FROM NATIONALISM TO REVOLUTIONARY ISLAM

This study of dominant social movements in the Middle and Near East by a group of social scientists and historians is the first attempt to bring nationalism and the contemporary Islamic movements into a unified thematic perspective. The process of national economic and political integration supplies the unifying context for the analyses of the various social movements to which it gives rise. The examination of nationalism in general, and of the rise of the Arab nationalist movement in Greater Syria in the early decades of the century in particular, is followed by a close analysis of the interplay of ethnic identity and Islam in the local politics of the tribal North-Western Frontier Province of Pakistan. The politicisation oflslam in Algeria, Turkey and Egypt is then explored and explained, together with the characteristics of the emergent Islamic movements. The last three essays cover Shi'ite Islam in Iran since the opening decade of the century, focusing on various components and aspects of the Islamic movement which culminated in the revolution of 1979.. The case-studies thus chart the recent upsurge of revolutionary Islam and the concomitant decline of nationalist movements in the contemporary Middle and Near East. The introduction offers an analytical perspective for the integration of this major theme which is forcefully suggested by the juxtaposition of the essays.

St Antony's! Macmillan Series

General editor: Archie Brown, Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford

Said Amir Arjomand (editor) FROM NATIONALISM TO REVOLUTIONARY ISLAM

Anders Aslund PRIVATE ENTERPRISE IN EASTERN EUROPE Archie Brown and Michael Kaser (editors) SOVIET POLICY FOR THE 1980s S. B. Burman CHIEFDOM POLITICS AND ALIEN LAW Renfrew Christie ELECTRICITY, INDUSTRY AND CLASS IN SOUTH AFRICA Robert 0. Collins and Francis M. Deng (editors) THE BRITISH IN THE SUDAN,

1898-1956 Wilhelm Deist THE WEHRMACHT AND GERMAN REARMAMENT Julius A. Elias PLATO'S DEFENCE OF POETRY Ricardo Ffrench-Davis and Ernesto Tironi (editors) LATIN AMERICA AND THE

NEW INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ORDER Bohdan Harasymiw POLITICAL ELITE RECRUITMENT IN THE SOVIET

UNION Neil Harding (editor) THE STATE IN SOCIALIST SOCIETY Richard Holt SPORT AND SOCIETY IN MODERN FRANCE Albert Hourani EUROPE AND THE MIDDLE EAST Albert Hourani THE EMERGENCE OF THE MODERN MIDDLE EAST J. R. Jennings GEORGES SOREL A. Kemp-Welch (translator) THE BIRTH OF SOLIDARITY Paul Kennedy and Anthony Nicholls (editors) NATIONALIST AND RACIALIST

MOVEMENTS IN BRITAIN AND GERMANY BEFORE 1914 Richard Kindersley (editor) IN SEARCH OF EUROCOMMUNISM Bohdan Krawchenko SOCIAL CHANGE AND NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN

TWENTIETH-CENTURY UKRAINE Gisela C. Lebzelter POLITICAL ANTI-SEMITISM IN ENGLAND, 1918-1939 Nancy Lubin LABOUR AND NATIONALITY IN SOVIET CENTRAL ASIA C. A. MacDonald THE UNITED STATES, BRITAIN AND APPEASEMENT,

1936-1939 Patrick O'Brien (editor) RAILWAYS AND THE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

OF WESTERN EUROPE, 1830-1914 Roger Owen (editor) STUDIES IN THE ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL HISTORY

OF PALESTINE IN THE NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURIES Irena Powell WRITERS AND SOCIETY IN MODERN JAPAN T. H. Rigby and Ferenc Feher (editors) POLITICAL LEGITIMATION IN

COMMUNIST STATES Marilyn Rueschemeyer PROFESSIONAL WORK AND MARRIAGE A. J. R. Russell-Wood THE BLACK MAN IN SLAVERY AND FREEDOM IN

COLONIAL BRAZIL Aron Shai BRITAIN AND CHINA, 1941-47 Lewis H. Siegelbaum THE POLITICS OF INDUSTRIAL MOBILIZATION IN

RUSSIA, 1914-17 David Stafford BRITAIN AND EUROPEAN RESISTANCE, 1940-1945 Nancy Stepan THE IDEA OF RACE IN SCIENCE Guido di Tella ARGENTINA UNDER PERON, 1973-76 Rosemary Thorp (editor) LATIN AMERICA IN THE 1930s Rosemary Thorp and Laurence Whitehead (editors) INFLATION AND

STABILISATION IN LATIN AMERICA Rudolf L. Tokes (editor) OPPOSITION IN EASTERN EUROPE

FROM NATIONALISM TO REVOLUTIONARY ISLAM

Edited by

Said Amir Arjomand

Foreword by

Ernest Gellner

M MACMILLAN

in association with Palgrave Macmillan

© Social Science Research Council 1984

Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1984 978-0-333-35369-1

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form

or by any means, without permission

First published 1984 by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD

London and Basingstoke Companies and representatives

throughout the world

Filmset in Monophoto Times by Latimer Trend & Company Ltd, Plymouth

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Arjomand, Said Amir From nationalism to revolutionary Islam. I. Near East~ History --20th century I. Title 956'.04 DS62.4 ISBN 978-1-349-06849-4 ISBN 978-1-349-06847-0 (eBook)DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-06847-0

Contents Foreword by Ernest Gellner Publishers' Acknowledgement Editor's Acknowledgement Notes on the Contributors Notes on Transliteration Glossary

Introduction: Social Movements in the Contemporary Near and Middle East Said Amir Arjomand

2 Nationalism in the Middle East: A Behavioural Approach

vii xii

xiii xiv xvi xvii

Richard Cottam 28

3 Social Factors in the Rise of the Arab Movement in Syria Rashid Khalidi 53

4 Emergent Trends in Moslem Tribal Society: the Wazir Movement of the Mullah of Wana in North-Western Fron­tier Province of Pakistan Akbar Ahmed 71

5 National Integration and Traditional Rural Organisation in Algeria, 1970-80: Background for Islamic Traditionalism? Peter von Sivers 94

6 Politicisation of Islam in a Secular State: the National Salvation Party in Turkey Binnaz Toprak 119

7 Ideology, Social Class and Islamic Radicalism in Modern Egypt Eric Davis 134

9

vi Contents

8 The Fada'iyan-e Islam: Fanaticism, Politics and Terror Farhad Kazemi 158

9 Sermons, Revolutionary Pamphleteering and Mobilisation: Iran, 1978 Shaul Bakhash 177

10 Traditionalism in Twentieth-century Iran Said Amir Arjomand 195

References 233 Index 248

Foreword ERNEST GELLNER

The central theme of the history of the twentieth century is now totally plain and obvious. In the course of it, industrial/scientific societies, hitherto largely confined to what may loosely be called the North Atlantic world, spread to the rest of the globe. It does not look as if the transformation of the rest of the world will have been completed by the end of the century; but there can be no shadow of doubt that the disruption of the traditional agrarian societies will by then be largely accomplished.

The process which we are witnessing is the replacement of agrarian societies by industrial or industrialising ones. What is the difference between them?

Agrarian societies contain a majority of direct agricultural producers; they had a fairly stable technological base, cognitive and technical innovation being a rarity rather than a normality; they were generally hierarchical, authoritarian, dogmatic and stability-oriented. They poss­essed belief-systems claiming absolute and transcendental grounding which were linked to the authority and hierarchy structures of their societies and provided them with their legitimation.

Industrial societies are defined by the possession of ever-growing and ever more powerful technical equipment, depending in turn on a form of cognition ('science') committed or doomed to perpetual growth. They employ a diminishing proportion of the population in agriculture. Although their political and cultural superstructure is not hom­ogeneous, it is marked by at least the potentiality of a certain liberalisation (political and doctrinal pluralism and choice, the replace­ment of the stick of fear by the carrot of material bribery, and the anticipation of radical enrichment), by a diminution of the chasm between a 'Great' Tradition and a 'Folk' Tradition, a larger population, a much increased social mobility and a tendency towards widespread secularisation.

Vll

VIJI Foreword

So much is obvious and general. But there are great and profoundly important differences within both agrarian (which includes pastoral) and industrial/industrialising societies. Marxism is perhaps the greatest observer-participant in the overall process ~ a belief-system which is both a theory of the process and an important actor within it. Its significance as an actor within the drama can hardly be in dispute. Its accuracy as an account of the whole process is more questionable.

Two central ideas within it in particular seem open to doubt. One is the employment of the notions of 'feudalism', 'capitalism' and 'soci­alism' as designations of types of society, putatively defined in terms of their mode of production. The facts of history have by now forced virtually everyone (including nominal Marxists) to treat agrarian and industrial as the real designations of forms of production: capitalism and socialism are only names of the optional socio-political superstructures accompanying the latter one. (The idea that 'feudalism' is some kind of general matrix of the emergence of industrial societies is similarly questionable, and can only be sustained by extending the meaning of the term so widely that it is deprived of much of its utility.) The second questionable idea is that modes of production, or societies defined in terms of their productive base, uniquely determine the 'superstructure'.

In other words, we now need to operate in terms of a simple social typology, agrarian/industrial, which only revived and conquered our speech after the Second World War, and we are quite clear that, whilst each of these types may determine the problems faced by a society, they do not uniquely determine its solutions.

Despite the great diversity displayed by ex-agrarian, industrialising societies, one can nevertheless offer a certain simple formula for their doctrinal, ideological predicament. The reason why they are obliged to undergo change is of course to be sought in the technical, economic and military superiority of industrial society. They are changing, because they, or their members, wish to be as rich and powerful as industrial, 'developed' lands. The ideological consequence of this situation is obvious. These societies are torn between 'westernisation' and (in a broad sense) populism, that is, the idealisation of the local folk tradition. (The old local 'Great' Tradition is generally damned by its failure to resist the West and by its doctrinal and organisational rigidity, once a source of strength, now a great weakness.) The emulation of the developed world flows from the desire to steal its sacred and power­conferring fire; the romanticisation of the- local tradition, real or imagined, is a consequence of the desire to maintain self-respect to possess an identity not borrowed from abroad, to avoid being a mere imitation, second-rate, a reproduction of an alien model.

Foreword IX

These two ideological trends or temptations are mutually incompat­ible; nevertheless, most ideologies prevalent in the Third World contain some blend or mixture of the two. The tension between them is manifest and painful. In the far-off days, over a century and a half ago, when the Third World began on the Rhine, the dilemma took the form of the conflict between classicism and romanticism, between the aping of French models and the reverence for the local folk spirit. By the time the dilemma came to be felt in Russia, it was articulated in the terms which we still recognise today.

But there is one section of the ancient world which seems at least in part to have escaped this predicament: namely, Islamic societies, notably those of the arid zone. This interesting exception has not yet been widely noticed. But there is an aspect of it which is conspicuous and which really cries out for more thorough investigation. It is the curious, yet supremely important fact that, of all the great traditional belief systems, Islam alone, far from weakening, has become an increasingly powerful social and political mobilising force. The other traditional faiths have had to retreat before diverse mixtures of modernism and populism; Islam, on the other hand, has retained and enhanced its social vitality, and moreover is vigorously invoked both by conservative and radical regimes.

Is this an accident? I think not. Islam, like other faiths, was divided between a folk variant and a central, literacy-sustained tradition. But the central, scholarly version was rather special: it was not rigidly tied to any one political ancien regime, it was carried by an open class of scholars/jurists/theologians which would in principle come to embrace the entire society, and it contained an egalitarian doctrine of equal access to God by all believers willing to heed the publicly available and definitely and finally delimited Word. Its scripturalist, orderly, re­strained theology made it compatible with the requirements both of centralising regimes and of developmental programmes.

Its sober and restrained unitarianism, its moralism and abstention from spiritual opportunism, manipulativeness and propitiation, in brief its 'protestant' traits, give it an affinity with the modern world. It did not engender the modern world, but it may yet, of all the faiths, turn out to be the one best adapted to it. It can dissociate itself from both folk 'superstitions' and its archaic hierarchies, and it is not dragged down by them.

What had once, in the days when literacy was a specialist accomplish­ment, been the faith and stance of a restricted clerical elite, could now, in the age of widespread urbanisation and literacy, become the folk culture of the entire society. It could simultaneously define it against foreign

X Foreword

enemies, against over-westernised local rulers, and against the rejected moral corruption of the real local past; and yet it could also be used to invoke an uncorrupt ideal past, whose image had always haunted the society, and thus affirm both past roots and future aspirations, both continuity and transformation, identity and purification, under one single banner.

This, in rough outline, is in my view the explanation of the unique and enormously important standing of Islam in the modern world, its potential of both mobilisation and conservation. (The accident of oil explains the power of Moslems; it does not explain the powerful hold of Islam over its adherents.) All this fact has not, of course, saved the Moslem lands from the impact of either nationalism or socialist radicalism. The call for culturally homogeneous communities, endowed with a state-sustained and endorsed culture, in other words nationalism, has been felt in the Middle East and North Africa as powerfully as elsewhere. The requirement that the fruits and benefits of the yearned­for industrial cornucopia should be distributed according to moral and political requirements, and not be left to the vagaries of the market - in other words the imperative of socialism- has been affirmed all the more strongly in societies long habituated to the view that the duty of the state is to proscribe evil and enforce good, and which may consequently be receptive to the idea that the good of industrial society should be decreed by norm, rather than be the fruit of accidental, unplanned interactions. Here the state had ever been moralistic in tone, even if in fact it was based on kin and patronage networks and their usurpation of the benefits of power.

The Moslem world is not alone in possessing conservative vested interests, nationalist turbulence and chiliastic social strivings. It is unique in that the fusion of these trends with a genuinely traditional religion, or rather, with its erstwhile top layer, now available to the entire society, is more intimate, more pervasive, more profound, more convincing, than it is anywhere else. How their interaction will con­cretely mould the future can only be grasped by looking at each case in detail.

The generalities which I have proposed may or may not be valid. Their soundness will not be determined by their logical neatness but by whether or not they fit the facts. Many of the relevant facts have been assembled in this volume.

The struggle of diverse political and ideological trends for the soul of the Middle East is intricate and multiform. These trends can only be properly understood in their diverse complexity. The present outstand-

Foreword xi

ing collection of essays explores the microstructure of the various conflicts which are being played out in the Middle East, and provides us with data and insights not available to the superficial view. It in­disputably makes a very major and significant contribution to our understanding of a fascinating and as yet far from decided struggle, whose outcome may in the end be decisive for the fate of our world.

ERNEST GELLNER

Publishers' Acknowledgements

The conference on which this volume is based, and the preparation of the volume itself, were supported by the Joint Committee on the Near and Middle East of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council (USA).

xii

Editor's Acknowledgements

The pages in this volume, with one exception, were first presented at a Conference on Social Movements and Political Culture in the Con­temporary Near and Middle East held in Mt Kisco, New York, on 14-17 May 1981. I am most grateful to the Joint Committee on the Near and Middle East of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council for organising the conference and for its material assistance in preparing the manuscript for publication, to Ernest Gellner for kindly agreeing to write the Foreword, and to Ali Banuazizi, Eric Davis, and Peter von Sivers for their editorial advice. I am also much indebted to the members of the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies, St Antony's College, Oxford, especially the late Hamid Enayat, and to the Warden and Fellows ofSt Antony's College, where, as a Visiting Fellow in 1981-2, I could complete the editorial work and write the Introduction in a congenial and stimulating atmosphere.

SAID AMIR ARJOMAND

Xlll

Notes on the Contributors Akbar Ahmed, a Visiting Scholar at the Department of Anthropology, Harvard University, is also a member of the Civil Service of Pakistan. His last post was Political Agent, South Waziristan. He has written extensively on Pakistan and his most recent book is Religion and Politics in Muslim Society: Order and Conflict in Pakistan (1983).

Said Amir Arjomand is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He was a Visiting Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford, in 1981-2, and is the author of Shadow of God and the Hidden Imam (1984).

Shaul Bakhash has been a Visiting Associate Professor at the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, and is the author of Iran: Monarchy, Bureaucracy and Reform Under the Qajars, 1858-1896, The Politics of Oil and Revolution in Iran and numerous articles on Iranian history and politics.

Richard Cottam is University Professor of Political Science at the University of Pittsburgh. His fields include the politics of Iran, foreign policy in the Middle East and international relations theory.

Eric Davis is Associate Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey. A specialist in problems of political and economic development, he is author of Challenging Colonialism: Bank Misr and Egyptian Industrialization, 1920-1941 (1982).

Farhad Kazemi is Associate Professor of Politics and director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies at New York University. He is the author of Poverty and Revolution in Iran: The Migrant Poor, Urban Marginality and Politics and the editor of Iranian Revolution in Perspective. He is also an editor of Iranian Studies.

xiv

Notes on the Contributors XV

Rashid Khalidi teaches politics at the American University of Beirut, where his research interests include modern Arab politics and history, and Soviet Middle East policy. He is the author of British Policy Towards Syria and Palestine 1906-1914 (1980) and a number of papers and monographs.

Binnaz Toprak is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Bogazic;i University in Istanbul. She received her Ph.D. in political science from the City University of New York. She is the author of islam and Political Development in Turkey (1981) and has written on religion, women, and politics in contemporary Turkish society.

Peter von Sivers is Associate Professor, Middle East History, University of Utah. He has done research and published in the field of social history (Egypt, Iraq, Syria, 750-1500; Algeria, 1830-1914), and has written articles on the Abbasid Thughur in Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 25 (1982) and on the Bou Amama revolt 1881 in Peuples mediterram?ens ( 1982).

Note on Transliteration Turkish words have been written in the modern Turkish alphabet. Two separate simplified transliteration systems have been adopted for Persian and Arabic. Maximum effort has been made to be consistent within each of these systems. However, exceptions have had to be made for such common words as imam, Islam, jihad and ayatollah, and for proper names such as Muhammad, Husayn, Mosaddeq, Nasser and Khomeini which have been spelt uniformly throughout. Diacritical marks have been omitted, and' 1 ' is used both for the hamza and the 1 ain.

XVI

Glossary

'Adalat Khaneh add a Akmczlar al-amir al-Ahd al-'id

'alim al-infinitah al-jihaz al-sirri al-umma al-mu'mina al-umma al-jahiliyya al-usra al-wasita Amir al-mu'minin anjoman anomie Ansar Khumayni aqayid 'ashura

'atabat 'avamm ayatollah

badshah bast Ba'th beghairat dar al-harb da'wa ezan

House of Justice Market The Raiders (youth organisation) The commander The Covenant The festival (either of the breaking of the fast

or the sacrificial festival) 'Learned' or religious scholar The Open Door The Secret Organisation The Community of the Faithful The Community of Unbelievers The family Mediator Commander of the Faithful (Political) society Absence of social standards; normlessness Helpers of Khomeini Ideas; ideology The day of commemoration of the martyrdom

of Imam Husayn Shi 'ite holy centres in Iraq Common masses 'Sign of God', title of Shi'ite religious digni-

taries King Taking of sanctuary Rebirth; the ruling party in Iraq and Syria Shameless Realm of war Mission Call to prayer

XVll

XVlll

Fada'iyan-e Islam Fara'iziyya

farangi fatwa(h) friperie gourbi Hak i~ hadith hay' at mazhabi hefz-e bayza-ye

Eslam hijra/ hijrat

Hizb al-tahir al-islami

hudud ijtihad

iktisatqilar Kiiltiir Vakji

ilim Yayma Cemiyeti

imam imam hatip imamat 'irfan jahili jahiliyya Jama'at al-jihad Jama'at al-muslimin

li' 1-takjir Jama'at al-takjir

wa' 1-hijra javan mardi jazirat al'-arab jihad lund Allah kajir khal' -e yadd

Glossary

Devotees of Islam A movement for observation of religious

duties (jar a' iz) in Bengal in early nineteenth century

'Frankish'; European (Legal) injunction Used cloth Dwelling built by Algerian peasants (Turkish) Labour Union Tradition (saying or deeds) of the Prophet Religious association Protection of the citadel of Islam

Migration after the model of Muhammad's migration from Mecca to Medina

Islamic Liberation Party

Punishments of the Sacred Law 'Endeavour'; exercise of independent legal

judgement (Turkish) Cultural Foundation of Economists

(Turkish) Society for the Propagation of Knowledge

(Prayer) leader Prayer leader/preacher Leadership of the community of believers Philosophical Sufism Pertaining to pre-Islamic ignorance Pre-Islamic ignorance The Holy War Association The Society of Moslems which Charges Soci­

ety with Unbelief Society of excommunication and withdrawal

Manly valour The Arabian peninsula Holy war God's Soldiers Infidel Takeover from; dispossession

khassadar khavass khilafat lashkar madrassahfmedrese

mahdi mai-baap Majlis majles-e ma'delat maktab al-rishad malik marja' ( -e taq/id) mashayikh mashuru'a mashurta maul vi Mekfureci Ogret­

menler Dernegi mian Milli Guru~ Almanya

Te~kilatlarz

Milli Nizam Partisi Milli Selamet Partisi

(MSP) MSP Genr;lik Lokal­

leri MSP l:jr;i Komisyo­

ulair Milli Turk Talebe

Birligi mos/eh-e kabir mujaddid/mojadded mujtahed mulaqat mullah musawat mustaz'afin nadi Naksibendi namaz

Glossary

Tribal levy (of troops) The elite Caliphate Army

XIX

Religious school; colleges of religious educ-ation

The messianic 'leader' at the End of Time Mother-father Lower House (of Parliament) Assembly of Justice The Guidance Council King Shi'ite authoritative jurist The elder; authorities In accordance with Sacred Law Constitutional Man of religion Organisation of Idealist Teachers (Turkish)

Man of spiritual gifts and holy descent Organisation of National Outlook in Germany

National Order Party National Salvation Party (NSP)

NSP Youth Clubs

NSP Workers' Commission National Turkish Union of Students

The Great Reformer Renewer Jurist; he who is competent to exercise ijtihad Meeting Moslem cl~ric Equality The disinherited Assembly hall A Sufi order Daily prayers

XX

nang nazr niswar Nizam-e Mustafa Nurcu

pir qazi rawza-khani

ruhaniyyat ruz-nameh sala.fiyya

sartor sayyed ~eyh shaheed Shari' a Sufi tabliq tafsir tak.fir talib Tanzimat tarikat taw hid tasu'a ta'ziyeh

teeman Teknik Elemanlar

Birligi thana to !lab Tudeh Tiirk Yazarlar

Sendikase Tiirkiye Yazarlar

Birligi

Glossary

A tribal branch of the Pukhtuns Cash donations for a vow Snuff Prophetic Order 'Seeker of light', a follower of Bediiizzeman

Saidi Nursi in Turkey Saint, spiritual guide Judge Shi'ite religious ceremonies usually devoted to

recitation of the tragedy of Karbala and martyrdom oflmam Husayn and his family

Clergy Journal, newspaper An Islamic movement enjoining the imitations

of the ways and the pristine Islam of the 'Pious Ancestors'

Black head (symbol of grief) Descendant of the Prophet Shaykh; Sufi guide Martyr Holy law Islamic mystic Missionary activity Interpretation of Koran Excommunication Seminarian The Reforms (Sufi) Brotherhood Unity (of God) The day of mourning preceding 'ashura Passion play on the martyrdom of Husayn and his family Tribe-at-large Union of Technical Personnel (Turkish)

Eulogy Seminarians Iranian Communist Party Syndicate of Turkish Writers

Writers' Union of Turkey

'ulama

'umad umma(h) Usuli Usuli movement

vali velayat velayat-e faqih wilaya zakat zawiya zendeh bad

Glossary XXI

'The learned', plural of 'alim; religious autho­rities Plural of 'umda; village magnate Community of believers Pertaining to rationalism in jurisprudence A movement of jurisprudential rationalism in late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Shi'ism Guardian, custodian Guardianship, authority, mandate Authority, sovereignty of the jurist Province A religious tax Sufi convent Long Live ... !