Vanessa Martin. Iran between Islamic Nationalism and Secularism: The Constitutional Revolution of 1906.

Abstract

In the past 35 years, official historiography in Iran has presented “Islam” as the primary motivator of all popular movements since the mid-nineteenth century. A corollary of this has been to denigrate or downplay motives that cannot be subsumed by “Islam.” The purpose has been to furnish a historically rooted intellectual pedigree for the Islamism currently dominant in the country. In the book under review, however, Vanessa Martin contends that the literature in English on the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1906 has emphasized the secular components of the revolution and it is now “timely” to explore the role of Islam. Indeed, she maintains, a “wide reading of the sources of the time demonstrates how far the population as a whole thought” of that revolution “implicitly as a Shiʿi revolution, whilst also being conscious that it would introduce a new system of government that promised greater accountability, regularity and justice to replace the arbitrary rule of absolutism.” Given that Iran was a “devoutly Shiʿi country, it was natural that the Revolution would be perceived in religious terms.” Unlike a small intellectual and mercantile elite who espoused secularism, the clerics were “very influential, not only because of their role in Islam, but also because the people were accustomed to deploying their influence to bargain with and protest against the state” (p. 1).