A revolution in religion, or a return to tradition?
How Islamist extremism has profoundly affected public discussion about religion in the Middle East
Al-Arabiya has a piece on how Iran’s clerical class is faced with hostility from ordinary people after 43 years of being in a position of power and privilege. This is no surprise because of the corruption and arrogance of Iran’s ruling clergy, and its abuses of power, which has left it discredited.
And if surveys like this are to be relied upon (I take into account that we can never be sure about the actual numbers and public attitudes inside Iran), 43 years of Islamic Republic rule has succeeded in turning many Iranians against the official creed, either away from religion or to alternative faiths. The regime officially discriminates against and outright persecutes all religious minorities and dissenters in Iran, in other words all those who do not follow the official line of velayat-e-faqih (wilayat al-faqih). In other words, codifying political-religious extremism into a state ideology like Communism has been a failure!
This must surely have been noticed in the Arab World, reeling from dealing with Islamist extremism in its maximal form represented by ISIS and Al-Qaeda, and in the guise of the Muslim Brotherhood and its well-connected global network linked to Western liberals. Rather than a rejection of religion or secularisation, the process taking place in the Arab World is more a return of Islam in a more traditional role of being just a religion again, rather than a political creed.
Just recently, Lebanese Shia cleric and now Saudi citizen Seyed Mohammad Ali al-Husseini, an outspoken opponent of the Islamic Republic and Hezbollah, sent his condolences on the passing of leading Saudi cleric Saleh al-Luhaidan, one of the most important figures in Saudi Arabia’s religious establishment. At the same time, Habib Ali al-Jifri, a Shafi’i scholar of the Ba Alawi tradition of Hadhramaut, sent his greetings to Orthodox Christians who celebrate Christmas on January 7. These posts appear to be in line with the spirit developing or being rekindled in the region, one contrary to the sectarian politics initiated by the Islamic Republic regime when it came to power in Iran in 1979.
The evolving discussions on religion must also be seen within the framework of the region’s traditions - tribal and clan lineages in the Arab World, and schools of jurisprudence which are traditions adopted and inherited over centuries. At the same time, the Islamic Republic and its corrupt and discredited religious establishment is handed a significant defeat in the propaganda war, especially on religious matters. Its claims of countering alleged “Wahhabi extremism” was never more than a ploy to make various actors in the region complicit in its sectarian bloodshed, assenting both to external wars and murderous repression of internal dissent.
If and when the Islamic Republic falls, we will know the true extent of how much Iranians’ religious attitudes have changed in recent decades. The Arabs on the other hand are coming to grips with the task of putting religion in its proper place.