Iran’s Constitutional Revolution and Religious Reactions to It

Seyed Milad Kashefi Pour Dezfuli

doi:10.5539/ass.v12n11p11

Abstract

<p>Half a century of intellectual debates and efforts to political reforms following Iran’s defeat against Czarist Russian Empire at two series of wars at 1810s and 1820s, led to the Constitutional Revolution of 1906 which put an end to a thousand-year-old despotic monarchical order. However, the success of the revolution and the establishment of Iran’s first legislative Assembly (Majlis) didn’t ended controversy between advocates of traditional order and widespread front of supporters of modernism which was begun decades earlier. New ruling system with its modern institutions could not satisfy opponents of modernism and supporters of traditional monarchy. From decades before Constitutional revolution, introduction of modern concepts had created rifts in the content of traditional ones but so far as these modern concepts hadn’t turned to parts of socio-political realities of the country and hadn’t unsettled traditional order, controversy between advocates and opponents of modernism couldn’t transform into an all-out and pervasive conflict. It was then that traditionalists realized the depth of dangers modern concepts can present against traditional political order.</p>

Highlights

During Qajar dynasty’s history, there were numerous campaigns for modernizing the socio-political order and institutions of the country, but despotism of the Shahs was an obstacle for every meaningful achievement
Political reforms required securing of fundamental freedoms; Shah and a large part of the ruling clique were more accustomed to the long tradition of despotism than to be able to acquiesce to the requirements of a modern political order
Constitutional movement was a response to the dilemma between the continuation of tyranny and the quest for freedom and modernization, following the overthrow of the despotic order and its institutions, the country was stuck into such a massive disorder and disruption in some provinces resulted from domination of anarchists and hoodlums that even a great many of the staunchest sympathizers of the revolution started to worry about the legitimacy of the new order and the people consent and some of them even began to warn of the failure of the revolution

Summary

Introduction

During Qajar dynasty’s history, there were numerous campaigns for modernizing the socio-political order and institutions of the country, but despotism of the Shahs was an obstacle for every meaningful achievement. On the one hand official historiography after the Islamic Revolution of 1979 has tried to purify Sheik Fazl-Allah as a sage who foresaw all the difficulties an unbound-to-Sharia constitutionalism would encounter and on the other hand secular historians have tended to underestimate the importance of the religious debates revolving around religious legitimacy of constitutionalism between Sheik Fazl-Allah and his opponents An example of this tendency could be found in “Iranian Mashrooteh: backgrounds of the theory of Velayat-e-Faqih (sovereignty of Shia jurist)” written by Masha-Allah Ajodani, Iranian expatriate intellectual living in London. Considerable literature has been produced among Iranian academics living abroad on the subject of Iranian Muslims reactions to modernity which in study dedicated to Constitutional movement could be valuable sources Works such as Mangol Bayat’s “Iran’s First Revolution: Shi’ism and Constitutional Revolution of 1905-1906”, Farhang Rajaee’s “Islamism and Modernism: Changing Discourse in Iran” and Said amir Arjomand’s “Constitutional Politics in the Middle East: With Special Reference to Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan” are among them. A framework based on conceptual history theory which assumes that concepts and cultural values and practices should be understood in their particular contexts and not as unchanging ideologies and processes would be of great significance in my research as this research method could be used to suggest that it was evolutions in traditional Shia concepts which made possible the development of modern Shia political thought

Political Context

Religious Opponents of Constitutionalism

Religious Advocates of Constitutionalism