Islam In Iran

A scholarly and authoritative history of the emergence and growth of Islam in Iran during the early and later medieval periods. This book, by I. P. Petrushevsky, the foremost Soviet Iranologist, was originally published in Russia in 1966. After discussing the Arabian environment in which the faith of Islam arose, and the character--legal, social and doctrinal--of the new message, the author moves on to trace the peculiarly Iranian development of Islamic beliefs, the schisms which arose in its early history, and the eventual creation of a Sunni orthodoxy. Written from the Russian perspective, with Russia's long contact with Iranian and Turkish Muslim neighbors, it provides a stimulating and salutary balance to the study of the Islamic world.

Examining the trajectory of the secularization of Islam in Iran, this book explains how efforts to Islamize society led, self-destructively, to its secularization. The research engages a range of debates across different fields, emphasizing the political and epistemological instability of the basic categories such as Islam, Sharia, and secularism. The volume is an interdisciplinary study of both the history of Islamic revival and Khomeini’s very specific merger of Islamic law and mysticism. It traces back the process of secularization to the early encounter of Iranian intellectuals with Europeans and adoption of their fundamental framework in an Islamic guise. The process continued until the Islamic Revolution of Iran in 1979, when Khomeini tried to substantively de-secularize Iranian social imaginaries. His attempts were not followed up by his followers, who vigorously reinstated the previous trend, after his death, resulting in a polity that is mostly secular but with Islamic ornaments. Bringing together area studies (Iran), religious studies (Islam), and political theory (secularism), this interdisciplinary volume places findings in a broader narrative that is both specific to Iran and broad enough to engage a global readership.

Ali Mirsepassi's book presents a powerful challenge to the dominant media and scholarly construction of radical Islamist politics, and their anti-Western ideology, as a purely Islamic phenomenon derived from insular, traditional and monolithic religious 'foundations'. It argues that the discourse of political Islam has strong connections to important and disturbing currents in Western philosophy and modern Western intellectual trends. The work demonstrates this by establishing links between important contemporary Iranian intellectuals and the central influence of Martin Heidegger's philosophy. We are also introduced to new democratic narratives of modernity linked to diverse intellectual trends in the West and in non-Western societies, notably in India, where the ideas of John Dewey have influenced important democratic social movements. As the first book to make such connections, it promises to be an important contribution to the field and will do much to overturn some pervasive assumptions about the dichotomy between East and West.

'...her short analysis of the Iranian armed forces in the 1980s is first-rate, so too is her much more substantial section on women and the state in Iran...As well as offering useful insights into the workings of the Islamic state in Iran, this readable book also provides a warning of the struggles ahead in many other Muslim societies.' - Anoushiravan Ehteshami, Times Higher Education Supplement ;Islam has been the driving force shaping the ideology and the power base of the Iranian revolution. This volume engages critically with the Islamic perspective and promises offered by the revolution. Looking at the rise of the religious institution as a revolutionary force, the author observes their post-revolutionary policies in the domains of politics, economics, education, the armed forces and women's status. In the event, the volume demonstrates that the Iranian government has failed to deliver on most, if not all, of its Islamic pledges.

In today's world all eyes are on Iran, which has grappled with an experiment that has had a massive global impact. For some, the Iranian Revolution of 1978-79 was the triumph of a modern, political Islam, heralding Muslim justice and economic prosperity. Others, including many of the original revolutionaries, saw religious fanatics attempting to roll back time by creating a despotic theocracy. Either way, the Iranian Revolution changed the Muslim world. It not only inspired the Muslim masses but also reinvigorated intellectual debates on the nature and possibilities of an Islamic state. The new 'Islamic Republic of Iran' combined not just religion and the state, but theocracy and democracy. Yet the revolution's heirs were soon engaged in a protracted struggle over its legacy. Dissident thinkers, from within an Islamic framework, sought a rights-based political order that could accept dissent, tolerance, pluralism, women's rights and civil liberties. Their ideas led directly to the presidency of Mohammad Khatami and, despite their political failure, they did leave a permanent legacy by demystifying Iranian religious politics, and condemning the use of the Shariah to justify autocratic rule. This book tells the story of the reformist movement through the world of Hasan Yousefi Eshkevari. An active supporter of the revolution who became one of the most outspoken critics of theocracy, Eshkevari developed ideas of 'Islamic democratic government', which have attracted considerable attention in Iran and elsewhere. In presenting a selection of Eshkevari's writings, this book reveals the intellectual and political trajectory of a Muslim thinker and his attempts to reconcile Islam with reform and democracy. As such it makes a highly original contribution to our understanding of the difficult social and political issues confronting the Islamic world today.

Iranian women tell in their own words what the revolution attempted and how they responded. The Islamic revolution of 1979 transformed all areas of Iranian life. For women, the consequences were extensive and profound, as the state set out to reverse legal and social rights women had won and to dictate many aspects of women's lives, including what they could study and how they must dress and relate to men. Reconstructed Lives presents Iranian women telling in their own words what the revolution attempted and how they responded. Through a series of interviews with professional and working women in Iran—doctors, lawyers, writers, professors, secretaries, businesswomen—Haleh Esfandiari gathers dramatic accounts of what has happened to their lives as women in an Islamic society. She and her informants describe the strategies by which women try to and sometimes succeed in subverting the state's agenda. Esfandiari also provides historical background on the women's movement in Iran. She finds evidence in Iran's experience that even women from "traditional" and working classes do not easily surrender rights or access they have gained to education, career opportunities, and a public role.

How did Iran remain distinctively Iranian in the centuries which followed the Arab Conquest? How did it retain its cultural distinctiveness after the displacement of Zoroastrianism - state religion of the Persian empire - by Islam? This latest volume in "The Idea of Iran" series traces that critical moment in Iranian history which followed the transformation of ancient traditions during the country's conversion and initial Islamic period. Distinguished contributors (who include the late Oleg Grabar, Roy Mottahedeh, Alan Williams and Said Amir Arjomand) discuss, from a variety of literary, artistic, religious and cultural perspectives, the years around the end of the first millennium CE, when the political strength of the 'Abbasid Caliphate was on the wane, and when the eastern lands of the Islamic empire began to be take on a fresh 'Persianate' or 'Perso-Islamic' character. One of the paradoxes of this era is that the establishment throughout the eastern Islamic territories of new Turkish dynasties coincided with the genesis and spread, into Central and South Asia, of vibrant new Persian language and literatures. Exploring the nature of this paradox, separate chapters engage with ideas of kingship, authority and identity and their fascinating expression through the written word, architecture and the visual arts.