The key argument of this article is that the origins of today's ideological conflict between Mahm... more The key argument of this article is that the origins of today's ideological conflict between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Mir Hossein Mousavi can be traced back to the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1906-1911. One of the key disputes that emerged during this period was between a group of clerics and a coalition of constitutionalists who clashed over whether a council of religious experts should have veto power over parliamentary deliberations. While the constitutionalists prevailed in 1907 over their religious rivals in the short term, the ideological battle over this issue continued throughout the 20 th century and resurfaced again after the Islamic Revolution in 1979. This time religious conservatives were victorious. They successfully wrote and passed a constitution where sovereignty was divided between religious clerics and the masses. If ever the two should clash, it was the clerics who had the final say. The present conflict in Iran today, in the aftermath of the disputed June 12, 2009 presidential election between conservatives and reformists, is rooted in this legacy of the unresolved ideological dispute over the proper location of political sovereignty that began in the early 20 th century. Here I seek to explore these linkages between the past and the present and to comment on the internal struggle for democracy in Iran. The focus of this paper will be on the lessons for democratic theory that emerge from the conflict and tension between religion and politics in Iran. In particular, it will focus on lessons that can be drawn from debates over the moral basis of legitimate political authority and what role religion should play in emerging Muslim democratic polities. The Failure of Democracy in 20 th Century Iran: Relevant Democratic Notes The current struggle for democracy in Iran today did not emerge out of a vacuum-a century of history lies behind it. Broadly speaking, it is often forgotten that most democratic transformations are rarely victorious on their first attempt; there is a legacy of struggle, defeat, intellectual transformation, sacrifice, political experience and democratic learning that is accumulated prior to any transition to democracy. Even when democracy has been consolidated, the possibility of rollback remains. In Contention and Democracy in Europe, 1650-2000, Charles Tilly noted that examples of democratization in Europe in the past 350 years are as frequent and numerous as de-democratization. 1 The struggle for democracy in Iran over the past century follows a similar oscillating pattern of democratization and dedemocratization. More recently, the rise and fall of the reformist presidency of Muhammad Khatami (1997-2005), followed by the ascendency of the hard-line presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the brief democratization of Iranian politics in the lead up to the June 12, 2009 presidential election, followed by the subsequent electoral coup d'état all fall within this oscillating pattern.
The Arab Spring of 2011 is widely viewed today as one of the great historical moments of politica... more The Arab Spring of 2011 is widely viewed today as one of the great historical moments of political transformation. Comparisons have been made to the European revolutions of 1848 and the post–cold war democratic transitions in Eastern Europe, while some have spoken of a possible “fourth wave” of democratization. These analogies make sense given that longstanding dictators who seemed impervious to political change, in a region known for persistent authoritarianism, were suddenly toppled by largely nonviolent protesters invoking the universal themes of political freedom, dignity, and social justice. From the outset, however, the Arab Spring was met by a small chorus of criticism and contempt from prominent intellectuals, writers, and politicians.
Toward New Democratic Imaginaries - İstanbul Seminars on Islam, Culture and Politics
The relationship between religion and politics is a bone of political contention and a source of ... more The relationship between religion and politics is a bone of political contention and a source of deep confusion across the Islam-West divide. When most western liberals cast their gaze on Muslim societies today, what they see is deeply disconcerting. From their perspective there is simply too much religion in public life in the Arab-Islamic world, which raises serious questions for them about the prospects for democracy in this part of the world. This article critically explores the relationship between religion and political legitimacy with a geographical and cultural focus on the Muslim Middle East. The broad historical question that shapes this inquiry is: Why is religion a source of political legitimacy in Muslim societies today while in the West, broadly speaking, religion is a source of disagreement and illegitimacy? Keywords Muslim • Religion • Secularism • State This article examines the relationship between religion and political legitimacy in the context of the contemporary Muslim Middle East. Specifi cally, it seeks to provide a broad historical answer to the question: Why at the start of the twenty-fi rst century is religion a powerful source of political legitimacy in Muslim societies while in the West, by and large today, it is a source of disagreement and hence illegitimacy? This topic is important because the role of religion in politics is a bone of political contention and a source of deep confusion across the Islam-West divide. When
Part 1 Introduction: Comparing Reformations Chapter 2 Who Speaks for Islam? Inside the Islamic Re... more Part 1 Introduction: Comparing Reformations Chapter 2 Who Speaks for Islam? Inside the Islamic Reformation Chapter 3 Islam and PoliticalSinn: The Hermeneutics of Contemporary Islamic Reformists Chapter 3 Changes in Modern Islamic Legal Theory: Reform or Reformation Chapter 5 Critics Within: Islamic Scholars' Protests against the Islamic State in Iran Chapter 5 The Politics of Historical Revisionism: New Re-readings of the Early Islamic Period Chapter 6 In Search of the Counter-Reformation: Anti-Sufi Stereotypes and the Budshishiyya's Response Chapter 7 Primitivism as a Radical Response to Religious Crisis: The Anabaptists of Munster in the 1530s and the Taliban of Afghanistan in the 1990s Chapter 8 Islamic Fundamentalism and the Trauma of Modernization: Reflections on Religion and Radical Politics Chapter 10 Conclusion: An Islamic Reformation? Some Afterthoughts
The terrorist attacks in Washington and New York on 11 September 2001 and the subsequent war in A... more The terrorist attacks in Washington and New York on 11 September 2001 and the subsequent war in Afghanistan have concentrated international attention on the 'demo-cratic deficit' in Arab and Muslim societies like never before. According to Bernard Lewis, Islamic tradition and liberal democracy are fundamentally incompatible and the ultimate choice facing the Muslim world at the beginning of the twenty-first century is between religious fanaticism and modernisation. 'The future of the Middle East will depend on which of them prevails', he recently told an audience at his native Princeton University.' Two recent reports on the state of political development in Muslim societies seem to confirm Bernard Lewis's grim prognosis. On 18 December 2001 the New York-based Freedom House released a major study on
Nader Hashemi The Sectarianization Thesis: Toward a Critical Theory of Sectarian Conflict In rece... more Nader Hashemi The Sectarianization Thesis: Toward a Critical Theory of Sectarian Conflict In recent years, a narrative has taken root in Western policy and media circles that attributes the turmoil and violence engulfing the Middle East to supposedly ancient sectarian hatreds. “Sectarianism” has become a catch-all explanation for virtually all of the region’s problems. This narrative can be found across the political spectrum — from right-wing voices with openly antiMuslim agendas, to softer liberal-centrist articulations, and even certain commentators on the Left. In one form or another, this new sectarian essentialism, which is lazy, Orientalist, and ideologically convenient, has become a new conventional wisdom in the West. In our book Sectarianization: Mapping the New Politics of the Middle East, my co-editor Danny Postel and I (along with our fellow contributors) forcefully challenge this narrative and advance an alternative set of explanations for the rise in sectarian conflic...
... NADER HASHEMI ... In an insightful essay entitled Palace Fundamentalism and Liberal Democ-ra... more ... NADER HASHEMI ... In an insightful essay entitled Palace Fundamentalism and Liberal Democ-racy, written more than 15 years ago, the Moroccan sociologist Fatima Mernissi provided an intriguing analytical framework for considering this topic.1 Mernissi noted that there is a ...
contribution of this section is its evaluation of the dynamics in relations between Islamic Iran ... more contribution of this section is its evaluation of the dynamics in relations between Islamic Iran and Hizbullah as it relates to factional infighting in Iran. This book provides the reader with an overview of the relational dynamics between the two important Shi↪i communities of Iran and Lebanon. The collection is a window into the complexities of each region and their relations with each other. It provides the reader with a road map of how the politics of Shi↪i empowerment began in Iran in 1979 and migrated to Lebanon in the 1980s. Sections of the book have utility for undergraduate courses in Middle East studies, and any graduate course dealing with the region’s social movements might benefit from it.
There is a paradox at the core of the debate on Islam and democracy, which democratic theorists h... more There is a paradox at the core of the debate on Islam and democracy, which democratic theorists have generally ignored. The paradox is that modern liberal democracy requires a form of secularism to sustain itself, yet simultaneously the primary intellectual, cultural, and political resources at the disposal of Muslim democrats are theological. Reconciling this tension is critical to advancing a democratic theory for Muslim societies today.
This chapter focuses on the problem of misunderstanding religious politics in the Arab-Islamic wo... more This chapter focuses on the problem of misunderstanding religious politics in the Arab-Islamic world. The goal is to advance an objective historical and comparative framework for interpreting this subject. Two key themes that have been central to John Esposito’s scholarship are examined: the secular bias in modernization theory and the need for a historical and contextual understanding of the many faces of political Islam. To advance this argument, Michael Walzer’s The Paradox of Liberation: Secular Revolutions and Religious Counterrevolutions will be utilized, focusing on his discussion of Algeria and political Islam. It is argued that Walzer offers a typical liberal reading of this topic that upon examination is ideologically biased and analytically distorting. Ironically, his earlier writings on religion and politics provide a more useful interpretive framework for understanding the rise of religious politics in our contemporary world.
This paper is a provocative play on the famous Muslim Brotherhood slogan al-Islām hūwa al-ḥāl (Is... more This paper is a provocative play on the famous Muslim Brotherhood slogan al-Islām hūwa al-ḥāl (Islam is the solution). While critics of the Muslim Brothers rightly criticized them for the simplicity of their worldview in thinking that religion was a panacea for all of the problems confronting Muslim societies during the late twentieth century, an argument can be made that religion does profoundly matter in the context of the struggle for democracy in the Arab-Islamic world. In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, democratic transitions in North Africa and the Middle East will be dependent on democratically negotiating the question of religion’s role in politics. Here I provide some reflections on this topic with a focus on Tunisia’s transition to democracy.
Abstract:In his critically acclaimed book, The Shi’a Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Sha... more Abstract:In his critically acclaimed book, The Shi’a Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future, Vali Nasr has suggested that traditional concepts and categories used to explicate the Middle East, such as modernity, democracy, fundamentalism and nationalism, no longer adequately explain the politics of the region. It “is rather the old feud between Shi’as and Sunnis that forges attitudes, defines prejudices, draws political boundary lines, and even decides whether and to what extent those other trends have relevance.” In keeping with this argument, President Obama has on numerous occasions invoked the phrase “ancient sectarian differences” to explain the turmoil and conflict in the Arab-Islamic world today. This raises the question how old is the feud between Shi’as and Sunnis and how far back in history can we trace the origins of sectarianism that is currently destabilizing the Middle East? Rejecting the paradigm of “ancient sectarian hatreds” this paper locates the roots of sectarian conflict in the late twentieth century and not in the seventh century. More specifically, the political context that illuminates the question of sectarianism is the persistence of authoritarianism – as the dominant feature of the politics of the Middle East – and the crisis of legitimacy facing ruling regimes that has followed as a consequence. The political mobilization and manipulation of sectarian identities, it will be argued, is a key strategy for regime survival and it is within this framework that the question of sectarianism can be better understood. Drawing on the literature of “ethnic political mobilization” and the literature in international relations that explains the regional rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the question of sectarianism will be analyzed as the function of the “broken politics” of the Middle East and not due to irreconcilable theological differences between Sunnis and Shi’as.
This article rejects the paradigm of “ancient sectarian hatreds” to explain the turmoil in the Mi... more This article rejects the paradigm of “ancient sectarian hatreds” to explain the turmoil in the Middle East. Instead, the political context that illuminates the question of sectarianism is the persistence of authoritarianism and the crisis of legitimacy facing ruling regimes. The mobilization and manipulation of sectarian identities is a key strategy for regime survival, and it is within this framework that sectarianism can be better understood. Drawing on the literatures of ethnic mobilization and international relations, sectarianism is analyzed as a function of the authoritarian politics of the Middle East and not irreconcilable theological differences between Sunnis and Shias. Portions of this research were earlier presented in the Religion and World Affairs Series, a project organized and hosted by the Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs (CURA) at Boston University and funded by the Henry Luce Foundation.
The key argument of this article is that the origins of today's ideological conflict between Mahm... more The key argument of this article is that the origins of today's ideological conflict between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Mir Hossein Mousavi can be traced back to the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1906-1911. One of the key disputes that emerged during this period was between a group of clerics and a coalition of constitutionalists who clashed over whether a council of religious experts should have veto power over parliamentary deliberations. While the constitutionalists prevailed in 1907 over their religious rivals in the short term, the ideological battle over this issue continued throughout the 20 th century and resurfaced again after the Islamic Revolution in 1979. This time religious conservatives were victorious. They successfully wrote and passed a constitution where sovereignty was divided between religious clerics and the masses. If ever the two should clash, it was the clerics who had the final say. The present conflict in Iran today, in the aftermath of the disputed June 12, 2009 presidential election between conservatives and reformists, is rooted in this legacy of the unresolved ideological dispute over the proper location of political sovereignty that began in the early 20 th century. Here I seek to explore these linkages between the past and the present and to comment on the internal struggle for democracy in Iran. The focus of this paper will be on the lessons for democratic theory that emerge from the conflict and tension between religion and politics in Iran. In particular, it will focus on lessons that can be drawn from debates over the moral basis of legitimate political authority and what role religion should play in emerging Muslim democratic polities. The Failure of Democracy in 20 th Century Iran: Relevant Democratic Notes The current struggle for democracy in Iran today did not emerge out of a vacuum-a century of history lies behind it. Broadly speaking, it is often forgotten that most democratic transformations are rarely victorious on their first attempt; there is a legacy of struggle, defeat, intellectual transformation, sacrifice, political experience and democratic learning that is accumulated prior to any transition to democracy. Even when democracy has been consolidated, the possibility of rollback remains. In Contention and Democracy in Europe, 1650-2000, Charles Tilly noted that examples of democratization in Europe in the past 350 years are as frequent and numerous as de-democratization. 1 The struggle for democracy in Iran over the past century follows a similar oscillating pattern of democratization and dedemocratization. More recently, the rise and fall of the reformist presidency of Muhammad Khatami (1997-2005), followed by the ascendency of the hard-line presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the brief democratization of Iranian politics in the lead up to the June 12, 2009 presidential election, followed by the subsequent electoral coup d'état all fall within this oscillating pattern.
The Arab Spring of 2011 is widely viewed today as one of the great historical moments of politica... more The Arab Spring of 2011 is widely viewed today as one of the great historical moments of political transformation. Comparisons have been made to the European revolutions of 1848 and the post–cold war democratic transitions in Eastern Europe, while some have spoken of a possible “fourth wave” of democratization. These analogies make sense given that longstanding dictators who seemed impervious to political change, in a region known for persistent authoritarianism, were suddenly toppled by largely nonviolent protesters invoking the universal themes of political freedom, dignity, and social justice. From the outset, however, the Arab Spring was met by a small chorus of criticism and contempt from prominent intellectuals, writers, and politicians.
Toward New Democratic Imaginaries - İstanbul Seminars on Islam, Culture and Politics
The relationship between religion and politics is a bone of political contention and a source of ... more The relationship between religion and politics is a bone of political contention and a source of deep confusion across the Islam-West divide. When most western liberals cast their gaze on Muslim societies today, what they see is deeply disconcerting. From their perspective there is simply too much religion in public life in the Arab-Islamic world, which raises serious questions for them about the prospects for democracy in this part of the world. This article critically explores the relationship between religion and political legitimacy with a geographical and cultural focus on the Muslim Middle East. The broad historical question that shapes this inquiry is: Why is religion a source of political legitimacy in Muslim societies today while in the West, broadly speaking, religion is a source of disagreement and illegitimacy? Keywords Muslim • Religion • Secularism • State This article examines the relationship between religion and political legitimacy in the context of the contemporary Muslim Middle East. Specifi cally, it seeks to provide a broad historical answer to the question: Why at the start of the twenty-fi rst century is religion a powerful source of political legitimacy in Muslim societies while in the West, by and large today, it is a source of disagreement and hence illegitimacy? This topic is important because the role of religion in politics is a bone of political contention and a source of deep confusion across the Islam-West divide. When
Part 1 Introduction: Comparing Reformations Chapter 2 Who Speaks for Islam? Inside the Islamic Re... more Part 1 Introduction: Comparing Reformations Chapter 2 Who Speaks for Islam? Inside the Islamic Reformation Chapter 3 Islam and PoliticalSinn: The Hermeneutics of Contemporary Islamic Reformists Chapter 3 Changes in Modern Islamic Legal Theory: Reform or Reformation Chapter 5 Critics Within: Islamic Scholars' Protests against the Islamic State in Iran Chapter 5 The Politics of Historical Revisionism: New Re-readings of the Early Islamic Period Chapter 6 In Search of the Counter-Reformation: Anti-Sufi Stereotypes and the Budshishiyya's Response Chapter 7 Primitivism as a Radical Response to Religious Crisis: The Anabaptists of Munster in the 1530s and the Taliban of Afghanistan in the 1990s Chapter 8 Islamic Fundamentalism and the Trauma of Modernization: Reflections on Religion and Radical Politics Chapter 10 Conclusion: An Islamic Reformation? Some Afterthoughts
The terrorist attacks in Washington and New York on 11 September 2001 and the subsequent war in A... more The terrorist attacks in Washington and New York on 11 September 2001 and the subsequent war in Afghanistan have concentrated international attention on the 'demo-cratic deficit' in Arab and Muslim societies like never before. According to Bernard Lewis, Islamic tradition and liberal democracy are fundamentally incompatible and the ultimate choice facing the Muslim world at the beginning of the twenty-first century is between religious fanaticism and modernisation. 'The future of the Middle East will depend on which of them prevails', he recently told an audience at his native Princeton University.' Two recent reports on the state of political development in Muslim societies seem to confirm Bernard Lewis's grim prognosis. On 18 December 2001 the New York-based Freedom House released a major study on
Nader Hashemi The Sectarianization Thesis: Toward a Critical Theory of Sectarian Conflict In rece... more Nader Hashemi The Sectarianization Thesis: Toward a Critical Theory of Sectarian Conflict In recent years, a narrative has taken root in Western policy and media circles that attributes the turmoil and violence engulfing the Middle East to supposedly ancient sectarian hatreds. “Sectarianism” has become a catch-all explanation for virtually all of the region’s problems. This narrative can be found across the political spectrum — from right-wing voices with openly antiMuslim agendas, to softer liberal-centrist articulations, and even certain commentators on the Left. In one form or another, this new sectarian essentialism, which is lazy, Orientalist, and ideologically convenient, has become a new conventional wisdom in the West. In our book Sectarianization: Mapping the New Politics of the Middle East, my co-editor Danny Postel and I (along with our fellow contributors) forcefully challenge this narrative and advance an alternative set of explanations for the rise in sectarian conflic...
... NADER HASHEMI ... In an insightful essay entitled Palace Fundamentalism and Liberal Democ-ra... more ... NADER HASHEMI ... In an insightful essay entitled Palace Fundamentalism and Liberal Democ-racy, written more than 15 years ago, the Moroccan sociologist Fatima Mernissi provided an intriguing analytical framework for considering this topic.1 Mernissi noted that there is a ...
contribution of this section is its evaluation of the dynamics in relations between Islamic Iran ... more contribution of this section is its evaluation of the dynamics in relations between Islamic Iran and Hizbullah as it relates to factional infighting in Iran. This book provides the reader with an overview of the relational dynamics between the two important Shi↪i communities of Iran and Lebanon. The collection is a window into the complexities of each region and their relations with each other. It provides the reader with a road map of how the politics of Shi↪i empowerment began in Iran in 1979 and migrated to Lebanon in the 1980s. Sections of the book have utility for undergraduate courses in Middle East studies, and any graduate course dealing with the region’s social movements might benefit from it.
There is a paradox at the core of the debate on Islam and democracy, which democratic theorists h... more There is a paradox at the core of the debate on Islam and democracy, which democratic theorists have generally ignored. The paradox is that modern liberal democracy requires a form of secularism to sustain itself, yet simultaneously the primary intellectual, cultural, and political resources at the disposal of Muslim democrats are theological. Reconciling this tension is critical to advancing a democratic theory for Muslim societies today.
This chapter focuses on the problem of misunderstanding religious politics in the Arab-Islamic wo... more This chapter focuses on the problem of misunderstanding religious politics in the Arab-Islamic world. The goal is to advance an objective historical and comparative framework for interpreting this subject. Two key themes that have been central to John Esposito’s scholarship are examined: the secular bias in modernization theory and the need for a historical and contextual understanding of the many faces of political Islam. To advance this argument, Michael Walzer’s The Paradox of Liberation: Secular Revolutions and Religious Counterrevolutions will be utilized, focusing on his discussion of Algeria and political Islam. It is argued that Walzer offers a typical liberal reading of this topic that upon examination is ideologically biased and analytically distorting. Ironically, his earlier writings on religion and politics provide a more useful interpretive framework for understanding the rise of religious politics in our contemporary world.
This paper is a provocative play on the famous Muslim Brotherhood slogan al-Islām hūwa al-ḥāl (Is... more This paper is a provocative play on the famous Muslim Brotherhood slogan al-Islām hūwa al-ḥāl (Islam is the solution). While critics of the Muslim Brothers rightly criticized them for the simplicity of their worldview in thinking that religion was a panacea for all of the problems confronting Muslim societies during the late twentieth century, an argument can be made that religion does profoundly matter in the context of the struggle for democracy in the Arab-Islamic world. In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, democratic transitions in North Africa and the Middle East will be dependent on democratically negotiating the question of religion’s role in politics. Here I provide some reflections on this topic with a focus on Tunisia’s transition to democracy.
Abstract:In his critically acclaimed book, The Shi’a Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Sha... more Abstract:In his critically acclaimed book, The Shi’a Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future, Vali Nasr has suggested that traditional concepts and categories used to explicate the Middle East, such as modernity, democracy, fundamentalism and nationalism, no longer adequately explain the politics of the region. It “is rather the old feud between Shi’as and Sunnis that forges attitudes, defines prejudices, draws political boundary lines, and even decides whether and to what extent those other trends have relevance.” In keeping with this argument, President Obama has on numerous occasions invoked the phrase “ancient sectarian differences” to explain the turmoil and conflict in the Arab-Islamic world today. This raises the question how old is the feud between Shi’as and Sunnis and how far back in history can we trace the origins of sectarianism that is currently destabilizing the Middle East? Rejecting the paradigm of “ancient sectarian hatreds” this paper locates the roots of sectarian conflict in the late twentieth century and not in the seventh century. More specifically, the political context that illuminates the question of sectarianism is the persistence of authoritarianism – as the dominant feature of the politics of the Middle East – and the crisis of legitimacy facing ruling regimes that has followed as a consequence. The political mobilization and manipulation of sectarian identities, it will be argued, is a key strategy for regime survival and it is within this framework that the question of sectarianism can be better understood. Drawing on the literature of “ethnic political mobilization” and the literature in international relations that explains the regional rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the question of sectarianism will be analyzed as the function of the “broken politics” of the Middle East and not due to irreconcilable theological differences between Sunnis and Shi’as.
This article rejects the paradigm of “ancient sectarian hatreds” to explain the turmoil in the Mi... more This article rejects the paradigm of “ancient sectarian hatreds” to explain the turmoil in the Middle East. Instead, the political context that illuminates the question of sectarianism is the persistence of authoritarianism and the crisis of legitimacy facing ruling regimes. The mobilization and manipulation of sectarian identities is a key strategy for regime survival, and it is within this framework that sectarianism can be better understood. Drawing on the literatures of ethnic mobilization and international relations, sectarianism is analyzed as a function of the authoritarian politics of the Middle East and not irreconcilable theological differences between Sunnis and Shias. Portions of this research were earlier presented in the Religion and World Affairs Series, a project organized and hosted by the Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs (CURA) at Boston University and funded by the Henry Luce Foundation.
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Papers by Nader Hashemi