Messianism in Iranian Islam: From Conceptions to Re-conceptions

Islamic messianism has been exploited on numerous occasions in Iranian history but rarely with the same intensity as that witnessed in the modern period, an era marked by messianic hopes and chiliastic tensions. This panel will seek to broaden scholarly understanding of Islamic messianism through three presentations exploring how messianism has been received, conceived and reconceived in Iranian Islam. The aim of this panel will be to gain a greater understanding of this powerful concept in Islamic thought and to consider some of the ways it has been negotiated by Iranians throughout history. The first paper, “After a Break in the Sequence: Moses and the Messiah in Early and Modern Shi`i Literature,” will examine the changing images of Moses vis-à-vis the Shi`i messiah from early to contemporary works. The second presentation, “The Shi‘i Mahdi and the Sunni Mahdi: Towards a Comparative Study,” will compare the figure of the Mahdi in the earliest Sunni and Shi`i primary sources. The final two papers will focus on the modern period. The third paper, “The Baha’i Faith and Islamic Messianism in Iran,” examines the messianic aspirations of Iranian Muslims and Baha’is based on study of two of the foremost messianic sources in the Baha’i corpus. The fourth paper will argue that the promotion of Shi`i-Sunni rapprochement by a prominent 20th century Grand Ayatollah was in no small measure a reaction to the post-messianic Baha’i religion.


Presentations

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The image of pre-Islamic prophets in the corpus of Twelver Shi`i messianic literature has to date received little scholarly attention. This paper will be the first attempt to examine the changing conceptions of Moses, the prophet mentioned more than any other in the Qur’an, as encountered in Shi`i classical and contemporary works written to prove the occultation (ghayba) of the Shi`i messiah known as the Qa’im or hidden Imam. Events in the life of Moses as recounted in the Qur'an come to represent a template for the life of the Qa'im in Shi`i hadiths. One particularly important and lengthy hadith casts Moses's role as the messianic deliverer of the Israelites as a typological prefiguration of the mission of the Qa'im, defining occultation as the interregnum between two prophets (in this case, Joseph and Moses) when the earth is bereft of a prophet or messenger. This hadith bares striking similarity to a set of controversial Traditions recorded by early Shi`i scholars stipulating that the Qa’im will only rise after an interval or break in the series of Imams (`ala fatra min al-a’imma), i.e., after a period of time when there are no Imams, just as the Prophet Muhammad appeared after a break in the sequence of Messengers. After presenting these hadiths, this paper will focus on attempts by Shi`i scholars and Qur'an commentators to negotiate such Traditions. As we will see, although such Traditions are found in early Shi`i works, they are either passed over in silence or at times blatantly distorted by some contemporary works, including Persian translations.

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Scholarship in the field of Islamic messianism has tended to focus exclusively on either its Sunni or Shi‘i representations. This paper will attempt to fill a noticeable lacuna by conducting a comparative study of the Islamic messianic figure known as the Mahdi in classical Sunni and Shi‘i works of hadith. We will give particular attention to the duration and features of the Mahdi’s rule, the condition of the world at the time of his appearance, and his position vis-à-vis previous prophets and messengers, as imagined and reimagined by Sunni andShi‘i scholars of hadith. Particular focus will be given to how scholars from Persianate societies (both Sunni and Shi‘i) have responded to the question of what precisely the Mahdi will inaugurate and how the various answers proffered to this question reflect changing social and historical circumstances and exigencies.

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In the mid-1840s, Sayyid ‘Ali Muhammad Shirazi (known to history as the Bab), claimed to be the promised Mahdi whose return Iranian Shi‘i Muslims have been awaiting for over a millennium. The overwhelming majority of the Bab’s believers eventually followed Baha’u’llah (founder of the Baha’i religion), who claimed to be the return of Imam Husayn. I argue that the respective messianic visions of Islam and the Baha’i faith account for a fundamental difference between the two religions. Whereas Muslims remain in a state of messianic expectation (intizar), Baha’is have entered a post-messianic era of fulfillment. Whereas Muslims, especially of the Shi‘i persuasion, place the burden of establishing justice and peace on the Mahdi, who will appear at a future date, Baha’is place the burden to establish a just society on themselves in the here and now. Based on a close study of foundational Babi and Baha’i primary sources such as the Bab’s Arabic Qayyum al-Asma’ and Baha’u’llah’s Persian Kitab-i Iqan, my paper will consider how the Baha’i faith views its relation to Islamic messianism in its uniquely Iranian mode.

Additionally, this paper argues that the messianic claims of the Bab and Baha’u’llah are closely related to persecution of Babis and Baha’is in Iran. This link between messianism and persecution is established on the basis of a survey of Iranian and Western primary reports dating from the mid-nineteenth century to the present.

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The impulse behind Islamic ecumenism the rapprochement between Sunnis and Shi‘as in modern Iranian history originated in the activities of Sayyid Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (d. 1896), and his endorsement of Sultan ‘Abdu’l-Hamid’s notion of ittihad-i Islam (unity of Muslims). The ecumenism of al-Afghani and his immediate followers was essentially political in motivation, inviting Muslims to form a united front against British encroachment. In contrast, the later Iranian attempts at promoting solidarity between Sunnis and Shi‘a was motivated by primarily religious causes. During the twentieth century, and before the Islamic Revolution of 1979, two Iranian waves of ecumenism can be discerned. The first was fostered by “reformist” theologians such as Sayyid Asad Allah Kharqani (d. 1936 ), and by the efforts of Shari‘at Sangalaji (d. 1944) during the decades following the Constitutional Revolution, particularly in the 1930s. The second originated in the activities of Grand Ayatollah Haji Aqa Husayn Burujirdi (d. 1961), the sole marja‘-i taqlīd (Source of Emulation) of the Shi‘a during the 1950s. For Kharqani, recovery of a united Islamic front like that which, in his mind, had existed in the first forty years of the religion’s history, was essential in strengthening Muslim interests against threats posed by multiple “Others.” These latter forces of unbelief (kufr) were “the followers of old religions, new religions, the materialists, and naturalists.” Sangalaji, similarly, projected onto the Baha’i minority the extremism (ghuluw) of which the Sunnis accused the Shi‘ites themselves. His objective was to endow mainstream Twelver Shi‘ism with the status of orthodoxy and thus to effect a rapprochement between it and “the other orthodoxy,” embodied in mainstream Sunni Islam. The origin of Burujerdi’s ecumenical commitment, on the other hand, was far more focused. A vitriolic anti-Bahaism is said to have been the passion of his life. For him, Islamic rapprochement was the logical coming together against a heretical “common enemy” of both Shi‘ites and Sunnis. Based on an in-depth study of the writings and biographies of the figures involved, this paper argues that the rise and expansion of the Baha’i faith created a perceived threat that induced Iran’s Islamic establishment to see Shi‘a-Sunni rapprochment as a necessary defensive maneuver.