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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Iran
Index
Two men who came to pay tribute to Darius, ca. 500 B.C., from a bas-relief at Persepolis
IRAN HAS BEEN EXPERIENCING significant social changes since the
1979 Islamic Revolution that overthrew the monarchy. Ayatollah
Sayyid Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini, the spiritual leader of the
Revolution, and his supporters, who were organized in the Islamic
Republican Party (IRP), were determined to desecularize Iranian
society. They envisaged the destruction of the royal regime as a
prelude to the creation of an Islamic society whose laws and values
were derived from the Quran and religious texts sacred to
Shia (see Glossary)
Islam. The flight into foreign exile of the royal family
and most of the prerevolutionary political elite, and the
imprisonment or cooptation of those who chose to remain,
effectively enabled the Shia
Islamic clergy (see Glossary)
to take
over governmental institutions and to use the power and authority
of the central government to implement programs designed to
accomplish this goal. The creation of the Islamic Republic of Iran
in 1979 resulted in the destruction of the power and influence of
the predominantly secular and Western-oriented political elite that
had ruled Iran since the early part of the twentieth century. The
new political elite that emerged was composed of Shia clergymen and
lay technocrats of middle-class origins. The major consequence of
their programs has been cultural, that is, the desecularization of
public life in Iran. By 1987 this new political elite had not
adopted policies that would have caused any major restructuring of
the country's economy. While there has been controversy regarding
the appropriate role of the government in regulating the national
economy, the overall philosophy of this new political elite has
been that private property is respected and protected under Islam.
The establishment of an "ideal" religious society has been
impeded by foreign war. Iran became involved in a protracted war
with its neighbor, Iraq, in September 1980, when the latter country
invaded Iran's oil-rich southwestern province of Khuzestan. This
conflict has meant a total war for Iran. By 1987 at least 200,000
Iranians had been killed and another 350,000 to 500,000 wounded. At
any one time, 600,000 men were under arms. Property destruction,
including the complete leveling of one major city, several towns,
and scores of villages, as well as extensive damage to industrial
infrastructure and residential neighborhoods of other urban areas,
was estimated at billions of dollars. The war also created the need
to provide for as many as 1.5 million persons who had become
refugees; to ration a wide variety of foodstuffs; to retool most
major industries for the production of war-related goods; and to
expend a substantial proportion of government resources, including
revenues from the sale of petroleum, on the war effort.
Although the war with Iraq has imposed extraordinary burdens on
the economy and society, the government of the Republic has
continued its efforts to recast society according to religiously
prescribed behavioral codes. These policies have resulted in a
significant enhancement of the role that the mosque plays in
society. The Shia clergy have become the major political actors not
only at the national level but also at the local level, where the
chief cleric in each town has assumed the functions of a de facto
district governor
(see Local Government
, ch. 4). Thus, local
mosques, in addition to fulfilling their traditional roles as
places for prayer, have become primary sources of social services
that formerly were obtained from various government ministries.
Mosques also have become one of the principal institutions for
enforcing the observance of public morals.
All the major cultural and social groups in Iran have been
affected by the changes resulting from the establishment of the
Republic. The secularized, Western-educated, upper and middle
classes of the prerevolutionary period have been frequent targets
of criticism by the clergy and lay political leaders, who have
accused them of "immoral life- styles." These secular groups have
tended to resent the laws that regulate individual behavior. In
particular, they dislike
hejab (see Glossary),
the dress
codes that require women to be covered in public except for their
faces and hands, and the prohibition of all alcoholic beverages.
Members of these classes, who predominated in the upper levels of
the civil service and in the professions, have also been compelled
to undergo "re-education classes" in Islam to retain their
positions.
In contrast, the religious middle class, generally identified
as the bazaar class, has tended to support the laws the secularized
groups disliked because these laws reflect the ideal life-style
that the bazaar traditionally has tried to follow. Similarly, the
lower classes in both urban and rural areas have not necessarily
tended to perceive laws regulating behavior as intrusions because
the religious sanctions have for the most part merely reinforced
the values of their generally conservative life-styles.
Data as of December 1987
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