Iranian identity is often discussed within the paradigm of ethnically Persian and religiously Shii identities while in reality a myriad of subaltern groups comprise and shape Iranian society. In the backdrop of twentieth century nationalism, Iranian minorities expressed hybrid identities to at once conform to and complicate the ideal Shii Iranian identity. Thus, Iran faced the challenge of ethnic and religious pluralism early on. This panel investigates the experience of subalterns who confronted nationalism in the periods of the Pahlavi and Islamic regimes.
These minorities, rather than reject any one identity, have invented hybrid identities in order to maintain their ethnoreligious integrity while carving a political and social stake in the nation-state. This panel presents the transformation and struggles of subaltern communities in Iran, which articulated distinct identities conscious of, and in conversation with, the national identities proffered by the Pahlavi and Islamic regimes.
The first paper focuses on the emergence of a distinct Iranian national identity among Jewish communities through the M.R Pahlavi era (1941-1979). Conscious of sociopolitical cleavages, this paper examines two allegedly conflicting national movements, one Iranian and one Zionist. The Iranian Jewry resolved this crisis by separating religious and cultural identities, emphasizing their ancient and genuine Iranian roots in the public sphere. For Iranian Jews, Iran came to represent the homeland just as Jerusalem (Zion) represented the Qiblah.
The second paper examines the conditions of the Baha’i community of Iran during the reign of Muhammad Reza Shah (1941-1979). While Baha’is were initially scapegoated by the government, the clerics and the people from 1941 to 1955, this paper argues that they enjoyed a state of relative security from 1956 to 1979 without official recognition as a religious community.
The third paper examines female memoirs of the Iran-Iraq War published in the last fifteen years by the Islamic Republic. These memoirs reveal the complex ethnic allegiances of women straddling the Iran-Iraq border who identify as Arab-Iranian or Kurdish-Iranian. The paper argues that by publishing these memoirs the IRI presents a pluralistic Iranian society while attempting to normalize volatile competing identities.
The last paper, challenges the distinct separation between the Zoroastrian elements that thrived in the Pahlavi era and the Shii vision of the post-revolutionary period by presenting an attempt by the Islamic Republic to appropriate the image of Cyrus, thus fusing the religious and the ethnic adoration of the founder of the Achaemenid Empire.
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Dr. Lior B. Sternfeld
In 1948 the Jewish Agency envoy in Tehran wrote back to the Jerusalem headquarters a short letter stating that the situation in Iran is hopeless for the Zionist organization. Paradoxically, those were fascinating years for the Jewish population in Iran. During that time Jews began to climb up the social ladder, leave the Jewish quarters and integrate into Iranian society. They enjoyed religious and political freedoms that Iran had offered since Mohammad Reza Pahlavi ascended to throne in 1941. What was it, then, that caused such discomfort to the Zionist envoy in 1948?
My paper analyzes the relationship between the Zionist and the Jewish Iranian identities in Iran during the Pahlavi era, from documents of a myriad of Jewish and Zionist organizations, and Iranian writings on this topic.
Unlike the Arab Jewish communities, the Iranians did not flee en masse after the establishment of the State of Israel, and their approach to Zionism was ambivalent. While they sympathized with the Zionist cause, and celebrated the establishment of a Jewish homeland, they felt better than ever before regarding their chances to flourish and succeed in Iran, which in turn strengthened their Iranian national identity. As a result, the majority of the community stayed in their Iranian homeland. The American Joint Jewish Distribution Committee efforts to rehabilitate the community in the postwar era was at odds with Israel’s attempts to bring the community to Israel at once, thus causing a minor rift between the JDC and Israel.
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Mr. Menahem Merhavy
The National Appropriation of Religious Symbols in Iran - Quranic Exegesis in the Service of Iranian Identity
Paper abstract, proposed to MESA 2014 conference
In this paper I use the debate over the character of Cyrus the Great in Iran during the last four decades, as a prism to the nuanced balance between the religious and the ethnic components in Iranian historiography and Quranic exegesis during this period. Through the heated polemics over the historical figure of Cyrus and his legacy, appear undercurrents of Iranian identity dilemmas and different and conflicting ways of solving them among intellectuals and religious scholars. Beyond a mere historical or religious polemics, the debate over the “right” memory of Cyrus presents an interesting case of shifting emphasis of identity and sources of political inspiration in Iranian society from the late 1960’s to the present. Moreover, putting the debate over the ancient king in perspective, there emerges a wider picture on the religious adaptation and “embracement” of what once seemed secular or even “pagan”. The Pahlavi legacy, rather than abandoned, is metamorphosed into an inclusive framework of Iranian identity.
This tendency is evident in the appropriation of Cyrus as Dhul-Qarnayn mentioned in sūrat l-kahf (The Cave) in the Quran. The figure of Dhul-Qarnayn, traditionally attributed to Alexander the Great has to be believed by that of Cyrus the Great in a growing popularity in Iran in the last four decades. From a marginal and esoteric understanding of the sura, it seems that Iranian nationalism, from the early 1970’s has embraced the view that Cyrus is mentioned in the Quran. This commentary has gained tremendous popularity among some clerics, and, more importantly, among lay writers who mediate Quranic exegesis to a wider public. The case of Dhul-Qarnayn is telling for the fusion of two important elements that come together and whose interaction goes well beyond the specific question of the hermeneutical question they come to theorize. The role of ancient Iran in modern Iranian identity on the one hand and the religious appropriation of national symbols in Iran, on the other. By contextualizing the seemingly commentary metamorphosis of Dhul-Qarnayn I show that it is, in fact, part of a much wider attempt at imbuing national symbols in Iran with religious aura. A process which was supported by the Pahlavi regime but persisted and even gained new ground in the Islamic Republic in the last two decades.
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Dr. Shaherzad Ahmadi
This paper considers the Iran-Iraq War’s repackaging by examining female narrated memoirs published in the last fifteen years by Sureh-ye Mehr, the official publisher of the Artistic Center of the Islamic Development Organization. Laetitia Nanquette’s recent article published in 2013 regarding the popular memoir Da (2008), “An Iranian Woman’s Memoir on the Iran-Iraq War,” sheds light on the topic of female memoirs. She does not, however, offer a critical reading of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseini’s book. Nor does she put Da (“Mother” in Kurdish) in conversation with the many other female-narrated memoirs published by Sureh-ye Mehr. Academic scholarship of the war has thus far been limited to military histories, like Dilip Hiro’s The Longest War, or ethnographies of the post-war generation, like Roxanne Varzi’s Warring Souls. The memoirs discussed in this paper, with ethnic minorities and women at their center, breathe new life into the now stale Iran-Iraq War narrative. In the same vein as works like Houchang Chehabi’s article, “Ardabil Becomes a Province” (1997), my paper explores the manipulation of the Iran-Iraq War by ethnic minorities to exert influence over the public sphere while simultaneously legitimating the populist rule of the Islamic Republic.
In order to reconceptualize Iranian nationalism, this paper interrogates gender, racial and ethnic identities during the Iran-Iraq War. These books offer the unique subaltern subjectivities of those ascribing to a Shi’i faith in majority Sunni communities, an Arab-Iranian identity in the midst of an Arab-Iranian war, a Kurdish identity with family on both sides of the border and so on. In these memoirs, the state both calls to attention and normalizes complex ethno-religious identities. For example, Nahid Salmaani, the subject of the short memoir Gol-e Simin, describes her mother as yearning to return home to Iraq and never learning Persian without ever conceding her truly "Iranian" identity. Other memoirists use racial minorities as a foil to present “good” and “bad” cultural values in an effort to critique Iranian mores. Female memoirists interrogate Iranian nationalism, calling into question race, religion, language, and ethnicity during a conflict between Iraqis and Iranians of all stripes and creeds. Through a comparative perspective, I analyze themes shared by eight memoirs in order to discern the larger implications these memoirs present for the Iranian Shi’i state.
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Dr. Mina Yazdani
According to the Islamic Republic of Iran’s version of history, members of Iran’s Baha’i community lived in a state of bliss during the reign of Muhammad Reza Shah (r. 1941-1979). Moving away from such simplistic and monolithic narratives, this paper will investigate the multi-layered, multi-faceted history of the Baha’i community of Iran during the reign of the last Pahlavi monarch. Based on primary sources such as memoirs, newspaper clippings, interviews with eyewitnesses, and government documents, I will argue that while Baha’is were initially scapegoated in the interactions among the government, the clerics and the people from 1941 to 1955, they enjoyed a state of relative security from 1956 to 1979 without ever being officially recognized as a religious community and while their existence as Baha’is was essentially ignored or denied.
With the sudden removal of Reza Shah’s iron fist and the ascension of his young son to the throne, Iranian society underwent many changes, among them the political resurgence of the Shi‘i clerics and the appearance of several Islamic organizations with anti-Baha’i agendas. Meanwhile, some Baha’is increased their religious activities by settling in areas with little or no co-religionists. In the political chaos that characterized the 1940s, numerous Baha’is were murdered, while others had their homes raided or were expelled from their villages and towns, almost always with impunity. These conditions climaxed with the 1955 anti-Baha’i campaign, which proved to be at once the apogee and culmination of government-clergy collaboration, as the government, weary of international condemnation, refused to comply further with the clerics’ demand to suppress the Baha’is. With the Shah consolidating power in the latter part of his reign, the Baha’i community experienced a period of relative security—with the exception of episodes of violence during the 1963 anti-government riots that again went unpunished. A number of individual Baha’is became successful entrepreneurs and industrialists and one served as the Shah’s personal physician. At the same time, the “Anti-Baha’i Society” (later Hujatiyah) formed in the mid-1950s was supported by the Shah’s internal security agency, SAVAK, and given free rein to harass Baha’is. The Civil Employment Act did not permit Baha’is to be recruited to government jobs, silence permeated about them inside the country, and their existence was officially denied throughout.
