Inspiration for a Revolution

The three slipped into their usual chairs with skill and precision while coffee pots and light food distributing itself through the invisible hand of the dinner table and threw itself into ferocious mouthes and distinguishing palates.

Miranda was positively beaming.

G: “You look cheerful today.”

M: “Sometimes I can’t believe how massive the iron hand of the media can seem to be. Then you find something that doesn’t fit, you follow it and suddenly the wall was not stone at all but dandelion seeds scattering in the wind.”

C: “And this something?”

M: “I tried to understand the whole thing about the Iranian revolution. You remember we briefly touched on the subject of Iran?”

G: “I did a little reading myself as well. Let’s compare notes. They were actually under a colonial foot longer than the others in the area. The period with the Shah in place was good time for America rather than a good time for Iran, at least politically. At this point in time Iran could peak over to the neighbours and examine how difficult a time they had shedding their colonial mantle. Syria and Lebanon were unstable, Egypt had taken a leap with Nasser, but from the point of view of a colonised Arab land, US and its ally, Israel, had beaten them on the ground.”

Gerald found a timeline of the political development in Iran.

C: “So.. the US and the British had their man in Iran, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. He was officially monarch since 1941. He held office during the Suez Crisis, during the Six-Days War, he could look at Algeria struggling against the French. And yes, he witnessed how Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Yemen were politically unstable as you said.”

G: “That instability owed a lot to the colonial and post colonial turmoil. The CIA and MI6 made a bad bargain getting rid of Prime Minister Mosaddegh in 1953 and reverting Iran into an authoritarian monarchy again like in his father’s days until 1941 when his father was deemed useless to the occupying forces. Had they known what kind of situation they would have on their hands in 1979 because of what they did in 1953, they might have thought twice.”

Christine looked at Miranda who looked sly.

M: “Suspecting that our Western perception of Iran was somewhat lacking, I thought I’d like to revisit the scene. This brings me to:”

Ali Shariati

M: “He studied sociology in Paris in the crucial years right after the 1953 coup in Iran ousted prime minister Mosaddegh and while Paris was teeming with anti-colonial fervour over Algeria, and while a structuralist reading of the prevailing power relations exposed and attacked these relations. He came home having acquainted himself with every anti-colonial framework in the book.

Reading him is actually amazingly refreshing. Christine, a couple of nights ago you said you have read some of the Ayatollah’s writings and found them boringly holy.

I would have expected the same thing with Shariati. Instead I saw a creative thinker rewriting his religion through the mental discipline of structural linguistics, history and sociology.”

G: “I thought the essence of the revolution was Islamic fundamentalism?”

M: “Certainly possible, I have yet to read many of the key voices of formulating the movement’s thinking, including Khomeini himself.

If you ask me outright if Shariati sounds fundamentalist, I would struggle for words to express how much the opposite the case is.”

C: “Could it be the case that you find his version of Islam sympathetic or perhaps feel obligated to shield them from further derision?”

M: “I think a better explanation is that I did expect to find a lot of poetic religious praise and amen. Honestly, the lengthy foreword sent me in that direction. Then as soon as Shariati spoke, I immediately recognised the mentality, the method applied.”

G: “So what does he say?”

Engine of change

M: “He does what a French structuralist would do when approaching any subject: He starts to examine the genealogy of this own method. Like a structuralist historian, he draws out the influences of layers as if he were to understand a historical person.”

Only two ways exist in which to acquire knowledge of a great personality, and both of these ways must be pursued simultaneously in order to yield the final result ‑ the knowledge of the great man in question.

1. The first way consists of studying and investigating the intellectual, scientific and written works of the individual, his theories, his speeches, his lectures and his books. Knowledge of the ideas and beliefs of a person is an indispensable preliminary to understanding him. […]
2. The second way, which complements the first and makes possible a complete understanding of the person, is to study his biography and to seek an answer to such questions as: where was he born? to what family did he belong? what was his race and what was his country? how did his childhood pass? how was he educated? in what environment did he grow up? where did he study? who were his teachers? what events did he confront in the course of his life? what were his failures and his successes?

M: “There will be nothing beyond these answers. But we must ask all the questions. There is no onion, it is not layers. The soul is an octopus of reactions and the grand sum of its tentacles is the whole picture. And a soul is part of a greater whole.”

Christine looked more at a loss than Gerald who himself looked like a photograph taken seconds before or after he was supposed to look intelligent.

M: “Okay, let’s try another way. Shariati poses this question as being central:”

“"Why did Europe stagnate for a thousand years, and what happened to cause a sudden change in direction, so that in the course of three centuries, it discovered truths it had failed to perceive in a whole millenium?”

C: “Well… because of the Dark Ages?”

M: “Ah, clever, but unenlightening. Shariati adds a level of insight, but he has a goal:”

We must point out here that the fundamental factor in the stagnation of thought, civilization and culture that lasted for a millenium in medieval Europe was the Aristotelian method of analogical reasoning.

[…]

At the same time, it is true from the sociological point of view that the main factor in this change was the transformation of the feudal system into that of the bourgeoisie; this was caused, in turn by the breaching of the wall that separated the Islamic East from the Christian West, the breaching brought about by the Crusades.

M: “His notion is that for a thousand years intelligent people asked the wrong kind of questions. The way we think is of importance.”

But what enabled the two Bacons to become factors in the advancement of science, despite their inferiority in genius to men like Plato, while those geniuses caused the millenial stagnation of medieval Europe? In other words, why should a genius cause stagnation in the world, and an average man bring about scientific progress and popular awakening? Because the latter has discovered the correct method of reasoning […]

M: “And that is his project: To figure out why the Quran and Islam caused major upheavals, and of course ultimately to lead people to such a revolutionary thinking as caused the enlightenment and restarted the Western civilisation.

He links this question of change to kind of an attitude, a disposition towards existence that applies to everybody, kings and beggars.”

G: “I guess this is where the revolutionary part starts to take shape: Change how people look at the world to gather them into a revolutionary force.

We spend a lot of time analysing which political forces in a country causes what change. But Shariati poses a seemingly identical question, but in reality different: How can we reproduce such a change?”

Miranda nodded.

M: “It is the way he repurposes his training from his studies in Paris that is refreshing. We see all the usual religious slogans, but he turns every stone and reexamines it with structural eyes.

He has awareness of the method, which is why he is easy to misread. He employs a historiography, an analysis of a historical tradition.”

Attempts to find the answer to this question have been continuing for centuries […] The various schools of sociology part company at this point […]

M: “This is our knowledge. He contrasts that with the Islamic teaching. I can’t say tradition, because he also insists that we need to reexamine how we read the Quran - with awareness of its history. We recognise our schools in his version:”

Certain schools do not believe at all in history […] They also refuse to accept that sociology should have any fixed laws, principles or criteria.

[…]

It is pessimistic with regard to the philosophy of sociology and the human sciences, and considers accident to be the basic factor.

[…]

For example, suddenly the Arabs attacked Iran; by chance, Iran was defeated and later the Iranians became Muslim. By chance, Chengiz Khan attacked Iran;

[…]

In short, this school regards everything as the outcome of chance.

M: “You see what he is doing? Underpinning this particular form of thinking is an unvoiced tenet: Random chances drives history. Causality plays a role, but a lesser one than we think.”

C: “Not the most prevalent of schools today. Social laws drive history.”

G: “I largely agree, Christine, but he may be talking less about a specific kind of sociology and more about a cynical approach seen in many who refuses to surrender completely to the idea that social laws cannot be bent.”

M: “Rounding that one of, see how Shariati contrasts that underlying principle with Islam:”

"Accident" also has no decisive role to play in Islam, for all things are in the hand of God, so that accident, in the sense of an event coming into being without any cause or ultimate purpose, is inconceivable, whether in nature or in human society.

M: “We are to imagine those philosophers that Gerald spoke of and contrast their hidden assumption with what he just said. See how he is in an active, creative process of changing the mindset of his audience? It is more than just ‘counter-ideas’. He has learned a skillset, a method of authoring, and he applies that method.

Let’s talk about Marxism and that company.”

Another group is composed of the materialists and those who believe in historical determinism. “They believe that history and society, from the very beginning down to the present, are like a tree, devoid of any volition. In its origin it was a seed.

C: “The social laws are unfolding.”

According to this belief, individuals can have no effect on the fate of their societies, and society is a natural phenomenon that develops according to natural factors and laws.

M: “The Quran takes a middle ground:”

Tradition, in the form derived from Islam and the Qur’an, has the sense that each society has a fixed basis, or in the words of the Qur'an, it has a road, a path, a particular character. All societies contain definite and immutable laws within themselves.

Islam thus appears to approach the theory of determinism in history and society; but it has something further to say […]

"Verily God does not change the state of a people until they change the state of their own selves" (13:11) bear the meaning of social responsibility.

M: “What I really try to convey here is that the very act of applying Islamic thinking in a creational way in itself incarnates the essence of the philosophy. It is an awareness.”

G: “Okay. Perhaps I let myself slide down into habitual Western thinking, but I think it is getting rather speculative.”

C: “No, I think I see where Miranda is going. She has the advantage of recognition. She knows the turf a bit more than we do.”

M: “What do you think of the core question? Why does change happen?”

G: “Change happens because CIA knows which buttons to push.”

C: “They didn’t know how to stop the 1979 revolution.”

M: “Shariati knew how to invigorate an entire people. He fused together new and old scholarship and came up with something that put the masses in motion, at least after some further evolutionary steps.”

G: “That is why you have a hard time reducing the Islamic Republic to a fundamentalist system?”

M: “Yes. It didn’t begin as one. Shariati is about the very opposite of using the Quran to coerce your fellow people. Without the elevated awareness, it couldn’t work.

Furthermore, he emphasises the importance of everybody, not a singular leader.”

In short, four factors affect the destiny of societies personality, accident, norm and people (al‑nas). Among them the two most important are al‑nas and norm, because al‑nas represents the will of the mass of the people, and norm, the scientifically demonstrable laws existent in society.

M: “Combining the emphasis on al-nas with personal responsibility is a powerful recipe. He examines influential Islamic leaders as well. Husayn, Abu Ali Sina and Husayn b. Mansur Hallaj”

The comparison of these three individuals will help us to gain a vivid comprehension of the differences between the schools of philosophy, Sufism and Islam, as well as their common features.

M: “Ali Sina seems to highlight his initial comment that clever people can still suffer from contentment. They do not explain change.”

Ibn Sina was a great philosopher, scholar and genius, a source of pride to the whole history of science and philosophy in Islamic civilization. But this great and profound man, who was so outstanding as a philosopher and scholar, was content, from the social point of view, to place himself in the service of rank and of power, and he never showed any concern with the destiny of man and the fate of his society. He saw no connection between his own fate and that of others. His sole concerns were the investigation of scientific matters and scholarly research. The outer form of his life was a matter of indifference for him; whoever granted him money and position was acceptable to him.

G: “He scored low on the social responsibility index.”

M: “Same problem with the religiously man of fire.”

As lot Hallaj, he was a man aflame. A man that is on fire has no responsibility; it is his function simply to burn and to cry out.

Why was Hallaj burning? From the passionate love of God. He had taken his head between his hands and run through the streets of Baghdad proclaiming:

"Split open this head, for it has rebelled against me! Deliver me from this fire that is burning within me! I am nothing, I am God!" By this he meant, "I no longer exist, God alone exists!"

Hallaj was constantly immersed in the burning invocation of God, and this was a Source of true exaltation for him.

C: “Powerful!”

M: “As long as we don’t imitate him:”

But imagine if Iranian society were to consist of 25 million Hallaj's. It would be nothing but a vast lunatic asylum, with everyone running into the streets proclaiming, "Come, kill me! I can endure it no longer! I have nothing! There is naught in my cloak but God!”

They were all silent for a while.

C: “History is apparently not guided by completely random chances.”

G: “I think I would have liked that lunatic asylum!”

/ПРИЗРАК