Iran: Change in Istam; Islam and Change Nikki R. Keddie International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 11, No. 4 (Jul., 1980), 527-542. Stable URL htp:/flinks.jstor-org/sicisici=( 120-7438% 28 198007% 29 1 1%3A4% 3C527%3AICIIIA3E20.CO%3B2-O International Journal of Middle East Studies is currently published by Cambridge University Press. Your use of the ISTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at hup:/www,jstororglabout/terms.hml. ISTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www jstor.orgyjoumals/cup.html, ch copy of any part of'a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the sereen or printed page of such transmission, ISTOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support @ jstor.org. hupulwww jstor.org/ Sun Jan 22 10:10:57 2006Int J. Midle East Stud. 11 (1980), 527-542. Printed in the United States of America Nikki R. Keddie IRAN: CHANGE IN ISLAM; ISLAM AND CHANGE THE “ISLAMIC REVIVAL” IN THE MIDDLE EAST In discussing the intellectual and religious history 0 the modem Muslim world, the attention of both Western and Middle Eastern scholars has hitherto focused. fon those who were, directly or indirectly, heavily influenced by Western thought and practices. For Egypt, the center of Arab intellectual life, we have Studies of at-Tahtawi, Abduh, Rida, Mustafa Kamil, Lutfi as-Sayyid, and those close to them: for Turkey studies of the Young Ottomans, the Young Turks, Zia Gokalp, and those influenced by Ataturk's Turkish nationalism; and for Iran of Malkum Khan, Afghani, various Babis, Ale Ahmad, Shariati, and other Western-influenced thinkers. Naturally, there are large differences in the thought of those qualified here as Western-influenced; even the most traditional alim usually reflects Western influence in a mediated way. The point is, how- ever, that there has been little analysis of thinkers and leaders who appear to be primarily traditional, whether they be ulama educated entirely in madrasas and carrying out primarily traditional functions, or heads of Sufi orders operating mainly within their own traditions. This concentration by Western and Middle Eastern intellectuals on leaders who were able to a large degree secularized and Westernized has been based on certain generally unspoken assumptions about progress and development. The assumptions are that progress and develop- ‘ment include Westernized, secularized educational systems and an increasingly Western lifestyle with a decreased role for both ulama and Sufis, whom itis not particularly important for one concentrating on trends with a viable future 10 study or understand. Even those who did study “traditionalist” movements such as the Egyptian Muslim Brethren tended to see them as a trend with no future.* In addition to assuming that “traditionalists” must be on the decline and “modernists” on the rise, Western-educated historians were attracted to persons with whom they could identify. This was so despite the fact that well before the current Muslim Revival mass movements were more often led by traditionalists than by modernists — witness Shamyl in the Caucasus, the Sa- nussis in Libya, the Wahhabis, and even the tobacco protest and constitutional revolution in Iran. Regarding Iran, writers beginning with E. G. Browne and Nazim al-Islam Kermani tended to overstate the role of modernized intellec- tuals and understate that of both the ulama and the bazaar classes who were ideologically tied to the ulama.* Studies of the ulama and of Sufis have tended to concentrate less on their ideological influence than on other aspects of their © 1980 Cambridge University Press 0020-74388010g0527-26 501.50,528 Nikki R. Keddie activity." In view of this background, it may be said that most Western and wwesternized scholars, even if they had the tools available to understand it to some degree, had not foreseen the so-called Islamic revival of recent years, but rather had expected a development toward secularism and “*modernization’” in which Islam would increasingly cease to “interfere significantly with such spheres as law, education, and politics. The progress-oriented secularist concentration of most Western and Middle Eastern scholars not only prevented them from foreseeing major develop- ments, but also skewed their view of the past, including ideological and rel {ious history. The stereotypical Orientalst view of the religious and intellectual past of the Middle East may be briefly summarized, with litte exaggeration, as ‘one in which a variety ef major intellectual achievements and innovations took place only until about the A.b. eleventh-twelfth centuries. After that, the sup- pression of Aristotelian and Neoplatonist Muslim philosophy and the socioeco- nomic decline beginning with nomadic “invasions” and military slave rule, along with the institution of orthodox madrasas as virtually the only institutions of higher education, brought a domination of conformity and orthodoxy which lasted until the time of major Western impact in the nineteenth century. There is certainly some truth in this picture, and those revisionisms that would make all periods of history almost equally dynamic are not helpful. On the other hand, recent research has undermined the picture at numerous points. For Iran and the more Eastern Muslim world it has been shown that rationalist philoso- phy never died out, that there was a long line of philosophers after Avicenna, including notably Nasir ad-Din Tusi in Assassin-Mongol times and Mir Damad ind Mulla Sadra under the Safavids, as well as original niaeteeth-century phi- losophers. In the Ottoman Empire and Egypt philosophy was taught less, but there were ulama who both learned and taught it, and a recent thesis shows its seventeenth and cighteenth-century continuation among a small group in Egypt and its influence on Rifa‘a at-Tahtawi. Rationalist Islamic philosophy’s influence on Afghani and Abduh has already been demonstrated.* Less study has been done on the socioeconomic aspect of the above picture, but there are already suggestions that since trade contacts with the West go back to the Middle Ages, and often changed character, itis a mistake to focus so heavily on the postindustrial revolution period as if its trade impact were totally new. Least of all have there been serious studies of majoritarian Islam (a term used in preference to the Western “orthodox” and its intellectual leaders inthe pe- riod from the eleventh through the eighteenth centuries. The notions that, in Sunni Islam, the door of interpretation «ijtihad) was early closed and that “Ash‘arite theology won out definitively over its rivals have helped turn the at- tention of most scholars away from a close study of the ideas expressed by ulama over these centuries. Only recently have some suggested that the door of itihad was less firmly closed than was thought, and that even if ulama consid- ered that they could not change the sharia itself, ample room remained for in- terpretation through fara and otherwise (as is paralleled in many supposedly rigid Western laws or constitutions). Scholars who see the great variety of ways