International Society for Iranian Studies

From Nationalism to Revolutionary Islam by Said Amir ArjomandReview by: Hooshang AmirahmadiIranian Studies, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Winter, 1986), pp. 104-107Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of International Society for Iranian StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4310517 .

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writings are sometimes statements of principle, but often they reflect his reactions to events around him. They are, therefore, not devoid of contradictions, which is precisely what allows Iranians of varying political persuasions to claim him as one of them.

From Nationalism to Revolutionary Islam. Edited by Said Amir Arjomand. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984. xxi + 256 pp.

Hooshang Amirahmadi

This book of eleven essays is a welcome addition to the growing literature on Islamic movements in the Middle East, despite an unevenness in the geographical coverage, choice of topics, and the quality of individual contribu- tions. Islamic movements in Iraq and Lebanon are ex- cluded, and nationalist movements receive cursory treat- ment.

In the foreword, Ernest Gellner hastily dismisses Marxism in favor of modernization theory and argues that Islam is compatible with "Westernization." None of the case studies that follow supports this proposition. Said Arjomand, in his introduction, pulls the essays together and thereby provides us with a coherent account of the issues dealt with in the book.

The next two chapters are devoted to nationalism. Richard Cottam's behavioral concept of nationalism is largely ahistorical and as such is misplaced in a volume whose main theme is history and social change. Similarly, Rashid Khalidi offers a functionalist interpretation of

Hooshang Amirahmadi is Assistant Professor of Urban Planning and Policy Development at Rutgers University.

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Arab nationalism in Syria after the 1908 reforms in the Ottoman political system and is, thus, unable to trace the genesis of the movement. We are not told, e.g., how the "new intelligentsia" emerged or why certain issues became politicized. The piece also suffers from redun- dancies.

The remaining seven chapters cover Islamic movements and ideological developments. In his detailed account of a tribal Islamic movement in Pakistan, Akbar Ahmad maintains that modern Islamic movements are traditionalist and their target is primarily within society. He also examines the Mullah of Wana's leadership tactics, such as merging tribal identity with Islam, using economic issues to stir up the people, and centralizing administration of the movement. The mullah also vacillated between a secular political and a religious-charismatic paradigm. This created ambiguity and allowed him a larger area in which to maneuver. The similarity of these tactics to those used by Khomeini in the Iranian revolution is striking.

Peter von Sivers's paper on national integration and traditional rural organization in Algeria is equally well done. He argues that tradition (defined as self-suffi- ciency, political noninvolvement, and religious parochi- alism) is becoming "an instrument of self-protection" against the failure of the government to integrate the national economy. A manifestation of this is the ongoing struggle between the local administrators of peasant traditionalist origins and the national administrators with technocratic values. Whether the latter can hold power will largely depend on the success of government planning. While von Sivers treats economic self-suf- ficiency in detail, analysis of the noninvolvement in politics by the traditional classes and their religious parochialism remains inadequate, as acknowledged by the author.

Binnaz Toprak's paper on the National Salvation Party (NSP) in Turkey gives us a clear picture of the party's ideology, class basis, and political activities. The NSP articulated an ideology that rejected the Kemalist conception of Westernization but accepted the adaptation of Western technology for industrialization based on a re-created cultural past. While this ideology reflected

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the interests of the party's leadership (drawn from the professional classes), it was contradicted by the in- terests of its largely peasant and traditional urban middle-class supporters. This was perhaps why the party never spelled out a program of industrialization during its short life (1972-1980).

Eric Davis's paper on the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (MB) offers a neo-Marxian "structural model" for the study of the relationship between Islamic fundamentalism and politics. In brief, "differential accumulation" led to the "illegitimization" of the state and brought into question the "authenticity" of the capitalist and so- cialist ideologies. Islam thus became the only authentic ideology which was then politicized by the Islamic radicals originating from the rural petite-bourgeoisie. This class tends to romanticize its past and thus calls for a cultural revolution. While Davis's class analysis of the MB in Egyptian politics is rich, he is not con- vincing about the authenticity crisis of capitalism or socialism in Egypt. Also, why should the MB's romanti- cization of the rural past lead them to radicalism and not sufism?

Farhad Kazemi's description of the ideology and practice of the Fada'iyan-e Islam in Iran gives us a clear picture of their antisecularism/anti-Westernism and their devotion to the violent establishment of a theo- cratic government based on a re-created cultural past. Kazemi is also successful in identifying the Fada'iyan's class basis (largely young urban middle- and lower-middle classes) and its uneasy coalition with Ayatollah Kashani, but he fails to account for the factors behind its emergence.

Shaul Bakhash's analysis of the sermons and religious pamphlets during 1978 gives only a partial picture of the 1979 revolution. To complete it he ought also to have investigated the pamphlets distributed by secular forces. Bakhash's analysis leads us to believe, e.g., that people demanded only an Islamic Republic and national indepen- dence, whereas demands for democracy and social justice were equally present.

The most important contribution to the book is the paper by Said Arjomand on Shi'i traditionalism in twen-

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tieth-century Iran. Its distinctive features are its reaction against Westernization and its development into an explicit Islamic ideology seeking to re-create the Islamic cultural past. Arjomand traces the ideology's evolution from Shaikh Nuri's opposition to parliamentary democracy in 1905-1909 to the ideological struggle against religious modernism and Westernization during the 1940s (led by the Fada'iyan-e Islam and Ayatollah Kho- meini) and to the developments in the 1960s and 1970s during which Islam was politicized, imbued with populism, and the concept of velayat-e faqih was formulated by Ayatollah Khomeini. Arjomand also demonstrates the shah's naivete in his dealings with the clergy and his handling of Islamic ideological developments. He might have provided a fuller explanation by an analysis of socioeconomic and ideological developments since the Constitutional Revolution and their relationship to developments in Islamic traditionalism. Arjomand's view that Khomeini assumed a leading role in religious col- lective protest to modernism and Westernization in the 1940s is not shared by a number of other scholars, but is supported by some, such as Hamid Alger.

In sum, the book is a rich source of theoretical positions, historical accounts, and tactical issues about modern Islamic movements and as such is indispensable to anyone interested in the current ideological and political developments in the Middle East.

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