Opponents of Reform: Tradition in the Service of Radicalism

Kamran Giti is a political analyst in Tehran.

In northern Iran, the farmers a couple of generations ago had a saying about their landlords to the effect that when people at the top start talking to each other, people at the bottom should beware. In Iran there is no sign of agreement at the top, but interesting discussions abound at the bottom. That brings to mind an ancient Chinese curse: “May you live in interesting times.” There are many indications that we should fear the curse.

 

This analysis will focus on the probable reactions of the losing side in the recent presidential elections in Iran. Its response to that defeat ought to be considered in a context of several other factors, including how the winners will act; the price of oil; the New Right in Iran; the balance of international relations; Iran’s socio-economic situation; and the newly formed financial pressure groups in the country. Unfortunately, significant as these factors are for an understanding of the subject under consideration, reasons of space preclude me from discussing them here.

 

I must begin with some points of semantics. I find it inappropriate to identify the losers as “conservatives”. Those who are called “conservatives” in Iran are in fact very “radical”. Conservatism and radicalism seem to me incompatible. So instead of “conservatives”, I will use “traditionalists”, but in a specific sense of the word customised for this paper.

 

On my definition, traditionalism is the exploitation of, or appeal to, tradition as a basis for reform—even radical reform. Thus, the Renaissance was traditionalist in that it sought a return to ancient Greek traditions in order to make changes. In China, the Boxer Uprising in the late nineteenth century was motivated by traditionalism to oppose foreign intervention. And during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Mao Tse Tung used Chinese traditions in writing his Little Red Book to teach his cadres his version of Marxism (a rather modern school of thought). Mahatma Gandhi similarly used Indian traditions during his struggle against British rule, while simultaneously drawing on the modern knowledge he had gained during his years studying law in Britain. Japan also furnishes examples of the exploitation of tradition for reformist ends, as in the Meiji Restoration (1868) and in the pursuit of industrialisation. And even a very young, modern nation such as the United States leans heavily on tradition. For example, the architectural design of the front aspect of the White House is based on ancient Greek models. Similarly, the US judicial system, the Senate, the voting system, American democracy itself, are all imitations and developments of ancient Greek and Roman traditions.

Selective Modernisation

Iran’s traditionalists, too, try to make a power base from which they can jump into the modern world on their own terms. Arnold Toynbee once suggested that only two non-Western nations, Russia and Japan, acquired Westernisation voluntarily, so they could pick and choose which aspects of it they wanted. According to him, the rest of the world was forced into it lump sum, so for these other countries Westernisation was ultimately a painful, destructive and destabilising experience.

 

Iran’s traditionalists want Iran to modernise selectively. They reject Westernisation, because they think they have something better of their own on which to build.

 

Now, there are examples of a different kind of traditionalism, which fall outside the scope of my definition. For instance, there are reportedly still clusters of inhabitants of northern Scotland who reject electricity and drive horsedrawn coaches rather than automobiles. They refuse to go to modern hospitals. Even in the United States when I was there twenty-five years ago, I met people who called themselves Christian Scientists and refused to use new medicines when they were sick; they preferred praying to God to get their health back.

 

My version of traditionalism is not like that. In the seminaries of Qom, where young clerics are educated, students are skilfully working with computers. They bought their first four hundred Apple Macs six years ago. They engage in debates about Habermas, Foucault, post-modernism; and they drive cars. They read books (some in English) on economics, medicine, international relations, modern psychology, sociology and modern literature.

 

The reconciliation of tradition and modern technology may have gained impetus during the 1980–8 war with Iraq; armed clerics at the front, in their religious preachings to the fighters, could be heard discussing the parabolas of missile trajectories. There are clerics who are physicians by profession, visiting patients and writing prescriptions; one such cleric is also editor-in-chief of a traditionalist-leaning newspaper.

 

So, the Iranian traditionalists think tradition, with Islam at its core, is an asset, but they also see modern knowledge and technology as assets. In the Islamic history of Iran, I know of no persecution or inquisition against scientists (while ideological victims abound). Neither do our contemporary traditionalists have anything against science or technology. To an extent, they resemble those Japanese, who, during the early years of the Meiji Restoration, wanted to import Western books and knowledge, but only scientific, technological and military books and knowledge; they did not want Shakespeare, Descartes, the Bible, Western clothes, or Western life-styles.

Resisting Western Hegemony

Iranians, however, even the most extreme traditionalists, have never been afraid of Kant or Descartes. They were translating Aristotle a millennium ago. Iranians proudly proclaim themselves heirs to one of the four major worldviews surviving from ancient times (along with those of India, China and Greece). They hold that Iran was strengthened by Islam, just as Christianity strengthened the Greek worldview after the fall of the Roman Empire. It should not be surprising that some Iranians (notably, but not exclusively, the traditionalists) resist the pushing of alien values by the West. This drive of the West to impose its way of life and values on others is called tahajom farhangi in Iran by those who see the West as a bullying culture that boasts of its one-dimensional material progress and exploits its political and economic global hegemony to loot the rest of the world. In this view, the traditionalists are supported by some secular thinkers both at home and abroad.

 

The traditionalists believe tahajom farhangi will isolate Iran’s voice in the world and eventually lead to the disintegration of Iran’s cultural and religious identity. Their charge that the West has a hegemonic attitude towards the rest of world receives support from a perhaps unexpected quarter: Vice-President Dick Cheney of the United States. In 1996, when he visited Abu Dhabi in his capacity as chief executive of the Dallas-based Halliburton company, a major oil-equipment supplier, Cheney said: “There seems to be an assumption that somehow we [the United States] know what’s best for everybody else, and that we are going to use our economic clout to get everybody else to live the way we would like.” (Interestingly, almost exactly the same words—with the omission of the “economic clout” clause—are used in Iran to criticise the outlook of the traditionalists.)

 

The notion that the whole world has decided to adopt bourgeois liberal values, including freedom of thought and expression and free market capitalism, is rejected by the traditionalists. They believe they have something of their own that is worthy of the world’s recognition. To that extent, yes, they do believe that a clash of civilisations is likely. In fact, they suggest that there have already been such clashes in the past, the last occurring some two centuries ago. They were the losers in that clash, but they believe the defeat was not total. They feel prepared, if the need should arise, for another round. Such thinking is not necessarily in conflict with President Mohammad Khatami’s advocacy of a dialogue among civilisations. The dialogue was deemed necessary in the first place only because of the likelihood of a clash.

 

Seen from outside Iran, the traditionalists may look like conservatives; but seen from inside Iran they are radicals of the global village who oppose the status quo of the present world order. They might be compared to the anti-globalisation protesters of the modern far left. They view some of President Khatami’s aides as conservatives who are accomplices of that world order, wishing only for minor modifications to it at most.

 

The angry young men of Iran’s reformist camp regard their traditionalist opponents as a virtually extinct species who make a nuisance of themselves by continuing their futile survival. But the traditionalists should be recognised as a respectable, dignified, serious and thoughtful political force. After all, as against some twenty-one million people who voted for President Khatami this June, some six million voted for his rivals, all of whom were traditionalists. Iran’s traditionalists ought not to be belittled as mere street thugs or death squad activists who murder whomever they dislike.

 

Having said all this, I grant that at the centre of events which make the headlines in Iran, not everything done by traditionalist activists (to be dealt with below) is nice and neat. Most disturbing are the attitudes and actions of what may be called the traditionalists’ “guerrilla wing”, which is recognised to be distinct from the traditionalists’ main political body, while enjoying its occasional support (in this regard the relationship resembles that between the Irish Republican Army and Sinn Fein).

A Resilient Opposition

In order to convey a better understanding of the Iranian traditionalists, I will make some historical comparisons with the recent past of the United States, widely regarded as the epitome of a modern, young, democratic nation. This approach will provide an insight into the methods and techniques used so far by the traditionalists to cling to the remnants of their power. It will also shed light on their stamina, motivation and faith, on the nature of their guerrilla faction and the rebels among them.

 

For the time being the traditionalists, following their defeat in June’s presidential elections, will wait for the dust to settle. Their timing is generally good. They will wait until maybe next winter, and then they will hit, and fight, even if they know it is a losing game.

 

A key aspect of the traditionalists’ art of survival is resilience, a quality lying somewhere between resistance and resignation. Compared to the other two, resilience is less deliberate and planned, more impulsive, reflexive, improvised and reactive. The traditionalists’ way of enduring successive electoral defeats is an example of what I call resilience. I think they could have physically annulled the 1997 election results and declared a state of emergency had they wanted to, just as Indira Gandhi once did in India, the world’s largest democracy. The Iranian constitution could have been interpreted as allowing them to do that.

 

But they did not do that, and as a result the elections in Iran remain the most democratic in the region. Even Samuel Huntington has acknowledged that “Iran has had a series of highly competitive elections and is thus in some sense an electoral democracy”, though he added that Iran “clearly is not a liberal democracy”, in the sense of providing for the “individual rights, civil liberties, freedom of the press and religion that are present in Western liberal democracies”. He also remarked that “in the Persian Gulf the most democratic government is the greatest antagonist of the United States while the least democratic government is America’s closest ally”.¹ Matters might alternatively be expressed by saying, “The United States is the closest ally of the least democratic country in the Persian Gulf, and the greatest antagonist of the most democratic.”

 

When the crunch comes in Iran, crude methods will be employed again, in a chain reaction. Some critics claim to see parallels between the traditionalists’ use of the notion of “un-Islamic activities” and McCarthyism’s use of the charge of “un-American activities”, recalling McCarthy’s techniques of harassment, libel and demagoguery, his creation of mass hysteria, the disgracing of people on doubtful evidence, and so forth. I find the analogy invalid in many major respects, not least because the US senator lived some two centuries, and not just two decades, after the American Revolution, and not only because of the incomparable injustice that occurred during those two centuries. But without going into that, I would like to point out that such extremes are rarely absent in the course of the life of nations, during the process of consolidating state power. The path of full efficiency and rationality in state-building and the consolidation of power has yet to be discovered.

 

The Iranian traditionalists have often been subtler, and more prudent, than McCarthy. They lag behind, though, in the observance of strict legal formalities and in making effective use of the modern mass media. My guess is that they may not be able to afford subtlety for very much longer, as the extremists in both camps (reformists and traditionalists) grow impatient with the relative moderation of their elders. But here again, I don’t think a proper analogy can be drawn between what Iran’s traditionalist extremists will do in defeat and what defeated groups have done in younger civilisations such as the United States. After the American Civil War, embittered southern confederates created the Ku Klux Klan. I don’t think Iran will see the emergence of any such violent, regressive, underground group.

 

The traditionalists’ approach has hitherto been characterised by an economic use of force. Iran has not witnessed a Tiananmen Square–type bloodbath. The Tehran student riots of July 1999 cost only one life, and that by accident. When I visited the United States in 1972, I was lectured repeatedly by those who tried to justify the killings by police sharpshooters of four students during the Kent State University anti-war protests. It was a time when defendants were gagged in court. The state had used violence to silence dissent well before the Kent State killings. More than one hundred people were killed during the ghetto riots after the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968. All this was also some two hundred years after the American Revolution. These and similar experiences from around the world say something about the imperatives of the use of force by the power structure, especially when it feels threatened. When one witnesses journalists being jailed in Iran, it confirms once again that change only comes at a price.

 

Admittedly, the one student who died in the 1999 Tehran riots is not the only person to have been killed in Iran since Khatami first became president four years ago. But the number of deaths is in tens of lives, and not in tens of thousands, as during US-supported military rule in Chile, Argentina, Indonesia and Vietnam, let alone the millions who died in the years when the Soviet state was being consolidated. The killing of even one soul is indefensible; I feel ashamed of resorting to arithmetic in such matters. But the numbers do indicate what I mean by the economic use of force.²

 

After the reformers’ victory in the February 2000 parliamentary elections, a year after their victory in municipal council elections and three years into Khatami’s first term as president, many in Iran feared bloody clashes. We thought that both sides would see violent confrontation as the only way of escaping what seemed to be a political impasse. The reformers felt that heaven was at hand, and in the traditionalist camp, blood pressure was on the rise both literally and figuratively. But the clashes did not materialise. The traditionalists settled things in their own way, using much simpler, bloodless methods. One day, the pro-traditionalist judiciary closed down a dozen newspapers and on subsequent days another dozen. Several journalists were jailed. That was all. The judiciary even allowed several other reformist newspapers to continue publishing. The reformers came down to earth. More reformist papers opened one at a time, still fully critical of the clampdown, but understandably in a milder, less passionate, more calculated tone.

 

The traditionalists are motivated, and motivate others, on the basis of religious duty. After their defeat in the parliamentary elections, one traditionalist activist, Massoud Deh-namaki, said of the reformers, “The only thing they are capable of doing is voting.” This could be read as the boast, “We have the muscle.” But I believe what he had in mind was, “They win elections, but we have the faith.” Such thinking will be familiar to the readers of Max Weber, who in his much quoted distinction between the “ethics of responsibility” and the “ethics of ultimate ends”, explained how those motivated by the latter act according to what they believe is their duty, regardless of whether they are likely to succeed or not. This may explain a conundrum: the traditionalists, and their guerrilla forces, are not discouraged by the fact that they have played a losing game which has cost them dearly in the past several years.

 

Many of the reformers use modern sociological language, but are essentially conservatives in their firm religious background, their lifestyle and outlook. The traditionalists speak an old-fashioned type of language, but are radicals because of their revolutionary roots.

 

Traditionalists are short of vision; the reformers seem to have little other than vision. The power of the traditionalists rests on their solidarity in allegiance to a patriarchal hierarchy. This facilitates their coming to quick agreement. They enjoy unity of purpose, co-ordination and practical wisdom on a day-to-day basis, rather than in strategic theorising about future developments. A year ago, some of them recognised this lack of strategic vision as a handicap, which they have since tried to remedy. They call themselves no-andishan dini (new religious thinkers).

 

The traditionalists are pragmatic. Over the coming months they will talk much among themselves about reorganisation; revise some of their methods and language; remain as polite as possible; engage in intensive political manoeuvring; and ponder a coalition with certain factions of the New Right (especially if the Khatami cabinet’s economic policy tilts to the left). They will suffer rifts in their ranks, with both hardliners and moderates among them possibly even rebelling. They will lose some sympathisers to the reformers (gaining none). They may take two steps back, one forward for a while. But their substance will remain untouched. They are traditionalists, after all. The traditionalist bloc that emerges after this period of consolidation will enjoy a high degree of solidarity.

 

They (and the victorious reformist camp) will refuse the pull of reconciliation.

The Reformist Camp

Among the reformers, too, minor rifts are predictable in the near future, primarily between those disappointed in President Khatami’s failure to act more vigorously and decisively on behalf of reform, and those who wish him to be more conciliatory towards senior traditionalists. Notable among the latter group of reformers are Khatami’s coalition partners from the New Right.

 

A major rift among the reformers was what the traditionalists were hoping for after the reformist victory in the February 2000 parliamentary elections. The traditionalists anticipated the exposure of the political inexperience and rashness of the spoiled children among the reformers after their easy electoral success. The rift might well have occurred. But the traditionalists eventually realised that even if it did, they would gain nothing from the spoils. This time a coming rift, if any, in the reformist camp, will be minor.

 

President Khatami will remain his noble self, adhering to his reputation for honesty. He will do so, not because this sort of reputation has more public appeal in Iran than does political expertise, but because he can hardly live and act otherwise. Nevertheless, resisting the temptation to resort to more serious, open measures against the traditionalists’ incursions on his power will not be easy this time. Second-time successes have their own momentum. (I grant, however, that his first choice of cabinet members may appear to contradict this prediction.)

 

During his first term, Khatami refused to be pushed into reacting to explosive situations. His enigmatic, paradoxical manner of “acting passively” caused his adversaries to be more explicit than they wished in revealing where they really stood. The closure of newspapers, for example, was for the traditionalists a hasty imperative in the power game, one they were forced to undertake without being able to make a persuasive legal case for it. In this sense, Khatami’s active passivity, even if not deliberate, looked like a master ploy and worked miracles for him.

 

In his first term, Khatami was not a general, not a “philosopher king”, in no way like a Marcus Aurelius. That ancient Roman emperor, during the day, killed people on the battlefield as an able, vicious, brutal general, in pursuit of the empire’s greed for land; only at night did he write philosophical treaties on stoicism, grieving over the human condition. Khatami is a man who has grieved full time. He has refuted the old saying that “peace needs two sides; for war one will suffice”. He managed to dodge a war of attrition.

 

Khatami is not a history maker; rather, he resembles a midwife to history in the eyes of those who like to see history in deterministic terms.

 

Khatami’s second electoral platform was in sharp contrast to those of his rivals who tried to attract votes with shiny promises of economic growth and more jobs for ordinary people; of free access to university and easier terms of marriage; and with appeals to the young, who made up a high percentage of the voters. Khatami, by contrast, chose not to come down to earth by dealing with such mundane matters. He did not relinquish his elitist, abstract, elegant ideals, his appeals to such values as human dignity, legality, civil society, universal justice, freedom, dialogue of civilisations, Islam in the modern world, and so forth. On the surface, there was nothing concrete in what he said. But many voters took him at his word. The elite liked the dreams and the public followed the elite, liking the music, the poetry of Khatami’s language; they somehow “sensed” a long-desired substance in his words.

 

Those who say that Khatami’s honesty leaves him uncertain and doubtful on many issues might meet the retort, “So what? He is winning. In politics, that is what counts.” Khatami has indeed won two elections in a row, but is he really winning the battle to determine the long-term future of Iran?

 

Khatami’s weakest point is that he seems to lack the benefits of a well-organised, coherent team. Many people in his camp seem to care more for their own ideas than for hammering out a practical programme of reform.

 

Khatami’s first term has produced the following developments in the political attitudes of the Iranian people, both reformers and traditionalists:

 

• There is an acceptance of the diversity of opinion, because of the advocacy of tolerance by Khatami and the newspapers that support him.

 

• There is a willingness to recognise realities and to dispense with wishful thinking.

 

• There is a recognition that legitimacy derived from custom is distinct from legitimacy based on law.

 

• It is understood that traditionalism cannot be underestimated, and that the concept of political power cannot be reduced to some vote count.

 

• Erosion of the personality cult, perhaps the most important shift in popular attitudes under Khatami. The advent of a depersonalised leadership in Iran, with its long history of guardianship, was revolutionary. Khatami did not see himself as a guardian, neither did his followers. Many of those who voted for him, or who worked with him, have criticised him openly, sometimes to his face. This is in sharp contrast to what was permitted by previous Iranian leaders. Even a democratic, liberal minded leader like Mohammad Mossaddeq, the popular prime minister who was overthrown by a CIA coup forty-eight years ago, was unable to tolerate being questioned. He banished even close friends who did so. Khatami’s self-restraint and lack of self-regard in similar cases have been exemplary.

 

• A final, nagging question remains: is Khatami the saviour, “the One” Iran has been waiting for to lead it out of its difficulties? Or will his period in office turn out to be for his followers a sweet, romantic interlude?

The Future

Here, I bring this essay to a rather abrupt end. All I have done is provide a snapshot of a historically brief moment, so I will not attempt to present a conclusion or thesis. Some assume that events in Iran will proceed along a regular linear path, as they do in politically monotonous Canada, sleepy Norway, or the boring United States (all three adjectives by Iranian standards). But unexpected eruptions, both from above and below, coming both from inside and outside, are not rare in Iranian history. As to whether Iran is likely to experience such eruptions in the near future, one can only guess.

 

Even if we could suppose that internally Iran has been putting behind it the nightmare of turmoil, stepping onto the path of stability, dangers could still come from outside. This was seen in the 1980 invasion by Iraq, and in the sanctions and threats from the United States. Hence the concern in Iran over national security, which appears to be a higher priority for the traditionalists than for the reformers. The traditionalists have proved their ability in mass mobilisation during national emergencies.

 

The political standoff in Iran looks like being an open-ended game for as far as one can see. I find myself unable to agree with those optimists who believe the future would be assuredly bright and easily attained if only the traditionalists would renounce their harsh, crude measures and make way for the as yet vague, romantic and often incompatible aspirations of the pro-Khatami reformers. The mix of themes such as civil society, liberty, equality, progress, security and stability, all combining harmoniously with preserving the cherished independent national identity, looks just too good to be true.

 

The major question is, Who will emerge the winner in the endgame? For Khatami supporters, an unwanted possibility is an establishment dominated by the tiny minority of New Right technocrats if they, in their lust for pragmatic accommodation to the realities of world power, and in their search for economic growth, prescribe a return to pre-revolutionary autocratic solutions. Such solutions might well be in tune with globalisation and with the general situation in the Middle East, but they would not suit the voters.

 

To make my point clear, I would like to quote from the preface to a book recently presented to me in Washington. This book, written by Wilfred Buchta, is a detailed work of research entitled Who Rules Iran? The Structure of Power in the Islamic Republic. It was published in May 2000 by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. What caught my attention in the preface was the sentence: “Clearly, the success of the reform movement—and the evolution of a more benign Iran less out of tune with US interests—is by no means assured.”

 

Well, Iran is surrounded by governments “more in tune” with US interests, such as autocratic Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Kuwait, Pakistan and Turkey. If they represent the desired alternative for Iran, then it is a future even less democratic than what the traditionalists have been accused of intending. And it is a future that would certainly be less in tune with the aspirations of those voters who were swayed by Khatami’s language.

Endnotes

1. Samuel P. Huntington, “Islam and the West: From Conflict to Dialogue” (paper presented at the conference “Political Islam and the West”, organised by the Centre for World Dialogue, Nicosia, Cyprus, 30–31 October 1997).

 

2. It should be obvious that I am talking about recent developments in Iran, since the emergence of the “traditionalism versus reformism” power struggle. Loss of life was heavier during the early years of the revolution.