Nasr (Qum: Ansariyan, 1981), 22-25.

[22]Fischer, Iran: From Religious Disputation to Revolution, 249-250.

[23]“Prorogation of Jvaid Mosque in Tehran by Pahlavi Agents,” Islamic Revolution Document Centre, www.irdc.ir/en/calendar/293/default.aspx.

[24]This biography of Muṭahharī is based on Dabashi, 148-150; Ori Goldberg, Shi‘i Theology in Iran: The Challenge of Religious Experience (London: Routledge, 2012), 40-41; Mahmood Muṭahharī, Understanding Islamic Sciences, 7-9.

[25]For a partial list of Muṭahharī’s works, see Muṭahharī, Understanding Islamic Sciences, 9.

[26]Dabashi, Theology of Discontent, 150.

[27]Martin, Creating an Islamic State, 82-83.

[28]Muṭahharī, Insān-i kāmil, 161.

[29]Muṭahharī, Insān-i kāmil, 16.

[30]G. Böwering “ENSĀN-E KĀMEL,” Encyclopaedia Iranica (Online Edition, 1998, updated 2011), www.iranicaonline.org/articles/ensan-e-kamel (accessed 9^th May, 2016).

[31]Muṭahharī, Insān-i kāmil, 17.

[32]Knysh, “‘Irfan’ Revisited,” 365.

[33]Knysh, “‘Irfan’ Revisited,” 631-633.

[34]Muhammad Ibn ‘Arabī and Abū al’Alā ‘Affīfī, eds., Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam (Beirut: Dār al-kitāb al-‘Arabī, 1946), 49.

[35]Ibn ‘Arabī and ‘Affīfī, Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, 55.

[36]Ibn ‘Arabī and ‘Affīfī, Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, 55.

[37]Izutsu and Muḥaqqiq, The Metaphysics of Sabzavārī, 152.

[38] M. Takeshita, Ibn ‘Arabī’s Theory of the Perfect Man and Its Place in the History of Islamic Thought (University of Chicago, Doctoral Thesis, 1986), 110.

[39]Salman H. Bashier, Ibn al-‘Arabī’s Barzakh: the Concept of the Limit and the Relationship between God and the World (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004), 7.

[40]Quoted in Tahānawī, 281. See also M. Chodkiewicz,; trans. L. Sherrard, Seal of Saints: Prophethood and Sainthood in the Doctrine of Ibn ‘Arabī (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1993), 70-71.

[41]A. Jīlī and Y. Ziedan, eds., Sharḥ mushkilāt al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyyah (Cairo: Dār al-amīn, 1999), 159; 161-162.

[42]A. Jīlī and M. Bayḍawī, eds., al-Insān al-kāmil fī ma‘rifat al-awākhir wa l-awā’il (Beirut: Dār al-kutub al-‘ilmiyyah, 1997), 211.

[43]Quoted in Sajjad H. Rizvi, Mullā Ṣadrā and Metaphysics: Modulation of Being (London: Routledge, 2009), 129.

[44]Quoted in Ahmed, What is Islam?, 17.

[45]Quoted in Rizvi, Mullā Ṣadrā and Metaphysics, 31; see also Knysh, “‘Irfan’ Revisited,” 634.

[46]Kynsh, “‘Irfan’ Revisited,” 635.

[47]Al-Jīlī and Zeidan, Sharḥ mushkilāt al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyyah, 159.

[48]Al-Jīlī and Bayḍawī, al-Insān al-kāmil fī ma‘rifat al-awākhir wa l-awā’il, 131.

[49]Izutsu and Muḥaqqiq, The Metaphysics of Sabzavārī, 223.

[50]Chodkiewicz, 70-71; F. ‘Irāqī, Divine Flashes, trans. W. Chittick, and P. Lamborn Wilson (London: SPCK, 1982), 11-12.

[51]Ronald L. Nettler, Sufi Metaphysics and Qur’ānic Prophets: Ibn ‘Arabī’s Thought and Method in the Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 2003), 177.

[52]Chodkiewicz, 71.

[53]Ibn ‘Arabī, 214; see also Nettler, Sufi Metaphysics and Qur’ānic Prophets, 177; Chodkiewicz, Divine Flashes, 71.

[54]Al-Jīlī and Bayḍawī, al-Insān al-kāmil fī ma‘rifat al-awākhir wa l-awā’il, 207.

[55] See Mohammad Amir-Moezzi, The Spirituality of Shi‘i Islam: Beliefs and Practices (London: I.B. Tauris, 2011), 107-113.

[56] See Henry Corbin, En islam iranien, vol. 3 (Paris: Gallimard, 1972), 149-213.

[57] See S. Ḥakīm, al-Mu‘jam al-ṣūfī (Beirut: Dandarah li-l-ṭabā‘ah wa l-nashr, 1981), 909-915; al-Jīlī (ii), 210.

[58] Quoted in Seyyed Nasr, Sufi Essays (New York: Schocken Books, 1977), 111.

[59] Colin Turner, Islam without Allah?: The Rise of Religious Externalism in Safavid Iran (Richmond: Curzon, 2000), 120.

[60] See James Winston Morris, The Wisdom of the Throne: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mulla Sadra (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 15-18.

[61] Quoted in Henry Corbin, “The Imams and the Imamate,” in Shi‘ism: Doctrines, Thought, and Spirituality, trans. S.H. Nasr, H. Dabashi, and S.V. Nasr, (State University of New York Press, 1988), 167-187.

179.

[62]See Morris, 83-84; Shiguru Kamada, “Walāya in Fayḍ Kāshānī,” in Reason and Inspiration in Islam: Theology, Philosophy, and Mysticism in Muslim Thought, ed. T. Lawson (London: I.B. Tauris, 2005), 461.

[63]Muṭahharī , Insān-i kāmil, 12; 161-162.

[64]Muṭahharī, Insān-i kāmil, 49.

[65]Ahmed, What is Islam?, 398.

[66]See Binyamin Abrahamov, Ibn al-‘Arabī and the Sufis (Oxford: Anqa, 2014), 64-68.

[67]Abrahamov, Ibn al-‘Arabī and the Sufis, 36-43.

[68]Abrahamov, Ibn al-‘Arabī and the Sufis, 33.

[69]Muṭahharī, Insān-i kāmil, 34-35.

[70]Muṭahharī, Insān-i kāmil, 50-51.

[71]Muṭahharī, Insān-i kāmil, 161-162.

[72]Muṭahharī, Insān-i kāmil, 162.

[73]Muṭahharī, Wilāyah: The Station of the Master (Tehran: World Organization for Islamic Services, 1982),

67-75.

[74]See Knysh, “‘Irfan’ Revisited,” 635.

[75]Muṭahharī, Insān-i kāmil, 83.

[76]Hamid Mavani, Religious Authority and Political Thought in Twelver Shi‘ism: from Ali to post-Khomeini (Abingdon; New York: Routledge, 2013), 10.

[77]Mavani, Religious Authority and Political Thought in Twelver Shi‘ism, 10.

[78]Muṭahharī, Insān-i kāmil, 84.

[79]Muṭahharī, Insān-i kāmil, 274-276.

[80]Muṭahharī, Insān-i kāmil, 83-84.

[81]Muṭahharī Insān-i kāmil, 36-43.

[82]Muṭahharī, Insān-i kāmil, 67.

[83]Muṭahharī, Insān-i kāmil, 9.

[84]Muṭahharī, Insān-i kāmil, 12-13.

[85]Muṭahharī, Insān-i kāmil, 13.

[86]Muṭahharī, Insān-i kāmil, 13.

[87]Muṭahharī, Insān-i kāmil, 35.

[88]Muṭahharī, Insān-i kāmil, 44.

[89]Muṭahharī, Insān-i kāmil, 46.

[90]Muṭahharī, Insān-i kāmil, 44.

[91]Muṭahharī, Insān-i kāmil, 44.

[92]Muṭahharī, Insān-i kāmil, 158.

[93]Muṭahharī, Insān-i kāmil, 158.

[94]Muṭahharī, Insān-i kāmil, 34.

[95]Muṭahharī, Insān-i kāmil, 25, 79, 147-148.

[96]Muṭahharī, Insān-i kāmil, 12.

[97]Muṭahharī, Insān-i kāmil, 86.

[98]Muṭahharī, Insān-i kāmil, 25.

[99]Muṭahharī, Wilāyah: The Station of the Master,117.

Introduction[1]

With the spread of the Baha’i religion in Iran since its tumultuous birth in that country in the middle part of the nineteenth century, the persecution of its followers has been a part of Iranian history.[2] As Abbas Amanat has shown, during the Qajar period (1785-1925), anti-Babi pogroms and campaigns usually occurred during provincial or national crises such as those caused by harvest failures, famines, and epidemics. The Babis (and later Baha’is) served as scapegoats to cover the state’s failure in relation to European economic and political intrusion. Drawing the attention of the public to the evils of this ‘devious sect’ served to consolidate the relationship between the Qajar government and the clergy.[3] With the rise of Reza Shah to power, physical assaults, including murder, against Baha’is considerably decreased but did not cease. In 1926, angry mobs killed somewhere between eight to twelve Baha’is in Jahrum. The attacks were apparently instigated by a majlis representative who sought to gain favor with anti-Baha’i religious leaders in order to secure reelection. The Baha’is complained to the local and national authorities to obtain redress but were denied. This was the last incident of mass killing of Baha’is during Reza Shah’s reign.[4] Although immunity from physical attacks was provided in the closing years of Reza Shah’s rule, the government forbade Baha’i meetings, closed Baha’i centers and Baha’i schools, and harassed Baha’is on matters concerning census forms, marriage certificates, and birth certificates. It also dismissed some Baha’i government employees and stripped several Baha’is serving in the army of their rank.[5] The motivation behind such harsh measures might lie in Reza Shah’s determination “to subordinate all other loyalties to allegiance to his person,”[6] or perhaps in his intention to avoid unnecessary friction with the ulama, that is, friction beyond what was inevitable for the implementation of his “modernizing” ideas. With Reza Shah’s forced abdication and Mohammad Reza Shah’s accession to the throne in 1941, the influence of the ulama resurged, and a new era began. Historical narratives published in Iran after the Islamic Revolution usually depict the Baha’is in the Pahlavi period as living an imagined state of comfort and bliss, partaking of privileges denied to other citizens.[7] Careful study of the primary sources, however, paints a different picture. Moving away from simplistic and monolithic narratives, this paper will investigate the multi-layered, multi-faceted history of the Baha’i community of Iran during the reign of the last Pahlavi monarch. I will argue that the situation of Baha’is during Mohammad Reza Shah’s reign (1941-1979) went through different phases. The first phase, from1941 through 1955, was a period characterized by physical danger, during which Baha’is were scapegoated in the interactions among the government, the clerics and the people, and experienced several bloody incidents, the culmination of which was the 1955 anti-Baha’i campaign and its aftermaths. The second phase, from the late 1950s to around 1977, marked almost two decades of relative respite from physical attacks, during which Baha’is enjoyed more security than before, without ever being officially recognized as a religious community and while their existence as Baha’is was essentially ignored or denied. The last two years of the reign of the Shah comprised the third phase, the revival of a bloody period. It must be added that given the rather long span of the period under study, and the multi-faceted nature of the subject, this article can do no more than provide an overview.

The 1940s and Early 1950s: Tumultuous and Bloody Years

The 1940s and early 1950s were tumultuous, at times, even bloody years, for the Baha’i community of Iran. After the relative suppression of their activities in the last years of Reza Shah’s reign, the mid-1940s coincided with new plans in the Baha’i community for pioneering (migrating to places with fewer or no Baha’is) and propagating their faith, inside as well as outside Iran.[8] The 1940s also witnessed the re-empowerment of the Shi‘i clerics who largely viewed Baha’is as enemies of Islam, the relative weakness of the central government under the young and inexperienced king, and a judiciary system unwilling or incapable of protecting the Baha’is. The combination of these factors exposed Baha’is to episodes of severe persecution.

When the young Mohammad Reza Shah (d. 1980) acceded to the throne in 1941, among his strategies to consolidate power was appeasing the clerics.[9] The astute politician, Muhammad Ali Furughi,[10] told journalists in his press conference as the young Shah’s first prime minister, that “religion must also be supported” (bi din ham himayat bayad kard).[11] Furughi played a pivotal role in strengthening the new monarch in the wake of the forced abdication of Reza Shah, and acted as an experienced advisor to the apprehensive young Shah. Supporting religion meant first and foremost backing the Shi‘i clerics. Fearful of the spread of Communism in Iran, and wary of experienced and strong politicians such as Ahmad Qavam (d. 1955), the Shah forged strong ties with the clerics, the most prominent of whom was Ayatollah al-‘Uzma Haji Aqa Husayn Burujirdi (d. 1961), the sole marja‘-i taqlid of the Iranian Shi‘is between 1947 and 1961, who, as has been demonstrated elsewhere,[12] was forcefully and unabashedly opposed to the Baha’i religion. The Shah and the Ayatollah would have several meetings, during which Burujirdi expressed his demands. Burujirdi played a key role in revitalizing the Hawza in Qum and led the seminary from the 1940s. In his position as head of the seminary, he sent seminary student to different parts of Iran with the aim of suppressing the Baha’is.[13] What one of these emissaries, Ahmad Shahrudi, has recorded of Burujirdi’s words when dispatching him and two others, provides a possible explanation of the sporadic cases of murder of Baha’is in the 1940s and early 1955 in different parts of Iran. It also reflects the sense of power and immunity vis-à-vis the law that the Grand Ayatollah felt: “Go and kill them (Baha’is)! If you are able to, then do so and kill them! Kill and set your minds at ease (bikushid va itminan dashtih bashid).”[14] Along with the re-empowerment of the ‘ulama, many Islamic societies were formed, almost all with anti-Baha’i agendas, with many followers among the laity, not only in Tehran, but also in other cities such as Qum, Shiraz, and Mashhad.[15]

In the first three years of Mohammad Reza shah’s reign, the persecutions ranged from expelling Baha’is from cities and villages; looting, raiding, plundering, stoning and burning down homes and places of work; and uprooting trees and the like. While harsh and brutal, these persecutions seldom involved acts of murder.[16] Rather than proper prosecution and punishment of the offenders and their instigators, the government issued a circular that officially placed restrictions on Baha’i activities and prohibited Baha’i governmental employees from “teaching” their faith (which, for the most part, simply meant openly speaking about it).[17] The government’s lack of prosecution, coupled with the circular, emboldened the religious zealots. As a result, the severity of the attacks increased. In Shahrud, following a full month of tension and threats, mobs attacked, looted and burned the homes and shops of Baha’is and brutally murdered three Baha’is in August 1944 (Murdad 1323).[18] This was the beginning of more than a decade of episodes of sporadic killing of Baha’is coinciding with dispatches of clerics by Ayatollah Burujirdi to teach Islam in villages and towns. In the summer of 1947/1326, the young and successful engineer Abbas Shahidzadah and a fellow Baha’i, Habib Allah Hushmand, were murdered in Shahi and Sarvistan respectively; in 1949/1328, Dr. Sulayman Birjis was brutally murdered in Kashan,[19]and in 1950/1329, Ghulam Reza Akhzari and his son Nur Allah were killed near Yazd and Bahram Rawhani was murdered in Taft. More murders followed: in 1951/1330, in Najafabad, Muhammad Kayvani; in 1952/1331, in the village of Ramjin, near Qazvin, Nur al-Din Fatheazam; and in 1953/1332, in Luristan, Rahman Kulayni (these all being documented murders).[20] In most of these cases, Baha’is were scapegoated during times of political or social crisis. In most instances, one or more clerics had instigated Shiites to commit acts of violence.

Apart from the clerics, there were also lay anti-Baha’i individuals who abused their power in the service of their prejudices. It could not, for example, have been an accident that the same police officer named Fatimi was the head of the police office in 1944 in Shahrud, in 1947 in Shahi and in 1949 in Kashan, when each of the above-mentioned episodes occurred without any police protection. Fatimi is reported to have ignored the appeals when the early signs of dangers had been observed and reported.[21] Another example of the abuse of power by lay anti-Baha’i individuals is the unlawful imposition of an exorbitant tax, much higher than the actual value of the relevant properties, on the Baha’i community of Iran in the 1970s, mostly as a result of the anti-Baha’i attitudes of those in charge, particularly in the Ministry of Finance.[22]

In all of these cases, Baha’is filed complaints via legal channels and requested investigations. Officials seldom responded to the complaints, and investigations, when carried out, placed the blame at the feet of Baha’is for provoking such attacks by speaking openly about their religion.[23] In some cases, officials refused to investigate the case because the complaint had been filed by the Baha’i institutions and the authorities believed responding to the complaint would be tantamount to officially recognizing the Baha’i institutions.[24] Murderers, often acting collectively, were never punished. For example, the killers of Dr. Birjis, who had collectively confessed to his murder, were all exonerated due to “the lack of evidence.”[25] In rare instances where the government arrested someone, collective action by a number of clerics exerted pressure on the government to release the culprits.[26] In one exceptional instance where the killer of two Baha’i was put on trial and received a death sentence, the verdict was never carried out: in 1951, Muhammad Husayn Ansari confessed to the murder of two Baha’is, fifty-nine year old Ghulamriza Akhzari and his son Nur Allah. When Ayatollah Burujirdi heard that a Muslim was set to be executed for having murdered two Baha’is, he became extremely angry and sent his protégé, the then young Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, to the Shah to request a stay of execution.[27] This he did, as the accounts record.[28]

In other instances, the fact that the murderers usually acted collectively, and were supported by the radical Islamist group, Fada’iyan-i Islam, spared them from punishment. When the seventeen people who had killed Fatheazam were on trial, the Fada’iyan-i Islam gathered large sums of money from the Bazaar to hire a seasoned attorney to defend the killers. Twenty members of the terror organization attended the court hearing and threatened the family of the deceased outside the courtroom. A judicial system unwilling to oppose the Fada’iyan and unmotivated to defend the rights of the murdered Baha’is, exonerated the murderers who proceeded to collectively celebrate their victory in the company of the prominent cleric Muhammad Bihbahani. [29]

While most of these murders did not attract much public attention, the murder of Dr. Birjis did, perhaps because of his prominence as a physician serving the deprived people of a small city, the bold way in which the murderers declared what they had done, and the judiciary’s blatant disregard for justice and the rule of law. An unprecedented wave of sympathy towards the victim swept over the country. The Society of the Physicians of Iran (Kanun Pizishkan-i Iran) wrote a letter to the Shah requesting that an investigation be opened and the culprits to be punished. Several newspapers and magazines wrote articles on the events. And Iranian students in Switzerland sent a cablegram to the State, attracting their attention to the international repercussions of such “savage” acts.[30] It was perhaps in an attempt to dilute the sympathy, that shortly after, Baha’is faced the baseless accusation of murdering a Muslim woman and her five children in Abarqu in 1949/1328. The deliberate calumny lead to the arrest, unfair trial and years of imprisonment of a number of innocent Baha’is, the death of one of them in prison, and the execution of an innocent Muslim who the authorities refused to believe was a Muslim (and not a Baha’i), despite his many pleas.[31]

After the coup d’etat of 1953, with the Shah indebted to prominent clerics such as Ayatollah Abu al-Qasim Kashani and Ayatollah Muhammad Bihbahani for their support during the coup, clerics were given greater latitude to persecute Baha’is. According to one account, in an attempt to show his gratitude to Ayatollah Kashani, the Shah sent the high-ranking officer Batmanqilich to ask if he had any specific requests. The Ayatollah called for the Baha’i Center in Tehran to be demolished.[32] Ayatollah Burujirdi, who had finally taken the Shah’s side in 1953, likewise demanded from the Shah to suppress the Baha’is, as discussed below.

The 1955 Anti-Baha’i Campaign and its Aftermaths

Ayatollah Burujirdi’s own account of his interactions with the Shah in the lead up to the 1955 anti-Baha’i campaign highlights court-clerics relationship at the time and the ways in which Baha’is served as pawns in this interaction:

Whenever I met with the Shah, I emphasized that he must put an end to [the activities of] this misled and misleading (zallah-yi muzillah) sect. [The Shah] promised [he would do so], but did not keep his word. In a subsequent visit, I pressured him [to act]. He responded: “I am unable to do so. You must help [me]. I said: “What authority do I have? All the power is in your hands.” He responded: “Ask people to write and complain. When the complaints are forwarded to me, I will have just cause to act.” It was not a bad idea. After that visit, we urged people in various provinces to write letters of complaint against (the Baha’is). When Ramadan arrived, we told Mr. Falsafi to give speeches attacking and condemning them. Because of these steps, the Shah ordered Batmanqilich[33] to destroy the Hazirat al-Quds (the national Baha’i center in Tehran).[34]

The rest of the 1955 story is well-known.[35] The Shah sanctioned[36] Burujirdi’s disciple, the skilled orator Hujjat al-Islam Falsafi to deliver a series of fiery speeches against the Baha’is, which were broadcast at noon every day during the month of Ramadan when religious fervour was at a peak. Falsafi’s talks unleashed a wave of anti-Baha’i violence across the country. In smaller towns and localities, incited mobs raided, plundered and burned houses and other buildings belonging to Baha’is, destroyed Baha’i cemeteries, threatened many Baha’is with rape and murder (actually raping some), forced many Baha’is into mosques in order to force them to recant their faith, and coerced others to publicly declare their recantation in the press. Some children and youth were expelled from school. Many government employees were fired.[37] In some localities, such as Najafabad, the clerics forbade trading with Baha’is.[38] In others, they separated women from their husbands and forced them to marry Muslims.[39] In Tehran, the army occupied the Baha’i Center, and high ranking military officials and clerics jointly demolished its dome,[40] an action some contemporaries interpreted as the state’s way of preventing a full-blown Baha’i massacre.[41] When rumours spread that the state would not protect Baha’is from assaults, mobs killed seven Baha’is in the village of Hurmuzak on 28 July 1955.[42] Prior to the event, Baha’is in Hurmuzak had made frequent appeals to the authorities. The law-enforcement officers present in the village not only did not assist them but in fact participated in the persecution.[43]

From the beginning of the persecutions, in the same manner in which they responded to earlier episodes of abuse in the 1940s, the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of Iran lodged several appeals for protection and justice with the Iranian authorities. Shortly after the assaults began, on 9 May 1955, the National Spiritual Assembly addressed the Prime Minister of Iran, protesting the fact that government-sponsored radio stations such as Radio Tehran and the radio of the Air Force had vilified and misrepresented the Baha’is. In the same letter, the National Spiritual Assembly explained some of the Baha’i beliefs and principles, emphasizing that Baha’is were not “negligent of God,” unconcerned about their country, and “bereft of a moral code and a standard of ethics,” as the two speakers, Falsafi and Shikuhzadah, had claimed. The Assembly closed their letter by mentioning that the Baha’i international community had been recognized as a non-governmental organization at the UN. They, furthermore, drew attention to the basic human right to fundamental freedoms (which included freedom of religion) as defined in the Charter of the United Nations, to which Iran was a signatory, and demanded that the authorities intervene to prevent assaults against Baha’is.[44]

Baha’i institutions around the globe also sent telegrams and letters of appeal to Iran, addressing the Shah, the Prime Minister and, in some cases, the Senate. For example, on 24 May 1955, an initial set of cablegrams were sent, appealing the authorities to turn their attention to the plight of the Baha’is in Iran. The cablegrams were followed two days later by letters with further details. These cablegrams and letters clarified that the Baha’is were neither hostile to the government nor opposed to Islam, the two main charges leveled against them in the speeches broadcast on the radio and in other media outlets. They also emphasized that Baha’is of all lands regard Iran as a place of pilgrimage. Finally, they appealed the rights of Baha’is in Iran to be protected.[45] Aware of how sensitive the Iranian regime—and in particular the Shah—was about its public image, the authors of the cablegrams stressed their shock at reading about the persecution of the Baha’is of Iran in the press. The letters went on to provide further details. For example, in their letter to the Shah, the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of the United States emphasized that their “information concerning the actions taken by the Iranian Government against the Baha’is” had been “gathered from the public press,” adding that this news had been published “in many American cities.”[46] They also informed Prime Minister ‘Ala that news about the suppression of Baha’is was “widely reported” in “the public press.”[47] As the campaign of lies and misrepresentations in the media and the persecution of Baha’is in the country continued, and after previous communications were ignored, more letters were addressed to the Iranian government. This time, the missives reminded recipients of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, cognizant of the regime’s concern about its public image among the nations of the world: “As signatory to the charter and Bill of Human Rights, Iran has assumed a responsibility in the eyes of the entire world,” wrote the representatives of American Baha’is.[48] The National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of Egypt and Sudan wrote to Mohammad Reza Shah on 1 June 1955 that it had learned, “through the press,” of the “shocking news” of attacks launched against Baha’is. Expounding on the Baha’i teachings in order to correct the distortions, inventions and lies levelled against the Baha’is, the letter lamented the fact that the “high reputation” Iran enjoys among Baha’is has been “injured” by the aggression committed against Baha’is, and added that the “persecutors disregarded the welfare of their country and rendered themselves violators of human rights and freedom.” In their letter to the Prime Minster, also dated 1 June 1955, the representatives of the Baha’is of Egypt and Sudan called his attention to “[t]he Charter of Human Rights declared by the United Nations and unanimously approved by all the civilized countries including Iran.”[49]

The numerous appeals, in particular those written outside Iran, at last bore fruit and the harshest attacks ceased for some time (albeit not completely as we will see). The government found that it could no longer comply with the wish of the ulama to effect or sanction extermination of the Iranian Baha’i community once and for all.[50] As Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi has demonstrated in his study of the episode, the 1955 anti-Baha’i campaign was both the apogee of the state-cleric collaboration and the point of their separation.[51]

The appeals, with their emphasis on the charter of human rights, would have far-reaching effects. It was perhaps, at least partly, as a face-saving, compensatory move triggered by the fear of becoming known internationally as a government that does not protect its own people that the Shah’s regime grew particularly concerned with championing human rights. Princess Ashraf Pahlavi, the twin sister of the Shah, was even designated as the Chair of the UN Commission on Human Rights in 1965. Three years later, the first UN International Conference on Human Rights was held in Tehran between 22 April and 12 May 1968 (2-22 Urdibihisht 1347).[52]

Late 1950s to 1977-78: Relative Safety

In addition to the government, particularly the Shah himself, becoming concerned with the regime’s reputation beyond Iran’s frontiers, the gradual consolidation of the Shah’s power, and the relative separation between the government and the clerics provided Baha’is with more safety. The incidents of plunder, looting, and murder dropped in number, though they never ceased.[53] The last sporadic murders (before 1977/1356) occurred in 1958/1337 when three Baha’is were killed: Nusrat Allah Mavaddati in Qurvah, Ardishir Rawhani in Khash, and Mirza ‘Ali-Akbar Khan Safa’i in Khalajabad-i Arak.[54] One other wave of raiding and looting coincided with public demonstrations in support of Khomeini on 5 June 1963/15 Khurdad 1342. On that day, in the tradition of almost all socio-political upheavals in Iran, in a number of cities and localities, mobs attacked Baha’i properties. In Tehran, mobs raided the Baha’i cemetery, committed arson, and broke some of the grave stones. In Kashan, they plundered the Baha’i center and the homes and shops of Baha’is. Eight families lost all their belongings. The culprits were arrested but were released in a few days with no trial or punishment.[55] In Aran va Bidgul in the province of Isfahan, demonstrators raided and plundered the homes of Baha’is.[56] In Isfahan, Shiraz, Saysan and elsewhere, however, the intervention of law enforcement forces prevented mobs from carrying out further attacks.[57] From around this time to the last two years of Mohammad Reza Shah’s rule, for some thirteen years, Iranian Baha’is lived in a state of relative peace.

The absence of physical violence (murder, mass attacks, plunder, looting, arson, etc.) against Baha’is from the mid-1960s to 1977-78 can be traced to the dominance in Iran in this period of what Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi refers to as a “rights-based account of Iranian history,” fundamentally different from the earlier accounts which emphasized ethnic and language purity. This “tolerance-based” civilizational account, Tavakoli-Targhi argues, “synthesized the pre-Islamic and the Islamic pasts into an organic and other-accommodating whole.” It claimed that Iranian culture and Islam embodied the principles set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The coupling of the Cyrus Cylinder with the latter, Tavakoli-Targhi adds, “made possible the telling of a multi-confessional, multi-ethnic, and multi-lingual civilizational narrative.”[58]

Certainly, for the Shah, who considered himself the heir to Cyrus the Great, whom he told to “sleep in peace” because he was “awake” during the 2,500-year celebration of the Persian Empire,[59] it was only natural to see himself as the new monarchical champion of human rights. As mentioned earlier, Baha’i institutions both inside, and more importantly, outside Iran, in all the letters of appeal they sent to the Iranian government and the Shah himself, reminded the recipients of Iran’s official approval of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948.

No Right to Work According to the Law

The absence of mob attacks and major physical assaults did not by any means guarantee full civil rights to Baha’is, even in this phase. For example, with regards to the right to work, the pattern for Baha’i (un)employment remained almost the same throughout Mohammad Reza Shah’s reign: Baha’is were not eligible for employment in any government positions.[60] The implementation of this law, however, varied in different times and places, depending largely on the attitude of those tasked with implementing the law.[61]

In some sectors, like the army or primary and secondary education, the employment of Baha’is was particularly restricted. Baha’is who were employed in the army usually had technical jobs, such as medical doctors, accountants or engineers. In addition to the limitations already present, Mohammad Reza Shah issued a special order on 1 December 1955/9 Azar 1334 barring new employment of Baha’is in the army, and forbidding those who were already in the army from publicly declaring [their faith] (nabayad tazahur kunand), at the risk of not being promoted.[62]

The Civil Employment Act (Qanun-i istikhdam-i kishvari), ratified on 22 May 1966/31 Khurdad 1345, explicitly mentioned that lack of prior “convictions for espousing corrupt beliefs” was a condition of application for employment in governmental jobs. The executive regulations appended to the law by different branches of the government invariably required applicants to clarify their religious affiliation. Ads for governmental jobs always included, as a basic eligibility requirement, belief in one of the four “official religions of the country: Islam, Judaism, Christianity and Zoroastrianism.” which basically meant that Baha’is were not allowed even to apply. However, the way such regulations were put into practice depended to a large degree on the attitude of the individuals directly in charge. Those who did not harbor anti-Baha’i sentiments accepted that Baha’is leave the religion column on forms blank. This seemed to have been the only way for a Baha’i to get a job in a government organization, and many did. Indicating one’s religion as Baha’i, however, would almost invariably lead to outright rejection of one’s application, unless the organization was semi-governmental (i.e., partly private). In the 1960s, when the internal security organization known as SAVAK[63] took control of all government positions and began to screen applicants for government jobs, stricter measures were enacted. These years coincided with the early years of the premiership of Amir Abbas Hoveyda who “appears to have felt impelled to be particularly severe in his treatment of Baha’is”[64] in face of accusations made by his political enemies that he himself was a Baha’i. [65] According to SAVAK documents, only two weeks after Hoveyda became prime minister, SAVAK officials conveyed to him a number of suggestions, based on advice received from pro-Shah clerics, as ways of debunking the rumor that he was a Baha’i. One of these suggestions called on the prime minister to refrain from employing Baha’is in government offices.[66]

Here, I would like to present three cases that shed light on the work conditions of Baha’is during Mohammad Reza Shah’s reign:

(1) On 27 February 1966, a year into Hoveyda’s premiership, the nursing school of the National Oil Company dismissed 19-year-old student Minu Yazdani for having indicated four months earlier in her employment forms that she was a Baha’i.[67] When she appealed the decision to expel her before the administrative officials of the Oil Company, they told her the decision had been made based on a circular from the prime minister’s office that called for members of the “misled sect” (firqah-yi zzalah) employed after a certain date to be dismissed.[68]

(2) In 1969, Manuchihr Sharif al-Attiba, a young physician who applied for a psychiatry residency in a hospital affiliated with Tehran University, was denied admission for having identified himself as a Baha’i on the application form. Six years later, however, in July 1975, he was accepted for a psychiatry residency at Pahlavi (Shiraz) University, even though he again stated his religion on the application forms.[69] This example shows that the treatment Baha’is varied in different times and places.

(3) Colonel Husayn Vahad-i Haqq entered the army high school during the reign of Reza Shah. Later, he enrolled in the military university, studied military engineering and in the process learned several foreign languages. A high score on an exam administered in 1971 led to his being chosen to be sent to foreign countries as the military attaché of the embassy of Iran. The General in charge of the matter summoned Vahdat-i Haqq and told him that despite his high score on the exam, he could not be sent on the mission because of his religion. The only solution would be to change his religion in his file because, “this file must be signed by His Imperial Majesty, and he will not do so [if he sees you that have said that you are a Baha’i].” [70] Vahdat-i Haqq responded that if he accepted to lie about his religion, how could he then be trusted to not betray the Shah and his country by selling military secrets? Later, the General informed Vahdat-i Haqq that when reporting the case to the Shah, he conveyed Vahdat-i Haqq’s remarks to the monarch who in turn said, “He is right, he is right.” The Shah then approved Vahdat-i Haqq’s appointment as the military attaché of the embassy of Iran in Germany. Under the Islamic Republic, Vahdat-i Haqq was arrested and executed in 1982. This third example shows that the authorities did close their eyes when there was a need for the expertise of a Baha’i.

Baha’is and Positions of Power

On the positive side, during the reign of the second Pahlavi monarch, Baha’is for the most part (apart from a number of sporadic cases) were not denied the right to higher education. This fact, combined with the emphasis placed in the Baha’i religion on education led to a large number of Baha’is receiving advanced degrees. As we saw above, their expertise, if seriously needed, led in some cases to officials looking the other way on the question of religious identity, allowing some Baha’is to secure high-level positions (again, provided that they left the religion column on official forms blank).[71] They were also permitted to be active in the private sector. As a result, a number of individual Baha’is became successful entrepreneurs and industrialists.

In fact, among the factors that made the life of the Baha’is in Iran under Mohammad Reza Shah’s rule complex and uneven is that in the midst of the official discrimination in employment laws, there were a number of individual Baha’is who held prominent positions.[72] In fact, when it came to public posts, Baha’is, as a matter of principle, could not accept any position that was political in nature or required membership in a political party.[73] As we will see below, the only Baha’i who held a political position, General Sani‘i, ultimately had to choose between keeping his political position and being a member of the Baha’i community.

Much has been written of the Shah’s personal physician, General Dr. ‘Abd al-Karim Ayadi (d. 1980), being a Baha’i—a fact usually cited in anti-Baha’i polemics widely disseminated in Iran under the Islamic Republic to try and establish ties between the former regime, and particularly the monarch himself, and the Baha’is of Iran.[74] Ayadi was a well-known Baha’i.[75] More than merely a physician, he functioned as the Shah’s “chief of staff, private secretary,” and “trusted emissary.”[76] Officially, he was the Shah’s physician, a post that was not political in nature. Highly trusted by the Shah, he was the head of the Health Office of the army, a position that made him responsible for all medicinal purchases for both the army and the Organization of Social Insurance. The memoirs of an Iranian who, for a long time, directly observed the way Ayadi managed this task depicts him as highly diligent and responsible.[77] While much has been written about Ayadi’s power and influence because of his proximity to the Shah, the fact is that during the anti-Baha’i campaign of 1955, when Baha’is needed protection most, he was sent to Italy for nine months, apparently to avoid instigating the clerics by the presence of a Baha’i in the Shah’s Court. Ironically, despite his position, he was subject to SAVAK surveillance—an indication of the strength of the “animus against Baha’is.”[78]As the political unrest grew in the country in the last year of his reign, the Shah removed Ayadi from his position as his personal physician. Ayadi left Iran before the victory of the Islamic Revolution.[79]

Next in line of people who were actually Baha’is and were given a prominent role under Mohammad Reza Shah’s rule was General Asad Allah Sani‘i (d.1998).[80] During the time when Muhamad Reza was the Crown Prince, Sani‘i was appointed the Head of his Office. Later, he became the Minister of War. Since this was a political position and Baha’is are not to accept such positions, he was advised by the Baha’i administration to resign. The Shah, however, refused to accept his letter of resignation. When he chose not to relinquish his position, he lost his Baha’i administrative rights.[81]

The majority of prominent people in political positions, usually mentioned as Baha’is in the narrative of the Islamic Republic, were not Baha’is.[82] Some came from Baha’i families or had Baha’i ancestors, but never identified themselves with the religion, and even openly expressed their allegiance to Islam.[83] Such was the case with Amir ‘Abbas Hoveyda (d. 1979) whose grandfather was a Baha’i, but whose father had distanced himself from the religion, accepted a political position, and married a Muslim.[84] Hoveyda was raised a Muslim, but that did not prevent the ulama from voicing dissatisfaction with his premiership. The Shah himself knew Hoveyda was not a Baha’i and is said to have been angered by rumors to the contrary.[85] As mentioned earlier, in order to prove that he was not a Baha’i, Hoveyda took measures such as more strictly enforcing the law of government employment being restricted to Muslims and recognized religious minorities—hence barring Baha’is. Ironically, however, he is also reported to have offered a well-known Baha’i, General ‘Ali Muhammad Khadimi (d.1978), who was the head of Iran’s national airlines (HOMA), the new post of Minister of Transportation, an offer which General Khadimi declined, clearly stating that his religious beliefs did not allow him to hold a political position.[86]

Another person who held political office and was not a Baha’i but is nonetheless introduced as one in historical narratives sanctioned by the Islamic Republic is Parviz Sabiti (b. 1936), the second in command of SAVAK. Sabiti was born into a Baha’i family, but his father had lost his rights to participate in Baha’i community affairs, and Sabiti himself never became a Baha’i. This fact was announced by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of Iran on 15 Farvardin 1358/4 April 1979.[87] In a short autobiography apparently written when he sought to join SAVAK, Sabiti asserted that while his parents were Baha’is, he considered himself a Muslim from the start of high school.[88] In an interview in recent years, however, he clarified that he did not believe in any religion and did not hesitate to make disparaging remarks about the Baha’i faith.[89]

Among the most successful Iranian Baha’is of this era was Habib Allah Sabit (d. 1990), an entrepreneur and industrialist whose companies employed more than ten thousand people.[90] He displayed keen business acumen from a young age and gradually amassed a fortune through innovative and productive ways. He brought television to Iran, only to see it taken over by the government. His wealth brought him into contact with influential people. In 1953, when he was in New York, Mohammad Reza Shah’s mother traveled there. Given the political situation in Iran at the time, the members of the Iranian Embassy were reluctant to receive her. Upon disembarking the ship, the Queen Mother broke her leg, and Sabit and his wife took her to the hospital and cared for her. This event marked the start of an amicable relationship between the couple and the Queen Mother that lasted many years.[91] During the 1955 anti-Baha’i campaign, he tried to use his connections to mitigate the dangers that Baha’is faced.[92]

There were a number of other wealthy Baha’is living in Iran during this period. The discussion of their social and financial activities is beyond the scope of this paper. The acknowledgement of their existence, and the fact that they had the opportunity to prosper, however, is necessary for a realistic appraisal of the Baha’i community during the reign of Mohammad Reza Shah.[93]

Anti-Baha’i Societies                                                                           

Baha’is were also unofficially permitted to hold their own gatherings, provided they were low-key and did not draw public attention. At the same time, anti-Baha’i societies were supported by SAVAK to harass Baha’is and interrupt their meetings. The Anjuman-i Khayriyyah-’i Hujjatiyyah-’i Mahdaviyyat, or Anjuman-i Zidd-i Baha’iyyat[94] was founded by Shaykh Mahmoud Halabi with the permission of the Grand Ayatollah Burujirdi, apparently right after the 1953 coup that reinstated Mohammad Reza Shah in power. The Anjuman, which listed non-involvement in politics as one of its principles, was supported by SAVAK—a well-documented fact.[95] The regime and SAVAK likely used the Anjuman as a conduit to channel the religious sentiments of the youth and distract them from dissident religio-political groups. Some sympathetic scholars and former members have tried to depict the Anjuman as a largely progressive and non-violent association.[96] A more accurate depiction of its activities and their at times violent nature has been recorded by others among its members[97] as well as by Baha’is who been physically attacked by the group. Baha’is, moreover, have noted that law enforcement officials have been unwilling to prosecute members of the Anjuman when the victims of their attacks were revealed to be Baha’is.[98] The statement made by the reformist Muslim ‘Abd al-Karim Soroush as to why he left the Anjuman as a young man testifies to the fact that its activities included some physical violence which led the young Soroush to dissociate himself from it.[99]

The Hujjatiyyah members were given free rein by SAVAK to disrupt Baha’i gatherings, although their main organizational duty was to find non-Baha’is who seemed to have been attracted to Baha’i ideas and try to convince them not to join the Baha’i community. Neither the collaboration of SAVAK nor the freedom to harass Baha’is was exclusive to Hujjatiyyah as an anti-Baha’i organization. The older organization, Anjuman-i Tablighat-i Islami, established in 1941 by ‘Ata Allah Shihabpur,[100] is reported to have sought and obtained the support of SAVAK in 1972 in its activities against the Baha’i community.[101]

Many members of these anti-Baha’i organizations were schoolteachers. The childhood and early youth memories of this author in Shiraz is filled with memories from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s of teachers from both elementary and secondary schools who attacked everything that Baha’is considered holy with no opportunity on the part of Baha’i students or their parents to defend their beliefs or protest the verbal abuse.

Officially Non-Existent

Throughout the reign of Mohammad Reza Shah, Baha’is as Baha’is did not have a social existence.[102] With the exception of anti-Baha’i polemical works, the name “Baha’i” almost never appeared on TV or the radio or in newspapers, books, and magazines. In the extremely rare cases when Baha’is were alluded to in mass media, they were called “firqah-’i zallah” (the misguided sect). Even the most successful Baha’i entrepreneur, artist, or physician could not be publically identified as such. Baha’is were legally “non-persons” in Iranian public life.[103] At one point, the representative of the Iranian delegation told the United Nations that there were no Baha’is in Iran.[104] This fiction was maintained throughout the reign of Mohammad Reza Shah.[105]

1977-1978, Unsafe Again

The socio-political turmoil of the last two years of the reign of the Shah rekindled the pattern of Baha’i persecution during times of crisis. In May 1977, Ruh Allah Taymuri was killed in the village of Fazil Abad near Gurgan.[106] The murderers were arrested, but the actual trial was postponed numerous times. Finally, they were released upon getting a letter from the family of the deceased exempting the killers from any possible penalties or liabilities. Worried of the possibility that this indicated a new wave of persecutions, the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of Iran advised the Baha’is to pursue a legal course and appeal to the local or national government should they face persecution.[107] On 7 November 1978/16 Aban 1357, General ‘Ali Muhammad Khadimi was assassinated in front of his wife at their home. The assassins were most likely SAVAK agents.[108] Less than two weeks later, the Islamist newspaper Sitarah-’i Islam [The Star of Islam] reported on 20 November 1978/29 Aban 1357: “Baha’is are the cause of problems in our country and must be punished.” The heightened religious fervor of the Islamists was accompanied by sporadic attacks on Baha’is, in different parts of Iran. In December 1978, mob violence unleashed against Baha’is in the village of Sa‘diyyah near Shiraz extended to inside the city. From early December, with the beginning of the holy month of Muharram—when Shi‘i religious sentiments are usually at their most fervent—rumors began to spread in the suburbs of Shiraz about setting the city’s Baha’i Center and the homes of Baha’is on fire. The village of Sa‘diyyah was where these threats materialized. Sa‘diyyah was home to a mixed Baha’i and Muslim community with familial ties among families from the two religions. A cleric spoke from the pulpit on three successive nights against the Baha’is, declaring that they must convert to Islam or suffer the burning of their homes.[109] On the 13^th of December, a mob gathered at the door of a Baha’i named Sifat Allah Fahandizh (d. 1978) who was a low ranking officer in the army. They were intent on dragging Fahandizh and his family to the mosque to force them to recant their faith. According to some accounts, they also threatened to take away his daughter (in effect, a threat of rape, a highly feared taboo in Iranian culture). Fahandizh appealed to law enforcement officers for help, but they never arrived. He then went to the rooftop of his house. When some among the mob attempted to force down the door to his home, he did what the original assailants had wished him to do all along: he shot at those attacking him with his gun. In return, both he and his wife were gunned down. That a Baha’i had killed Muslims gave the instigators the excuse they had sought. Mobs attacked the homes of Baha’is in Sa‘diyyah and set them on fire. News of the attacks spread quickly. Mobs of two hundred men or more, all wearing black as part of the ‘Ashura mourning ritual, began attacking the homes of Baha’is in Shiraz, one street at a time.[110] During the next two to three days, around two hundred Baha’i homes were raided, plundered and set on fire, as were a significant number of shops and factories.[111] For the most part, the military forces and police did not interfere or actively restrain or oppose the assaulting mobs. In fact, in some cases, the gas required to fuel the fire was obtained from military vehicles with the permission of military personnel. Fearing that the escalation in violence might get completely out of hand, Ayatollah Shaykh Baha’ al-Din Mahallati (d. 1981) at last announced that “the habitat, houses, and shops of others must be protected even if they are not Muslims, and that religious conflicts must stop.”[112] Meanwhile, Ayatollah Ruh Allah Khomeini in France[113] and Ayatollah Hajj ‘Abd al-Husayn Dastghayb (d.1981) in Shiraz[114] both accused the Pahlavi regime and its secret police, SAVAK, of orchestrating the incident.[115] Shortly thereafter, in other parts of Iran, Baha’is were also persecuted. A particularly severe case was in Buyr-Ahmad where a series of mob attacks began on the night of 12 January 1979/22 Day 1357.[116] A number of Baha’is were killed in the process, and elsewhere in Iran in the last months of the reign of the Pahlavi regime.[117] While there is evidence to suggest that the November 1978 attacks in Sa‘diyyah and Shiraz may have been instigated by SAVAK, with regards to these other incidents, in retrospect, it is difficult to know whether it was SAVAK instigating the attacks, or whether the clerics and people involved acted on their own when they felt there would be no governmental intervention given the unrest in the country.

Conclusion

As far as the treatment by the government, clerics and other citizens was concerned, throughout the reign of Mohammad Reza Shah, the Baha’i community of Iran passed through distinct phases: the first characterized by a lack of physical safety as a result of the collaborations between the government and the clerics, culminating in the 1955 anti-Baha’i campaign. At the height of the 1955 mass persecution of Baha’is, the Shah, concerned about his image abroad and caught between the demands of the clerics to escalate the repression of the Baha’i community on the one hand, and the need to construct the image of a champion of human rights on the other, chose the latter. Indeed, the lessons learned from the international repercussions of the 1955 anti-Baha’i campaign seem to have been one of the main reasons for the Shah to begin emphasizing human rights as a fundamental thread of the Iranian fabric.[118] The fact that the international press had accused the Iranian government of being partly responsible for some of the attacks and turning a blind eye to others made it all the more necessary for the Shah and his government to articulate and reiterate their respect for fundamental human rights. In his analysis of the repercussions of the 1955 anti-Baha’i campaign, Tavakoli-Targhi discusses how a tolerance-based civilizational narrative originally created, decades earlier, by the Bar Association of Iran, gradually developed into a more solid grand narrative of tolerance and inclusivity in the 1960s.[119] Analyzing the history of Iran in the decades prior to the Islamic Revolution, Tavakoli-Targhi refers to the continuous conflict and confrontation of two governmentalities: a jurisprudential (fiqhi), mono-confessional, and intolerant governmentality vs. a legal (civil law-based, qanuni), multi-confessional, and tolerant governmentality based on the value of “equal rights.”[120] Using this analytical lens, it can be said that the bloody history of the Baha’i community in the 1940s and the early to mid-1950s was the result of the jurisprudential governmentality, and the relative safety of the 1960s and early to mid-1970s the result of the legal, multi-confessional governmentality. In the turbulent last two years of Mohammad Reza Shah’s reign, then, the aggression against the Baha’i community was again the manifestation of jurisprudential governmentality.

Using the right to be employed in government positions as a point of departure, it can be said that, even during the period of the dominance of a tolerance-based, multi-confessional civilizational grand narrative, the Baha’i community was officially deprived of some of its basic civil rights. However, considering the varying ways in which regulations governing employment were implemented, the fact that Baha’is were free to work in the private sector, that they were, unofficially, allowed to perform their religious functions, and that the SAVAK-supported-Hujjatiyyah Society was allowed to harass them, we can conclude that life for the Baha’is of Iran during this period was far from stable or homogenous. Consequently, the history of the Baha’i community of Iran at this time was far from being a linear or monolithic narrative. As far as the monarch himself was concerned, despite his strong identification with Shi‘ism,[121] he did not particularly harbor anti-Baha’i prejudice, given his implicit trust in at least two Baha’is, Dr. ‘Abd al-Karim Ayadi, his personal physician, and General Asad Allah Sani‘i, the head of his office as Crown Prince and his Minister of War as Shah. However, whenever he felt that his power and interests would be in danger, he was ready to scapegoats Baha’is, as demonstrated by his sanctioning the clerics to start their attacks against Baha’is in 1955 and the events of the turbulent closing years of his reign.

In his interpretation of the situation of the Baha’is in the interplay between the clerics and the state in modern Iranian history, Roy Mottahedeh suggests that in Iran,

the Baha’is throughout most of their history were a pawn that…governments played in their complex game with the mullahs…[N]one of the governments was willing to surrender this pawn in a single move …Tolerating Baha’is was a way of showing mullas who was boss. Correspondingly, allowing active persecution of the Baha’is was the low-cost pawn that could be sacrificed to the mullas when the government was in trouble or in special need of mulla support.[122]

Mottahedeh’s suggestion explains the interaction between the Shah and the clerics in relation to the Baha’i community. However, there was also a third element which played a crucial role in the social life of Baha’is: everyday Iranian citizens who chose to act either as employers who ignored the religion column on official forms or as, for example, a chief of police to three different cities where Baha’is were murdered with impunity. Today, when the first two elements, the government and the clerics have merged into one, some among the third element have begun to act in promising ways by not only accepting Baha’is as Iranians rather than Iran’s “internal other” but by joining the cohort of those who express their objection to the injustices that continue to be perpetrated against the Baha’i community. The rise in consciousness by this third element merits further study.

[1] I wish to thank Omid Ghaemmaghami for his editorial comments. I have used a modified version of the Library of Congress system of transliteration sans diacritical marks and underdots. For certain famous personalities (e.g., Mohammad Reza Shah), I have used the most common spelling of their names even if such spelling does not comply with the Library of Congress system of transliteration.

[2]For multiple articles on various aspects of the Baha’i faith, see Encyclopedia Iranica, s.v. “Baha’i Faith or Bahaism.”

[3]Abbas Amanat, “The Historical Roots of the Persecution of Babis and Baha’is in Iran,” in The Baha’is of Iran: Socio-Historical Studies, Dominic Brookshaw and Seena Fazel, eds. (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2007), 170-183.

[4]Mina Yazdani, “Religious Contentions in Modern Iran, 1881-1941” (PhD Diss. University of Toronto, 2011), 229-230.

[5]Yazdani, “Religious Contentions in Modern Iran,” 237-38.

[6]Douglas Martin, “The Persecution of the Baha’is of Iran, 1844-1984,” Baha’i Studies, 12/13 (1984), 20.

[7]In the last decade or so, in addition to numerous polemical works, books have been published in the Islamic Republic of Iran which in the guise of academic studies reproduce and reinforce the government’s official narrative about the life of Baha’is under Mohammad Reza Shah. Examples include: Mas‘ud Kuhistaninijad, Ruhaniyyat –Baha’iyan (nimah-yi avval-i sal-i 1334 (Tehran: markaz-i asnad-i Inqilab-i Islami, 1386); Suraya Shahsavari, Asnad-i fa‘aliyyat-i Baha’iyan dar dawrah-yi Mohammad Reza Shah (Tehran: markaz-I asnad-i Inqilab-i Islami, 1378); Leila Chamankhah, Baha’iyyat va rijim-i Pahlavi (Tehran: Nigah-i Mu‘asir, 1391).

[8]The first organized plan for the expansion of the Baha’i faith began on 11 October 1946 (19 Mihr 1324). See Encyclopedia Iranica, s.v. “Baha’i Faith or Bahaism v. The Baha’i Community of Iran.”

[9] On Mohammad Reza Shah, see Gholam R. Afkhami, The Life and Time of the Shah (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2009); ‘Abbas Milani, The Shah (New York: Palgrave and McMillan, 2011); Homa Katouzian, The Persians: Ancient, Mediaeval and Modern Iran (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 229-287. On the Shah appeasing the clerics, Milani, The Shah, 99.

[10]On Furughi’s role in the transition of power/kingship from Reza Shah to his son see Katouzian, The Persians, 230-231.

[11][Ahmad Kasravi], Sarnivisht-i Iran chi khahad bud? 1^st ed. (Tehran: Chapkhanah Urdibihisht, 1324), 18. Available at www.kasravi.info/ketabs/sarnevesht-e-iran.pdf (accessed 25 June 2013). Writing four years into Mohammad Reza Shah’s reign, Kasravi, who published the book under the name of “An Iranian,” (yik Irani), went on to say that it was clear what Furughi meant by “supporting religion” and then blamed all the subsequent administrations, the contemporary newspapers and the Tudah Party for their support of the clerics.

[12]Mina Yazdani, “Islamic Ecumenism in Mid-Twentieth Century Iran: a Reaction to a Messianic Movement?” in the panel, “Messianism in Iranian Islam: From Conceptions to Re-Conceptions,” The Tenth Biennial Iranian Studies Conference, Montreal, Canada, 9 August, 2014.

[13]Even before coming to such prominence, Ayatollah Burujirdi had managed, on occasions, to suppress Baha’is. Once in 1927, officials dismissed a Baha’i from his job as the assistant to the head of a local branch of a governmental office (birth registration office, Idarah-yi sabt-i ahval) in Burujird, and expelled Baha’is from that city, as the Ayatollah had wished. Muhammad Husayn ‘Alavi Tabataba’i, Khatirat-i zindigani-yi Ayatollah al-‘Uzma Aqa-yi Burujirdi (Tehran: Ittila‘at, 1341/1962), 36. See also the Ayatollah’s biography on his website Paygah ittila‘-rasani-yi Hazrat-i Ayatollah Burujirdi, www.broujerdi.org/content/view/12/140/ (accessed 25 June 2013).

[14]Ghulam-Riza Karbaschi, Tarikh-i shafahi-i inqilab-i Islami (tarikh-i hawzah-yi ‘ilmiyyah-yi Qum), 1^st ed. (Tehran: Markaz-i Asnad-i Inqilab-i Islami, 1380/2001), 1:162.

[15]See Markaz-i Asnad-i Riyasat-i Jumhuri, Asnadi as anjumanha va majami‘-i mazhabi dar dawrah-yi Pahlavi (Tehran: Saziman-i Chap va Intisharat-i Vizarat-i Farhang va Irshad-i Islami, 2002/1381). For a thorough study of such societies and their goals, see Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi, “Baha’isitizi va Islamgara’i dar Iran,” Iran Nameh 19, nos. 1– 2 (Winter/Spring 2001), 79– 124; idem, “Anti- Baha’ism and Islamism in Iran,” trans. Omid Ghaemmaghami, in The Baha’is of Iran: Socio- historical Studies, ed. Dominic Parviz Brookshaw and Seena B. Fazel (London: Routledge, 2008), 200– 31.

[16]Even then sporadic cases of murder of Baha’is happened: in 1941/1320 in Ivil, Mazandaran, Mr. Jazbani, and in 1943/1322 in Ghahrukh, a village near Shahr-i Kurd, ‘Abd al-Husayn Rizvani. See Turaj Amini, Asnad–i Baha’iyan-i Iran, az sal-i 1320 ta payan-i 1331 (Stockholm, Sweden: Baran, 2012), 3-4.

[17]See the text of the circular in Amini, Asnad 1320 ta payan-i 1331, 491-92.

[18]For a firsthand account of the events in Shahrud, see: Y.P. Haqayiq-i guftani, dar piyramun-i hadasah-yi nangin-i Shahrud va kushtar-i Baha’iyan bih dast-i Shi‘ayan (Tehran: Parcham, 1945/1324). For primary sources pertaining to these events, see Amini, Asnad 1320 ta payan-i 1331, 506-511, 516-527; 535-617; Maymandinijad, “ Vaqi ‘ah-’i Shahrud,” Mard-i Imruz, 26 (27 Murdad 1323).

[19]For a detailed study of the murder of Dr. Birjis, see: Nasir Muhajir, “Kard-ajin kardan-i Dr. Birjis,” Baran (Spring and Summer 1387/2008), 10-24; See also: Mousa Amanat, Baha’iyan-i Kashan, ed. Noura Amanat-Samimi (Madrid, Spain: Nehal, 2012), 212-216.

[20]For the relevant documents see Amini, Asnad 1320 ta payan-i 1331, 742-753, and 580-83, 591, 594. See also, The Baha’i World, vol XII, 1950-1954 (Wilmette, Illinois, 1956, repr., 1981), 690-692, 710-711.

[21]For example, immediately before the murder of Dr. Birjis, when Baha’is in Kashan met Fatimi to express their worries about the possible consequences of fiery speeches delivered on the pulpit by a cleric who sought to instigate people against the “morally corrupt” Baha’is whose blood could be shed with impunity, he only assured them that nothing would happen. Ruh Allah Mihrabkhani, “Shahadat-i ductur Birjis,” Ahang-i Badi‘, no. 17, 4 (Isfand 1328/Feb. Mar. 1950), 4. For his support of the assailants in the 1323 Shahrud events, see Nasir Pakdaman, Qatl-i Kasravi, 2nd ed. (Sweden: Afsanah, 1998/1337), 86-87.

[22] Cyrus ‘Ala’i, “Tarikhchah-’i maliyat bar irs-i Hazrat-i Shoghi Rabbani vali-i amr-i Baha’i,” manuscript in private hands. An abstract of this article has been published in Cyrus ‘Ala’i, “Majara-yi amlak-i Shoghi Effandi,” in Iran dar ‘Asr-i Pahlavi, vol. 12, ed. Mustafa Alamuti (London: Paka Press, 1992):232-38.

[23] See for example the 7 Bahman 1326 /8 Jan. 1948 letter from the Minister of Interior to the governor-general of Fars, and the governors of a number of other cities. Amini, Asnad 1320 ta payan-i 1331, 796-97. Also see the letter written by the Minister of Interior to the Prime Minister Sa‘id on 23 Khurdad 1323/13 June 1944 in Amini, Asnad 1320 ta payan-i 1331, 482-83.

[24] For example, on 10 Bahman 1328/30 Jan. 1950, five days before the murder of Dr. Birjis, the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of Iran, the governing body of that community, wrote to the Police Commissioner to draw his attention to the impending dangers for Baha’is living in Kashan and some other parts of Iran, and to request the police’s intervention, Akhbar Amri, no. 10 (1328/1950), 90-91. Rather than providing protection, the result of this and similar complaints made after the murder of Dr. Birjis was that, Asad Allah ‘Alam (d.1978/1357), the Minister of the Interior, on 1 Isfand 1328/20 February 1955 wrote to the Prime Minister, Muhammad Sa‘id, expressing concerns that official letters from the “Assembly of Baha’is” to the government offices would lend them “official recognition” thereby “instigating the prejudice of Muslims.” Therefore, ‘Alam suggested to the Prime Minister that the Assemblies must be “categorically shut down.” See Amini, Asnad1320 ta payan-i 1331, 860. Also, the governor-general of Fars, Izz al-Mamalik Ardalan (d. 1987/1366), in the midst of the persecution of Baha’is in Sarvestan, frankly stated that he would “tear up” any letters of complaint written by a “Baha’i Assembly” and would only pay attention to complaints coming from individuals without any mention of the name Baha’i. Aman Allah Ardalan (Izz al-Mamalik), Khatirat-i Hajj Izz al-Mamalik Ardalan: zindigi dar dawran-i shish padishah (Tehran: Khurshid, 1993/1372), 315-16, quoted in Muhajir, “Kard-ajin,” 18.

[25]For details, see Muhajir, “Kard-ajin,” 20-21.

[26]For the role Ayatollahs Burujirdi, Kashani, Bihbahani and a number of other clerics played in freeing the murderers of Dr. Birjis, see Rasul Ja‘fariyan, Jaryanha va sazimanha-yi mazhabi-siyasi-i Iran, az ruyi kar amadan-i Mohammad Reza Shah ta piyruzi-i Inqilab-i Islami, salha-yi 1320-1357, 6^th ed. (Qum: published by the author, 2006/1385), 162. Ja‘faryan’s source is the memoirs of one of the murderers: “Khatirat-i Gulsurkhi,” Yad, no. 6, 45-46.

[27]See Husayn ‘Ali Muntaziri, Matn-i kamil-i Khatirat-i Ayat Allah Husayn ‘Ali Muntaziri bi hamrah-i Payvast ha (n.p.: Union of Iranian Editors in Europe, 1379/2001), 94; Khatirat-i Mas‘udi Khomeini Javad Imami, ed. (Tehran: Markaz-i Inqilab-i Islami, 1381/2002), 221; Muhammad Taqi Afnan, Bigunahan, Manuscript in private hands, 245-249. Ja‘fariyan, Jaryanha, 155.

[28]In the biography of Ayatollah Burujirdi there is mention of this murder and the rescue of the murderer by the intervention of Ayatollah Burujirdi, without including the latter’s sending of Ayatollah Khomeini to the Shah on this issue. See: ‘Alavi Tabataba’i, Khatirat-i zindigani, 81-85.

[29]Ahmad Gulmuhammadi, Jam‘iyyat-i fada’iyan-i Islam bi ravayat-i asnad (Tehran: Intisharat-i Inqilab-i Islami, 1382/2003), 2:467, document number 253.

[30]For all the relevant documents, see Suhrab Nikusifat, Sarkub va kushtar-i digarandishan-i mazhabi dar Iran, vol. 1, az Safaviyyah ta Inqilab-i Islami (Alzette, Luxembourg: Payam, 2009/1388), 397-407.

[31]For details, see Afnan, Bigunahan, 51-214; Nikusifat, Sarkub va kushtar, 1:414-38; Amini, Asnad az 1320 ta payan-i sal-i 1331, 900-915 and passim.

[32]Ghulamriza Musavvar-i Rahmani, Kuhnah sarbaz: khatirat-i siyasi va nizami-yi sarhang-i sitad, Ghulamriza Musavvar-i Rahmani, (1374/1995 repr., Tehran: Mu’assasah-’i khadamat-i farhangi-’i rasa, 1366/1987), 363-364.

[33]Major-general (sarlashkar) Nader Batmanqilich (d. 1991), the head of the Iranian Army at the time.

[34]Mujtaba Ahmadi, et al., eds., Chashm va chiragh-i marja‘iyyat: musahibahha-yi vizhah-’i majallah-’i hawzah ba shagirdan-i Ayatollah Burujirdi (Qum: Daftar-i Tablighat-i Islami-i hawzah-’i ‘ilmiyyah’-i Qum, 1379/2000), 55.

[35]What is less known, however, is Mahdi Ha’iri’s account of the role played by Khomeini in the process. Ha’iri, a philosopher and politician born to a high-ranking clerical family, related by marriage to Ayatollah Khomeini’s son and a student and close friend of the Ayatollah, reported a critical meeting between Ayatollah Khomeini and the Shah, shortly before or during the 1955 anti-Baha’i campaign. According to Ha’iri, Khomeini recounted that he was sent by Ayatollah Burujirdi to ask the Shah to crack down on the Baha’is. Khomeini told the Shah: “His Majesty, the late king, your father, tied this wayward and misguided sect [firqah-yi zallah] in the stable; the people of Iran expect the same from you now.” According to Ha’iri, Khomeini was happy with the outcome of the meeting. See Habib Lajvardi, ed. Khatirat-i duktur Mahdi Ha’iri Yazdi (ustad-i falsafah, farzand-i bunyanguzar-i hawzah-yi ‘ilmi-i Qum) (Tehran: Nader, 1381/2002), 56-57. Historian Ervand Abrahamian considers the anti-Baha’i campaigns waged by the Pahlavis in the 1930s and again in the 1950s as evidence of their espousal of Shiism. Ervand Abrahamian, Radical Islam: The Iranian Mojahedin (London: I.B. Tauris, 1989), 19.

[36]Several hypotheses have been advanced on the reasons why the Shah gave consent to the suppression of the Baha’is, in 1955. Most agree that he sought to appease the ulama. On the one hand, the Shah was indebted to prominent fiercely anti-Baha’i clerics like Ayatollah Abu al-Qasim Kashani and Sayyid Muhammad Bihbahani for having supported the 1953 Coup. On the other, he was wary of Soviet and Communist influence at the height of the Cold War and wanted to align the country closer to the West to ensure the survival of his reign. He planned, after the anti-Baha’i campaign, to join the American sponsored Baghdad Pact, later known as Central Treaty Organization (CENTO), which he suspected would likely trigger the opposition of the ulama to what they commonly perceived as a growing dependency upon the West and the threat of increasing Western cultural influence. Moreover, according to Roy Mottahedeh, The Mantle of the Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran, 2^nd ed. (Oxford, UK: Oneworld, 2008), 239, the Shah “had already accepted a proportion of oil revenues below the level nationalists considered respectable.” The government was also facing serious economic problems and the anti-Baha’i campaign could distract attention from those problems. Shahrough Akhavi, Religion and Politics in Contemporary Iran: Clergy-State Relations in the Pahlavi Period (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1980), 77. Michael Fischer also interprets the events within the context of the economic difficulties that ensued after the 1953 coup and the government’s effort to buy off right-wing clerics. Michael M.J. Fischer, Iran, from Religious Dispute to Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980), 187. A different explanation has been offered by Sir Denis Wright, the British Charge d’Affaires in 1955. He states that the Shah was blackmailed to sanction the persecution of the Baha’is because the ulama had pictures of Queen Soraya in a bikini and newspaper accounts of an alleged son of the Shah born to a “well-known American socialite” and were threatening to publicize the pictures and accounts and raise an uproar. Therefore, the Shah agreed that they could attack the Baha’is. Milani, The Shah, 199. Milani’s source is “The Memoirs of Sir Denis Wright, 1911-1971,” 1:280.

[37]Shoghi Effendi, Tawqi` 113 (manuscript in private hands), provides a summary of the events.

[38]See Muntaziri, Matn-i kamil-i Khatirat, 94-95.

[39]Ja‘fariyan refers to one such instance without specifying its time. See Ja‘fariyan, Jaryanha, 373-374.

[40]Tavakoli-Targhi, “Bahaisitizi,” 104-10; Akhavi, Religion and Politics, 76-87.

[41]Hishmat Shahriari, Interview, A Quiet Genocide, aquietgenocide.com/index.php/component/k2/117 (accessed 25 Oct. 2014).

[42]See the 14 Dey 1344 (5 Jan. 1956) deliberations of the majlis on the event in Ruznamah-’i rasmi-i kishvar-i shahanshahi-i Iran: goo.gl/3eSOlM. For an account of the event see Muhammad Labib, The Seven Martyrs of Hurmuzak, trans. and foreword, Moojan Momen (Oxford: George Ronald, 1981).

[43]See Labib, The Seven Martyrs, 4-5, 13-15, and passim.

[44]The author is grateful to the Research Department of the Universal House of Justice for sharing a copy of this letter and a number of other letters that will be discussed in this Section.

[45]Cablegram from the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of the United States to Mohammad Reza shah Pahlavi, dated 24 May 1955; Cablegram from the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of the United States to the Prime minister of Iran, dated 24 May 1955; Cablegram from the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of the United States to the Senate of Iran, dated 24 May 1955; Cablegram from the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of Egypt and Sudan to Mohammad Reza shah Pahlavi, dated 24 May 1955; Cablegram from the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of Egypt and Sudan to the Prime Minster of Iran, dated 24 May 1955.

[46]Letter from the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of the United States to Mohammad Reza Shah, dated 26 May 1955.

[47]Letter from the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of the United States to the Prime Minster of Iran, dated 26 May 1955.

[48]Letter from the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of the United States to Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, dated 26 July 1955.

[49]In addition, Mildred Mottahedeh, the representative of the Baha’i International Community, complained of the persecutions at the United Nations. Iran’s representative, Rizazadah-shafaq, denied the allegations altogether and claimed that very few Baha’is were living in Iran. Afnan, Bigunahan, 264 –a response that shows the regime’s after the fact awareness of how the campaign could jeopardize the human rights records of the country.

[50] For details, see Tavakoli-Targhi, “Bahaisitizi,”107-110.

[51] Tavakoli-Targhi, “Bahaisitizi,”110.

[52] For an analysis of the socio-historical context of the conventing of this conference in Tehran and its connection with the emergence of a coherent historical grand narrative of tolerance and inclusivity, see Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi, “Charkish-i tamadduni, tasamuh-i Kurushi va ‘mutisavi al-huquqi’ shahrvandi,” Iran Nameh, 30:2 (Summer 2015), 52-119, specifically 105-113.

[53]For a list of persecutions in the year 1958/1337, see Akhbar-i Amri, no. 1-3 (Farvardin, Urdibihisht, Khurdad 1338), 63-71; Turaj Amini, Asnad–i Baha’iyan-i Iran, az sal-i 1332 ta inqilab-I Islami (Sweden: Baran, 2014/1393), 863-69. For a similar list in the year 1959/1338, see Akhbar-i Amri, no. 1-4 (1339), 99-111; Amini, snad az sal-i 1332ta inqilab, 872-80. For a concise overview of the life of Baha’is in Iran under the Shah after the 1955 anti-Baha’i campaign, see Geoffrey Nash, Iran’s Secret Pogrom (Sudbury, UK: Neville Spearman, 1982), 44-53.

[54]See Akhbar-i Amri, nos. 1-3 (Farvardin, Urdibihisht, Khurdad 1338), 63-71; on the murder of ‘Ali-Akbar Safa’i, also see Akhbar-i Amri, nos. 7 and 8 (Mihr, Aban 1338), 237-41; Amini, Asnad az sal-i 1332 ta inqilab, 869-72.

[55]Akhbar-i Amri, no. 5, year 42 (Murdad 1342), 295.

[56] Based on the accounts of an eyewitness to the events, Muhammad Mahdavifar <nurizad.info/?p=22128#comment-121926> accessed 19 July 2013/28 Tir 1392.

[57]Akhbar-i Amri no. 5, year 42 (Murdad 1342), 299.

[58]Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi, “Archaeotopia: The Cyrus Cylinder and the De-confessionalization of Iranian Identity,” paper presented at the symposium, “The Legacy of Cyrus the Great: Iran and Beyond,” Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, 27 April 26 2013. An updated and extended version of the paper in Persian has been published in Iran Nameh: Tavakoli, “Charkish-i tamadduni.” A statement by Mohammad Reza Shah from the last year of his life supports Tavakoli-Targhi’s analysis. The ousted Shah defined “the sacred” tenets of Islam as “the most progressive religious principles.” He remarked, however, that his desire for the spirit of Islam to “penetrate ever more into the soul of our people was not accompanied by any animosity towards other religions.” He then added, “history will one day show that one of the characteristics of my reign was tolerance. Iran since the time of Cyrus has always been a land of refuge…” Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Answer to History (New York: Stein and Day, 1980), 61.

[59]For a discussion of Mohammad Reza Shah’s proclamation of himself as a modern Cyrus, see Katouzian, The Persians, 263; Ali M. Ansari, Modern Iran: The Pahlavis and After, 2^nd ed. (Harlow, UK: Pearson, 2007), 175. For a discussion of the 2,500-year celebration, the Shah’s speech at the mausoleum of Cyrus the Great, and the international media’s coverage of the event, see Ansari, Modern Iran, 218-222.

[60]For examples of how the implementation of the law could be influenced by the attitude of anti-Baha’i groups or individuals, see (1) the letter dated 8 Azar 1329/29 November 1950, written by Sirajansari, the head of the religious organization Ittihadiyah Muslimin to Prime Minister Razmara, thanking him for dismissing some Baha’is from government positions and requesting that all remaining Baha’is be likewise expelled. Markaz-i Asnad-i Riyasat-i Jumhuri, Asnadi as Anjumanha va Majamiʻ, 36; and (2) the 15 Isfand 1328/6 March 1950 letter of a group of devoted Muslims in Khurasan to the Prime Minister, requesting that Baha’i employees be dismissed from educational institutes and fired from the hospital affiliated with the Shrine of Imam Reza in Mashhad, Ibid. 283-84.

[62]Haqiqatpajuh, A’in-i Baha’i yik nihzat-i siyasi nist (Germany: Mahfil-i Ruhani-i Milli-i Baha’iyan-i Alman, 1982/1361), 86.

[63]On SAVAK, see Gholam R. Afkhami, The Life and Times of the Shah, 381-403; Katouzian, The Persians 256.

[64]Borrowed from Martin, The Persecution of the Baha’is of Iran, 26-28.

[65]During his ministry, the Baha’i Center of Tehran which had been sealed off in 1955, remained closed; frequently, Baha’i gatherings in different parts of the country were cancelled, and Baha’i employment in government offices were more strictly prohibited. See Haqiqatpajuh, A’in-i Baha’i yik nihzat-i siyasi nist, 79.

[66] See ‘Abd Allah Shahbazi, Zuhur va suqut-i saltanat-i Pahlavi, vol. 2, Justarha’i az tarikh-i muʻasir-i Iran (Tehran: Mu’assasah-’i Mutali‘at va Pazhuhishha-yi Siyasi, 1990), 388.

[67] Students of the nursing school of the Oil Company were employed from the beginning of their studies.

[68]Hoveyda became the prime minister on 26 January 1965 (6 Bahman 1343), and Minu Yazdani was dismissed from her nursing school on 27 February 1966 (8 Esfand 1344). This author’s personal interview with Minu Yazdani. The official letter of dismissal from her nursing school is in the author’s possession.

[69]This author’s personal interview with Dr. Manuchihr Sharif al-Attiba (Manshadi), 1 October 2014.

[70]Mihri Vahdat-i Haqq (Haqiqatju), “‘Ishq-i bizaval,” Manuscript in private hands, 53-54.

[71]For a good discussion of this topic, see H.E. Chehabi, “Anatomy of Prejudice: Reflections on Secular anti-Baha’ism in Iran,” in The Baha’is of Iran: Socio-Historical Studies (London: Routledge, 2008): 184- 197. See pages 190-91, in particular.

[72]The exaggeration of this fact has been used in the Islamic Republic to justify the persecution of Baha’is. A revealing example is the letter dated 26 Shahrivar 1360/17 September 1981, written on behalf of the Minister of Agriculture to a Baha’i employee declaring that his employment had been illegal to begin with, listing five prominent Baha’is of the time of the Shah as “traitors” to the country (suggesting that the addressee was to blame for believing in the same “fake cult” as them), and ordering the employee to return all compensation he had received to the state. See the document in Fereydun Vahman, Yik-sad va shast sal mubarizah ba diyanat-i Baha’i: gushah’i az tarikh-i ijtimaʻi-dini-i Iran dar dawran-i mu‘asir (Darmstadt, Germany: ‘Asr-i Jadid Publisher, 2009), 712.

[73]For more on this topic, see Moojan Momen, “The Baha’i Faith and Politics,” paper presented at the conference “Intellectual Othering and the Baha’i Question in Iran,” Toronto, 3 July 2011, www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtVY1BW9s0A (accessed 11 April 2015)

[74]See for example, Shahsavari, Asnad-i fa‘aliyyat-i Baha’iyan, 135-36.

[75]While Dr. Ayadi definitely believed in the Baha’i religion, he was never a member of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of Iran, the elected body leading the affairs of the Baha’i community, or even the Local Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of Tehran.

[76]Abbas Milani, Eminent Persians: Men and Women Who Made Modern Iran, 1941-1979 (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, 2008), 2: 1058-61. Most of what has become public knowledge about Ayadi is based on the controversial memoirs of the Shah’s long-time friend, General Husayn Fardust (d. 1987) written while in captivity under the Islamic Republic, edited and published posthumously: ‘Abdollah Shahbazi, ed., Zuhur va suqut-i saltanat-i Pahlavi, vol. 1, Khatirat-i artishbud-i sabiq Husayn Fardust (Tehran: Mu’assasah-’i Mutali‘at va pazhuhishha-yi siyasi, 1990). Milani convincingly refers to this work as “alleged memoirs,” and describes it rightly as “vituperative.” Milani, Eminent Persians, 548, 285.

[77]See Goel Cohen, ed., Az kargari ta karafarini: zindiginamah va khatirat-i Jack Mahfar, az Jubarah in Isfahan to Tehran and Geneve in Swiss, 2^nd ed. (Geneva, Switzerland: The Mahfar Cultural Foundation, 2011), 121-27, 173-182. Also available at jmahfar.com/index.html (accessed 12 June 2015). The book has also been translated into English by Abbas Nayeri and Nazanine Nayeri, as From Laborer to Entrepreneur: Memoirs of Jack Maher, from Joubareh in Esfahan to Tehran and Geneva (Geneva, Switzerland: The Mahfar Cultural Foundation, 2013), available at jmahfar.com/books/english/ (accessed 12 June 2015). Mahfar depicts a picture of Ayadi much different than the one presented by Fardust (see the previous note). While quite influential because of his access to the Shah, Mahfar’s Ayadi is quite wary not to abuse that power (Az kargari 175). He only owns two villages in which he promotes agriculture while taking care of the medical needs of the villagers who are satisfied and happy with him (Az kargari 117), and in the process of the purchase of medicine, always makes the best deals for the Iranian government (Az kargari 122).

[78]Milani, Eminent Persians, 2:1061.

[79]Milani, Eminent Persians, 2:1061.

[80] On General Sani‘i, see his autobiography, Asad Allah Sani‘i, Yadha va yaddashtha (Montreal: Farhang, 2009); Murtaza Mushir, Khatirat-i Sipahbud Asad Allah Sani‘i (Los Angeles: Ketab Corp, 2002).

[81]See the 27 August 1965 letter of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of Iran to the Universal House of Justice on this matter, cited in Turaj Amini, Asnad-i Baha’iyan-i Iran, as Sal-i 1332 ta Inqilab-i Islami (Sweden: Baran, 2014), 1051. On the General losing his administrative rights, see Akhbar-i Amri 10 (1358), 156.

[82]Among those usually referred to as Baha’is on totally baseless grounds are: Farrukhru Parsa (d. 1979), the Minister of Education; and General Ni‘mat Allah Nasiri (d. 1979), the head of the notorious SAVAK for thirteen years. The list varies depending on the source.

[83]Examples of ministers who had Baha’i parents without ever identifying themselves as Baha’is include Mansur Ruhani (d. 1979), the Minister of Agriculture and Utilities (who was born to a Muslim mother and Baha’i father), and Mahnaz Afkhami (b. 1940), the Minister of Women’s Affairs (who had a Baha’i mother and a Muslim father). It is important to note that unlike other religions, being born into a Baha’i family does not automatically make one a Baha’i. One needs to declare his or her allegiance to Baha’i beliefs and principles in order to be identified as a Baha’i.

[84]On Hoveyda, see ‘Abbas Milani, The Persian Sphinx: Amir Abbas Hoveyda and the Riddle of the Iranian Revolution, (London, UK: IB Tauris, 2000). See also, Encyclopedia Iranica, s.v. “Hoveyda, Amir Abbas.”

[85] Mahmud Turbati Sanjabi, Nukhustvazir sih daqiqah-‘i pish darguzasht (Tehran: ‘Ata’i, 1383/2004), 91. When Ehsan Naraghi mentioned the rumor to the Shah, he responded, “No. That is pure calumny. Hoveida [sic] is not a Baha’i. The people are talking nonsense.” Ehsan Naraghi, From Palace to Prison: Inside the Iranian Revolution, trans. (from French) Nilou Mobasser (Chicago: Ivon R. Dee, 2007), 43. The fact that the Shah knew Hoveyda was not a Baha’i, however, did not prevent him from scapegoating the latter and imprisoning him in the turbulent last months of his rule, in the words of Naraqi, “to appease the masses.” Ibid., 42.

[86]Personal e-mail communication with Mona Khadimi, ‘Ali Muhammad Khadimi’s daughter, 11 Apr. 2015.

[87]See Haqiqatpajuh, A’in-i Baha’i yik nihzat-i siyasi nist, 79-81.

[88]See Shahbazi, Zuhur va suqut-i saltanat-i Pahlavi, 2: 450-51; Milani, Eminent Persians, 1:287.

[89]See Irfan Qani‘ifard, Dar damgah-i hadisah (Los Angeles: Ketab, 2012), 2: 678-85.

[90]See Habib Sabit, Sarguzasht-i Habib Sabit (Los Angeles, 1993); Milani, Eminent Persians, 2: 678-85. An English translation of this book is available at https://archive.org/details/HabibSabetMem; See also, Encyclopedia Iranica, s.v. “Sabet, Habib.”

[91]See Habib Sabit, Sarguẕasht, 239-47.

[92]See Encyclopedia Iranica, s.v. “Sabet, Habib.”

[93]One individual frequently mentioned in anti-Baha’i polemics is Huzhabr Yazdani (d.1389/2010). See Milani, Eminent Persians, 2: 799-807.

[94]In fact, the name usually used by this society’s members before the Islamic Revolution was Anjuman-i Zidd-i Baha’iyyat. See Michael M.J. Fischer and Mehdi Abedi, Debating Muslims: Cultural Dialogues in Postmodernity and Tradition (Madison, WC.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990), 48. On the Pahlavi regime allowing this society to function, see also Abrahamian, Radical Islam, 19.

[95]For the relationship between SAVAK and Hujjatiyyah see Ziya’ al-Din ‘Uliya-nasab and Salman ‘Alavi-nik, Jariyan-shinasi-i anjuman-i Hujjatiyyah (Qum, Zulal-Kawsar, 2006/1385), 115-140; for more documents on SAVAK supporting Hujjatiyyah, see Amini, Asnad-i Baha’iyan-i Iran, as sal-i 1332 ta inqilab-i Islami, 1048-1050.

[96]See Encyclopedia Iranica, s.v. “Hojjatiya.”

[97]See Mehdi Abedi’s description in “Shi‘ite Socialization in Pahlavi Iran: Autobiographical Sondages in a Postmodern World,” in Fischer and Abedi, Debating Muslims, 48-54.

[98]See Nader Saiedi, “Asibshinasi-i rawshanfikri-i Iran” Iran-i Emruz (23 March 2009), www.iran-emrooz.net/index.php/politic/more/17686/ (accessed 11 Apr. 2015).

[99]Quoted in ‘Uliya-nasab and ‘Alavi-nik, Jariyan-shinasi-i anjuman-i Hujjatiyyah, 104. Originally, published in the newspaper Jami‘ah, no. 100, 8 Tir 1377/29 June 1998.

[100]See Tavakoli-Targhi, “Baha’isitizi,” 91-92; Encyclopedia Iranica, s.v. “Anjoman-e Tabligat-e Islami.”

[101]The original document is dated 27 Aban 1351/18 November 1972. It has been published in Mojahid 1, 84 (19 Khurdad 1359/9 June 1980); See also Encyclopedia Iranica s.v. “Anjoman-e Tabligat-e Islami.”

[102]This has been interpreted by some as a situation in which the Baha’i community had a de facto presence while de jure, this presence was denied. See Cyrus ‘Ala’i, “Tarikhchah-’i maliyat bar irs.

[103]Borrowed from Martin, persecution 14.

[104] As mentioned in footnote 48, following the 1953 anti-Baha’i campaign, the Iranian delegate at the United Nations, Rizasadah-shafaq, claimed there were very few Baha’is in Iran. Fischer, however, records that the delegate, Mrs. Teimurtash, “told the United Nations of behalf of the Iranian delegation that there were no Baha’is in Iran.” Fischer, Iran, from Religious Dispute to Revolution, 187.

[105] Fischer, Iran, from Religious Dispute to Revolution, 187.

[106]See Akhbar-i Amri, 5 (Khurdad-Tir 1356), 202-209. For a detailed and heart-wrenching account of the murder, see Amini, Asnad-i Baha’iyan-i Iran, as Sal-i 1332 ta Inqilab-i Islami, 438-40.

[107]See Akhbar-i Amri, 11 (1356), 431.

[108]For more on the life and death of General Khadimi see Cyrus ‘Alai, “Chigunigi-i darguzasht-i sipahbud ‘Ali Muhammad Khadimi,” Iran Nameh, 30:1 (Spring 2015), 246-262.

[109]Habib Allah Hakimi’s notes. At the time, Hakimi was serving as a member of the Local Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of Shiraz—a position that naturally caused him to pay close attention to the events that were unfolding. Referring to the Sa‘diyyah incident, Fischer writes that “accounts of the attack on Baha’is are confused.” The various accounts cited in his book reflect this confusion. Fischer, Iran, from Religious Dispute to Revolution, 206. Hakimi’s notes are a valuable first-hand and accurate record of that tragic incident.

[110]Personal recollections of the author.

[111]A Baha’i living in Shiraz at the time recorded that “some 200” Baha’i homes were subjected to arson. See Abu al-Qasim Afnan’s letter to Muhammad ‘Ali Jamalzadah in Muhammad Ali Homayoun Katouzian, “Du Namah az Jamalzadah,” Mihrigan, vol.2, no. 4 (Winter 1372/1994), 53. A recent study indicates 170 houses and shops in Shiraz were burned, and in total 295 were attacked. It also asserts that the extent of the arsons, and the accuracy with which the houses of Baha’is were spotted both indicate a collaboration between SAVAK and Hujjatiyyah, the two organizations well informed of the locations of the houses of Baha’is. See Amini, Asnad-i Baha’iyan-i Iran, as Sal-i 1332 ta Inqilab-i Islami, 455,458. A western scholar has suggested 400 houses and shops were looted. See Karen L. Pliskin, “Camouflage, Conspiracy, and Collaborators: Rumors of the Revolution,” Iranian Studies, Vol. XIII, Nos. 1-4 (1980): 55-81.

[112]See the newspaper Pars, no. 4233 (27 Azar 1357/17 Muharram 1399/18 Dec. 1979). The same column titled “The News of Shiraz,” provides an obliterated and distorted account of the events in Sa‘diyyah and Shiraz. For similar announcements from Ayatollah Mahallati, see Vahman, Yik-sad va shast sal, 444-45.

[113]See Khomeini, Sahifah-’i Nur (Tehran: Saziman-i Madarik-i Farhangi-i Inqilab-i Islami, 1361), 4:79.

[114]For Ayatollah Dastghayb’s statement, see Pars, no. 4242 (2 Bahman 1357/ 22 Jan. 1979), 4. Writing days after the attacks, Dastghayb clarified in this statement that according to Islamic laws, whenever an infidel (kafir) lives in the lands of Islam, their lives and properties must be protected by the Muslim ruler, a principle he applied to “unrecognized sects” as well.

[115]The published SAVAK documents pertaining to the events contain some inaccuracies. The editorial notes added to those documents distort the truth, depicting Baha’is as the assailants and the murderers. See Inqilab-i Islami bih ravayat-i asnad-i SAVAK, vol. 20, 21 Azar to 25 Azar [12 to 16 Dec.1978] (Tehran: Markaz-i Barrasi-i Asnad-i Tarikhi-i Vizarat-i Ittila‘at, 1385/2006), 146-48, 258-59, 261, 405, 407.

[116]For details, see Geoffrey Nash, “The Persecution of the Baha’i Community of Iran, Ridvan 1979-Ridvan 1983,” The Baha’i World 1979-1983 (Haifa, Israel: The Baha’i World Center, 1986), 271-74.

[117]See Nikusifat, Sarkub va kushtar, 2: 35-36 for details about three of the Baha’is killed between 22 Murdad 1357/13 Aug. 1978 to 19 Dey 1357/9 Jan. 1979, in Jahrum, Mianduab, and Hisar Khurasan.

[118]This was in line with the Shah’s self-image as a “progressive,” even “revolutionary” monarch. See Ansari, Modern Iran, 160, 163-4, and passim.

[119]Tavakoli-Targhi, “Charkhish-i Tamadduni,” 53-57, 85-93.

[120]For a definition of Foucauldian notion of “governmentality,” see Tavakoli-Targhi, “Charkhish-i Tamadduni,” 55-56; for the discussion of the historical conflict between these two governmentalities, see idem, 55-93.

[121]See Pahlavi, Answer to History, 57-61.

[122]Roy Mottahedeh, The Mantle of the Prophet, 2^nd ed. (Oxford: Oneworld, 2008), 238-239.