ADVERTISEMENTS:
Hostility between state and the Islamic leadership had a long history in Iran. After the World War I the Shah, backed by Britain, stripped Iran’s religious leadership off much of their financial, legal and educational powers, and launched a vigorous programme of westernisation.
He forbade many Shia rituals, such as, self-flagellation, and forbade the pilgrimage to Mecca. Aytollah Khomeini, the hero of the religious masses, fiercely attacked the Shah’s acts. His arrest in 1963 was followed by massive riots. Khomeini was sent into exile. From his base in Iraq where there is majority of Shias, he launched bitter and vituperative attacks on the Shah and the whole concept of monarchy. He argued that the ulama should not just give advice on laws and government actions, as has been their traditional functions, but should actively participate in the overthrow of repressive governments and lead the regimes that replace them.
The ideal Islamic state was theocratic state. The Shah fled into exile in January 1979 and Ayatollah Khomeini returned in triumph. He established his legitimacy by holding a referendum on the creation of an Islamic republic, and became its ultimate ruler for life.
There was a council of ‘experts’ whose task was to choose a successor to the leader. It also had to ensure that whatever the Islamic republic did was ‘in conformity with the will of Allah. The Sharia or ‘divine law’, as found in the Koran and the works of the Prophet, was incorporated into the constitution.
The leader (Khomeini) appointed a Council of Guardians, composed of religious scholars, to make sure that the parliament passed no law that was contrary to divine dispensation. As time went on, the regime became more clerical, more intolerant and totalitarian. Enforcement of Islamic law became more vigorous. Iran was isolated, even within the Islamic world.
Having created an Islamic republic, Khomeini assumed that Iran was now the leader of not only of Shia Muslims, but the entire Islamic world. It condemned other regimes and encouraged Muslims to overthrow their leaders, particular of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait which were pockets of the hated America, ‘the Great Satan’.
In 1987, he sent a large number of Iranian pilgrims chanting political slogans and waving pictures of the Ayatollah.’ The Saudi police killed them all, and the rest were publicly executed. After the death of Khomeini, President Rafsanjani tried to rebuild Iran following a long destructive war with Iraq. But the fundamentalists continued to obstruct his ways.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
ADVERTISEMENTS:
Iranian influence is visible in a number of important places. There is Shia presence in the southern republics of former Soviet Union and Iraq. So far the Sunnis ruled in Iraq, Shias 60 to 65 per cent and Sunnis 32 to 37 per cent, now after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the Shias have formed government there. In Lebanon, the Lebanese Shias look to Iran for inspiration. After the 1979 revolution, the Iranian fundamentalists living there are engaged in a holy war against the Israelis.
Their suicide attacks on the Israelis and against the peacekeeping forces of America and France there shocked the world. (300 US marines were killed in an incident in 1983). The Western hostages were kept there as prisoner and ill-treated for six years. The Shia militias saw, blessed by the Khomeini, the West and Israel as the same. They started a holy crusade to liberate the Islamic city of Jerusalem from the Zionists. Death in this struggle was declared martyrdom and promised instant access to heaven. The Lebanese Shias (the Hezbollah and other groups) have continued guerilla war against the Israelis.
The whole history of Islamic Fundamentalism, identified with extremism or fanaticism, shows that it had been activated by the teachings and directives of the Holy Books. In order to restore supremacy and purity of Islam, the fundamentalists have resorted to fratricide, rebellion, bloodshed and violence against defaulting Muslims and non-Muslims. In order to advance Islam, they have crushed, destroyed and trampled over non-Muslim population even if there was no grievance against them.
In right earnest they obliterated alien cultures, art, literature, ways and structures of worship, enslaved and converted them to Islam in millions. The fanatics and fundamentalists did not spare even liberal Muslims and followers of middle or mixed path. They rejected all liberal values and stood for traditional Islamic values like patriarchy, four wives, sexual morality, anti-usury, blind faith namaj (prayer) etc. Throughout centuries of advancing Islamic Fundamentalism, their issues have remained almost the same except anti-Americanism, elimination of Israel, occupation of Jerusalem, and holding petrol as weapon.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
However, one is not considered as fundamentalist or extremist if he believes in religious tenets, observes rituals or worships God in form he likes, or spreads teachings at his individual conscience level and without hurting others. When they give shape to those teachings in the form of action, organisation, community, identity and influence, they do reflect their religion. It is without recourse to material interests, power and politics.