Internet Mahdism in the (re)Shaping of Shi‘i Iran With the rise of digital technology Islamic communities have incorporated new communication technologies for various experiential and institutional activities. While changes in such technologies have involved complex social consequences in the broad socio-structural context, religious subjectivities and communities continue to shape and be shaped by new technological practices. This study examines the phenomenon of Internet communication in the reconfiguration of key Shi‘i Twelver practices in post-revolutionary Iran. It focuses on variations of online Shi‘i Iranian millenarian discourses and practices and argues that Internet is impacting such beliefs in terms of authority, authenticity, community and public ritual practices. These transformations are not about technology changing Shi‘i Iran, the paper argues, but rather how agency engages with technology in reproducing new conceptions of millenarianism in the context of Iranian public life. The paper offers an analytical-theoretical discussion of what it calls “Internet Mahdism” by focusing on various textual, visual and audio productions made possible on digital space, wherein new conceptions of space, time, self and politics are negotiated and contested. In particular, it examines these transformations through social media production of apocalyptic themes, public rituals such as nimeh shaban, and pilgrimage rites associated with visitation sites such as Jamkaran. Finally, the paper offers an interpretation on the complex relationship between technology and religion in the context of Shi‘i Iranian life, which continues to undergo changes in terms of popular and official religious cultures.

On 15 September 1944, Muhammad Parvin Gunabadi (d. 1979), a member of Iran’s parliament, wrote a letter to the Prime Minister, Muhammad Sa’id (d. 1973), expressing his concern about disturbing news coming in from different parts of the country where a “coordinated plan” had been executed and commotion now seized the populace. He went on to inform the Prime Minister that some five hundred religious groups in Khurasan had formed and were preparing a “major uproar.” Parvin Gunabadi’s letter was a rare attempt by a member of the parliament to prevent anti-Baha’i attacks that had exacerbated since Reza Shah’s abdication. During the 1940s, the Baha’i population of Iran faced mob attacks, raids, arsons, looting, and even sporadic murders. Murderers, often acting collectively, were never punished. In rare instances where the government arrested the culprits, the joint action by a number of clerics exerted pressure on the government to release them. A salient example was the murder, in 1949, of a Baha’i physician in Kashan. Eight individuals connected with the Fada’iyan-i Islam, a radical organization devoted to militant propagation of Islamic ideals together stabbed Dr. Soleyman Birjis to death. Collectively, they went to the police headquarter and confessed to his murder, and were put under arrest. However, the joint, immediate and organized actions of Ayatollahs Burujirdi, Kashani, Bihbahani and a number of other clerics prevented the judicial system from any further actions. The killers were all exonerated, and immediately released. This was despite the known conflicts, if not blatant animosities between Ayatollah Burujerdi, the sole marj‘-i taqlid of the Shi‘ia at the time and the highly influential and politically active Ayatollah Kashani. Exploring the newspapers of the time, pertinent governmental documents and memoirs of the individuals involved, this paper suggests that the government’s inability or unwillingness to challenge fiery clerics and radical Muslims in their attacks against Baha’is, practically, empowered and emboldened these individuals and groups preparing them, over time, for the fervent opposition against the government itself. Furthermore, the joint action of the otherwise rival clerics to protect the murderers of Baha’is provided the clerics with experience that they later used, against the government, first in 1964, and in 1979, during the Islamic Revolution.

The Twelver Shi`i messianic figure known as the Hidden Imam is alleged to have entered a period of concealment in the late ninth century that continues to the present day. In the last one hundred and fifty years, an initial reticence for anyone to contact the Imam during his “occultation” has given way to an explosion of stories and accounts detailing encounters between the Imam and many of his followers (mostly from the ranks of the clergy). This controversial topic is one that scholars of Shi`i Islam have only begun to properly explore. As a contribution to filling the existing lacuna, this paper will speculate on the main reasons for this shift, by examining the work of the prolific scholar, ‘Ali-Akbar Nahavandi (d. 1950). The little-known Nahavandi lived at a time in which many of the messianic and eschatological tensions regarding the Hidden Imam – tensions that had remained unresolved since the period of the Lesser Occultation – exploded onto the religious landscape. This paper will introduce Nahavandi and his massive magnum opus, al-‘Abqari al-hisan fi ahwal sahib al-zaman [the Fine Wonders of Beauty concerning the Circumstances of the Lord of the (Final) Age]. This important work—the largest of its kind written in Persian—contains over 220 stories and accounts of individuals (including many prominent ulama) who have encountered the Hidden Imam, and has been cited repeatedly in subsequent books on the Shi`i messianic figure in Persian and Arabic. Yet other than two passing references by Henry Corbin and Mohammad-Ali Amir-Moezzi, the book and its author have not been mentioned by any western scholars. Special attention will be paid in this presentation to Nahavandi’s motives for writing the Fine Wonders of Beauty as reflected in the work’s highly charged chapter excoriating “heretical movements.” In doing so, this paper will suggest that the Nahavandi's work is central to understanding a critical messianic turn in modern Twelver Shi`i Islam that has reinvented the role and function of the Hidden Imam.