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Chapter One
Lost Opportunities and Eternal Conflicts
Much of the contemporary history of Iran is a narrative of clashes between aspirations for and obstacles of political participation. Herein is also a tale of conflict between modernity and tradition, at times leading to dramatic consequences including two revolutions. One starting point for this tale is the call for a constitutional monarchy in 1906; a change from an autocratic system to a constitutional monarchy was the galvanizing motivation and aspiration of Iran’s Constitutional Revolution of 1906 to1911. This was the first of two twentieth century revolutions that resulted in the formulation of constitutional documents, both insisting on the creation of political frameworks based on legal premises. The second document came into existence after the Iranian Revolution of 1979.
Each of these sets of documents served as partial materialization of aspirations to limit state authority and assure political liberties enshrined in law. In the case of the first constitutional document, however, both limitations on state authority and certain political liberties failed to materialize for essentially two reasons: a deeply entrenched traditionalism as well as the refusal of the royal courts to share power. In the case of the second document, powers with vested interests in the continuation of authoritarianism are again obstructing popular aspirations for political participation, setting the stage for an open and public conflict between forces of reform and increasingly reactionary forces. While royal power no longer exists in contemporary Iran, an institutional and individual desire to stand above the law remains to this day. Understanding the enduring forces of traditionalism and authoritarianism is important in identifying the lost opportunities in establishing a legally-based political framework, lost opportunities that more than anything else have become the primary markers of Iran’s modern history.
Traditionalism as an Obstacle
Prior to 1906, the Iranian political system was an autocratic and hereditary monarchy. Kings ruled and their positions were handed down from father to son. There were no parliamentary processes and accordingly, people played no substantive role to speak of in influencing the policies of the state. If excesses and injustices went beyond tolerable limits in one part of the country, rebellions would break out, leading either to the suppression of the rebellion or a replacement of the local rulers by the central authorities. The judiciary consisted of Shari'a or religious courts in which religious judges presided and resolved relevant cases. Judges meted out punishments according to their own individual understanding of religious laws. Such religious judges had full power and authority with little or no oversight, maintaining that authority within their geographical locality as long as they recognized the king as the Shadow of God on earth.
The Constitutional Revolution led to the promulgation of a royal writ decreeing that the king should reign, but not rule. A national consultative assembly (Majles) was to be elected by the free vote of the people (men only). For the first time in the history of Iran, the constitution endorsed the principle of popular participation within the provisions of constitutional law. The landmark constitution also provided for modes of participation, including election laws, and vested the responsibility of promulgating other participatory legislation to the workings of the Majles, or parliament.
And so at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Iranian people were on course for political participation under a parliamentary system. Such a development naturally shook the archaic political structure, though in the end it failed to unsettle its foundation— one still marked by traditionalism. Accordingly, the nascent parliamentary system soon found itself confronted by religious and traditional forces that perceived the constitutional mode of government as an affront to prevailing religious tenets. Using the vocabulary of ordinary people, these forces objected to religious rules being “trampled upon” through Western-style legislative processes, warning the “common man” of the dangers of ‘losing his religion.’ Using their pulpits, they denounced the decidedly ‘modern’ legislation as an affront and threat to a sacred Islam.
The pressure of a group of clerics and their followers, led by the cleric Sheikh Fazlollah Nouri, who was subsequently hanged by the constitutionalists for his support for continued autocratic rule, was a warning to the supporters of the new constitution. Fearing a popular backlash and the loss of their proposal at large, supporters of the constitution hastily added a supplement that, in fact, significantly changed the essence and direction of the document—originally based on civil legislation and the ideals of full popular participation. The supplement, whose content will be discussed below, was endorsed largely out of recognition of the fact that it would be necessary to placate a population still largely illiterate, rural and under the influence of the anti-constitutionalist clerics.
In the meantime, increasingly progressive sectors of society, influenced by modernist ideals propagated in the works of social, literary and artistic elites, were convinced that the panacea for all social and political ills was in fact the “law.” Led by a group of intellectuals and a number of constitutionalist clerics, they considered religious-based traditionalism to be the primary source of sociopolitical backwardness, insisting that society ought to become familiarized with such concepts as freedom, equality, growth and development. They hoped to promote such ideals by replacing an ancient tradition born of Shari'a with parliamentary legislation.
Despite the successes of the constitutional movement, the victory was not yet complete to the point that an Iranian contemporary historian has pointed out that “the Constitutional Revolution of Iran in 1906 happened at a time when many of the preconditions for its success were lacking. There was no central authority, no efficient bureaucracy, no true communications network and no extensive awareness of belonging to a common set of values which existed in a specific geographical area called Iran.” It was this absence of preconditions that enabled its opponents to emphasize that constitutional rule contradicted divine laws.
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