Due to its role as the only Shi’i majority state in the region, Iran’s relationships with the broader Islamic world – from its support of Hizbollah to its advocacy for minority Shi’i communities of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia – are often conceptualized as contentious and nefarious. The difference between Sunni and Shi’i Islam becomes the foremost conceptual frame used to analyze Iran’s relationship with the broader world. But this, of course, is a gross oversimplification of Iran’s relationship with the world outside its borders. Thus, this panel will examine the varied ways that Iranian Shi’ism has been imagined and reimagined over the course of modern Iranian history (both before and after the Iranian Revolution of 1979), emphasizing the broad connections – both real and conceptual – between Iran, the Islamic World, and the West. Thus, the first paper in this panel will take a long historiographical view of European perceptions of Iran and ‘Islamic Sectarianism’ from travelers to Iran in the seventeenth century to the early Orientalist scholarship of the nineteenth century, to examine some of the ways in which these views of Iran and Iranian Shi’ism have come to be. The second paper will be an examination of the Egyptian Center for Rapprochement of Islamic Sects, Dar al-Taqrib bayna al-Madhahib al-Islamiyya (1948-1980), founded by Iranians but participated in by Muslims from across the Islamic world, with the goal of abandoning both the “medieval” tradition of Shi’i-Sunni polemics and the “modern” call of Arab and Iranian secularism. The third and fourth papers will look at reconceptualizations of Iranian Shi’i practice and theology today. The third paper focuses on how reformist Islamic intellectuals Muhammad Mujtahed Shabestari and Abdolkarim Soroush have worked to reconcile modernity and Shi’i Islam with a reinterpretation of revelation (wahy ) more in tune with Western conceptions of human rights. Finally, the fourth paper is an exciting examination of the new Women's Section of the Museum of Martyrs in the Islamic Republic of Iran, which seeks to use the concept of ‘martyrdom’ transnationally – connecting Iranian female martyrs with Muslim martyrs across the Islamic world. Together, these papers paint a more accurate picture of Iran’s deep-connections with the broader Islamic world and show the varied ways that Shi’ism has been reinterpreted as a transnational and international phenomenon. (Panel convener Christine D. Baker)
Chair
Institutional Affiliation :
University of Texas at Austin
Academic Bio:
Gholamhoseyn Sa’edi’s Othello in Wonderland and Mirror-Polishing Storytellers, and Moniru Ravanipur’s Satan Stones and Kanizu. He was the recipient of the 2008 Lois Roth Prize for Literary Translation. His most recent book is The Neighbor Says: Letters of Nima Yushij and the Philosophy of Modern Persian Poetry (2009) and his forthcoming books include Iranian Films and Persian Fiction, Literary Diseases in Persian Literature, and a translation of Bahram Beyza'i's Memoirs of the Actor in a Supporting Role.
Discussant
Institutional Affiliation :
First Presenter
Institutional Affiliation :
University of Texas at Austin
Academic Bio :
Christine D. Baker is a Ph.D. student in the Department of History at the University of Texas at Austin, specializing in medieval Shi’ism. Her dissertation focuses on how the rivalry between the Fatimid (909-1171) and Buyid (945-1055) states affected the articulation and consolidation of various forms of Shi’i identity. She also has an M.A. in Middle Eastern Studies.
Concise Paper Title :
Rebels, Revolutionaries, and Assassins: A Historiographical Analysis of European Portrayals of Shi’ism
Paper Abstract (maximum of 400 words) :
Although nearly fifteen percent of Muslims identify themselves as Shi'is, as a minority, they exist on the conceptual border of the Islamic world. Further, from the ‘Assassins’ of the Crusades to the ‘radicals’ behind the Iranian Revolution of 1979, Shi’is have often been dismissed as violent and extreme, perceptions that have deep roots in early modern European depictions of Shi'ism.
This paper will explore the arc of European portrayals of Islamic sectarianism in Iran, from the first travelers to the Safavid Empire in the seventeenth century to Orientalist scholarship of the nineteenth century. While these depictions of the Muslim ‘Other’ abound in misconceptions usually labeled as ‘Orientalism’, a deeper process is at work. Historicizing these portrayals reveals how deeply these European perceptions of Shi’ism were affected by their own historical context. The earliest Europeans, influenced by the Protestant Revolution and rising European sectarianism, grappled with the doctrinal differences between Sunnism and Shi'ism while, by the nineteenth century, travelers influenced by Victorian ideas of race and the rise of the nation-state in Europe depicted Shi'ism and Sunnism as mere ethnic differences between Persians and Turks.
Orientalist tropes, rather than being a static framework for viewing the Other, reflected shifting European realities. Yet, despite the historical roots of these European portrayals, these misconceptions deeply affected early scholarship on Shi'is and the Middle East as modern scholars revisited these debates. While Edward Said’s ‘Orientalism’ has been deployed to revise portrayals of the Middle Eastern ‘Other’ based in the unequal power relationship between East and West, these revisions have not always extended to our views of sectarian Islam, which is still often discounted as biased, unreliable, or ‘merely’ sectarian. Viewing these debates within the longer history of Western portrayals of Shi’ism allows for a more thorough analysis of the roots of these positions.
Second Presenter
Institutional Affiliation :
University of Texas at Austin
Academic Bio :
Hanan Hammad has just completed her PhD in the History Department of the University of Texas at Austin. Her dissertation is entitled “Industrialization and Social Transformation in Modern Egypt: al-Mahalla al-Kubra 1910-1958.” She has accepted a position at Texas Christian University at Fort Worth-Dallas as an assistant professor of Middle East History, beginning in Fall 2009. Under the guidance of Professor M.R. Ghanoonparvar she has finished the translation of the novel “Ahl-e Gharq” from Persian into Arabic. Her article “The Iranian Revolution in the Egyptian Press” is forthcoming in Radical History Review. She has worked as a professional journalist for several Arabic publications including the Egyptian weekly al-Ahali and the Kuwaiti daily al-Rai al-‘Amm.
Concise Paper Title :
Rapprochement of Islamic Sects and Authoritarian Nationalism: Dar al-Taqrib 1948-1980
Paper Abstract (maximum of 400 words) :
Established in 1948 in Cairo by the Iranian immigrant Sayyid al-Qumi and Shaykh al-Azhar Mahmud Shaltut, the Center for Rapprochement of Islamic Sects, Dar al-Taqrib bayna al-Madhahib al-Islamiyya, was the first institution of its kind. It abandoned the “medieval” tradition of Shi’i-Sunni polemics and the “modern” call of Arab and Iranian secularism, which undermined the Islamic bond. Inspired by both the Iranian Sayyid Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1839 -1897) and the Egyptian Muhammad ‘Abdu (1849-1905), the Center sought Islamic unification.
It identified itself as “a group restricted to religious and social purposes.” A fatwa from Al-Azhar legitimizing the Ja’fari and Zaydi Madhhabs was one of its most important achievements. Furthermore, it published a tafsir by a Shi’i scholar that could be considered acceptable by both Shi’is and Sunnis. Among other activities designed to publicize the cause of Muslim unity, it also published a quarterly called Risalat al-Islam, which was suspended in 1964.
The Center attracted politicians, intellectuals and religious scholars across the Middle East. Among its founders and activists were the Egyptians Ali ‘Aluba Pasha and the author Ahmad Amin, the Iraqi Mujtahid Muhammad Hussein Al Kashif al-Ghata’, the Iranian Ayatollah Hajj Agha Hussein Barugardi the Lebanese Mujtahid Muhammad Jawad Maghniyya, and the Yemeni politicians Muhammad bin Abdullah al-‘Imari, and Abdullah al-Jarafi al-San’ani. Independent from the state, the Center was able to survive major socio-political changes in Egypt and the Muslim world throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Although it lost some of its strength with the rise of Arab nationalism under Nasser, the center continued its activities until its closure in 1980 with the suspension of relations between Sadat’s regime and the newly established Islamic Republic of Iran.
This paper traces the activities of the Center as an Islamic response to the challenges of modernization and European domination. It discusses how the challenge of modernity altered the way both Shi’i and Sunni Muslims looked at each other and pushed forward a rapprochement in the face of centuries-old polemics in a trans-national setting. It situates the activities of the Center in the broader context of politics of religion and communal relations in the Muslim world in the second half of the twentieth century. It also pays attention to how hegemonic authoritarian regimes tried to contain the Center through establishing state controlled institutions claiming the cause of pan-Islamism.
Thid Presenter
Institutional Affiliation :
University of Texas at Austin
Academic Bio :
Banafsheh Madaninejad is a PhD candidate at the University of Texas program in Comparative Literature, specializing in Islamic theology, commentary and philosophy. Her dissertation focuses on hermeneutic trends in contemporary Iran, comparing the works of Abdolkarim Soroush, Mohammad Mujtahid Shabestari and Mohsen Kadivar. She has MAs in political philosophy and Middle Eastern Studies.
Concise Paper Title :
Islamic Hermeneutics in Iran: A Rereading of Revelation
Paper Abstract (maximum of 400 words) :
In the last few years, reformist Islamic intellectuals Muhammad Mujtahed Shabestari and Abdolkarim Soroush, two of the most theoretically active thinkers in the field of theology, have taken an unexpected transnational hermeneutic turn in how they deal with the concept of revelation (wahy). This turn, heavily influenced by Western (German) hermeneutics, began germinating nine years ago in Soroush’s book “Bast-e Tajrobe-ye Nabavi (The Expansion of the Prophetic Experience)”. Soroush questioned the unqualified and categorical orthodoxy of the Qur’an as “kalam Allah” and in doing so problematized the finality of wahy. In August of 2007, Shabestari joined Soroush and began publishing a series of short articles on the topic. Both Shabestari and Soroush, although using different methodologies and arguments, have suggested that the Qur’an, however inspired and conceived by God, is itself already, “at some level”, an interpretation by the prophet and not the literal divine word.
In this paper, I compare and critique Shabestari and Soroush’s arguments and methodologies and conclude that although problematic, the project they have undertaken can have far-reaching significance.
The most immediate significance is that they have proposed a loophole in reconciling modernity and Islam. Qur’anic Interpretations more in tune with Western conceptions of human rights (something they both consider essential in this reconciliation) become possible if we assume that the non-divine Muhammad was the author of the Qur’an because this suggests a systematic way of “jumping over” the sometimes impenetrable wall of revelation – a text assumed to be the unwavering word of God and as a result, within bounds, applicable across cultures and times.
In directly questioning the givenness of the Qur’an as kalam Allah, the thinkers make the text less foundational in epistemological terms. Tradition dictates that the Qur’an, as the mediated word of God, has already clarified what is supposed to be “significant” in Islam. In choosing to consider the word of God as Muhammad’s interpretation of wahy, Soroush and Shabestari are preparing the means by which to construct new systems of religious significance since it now becomes less problematic for the already humanly produced text to undergo another signification process, more in tune with current historical and cultural needs. Modern interpretation then becomes a constructed and creative enterprise not clearly beholden to as rigid a set of inter-religious provisions as was the case in classical tafsir, opening the doors of ijtihad to a degree as yet unimagined.
Fourth Presenter
Academic Bio :
Faegheh Shirazi, a native of Iran, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies, Islamic Studies Program at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research interests include gender identity and discourse in Muslim societies, Textiles and Clothing, particularly the Islamic veil as well as issues related to women, rituals, and rites of passage as they relate to material culture in popular religious practices in Islamic societies. Shirazi has published in numerous scholarly journals. Her latest publications include: The Veil Unveiled: Hijab in Modern Culture (Gainesville: University Press of Florida 2001, 2003), Velvet Jihad: Muslim Women's Quiet Resistance to Islamic Fundamentalist (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2009), and Muslim Women in War and Crisis: from Reality to Representation (Edited) (Austin: The University of Texas Press, forthcoming 2010).
Concise Paper Title :
When Not Equal in Life, "Almost" Equal in Death
Paper Abstract (maximum of 400 words) :
This study focuses on the Women's Section of the Museum of Martyrs in the Islamic Republic of Iran. It further concentrates on the issue of transnational Women's participation in martyrdom in Iran as well as in other Islamic lands – and, significantly, how such “transnational” martyrdom is depicted at the Museum of Martyrs through the lens of various art installations, including banners, statues, and personal objects.
The idea of post-revolutionary thought and rhetoric falls within a rather gray area as the
museum also includes a painting gallery devoted to recent paintings on the subject of martyrdom. Further, in addition to the Iranian female martyrs there is also an exclusive wing devoted to Palestinian female martyrs. The women martyrs wing is a recent addition by the Bonyade Shahid, perhaps a political and well calculated move to create a different public image of modernization (and equality) within the Islamic Republic.
The discussion will be framed on the question of gender equality in terms of martyrdom. While Iranian women are still subject to unequal status in many aspects of their daily lives (culturally, religious and socially), does martyrdom become a marker of equal status for Muslim women in general? Is the idea of becoming a martyr a uniting factor among the women of the Islamic world? These are important questions to consider in terms of politics of religion. Most recently, the Iranian feminist movement (“One Million Signature Campaign”) certainly created an uneasy climate for governmental officials. This womens' wing to the martyrs museum, added after this campaign gained attention, can perhaps can viewed by the government as a visual remedy to veil and hide a much bigger social problem: The Unequal Status of Iranian Women.
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