Vahabzadeh (Ed) - Iran's Struggles For Social Justice (2017)

IRAN’S STRUGGLES
FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE

ECONOMICS, AGENCY, JUSTICE, ACTIVISM
Edited by Peyman Vahabzadeh

Iran’s Struggles for Social Justice
Peyman Vahabzadeh
Editor
Iran’s Struggles for

Social Justice
Economics, Agency, Justice, Activism
Editor
Peyman Vahabzadeh
Department of Sociology
University of Victoria
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
ISBN 978-3-319-44226-6 ISBN 978-3-319-44227-3 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-44227-3
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To the memory of
Khosrow Shakeri (Cosroe Chaqueri) (1938-2015)
social justice advocate par excellence
Foreword
What does it mean when a group of young and middle-aged a cademics

gather on a North American university campus and wonder what has
happened to the enduring problem of “social justice” in their homeland
half way around the globe in Iran?
Early in July 2015 I was part of such a group of almost exclusively
Iranian academics who had gathered at the University of Victoria, in
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. All the papers were delivered in
English. All the discussions in between the papers were in Persian. We
delivered our papers, exchanged and debated ideas, topics, concepts, and
issues in English, and then we retired to dining halls and restaurants and
caught up with the latest news in our homeland in Persian.
In the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution of 1977–1979, a generation
of Iranian critical thinkers has emerged outside their homeland. There is a
palpable disconnect between this generation and the unfolding history of
their country of birth. The chapters you will read in this book are a sample
evidence of the work of this generation that remains deeply concerned
about their national history and yet confined in their abilities to offer only
critical perspectives. This “generation,” to be sure, includes colleagues in
their sixties as well as younger scholars and critical thinkers in their thirties.
Both these cohorts, however, share the common denominator of having
exited the nasty censorial policies of the ruling Islamic Republic to be able
to live and think and read and write in relative freedom.
The writings of these chapters and their delivery in an academic gathering
in Iran are next to impossible to imagine. Over the last almost four decades,
the ruling apparatus of the Islamic Republic has systematically destroyed
vii
viii Foreword
the very foundation of social sciences and categorically appropriated the

very idea of “social justice” for itself. There is no public debate, no common
conversation that would enable anything remotely resembling a commu-
nal consciousness surround the question of “social justice.” The slightest
suggestion of any such critical thinking will land a person in a kangaroo
court, facing prison terms for having compromised what the custodians of
the Islamic Republic consider their “national security/amniyat-e melli.”
Although critical thinking and writing are inseparable from any human
gathering anywhere in the world, including and perhaps particularly in
societies in the snare of totalitarianism, the systematic destruction of social
sciences and humanities in Iran is a matter of state policies and their cul-
tural revolution against what they call “the West.”
In this book you will read learned discussions of various forms of
struggles for social justice in Iran, of the predicament of the working
class and labor movements, the theological underpinning of political
mobilization of the poor, detailed accounts of the cooperative movements,
gender equality, the student movement, new literary archive pertinent to
social justice, and many other equally urgent issues. Do the writing and
reading of these crucial essays constitute an exercise in futility when the
subject of their conversations and contentions, Iranian people themselves,
scarcely know they exist, let alone read and perhaps learn from them?
Signaled by the fact that this book is in English and not in Persian,
though all its authors are Iranian, no organic link can be presumed
between this critical body of literature and the struggle for social justice
in Iran. In one way or another, as evidenced in every single chapter,
those scholars gathered here deeply care, closely follow, and are vastly
informed by the subject of their scholarship—and yet they have opted
to write their thoughts in English, while they are perfectly capable of
doing so in Persian. The location of these senior and junior scholars on
North American or Western European campuses does, in part, explain
their choice of English—a choice effectively decided by the fact that they
are writing, in part, in critical conversation also with their non-Iranian
colleagues on these campuses.
This disconnect, however, is much less pertinent than it may first appear
if we remember that the public space upon which the very idea of “Iran”
as a nation was formed has always been transnational. The first Iranian
novel, Siyahatnameh Ibrahim Beig (1903), was written in Cairo and
published in Istanbul; the first Iranian film, Abi and Rabi (1930), was
made in India. From Calcutta to Istanbul to Cairo to Berlin were the sites
Foreword ix
of the most widely circulated and read periodicals of the Constitutional

period. Istanbul, in particular, was the site of the rise of the first generation
of Iranian public intellectuals. Central Asia and the Caucuses were the
domain upon which these intellectuals first came to grips with the very
idea of their homeland outside its emerging frontiers. So writing about
Iran from outside Iran is nothing new, novel, or unusual.
There is, however, one crucial difference between all those cases and a
volume such as this that you are about to read. All those books, films, and
periodicals were in Persian, while this one is in English. This volume, as
a result, as countless others like it, represents a new gestation of Iranian
scholars, critical thinkers, and public intellectuals. They are now all deeply
embedded in the heart of North American and Western European aca-
demic circles. They have mastered the language of their imperial where-
abouts better and more effectively than any other generation before
them. This development, of course, has the disadvantage of not being
read by their contemporaries in Iran. But it has certain number of other
advantages.
These scholars are now living, reading, and writing in a vastly more
cosmopolitan environment than what the Islamic Republic has allowed in
their homeland, and they are conversant with a widening body of litera-
ture beyond Iran as they openly or implicitly engage the work of postco-
lonial critical thinkers just like them from Asia, Africa, and Latin America,
never before so openly present in the horizons of Iranian thinkers when
writing in Persian as now confined to the censorial mandates of the Islamic
Republic. This cosmopolitan worldliness of their prose and the fact that it
is conversant at the heart of the globalized empire lift the dialogical dispo-
sition of their prose to an entirely different domain. They are bringing the
Iranian public sphere to global consciousness, where it can find its sense of
interiority onto a worldly scale.
Generations of writing in Persian addressed Iranians exclusively and
as such had a mournful, contemplative, plaintive, and introverted mono-
logue tone to it. Writing in English for a global audience has the entirely
opposite texture to it: defiant, conversational, embracive, worldly, and as
such in solidarity with others who share a similar trajectory. The English
these scholars write has the intonation of the Persian-speaking world
embedded in it. This English is not “accented” as some have suggested, as
if there is an English without an accent. All spoken and written languages
have an accent of their speakers and writers. But there is an intonation
to the language that has nothing to do with who is speaking or writing
x Foreword
but everything to do with whom is the speaker and the writer addressing:
who is his or her interlocutor? The interlocutor of these essays is a global
readership, a worldly audience, who knows where Iran is and what are
its issues, but does so in a comparative worldly context otherwise absent
when identical issues are rewritten in Persian and addressed exclusively to
Iranians. That worldly consciousness had always existed in Persian when
spoken in the imperial context of its own history. But that imperial context
today has moved to English, as it may very well travel to Chinese in our
own lifetime.
Yes, a vast segment of the Iranian population not conversant in English
may never get to read this or many other books like it. But millions of
other Iranians can and will. English, as a result, and what postcolonial
critical thinkers from four corners of the world write in it, is the upending
of the imperial language, the way Spanish was wrested in Latin America
from Spain, or English was in India, or Arabic in Islamic lands beyond
the control of the tribal Arabism of their conquerors. Today, English has
become an Iranian language too, as once Persian became an Indian lan-
guage, Arabic an African, or Spanish a Latin American. The book you hold
in your hand reads in English but breathes the desires and struggles of a
nation for social justice in Persian.
New York, NY Hamid Dabashi

May 2016
Acknowledgments
This book represents the collective endeavor of academics and activists

who share a profound sense of social justice in their approach to the vari-
ous aspects of Iran’s present complex and unjust reality. The book origi-
nates with an international scholarly conference under the rubric of “Iran’s
Struggles For Social Justice: Canadian and International Perspectives”
(http://socialjusticeiniran.com/), organized by the editor of this volume,
and held on July 10–12, 2015 at University of Victoria, in the heavenly
city of Victoria, on Vancouver Island, Canada, in the unceded traditional
territory of the Coast and Straits Salish Peoples, on the ancestral land
of the Lekwungen family group, Checkonien and Sungayka, where the
University of Victoria campus sits on the site of an old Lekwungen village.
The organizers and participants in the Conference acknowledge that they
held their deliberations on Aboriginal territory and are grateful for the
hospitality offered to them.
I would like to thank the individuals whose collective effort created
a smooth and collegial conference: Scott Bryce Aubrey, Kaveh Bavand,
Heather Currie, Mariana Gallegos Dupuis, Susan Kim, and Ardalan
Rezamand. Many thanks are also due to the Department of Sociology
for financial and logistical support, and I would like to personally thank
Sean Hier, Chair of Sociology, and Carole Rains, Departmental Secretary.
Thanks also to Mona Sedky Goode, Margo Matwychuk, and Andrew
Wender for chairing sessions. I would also like to acknowledge the finan-
cial support for this Conference through Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada Connection Grant (611-2014-0393), and
offer my gratitude to Fred Farhad Soofi; Centre for Comparative Studies
xi
xii Acknowledgments
of Muslim Societies and Cultures and Institute for the Humanities at

Simon Fraser University; Kwantlen Polytechnic University; Shahrvand
BC Persian Weekly and its Editor-in-Chief Hadi Ebrahimi; Centre for
Global Studies; as well as Middle East and Islamic Consortium of UVic,
Dean of Faculty of Social Sciences, the Centre for Asia-Pacific Initiatives,
Social Justice Program, and Centre for Studies of Religion and Society at
the University of Victoria. I am proud to announce that the Conference
was not funded through corporate sponsorship or grants from question-
able sources and foundations. It was important for a conference on social
justice to prove that such events can indeed be funded through social-
ized funds, public academic sources, and support of philanthropists with
impeccable public record in defending justice and democracy.
I am also grateful to the contributors to this volume, to their enthu-
siasm, dedication, commitment, friendship, and above all their patience
with my unending queries, critiques, and edits. Without them, this project
would not have succeeded. It is our collective hope that what we have
produced in this volume soon grows into a growing field of social justice
studies in Iran and in this shrinking and increasingly unjust world we have
inherited.
Lastly, I would like to thank Palgrave Macmillan for undertaking this
project, as well as the anonymous reviewer whose feedback helped us
improve on the various contributions in this volume. In particular, I thank
Mireille Yanow, Milana Vernikova, Alexis Nelson, and Kyra Saniewski
at Palgrave Macmillan for their professionalism, attentiveness, and kind
responses to my endless enquiries.
Contents
1 Introduction: How to Approach This Book1

Peyman Vahabzadeh
2 Historical and Conceptual Preparations for a

Multidisciplinary Study of Social Justice in Iran 9
Peyman Vahabzadeh
3 Gazing Upon the Land of Oil Through the Prism

of Structure, Elite Action, and Civil Society29
Hajar Amidian
4 The Unmaking of the Iranian Working Class since

the 1990s 47
Mohammad Maljoo
5 Charity or Mass Mobilization? Public Religion

and the Struggle for Economic Justice 65
Siavash Saffari
6 Iran’s Cooperative Movement: Agony of Development 81

Kaveh Sarmast
xiii
xiv Contents
7 Social Justice; Anti-imperialist, Racist, Persian-centric,

and Shi‘i-centric Discursive Formations of the
Ideal Citizen and Iranian School Textbooks:
A Social Biography Response 99
Amir Mirfakhraie
8 Justice Interrupted: The University and the Imam 127

Ardalan Rezamand
9 Ethical–Political Praxis: Social Justice and

the Resistant Subject in Iran 145
Shokoufeh Sakhi
10 Intergenerational Memory in Children of

the Jacaranda Tree 165
Nima Naghibi
11 Social Media as a Site of Transformative Politics:

Iranian Women’s Online Contestations 181
Victoria Tahmasebi-Birgani
12 Performative Agency: A Realization of an Objective

Clash of “Social Justice” Discourses or a Requiem
for a Subjective Silence 199
Sara Naderi
13 The Voice of the Workers: Iran’s Labour Movement

and Reflections on the Project-Seasonal Workers’
Union of Abadan, 1979–1980 219
Mohammad Safavi
14 An Unfinished Odyssey: The Iranian Student

Movement’s Struggles for Social Justice 237
Roozbeh Safshekan
Contents xv
15 The Left’s Contribution to Social Justice in Iran:

A Brief Historical Overview 255
Afshin Matin-asgari
16 Iran: Multiple Sources of a Grassroots

Social Democracy? 271
Mojtaba Mahdavi
17 Social Justice and Democracy in Iran: In Search

of the Missing Link 289
Peyman Vahabzadeh
Afterword: Social Justice in Iran: Further Research307
Index311
Notes on Contributors
Hajar Amidian is a PhD candidate in Political Science, University of

Alberta, Canada, specializing in the areas of international relations and
Canadian politics. In her dissertation, she attempts to advance the under-
standing of the correlation between authoritarianism and rentier theory in
postrevolutionary Iran. She holds an MA in North American Studies
and a BA in English Language and Literature from the University of
Tehran.
Hamid Dabashi is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies
and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He has taught and
delivered lectures in many North American, European, Arab, and Iranian
universities. He is the author of over 100 essays, articles, and book reviews
on subjects ranging from Iranian Studies, medieval and modern Islam,
and comparative literature to world cinema and the philosophy of art
(transaesthetics). His most recent books include Corpus Anarchicum:
Political Protest, Suicidal Violence, and the Making of the Posthuman Body
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), Post-Orientalism: Knowledge and Power
in a Time of Terror (Transaction, 2015), Can Non-Europeans Think?
(Zed Books, 2015), and Persophilia: Persian Culture on the Global Scene
(Harvard University Press, 2015).
Mojtaba Mahdavi is the Edmonton Council of Muslim Communities
(ECMC) Chair in Islamic Studies and Associate Professor of Political
Science at the University of Alberta. His research and teaching lie in the
areas of contemporary social movements and democratization in the
Muslim world; secularism, Islamism, and post-Islamism; modern Islamic
xvii
xviii Notes on Contributors
political thought; and political economy of the Middle East and North
Africa. He is the coeditor of Towards the Dignity of Difference? Neither
End of History Nor Clash of Civilizations (Ashgate, 2012) and the guest
editor of the journal Sociology of Islam on “The Unfinished Project of
Contemporary Social Movements in the Middle East and Beyond” (2014).
He is currently working on two book projects: Towards a Progressive Post-
Islamism in Postrevolutionary Iran and The Unfinished Project of Social
Movements in the Middle East and North Africa.
Mohammad Maljoo was born in Tehran in 1972 and educated at the
Faculty of Economics, University of Tehran, where he received his PhD in
Economics in 2005. He was a lecturer at the Faculty of Economics,
Allameh Tabatabaì University and at the University of Tehran between
2006 and 2009. He was a research fellow at International Institution of
Social History (Amsterdam) in 2010 and at the School of Oriental
and African Studies (SOAS), London, in 2013. His field of special-
ization includes political economy of the postrevolutionary Iran. He
has published more than 60 journal articles in Persian and several in
English, German, and French on these subjects.
Afshin Matin-asgari holds a doctorate in Modern Middle East History
from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) (1993) and is cur-
rently Professor of Middle East History at California State University, Los
Angeles. He is the author of Iranian Student Opposition to the Shah
(Mazda, 2002) and of more than 20 articles and book chapters on
twentieth-century Iranian political and intellectual history, with particular
attention to leftist trends and movements. These include “The Berlin
Circle: Iranian Nationalism Meets German Counter-modernity,” in
K. Scott-Aghaie and A. Marashi (eds.), Modern Iranian Nationalism
(University of Texas Press, 2014), and “The Impact of Imperial Russia and
the Soviet Union on Qajar and Pahlavi Iran: Notes Toward a Revisionist
Historiography,” in S. Cronin (ed.), Iranian-Russian Encounters: Empires
and Revolutions Since 1800 (Routledge: 2012). His forthcoming book is
Both Western and Eastern: Intellectual Constructions of Iranian Modernity.
Amir Mirfakhraie is a Sociology Faculty at Kwantlen Polytechnic
University. He received his PhD in Educational Studies from the University
of British Columbia, specializing in the sociology and anthropology of
education, with a focus on Iranian textbooks, and multicultural, antiracist,
and global education. His research interests include antioppression and
Notes on Contributors xix
antiracism education, curriculum studies, critical pedagogy, citizenship

education, and Canadian and Iranian Diaspora studies. His research
focuses on the immigration of Iranians to Canada and British Columbia,
ethnic and racialized diversity in Canada, antiracist/antioppression peda-
gogies, and the construction of national identity, the family, the state and
economy, “race,” ethnicity, and gender in Iranian school textbooks. Dr.
Mirfakhraie has numerous publications on these subjects.
Sara Naderi is a PhD student at the Department of Sociology, University
of Victoria. Her research interests include women’s studies, postcolonial
studies, cultural studies, sociology of religion, and sociology of knowl-
edge. Sara’s primary focus is on questioning and criticizing modern sub-
jectivity as she seeks alternative and critical subjectivities. In her academic
research, she endeavors to articulate the marginalized narratives of subjec-
tivity, probing, in particular, Iranian women’s subjectivity that arises from
their marginalized subject position—as women in a postcolonial society
and in the modern world. Her empirical research mainly focuses on
women in Iran, and partial findings of her study have been published in
Persian in Introduction to the Feminine Narrative of the City: A Study on
Women’s Lived Experience (Teasa, 2013).
Nima Naghibi is Associate Professor of English at Ryerson University in
Toronto. Her research is in the areas of diasporic and postcolonial studies,
and life narratives, with particular attention to questions of human rights
and social justice. She is the author of Women Write Iran: Nostalgia
and Human Rights from the Diaspora (Minnesota Press, 2016) and
Rethinking Global Sisterhood: Western Feminism and Iran (Minnesota
Press, 2007). She has published on Western representations of
Muslim Middle Eastern women, specifically the hijab, in Western
discourses; diasporic Iranian life narratives; documentary films; and
the filmic adaptation of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis. Her essays have
appeared in such journals as English Studies in Canada, Interventions:
An International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Radical History Review,
and Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly.
Ardalan Rezamand completed his BA from the University of California
at Santa Barbara in 1998 with double major in Philosophy and Islamic and
Near Eastern Studies. He worked as a health-care analyst and a personal
banker before returning to academia. Ardalan attended Simon Fraser
University for his MA studies, graduating with an MA in History in
xx Notes on Contributors
2012. His MA thesis traced the influence of academic philosophy in

the formation of a modern Iranian identity. Currently, he is a PhD
candidate at Simon Fraser University. His research interests include
religion and politics of modern Iran, in particular, the hybridiza-
tion of knowledge in the twentieth-century state-sponsored civic
institutions.
Mohammad Safavi was born in the southern city of Abadan, Iran, into
an oil worker’s family. He joined the project workers in the Iran–Japan
Petrochemical Plant in a construction site in Mammko and Jarahi districts
near Bandar Ma’shour in 1975 and was soon involved in labor activism as
a member of the Project-Seasonal Workers’ Union of Abadan (1979–1980)
and as a labor and social activist working in Isfahan Power Plant. In
Canada, he started a career in food industry and worked as a baker, partici-
pating in 1990 in a successful campaign in organizing bakery workers
(Venice Bakery) to Join United Food and Commercial Workers Union
(Local 1518), in which he served as a representative in the Health and
Safety Joint Committee, and as a shop steward for almost 15 years. He has
written numerous articles on labor issues from social movement–unionist
point of view, published in various Persian publications and on the
Internet.
Siavash Saffari is Assistant Professor of West Asian Studies at the
Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations, Seoul National
University (South Korea). He received his PhD in Political Science from
the University of Alberta (Edmonton, Canada), where he also taught
courses in comparative politics and political theory. Prior to joining Seoul
National University, he was a Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council of Canada Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Middle
Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies, Columbia University. His
research interests include Middle Eastern and Islamic politics, modern
Islamic political thought, modern Iranian studies, modernity/coloniality/
decoloniality, and development/postdevelopment. His publications
have appeared in several peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes.
He is the author of Beyond Shariati: Modernity, Cosmopolitanism and
Islam in Iranian Political Thought (Cambridge University Press, 2016).
Roozbeh Safshekan is a PhD candidate in Political Science at the
University of Alberta. He obtained his MA in Middle Eastern Studies
from Columbia University and in Political Science from the University of
Notes on Contributors xxi
Tehran. His research interests include cyberpolitics, international relations

theory, and comparative social movements. Roozbeh is the recipient of a
number of academic awards, including a Joseph-Armand Bombardier
Canada Graduate Scholarship–Doctoral (CGSD), Honorary Izaak Walton
Killam Memorial Scholarship, and Queen Elizabeth II Doctoral Award.
Shokoufeh Sakhi is a visiting scholar at the University of Victoria. She
holds a PhD in Political Science from York University, Toronto, special-
izing in political theory, writing on the phenomenology of the resistant
subject. Dr. Sakhi acted as Executive Committee Director (2013–2014)
of the Iran Tribunal Foundation, investigating the Iranian state’s crimes
against humanity in the 1980s, and also testified as an ex-political pris-
oner at the Iranian People’s Tribunal hearings held at the Hague
(2012). Among many documentaries, she appeared in The Tree That
Remembers (2002), a National Film Board of Canada (NFB) film on
Iranian political prisoners. Her most recent publication is “Prison and
the Subject of Resistance: A Levinasian Inquiry” in Death and Other
Penalties (Fordham, 2015).
Kaveh Sarmast has been a lecturer of various courses, including coopera-
tive theory, entrepreneurship, and development courses, at Allameh
Tabatabaì University and the University of Welfare and Rehabilitation
Sciences (UWRS) in Tehran from 2009 to 2013. He received his PhD in
Economic Development from Belgrade University, Republic of Serbia
(Ex-Yugoslavia). His principal academic interest is in cooperative the-
ory and movement, as reflected in his PhD dissertation, where he
made a detailed discussion about international cooperative movement.
He has other publications on cooperatives and economic develop-
ment issues; participated in many debates, conferences, and seminars
on Iranian and global economic issues; and recently concluded his research
fellowship at the Center for Cooperative and Community-Based Economy
(CCCBE), University of Victoria, Canada. As Chair of the Iranian
Association of Graduates in Economics (2008–2013), Kaveh played a key
role in the development of a community of graduates in economics.
Victoria Tahmasebi-Birgani is Assistant Professor of Women and
Gender Studies at the Department of Historical Studies, University of
Toronto-Mississauga, and Women and Gender Studies Institute at the
University of Toronto. Dr. Tahmasebi is an interdisciplinary scholar
whose areas of specialization encompass feminist theories in relation to
xxii Notes on Contributors
continental and transnational contexts, critical theories of women’s move-

ments in the Middle East, digital activism, theories of ethics, and contem-
porary history of social and political thought. Her recent publications
include Emmanuel Levinas and Politics of Non-Violence (University of
Toronto Press, 2014) as well as refereed articles in Subversive Itinerary
(University of Toronto Press, 2013), Difficult Justice: Commentaries on
Levinas and Politics (University of Toronto Press, 2006), Civil Society
and Democracy in Iran (Lexington Books, 2012), and Philosophy and
Social Criticism, Constellations: An International Journal of Critical and
Democratic Theory.
Peyman Vahabzadeh is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University
of Victoria, Canada, specializing in classical and contemporary European
thought, in particular phenomenology, social movements, exile, and
Iranian social and political movements since the 1960s. He is the
author of Articulated Experiences: Toward a Radical Phenomenology of
Contemporary Social Movements (SUNY Press, 2003), A Guerrilla
Odyssey: Modernization, Secularism, Democracy, and the Fadai Period of
National Liberation in Iran, 1970–1979 (Syracuse University Press,
2010), Exilic Meditations: Essays on A Displaced Life (H&S Media,
2013), and Parviz Sadri: A Political Biography (Shahrgon Books,
2015), in addition to eight books of poetry, fiction, literary criticism,
and memoirs in Persian, and some 50 articles in the public domain.
His works have appeared in English, Persian, Kurdish, and German.
List of Figure
Fig. 12.1 Performative agency 213
xxiii
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: How to Approach This Book
Peyman Vahabzadeh
Iran’s Struggles for Social Justice has found its present shape through a
collective sense of wonder: the Iranian Revolution, a revolution that at
its core was a nationwide, popular movement for social justice and demo-
cratic self-determination, not a Shi‘i state or Shi‘i values, has produced,
37 years later, a sad reality contrary to the ideals of 1979. The discourses of
social justice and participatory democracy that mobilized a proud and resil-
ient nation from different walks of life for a better future has now faded
away, leaving only bitter memory in the lives of ordinary people who are
left with no choice but to sadly measure the Revolution in terms of their
loss of social and international status, equitable conditions, institutional
avenues of participation in deciding their future, one-off opportunities,
means of subsistence, and of course, their loved ones lost to the war or in
waves of political purges.
This book offers a first contribution to the long-term project of under-
standing the issues, challenges, and potential outcomes pertaining to the
Iranian people’s struggles for social justice, in particular after 1979 but
also in tandem with their struggles in the past century. The project is a
response to the scholarly neglect of the theme as the fast pace of over-
whelming challenges since 1979 have, for good reasons, diverted scholarly
P. Vahabzadeh (*)
Department of Sociology, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada
© The Author(s) 2017 1

P. Vahabzadeh (ed.), Iran’s Struggles for Social Justice,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-44227-3_1
2 P. VAHABZADEH
attentions from social justice and to issues such as human rights, citizen-
ship and authoritarianism, economic analyses, diplomacy, secularism, or
analyses of political Islam, to name but a few. These fields constitute legiti-
mate concerns and have yielded abundant scholarship. Since the academic
field, just like the social and political expanse, witnesses rising discourses
that dominate, relatively speaking, the field for a while, it is important to
note that certain discursive turns over the past three decades have inadver-
tently marginalized the focus on social justice, despite the fact that stud-
ies of labour, women’s movement, and minorities necessarily prompt the
question of social justice.
This is a rather unusual book. As a collective effort, the book crosses
disciplinary boundaries, shifts analytical angles, and brings out lived expe-
riences. As such, the contributions of this volume go beyond the estab-
lished literature, often appropriately informed by the political economy
approach, on Iran’s steadfast post-revolutionary transition to economic
liberalization and privatization and its detrimental social and economic
consequences for the working class, the middle class, the poor, the vulner-
able, women, the minorities, not to forget Iran’s delicate ecology. The
post-revolutionary transition to a neoliberal economy and the abandon-
ment of social justice are undeniable facts. Thus, the common immediate
historical context of our collective interest in social justice is the post-
revolutionary and postwar Iran, when in the pretext of the war, the oppo-
sition was severely repressed, and in the shadow of rebuilding the country,
a neoliberal shift in Iranian economy emerged and has been gaining sig-
nificant momentum. Our contributions in this volume, therefore, intend
to promote new studies of this multifaceted phenomenon, produce new
research, and stay unrelentingly analytical. From such a heterogeneous
group of scholars, activists, and graduate students who have contributed
to this book, one can naturally expect interdisciplinary and multidisci-
plinary approaches and studies—a testament to the originality of this vol-
ume and our collective approaches to social justice. We hope this book
provides the groundwork for a growing field of social justice studies in
Iran in this increasingly unjust world we have inherited.
This multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary book dwells in the analy-
ses of grand socioeconomic structures as well as the legal turns necessary
for the assault on the collective, social rights of Iranians and for undoing
the past collective achievements of working peoples. Attending to these
aspects prompts the question of social justice, but this book is also equally
about the struggles for social justice since 1979 and their consequences.
INTRODUCTION: HOW TO APPROACH THIS BOOK 3
Therefore, the book attends to political analyses, historical observations,

the question of justice, social movements, activism and activists, education,
personal experiences, and literature. Thus, the economic conditions merge
with agency and activism around collectively constructed notions of jus-
tice. Contributors to this volume believe the profound question of social
justice requires such multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches.
We also believe that as a pioneer work, this book is still in need of further
research to address many other issues pertaining social justice.
The sites of collective action, public discourses, and intellectual debates
are explored and examined here. A glance at Iran’s history in the past cen-
tury clearly shows that the country’s entry into political modernity—epit-
omized by the Constitutional Revolution of 1906–1911, an anti-colonial,
anti-authoritarian, and democratic movement—has always contained a
vivid and weighty element of social democracy. In other words, the emer-
gent discourse of rights, citizenship, and constitutionalism has been con-
comitant with the discourse of just social relations and equitable working
conditions. The subsequent history of Iran has also contained continuous
and democratic struggles for citizenship rights as well as social justice in
the face of serious setbacks imposed by the states on social movements
and organized dissent especially those of the Left. Here is how we should
understand Iranian modernity without reifying it: a process involving ago-
nistic social projects and multiple social imaginaries. Alas, authoritarian rule
has never allowed this diversity, and the public debates arising from it,
to come to fruition. The postrevolutionary turn of events, in addition
to the dominant neoliberal discourse worldwide, have contributed to the
diminishment of the social democratic imaginary—in public discourse as
well as in social and political programmes—while the staggering social
inequalities, in their multiple forms, and increasing pauperization of the
population invite a reinstatement of the social justice discourse in public
debates. This is why the authors of this book stand against resignation
and forgetting, against succumbing to neoliberal models and declaring
the decline of social justice as fait accompli. This project also means that
social justice must be rescued from rigid definitions of the doctrinal Left,
so it can re-emerge in a new, dynamic way, as the multifaceted project at
the heart of Iranian modernity.
As a collective effort of academics, students, and activists, this book
intends to critically probe the various aspects of social justice and social
inequality. It will show that reality is always a socialized process. The
authors challenge the reified concepts of human rights, citizenship, and
4 P. VAHABZADEH
democracy, in both their current liberal and social democratic discourses.

The book aims at showing how by viewing democracy and social justice as
socialized, and thus collective processes, discourses pertaining to human
rights, democratic citizenship, and social justice will return in an entirely
new light by turning away from reified, ossified, ideological, and bor-
rowed concepts.
The Road from Here

In Chap. 2, the Editor offers preparatory observations on the historical
and conceptual contexts of multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary studies
of social justice in post-revolutionary Iran. He contextualizes the Iranian
state’s abandonment of the ideals of 1979 Revolution within two conse-
quential events in 1988: ending the war with Iraq and the massive purg-
ing of political prisoners. Iran’s history since then has been a history of
economic privatization, abandonment of social programmes, reducing
subsidy payments, a rising oligarchy that feeds off a rentier state, com-
monplace corruption, and suppression of opposition. The author then
offers a concept of social justice that speaks to the realities of today’s Iran.
The contributions in this book speak to the various aspects of the themes
raised in this chapter.
Chapter 3 attends to the relationship between Iran’s rentier state and
struggles of civil society for democracy. Examining the Iranian case, Hajar
Amidian challenges the thesis that oil-producing states block democratic
struggles. Although rent-dependent states tend to become authoritarian,
she argues, Iran shows clearly that the authoritarian state does not con-
stitute a total structure, and as such it is prone to challenges by both elite
action (Iranian Reformists) and democratic social movements (student
movement) including collective actions for social justice. Mohammad
Maljoo attends, in Chap. 4, to the legal enactments of the state in order
to “unmake” the working class and thus diminish the labour movement
and the workers’ collective power to challenge their exacerbating work-
ing conditions. Privatization and neoliberalization of economy, he shows,
have caused fundamental changes to Iran’s Labour Code to the detriment
of the workers’ bargaining power. Labour casualization, exclusion of small
workshops from the Labour Code, contracting out state positions, and
empowering human resource firms to deal with the workers are among the
manoeuvres leading to the workers’ collective disempowerment.
Chapter 5 attends to the increasing role of charity organizations in

attending to the needy and poor as the state’s commitment to the “down-
trodden” (mostaz‘afin) withers away. Public religiosity based on Shi‘i lib-
eration theology has been advocating economic justice, argues Siavash
Saffari. In moving away from economic justice, the state has instead rel-
egated the poor to religious-charity organizations and foundations. In the
end, Saffari hopes for the mass mobilization of the poor in challenging
privatization and austerity. In Chap. 6, Kaveh Sarmast attends to the his-
tory and status of cooperatives—a forgotten experience in citizen-oriented
and -initiated economy. Pointing out the old tradition of mutual assistance
in rural Iran, Sarmast shows the exogenous and endogenous causes of the
cooperative movement before 1979. He examines the legal and constitu-
tional aspects of cooperatives today and how as a result of the new eco-
nomic turn the cooperative movement, despite several key success stories,
has gradually diminished.
Educational aspects are key to maintaining a public conception of social
justice. In Chap. 7, Amir Mirfakhraie critically examines Iran’s school text-
books, revealing how the textbook propagated notion of the ideal Iranian-
Shi‘i citizen, while anti-imperialist, promulgates discriminatory, racist,
patriarchal, and ethno- and religio-centric values. The Iranian Self thus con-
structed, he argues in this condensed study, is out of tune with the necessary
values at the heart of social justice. Ardalan Rezamand critically examines, in
Chap. 8, the official pretext to the Cultural Revolution of 1980. He shows
that while Ayatollah Khomeini called for an end to westoxification in uni-
versity curricula and Islamization of otherwise Western knowledge, it was
the university’s being a long-time bastion for students and faculty defending
social justice and democracy that lay at the heart of the Cultural Revolution,
closure of universities, and purging of students and faculty.
The questions of agency and the subject are closely connected to rec-
ollecting the severe suppression of post-revolutionary, leftist social jus-
tice activists. Shokoufeh Sakhi critically examines, in Chap. 9, the ethical
and political consequences of the appeal of victims’ repression in Iran to
human rights as natural and inalienable. The human rights discourse allows
for the new subject to emerge and voice the injustices inflicted upon him
or her, while the social justice subject needs to enter an ethical relation
of respons-ability. In Chap. 10, Nima Naghibi offers a close reading of
Sahar Delijani’s fictional Children of the Jacaranda Tree, a novel about the
children of the leftist activists in the 1980s who were subject of prolonged
imprisonments, torture, and executions. Naghibi’s reading highlights the
6 P. VAHABZADEH
importance of remembrance in the intergenerational approach to tragic

and historic events in light of current day social movements.
Victoria Tahmasebi-Birgani offers an original study of Iranian women’s
online activism, in Chap. 11, in particular My Stealthy Freedom Facebook
page. Reaching nearly the unprecedented one million “likes,” My Stealthy
Freedom allows for “low-risk” online activism in which Iranian women
can register their personal protest against the imposed veiling laws. Despite
the state’s continued filtering of this and other opposition websites, argues
Tahmasebi-Birgani, the popularity of this initiative indicates how social
media platforms can be effectively used as a means of mobilization for
gender and social justice. In Chap. 12, based on her fieldwork on the
women of Tehran, Sara Naderi critically problematizes the commonplace,
feminist conception of Iranian women’s subjectivity. She shows that the
Iranian woman is caught between the dual-parallel binaries of Islamic view
of woman and Western-secular, Iranian feminism, on the one hand, and
the paternal–maternal models of personal development and subjectivity,
on the other. As a result, she argues, Iranian women’s subjectivity is per-
meated by serious contradictions. In conclusion, she offers a model of
“performative agency” for understanding women’s struggles for gender
and social justice.
Mohammad Safavi presents his first-hand experience as an activist with
the Project-Seasonal Workers’ Union of Abadan, 1979–1980, in Chap.
13. He contextualizes this historic experience within a brief history of the
labour movement in Iran, showing how this successful but short-lived
unionization effort of Abadan workers stands in tandem with the history
of labour movement: the Union’s mandates and its successes inevitably
rendered it a formidable social institution with broader mandates than
those of a workers’ union. The Union’s success then led to its sad demise,
as the new regime dismantled the Union, repressing its activists, and jail-
ing its key organizers. Roozbeh Safshekan offers in Chap. 14 the history
of the student movement in Iran in order to contextualize the origins
and struggles of the post-revolutionary student movement, in particular
the Freedom and Equality Seeking Students, a short-lived, leftist stu-
dent union of which he was a member. Safshekan shows that despite the
efforts of the state the student movement has steadfastly been a defender
of democracy and social justice, while it has failed to forge the necessary
alliance of the social movements for these causes.
Chapter 15 presents a historical overview of the Left’s contribution
to the cause of social justice in Iran from the Constitutional Revolution
to the present. Applying a global social justice frame to modern Iranian
istory, Afshin Matin-asgari argues for a new social contract that incor-
h
porates the necessities for the implementation of social justice in Iran.
Despite its problems, the Left has been the steadfast defender of social jus-
tice, and Matin-asgari calls for the renewal of the Left in light of the new
experiences in Turkey, Greece, and Spain. Mojtaba Mahdavi, in Chap. 16,
offers a meticulous survey of the indigenous, grassroots ideas of social
democracy in Iran, focusing in particular on the theories of Mohammad
Nakhshab, Khalil Maleki, and Ali Shari‘ati. Mahdavi shows the funda-
mental limits of the liberal paradigm in addressing social justice, and he
concludes by calling for building a new, decolonial discourse of social jus-
tice. Lastly, in Chap. 17, Peyman Vahabzadeh offers an interpretive his-
tory of the founding element of social democracy in the Constitutional
Revolution in order theoretically articulate the missing link between
social justice and democracy. A democratic future, he argues, is unthink-
able without the formidable presence of social justice, and this defines
the unfinished project of political modernity in Iran that started with the
Constitutional Revolution.
The Afterword invites the readers to consider the areas for further
research in the field of social justice in Iran.
Rebuilding the discourse of social justice is at the heart of this multidisci-
plinary project, as it attends to the diverse aspects of social justice: gender
justice, environmental justice, collective rights of workers and working
peoples, rights of minorities, equitable conditions for the masses, edu-
cating justice and peace, and of course building democratic institutions
capable of advancing the struggles for social justice. In short, we need to
opt for understanding social justice as the socialized process of bringing
the nation together instead of subjecting groups and classes to discrimina-
tory practices.
CHAPTER 2
Historical and Conceptual Preparations

for a Multidisciplinary Study of Social
Justice in Iran
Peyman Vahabzadeh
In the summer of 1988, two significant events marked a historic turning

point in the trajectory of Iranian sociopolitical life. First, Iran’s war with
Iraq—a war fought feverishly since September 22, 1980 when Iraqi forces
crossed Iran’s western borders; a war that has won the unfortunate desig-
nation of the longest conventional war between two states in the twentieth
century; a war in the state of stalemate and attrition since 1983—ended
on July 20, 1988 when the leader of the Revolution conceded, in a his-
toric declaration, to drink from the “goblet of hemlock” and Iran at last
accepted the UN Resolution 598. Second, thousands of political prison-
ers—from Marxist, socialist, radical Muslim, nationalist, and various other
secular or religious backgrounds—were summarily executed during the
fateful months of August and September 1988.
The first event released the country from a devastating war economy,
and as Iran’s rentier economy transitioned toward a celebrated and trum-
peted postwar rebuilding or reconstruction period (dowran-e sazandegi),
an incremental but visible and significant turn away from the ideals of the
P. Vahabzadeh (*)

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-44227-3_2
10 P. VAHABZADEH
1979 “revolution of the downtrodden” (enqelab-e mostaz‘afin) in which

peoples from various walks of life selflessly participated in a nonviolent,
grassroots, national liberation movement for democracy and social justice.
The second event profoundly scarred Iranian political life as it emblema-
tized the generational purge of defenders of social justice from diverse
ideological streaks, plurality of political affiliations, and multiplicity of
gender, ethnic, class, and religious backgrounds outside of the ruling
establishment. Given the concurrent mass exodus (by tens of thousands)
of an entire generation of postrevolutionary activists between early 1980s
and early 1990s, this otherwise unfathomable purge represented a vivid
act of “clearance,” to borrow a term from Ian Angus (2012), of the politi-
cal field from diverse agents of the social justice cause; in fact, the purges
represent a clearance of political field from those who uncompromisingly
stood by the ideals of the 1979 Revolution: democracy, social justice, and
postcolonial self-assertion. Once the articulators of social justice were
silenced, the public discourse pertaining to social justice and participatory
democracy died out or was forced into exile. The second event—the gen-
erational purge of defenders of social justice—was the necessary step for
the (neoliberal) socioeconomic processes following the first event—the
end of war—to take place without hindrance. Or so it tragically seems.
The War’s “Blessing”

The war was “a divine blessing” (ne‘mat-e elahi), famously declared
Ayatollah Khomeini. It was a blessing, held the Ayatollah, because it pro-
vided a historic opportunity for the Iranian nation, at the forefront of liber-
ationist Islam, to come to terms with the “necessity to rely upon ourselves
and abandon hope in outsiders” (2016). The leader of the Revolution still
held a view of the war as a war of liberation through which the long-coveted
“return to the [authentic] Self” would finally be realized. He did not see
much of the postwar Iran (having died within a year after the ceasefire),
having no idea what members of his inner circle, who collectively secured
key positions after the Imam’s death in order to rule the country in the
decades to come, had in mind for the country. For them, the war was
indeed a “blessing”: the war effort (or the “sacred defense”) symbolized
a courageous defense of the Revolution. For sure, the war indicated the
Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s ambitious maneuver to settle long-time ter-
ritorial claims in his favor, and he was encouraged by Western powers that
wished the defeat of Iranian Revolution. Iran’s engagement was indeed
HISTORICAL AND CONCEPTUAL PREPARATIONS FOR A MULTIDISCIPLINARY... 11
self-defense, but in the context of a popular revolution, self-defense soon

emerged in the public and religious discourses as a Shi‘i-inspired “war of
liberation” partaken by Iranian people whose enormous sacrifices reen-
acted, in official propaganda, the collective memory of the revered mar-
tyrdom of Hussein Ibn Ali, the Third Shi‘i Imam, by Omayyad Caliph,
Yazid I, in 680 CE. A nation exhausted by war, an economy in ruins, and
a country deeply wounded and partly devastated: so reemerged the post-
war Iran, but in the postrevolutionary state-propagated semiotic universe,
Iran was depicted as an innocent and victimized but proud nation that had
stood up to the evil, colonial forces of “global arrogance” (estekbar-e jah-
ani) and their regional cronies. To the rising political elite who now had
the opportunity to emerge from out of the mantle of their revered Imam,
the war meant that Iran had stood its ground, safeguarded its territorial
integrity, and defended its Revolution. The end of the war, then, provided
the possibility of a radically new turn. The public discourse of the “sacred
defense” paved the way for the “reconstruction effort,” and President
Ali-Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani (presidency: 1989–1997) was crowned the
“reconstruction commander” (sardar-e sazandegi) in the state-run media.
In the next two decades, the country gradually but steadfastly sought to
liberalize the economy, dismantle the state’s economic monopoly, remove
the constitutional obstacles to privatization, negotiate concessions with
Western powers to end international sanctions that impeded neoliberaliza-
tion policies, and not surprisingly, achieve all that at the expense of Iran’s
working people.
Iran’s (Hidden) Nietzschean Revolution

In The Genealogy of Morals (1887), Friedrich Nietzsche offers a theory of
“slave morality” that lay at the heart of Christian morals. This is a work of
“genealogy” because it reveals the presuppositions of morals through the
original formations. The notion of “good,” Nietzsche proposes, is derived
from power through language (1989: 26), and it is identified—etymo-
logically and socially—with the higher order of society and the nobility,
those “with aristocratic soul” (1989: 28). As such, good and evil conceal,
(heretically) borrowing Marxian language, the class character of these
notions. The reaction of the deprived classes to the powerful leads to a
“slave revolt in morality,” a reactionary sentiment of fuming and destruc-
tive envy that Nietzsche calls “ressentiment” (1989: 36–37). Morality
separates action from the actor, thus unburdening actors of responsibility
12 P. VAHABZADEH
for their actions (Nietzsche 1989: 45). Driven by a deep sense of col-
lective ressentiment, the “oppressed, downtrodden, outraged exhort one
another with the vengeful cunning of impotence” (Nietzsche 1989: 46).
In Nietzsche’s aristocratic philosophy, the downtrodden are unable to
mentally and intellectually rise above their conditions; they are incapable
of achieving self-consciousness, to borrow Hegelian terms. They are thus
purely motivated by vengeance, hatred, and destruction of the old (noble)
order. Mentally, the slaves wish to become masters at any cost, without
having the (presumed) concomitant nobility or the desire to change the
master–slave system. They shed responsibility and guilt for their actions.
Slave morality will bring no fresh values, no exalted order, no exceptional
quality; it will just conjure up the old in a savagely exploitative and ruth-
less order. Driven by greed and envy, the victorious slaves will only imitate
the material values and lifestyles of their former masters but fail to attain
noble spirits.
The rise of Iran’s political–economic elite from out of (largely) deprived,
nonproductive, traditional–religious sectors profoundly resentful of the
Shah’s westernized modernization, in the postrevolutionary and postwar
periods, exemplifies the long-neglected Nietzschean aspect of the 1979
Revolution. This aspect has been lost to the scholars’ preoccupation with
methodological lenses (often quantitative and/or ideologically informed)
that focus on class analysis, political economy, political theory, regional
politics, and Islam. These approaches are fine and fruitful, but they have
diverted attention from the collective psychology and cultural components
of the religious circles within traditional lower- and middle-class families
that had supported Ayatollah Khomeini since the early 1960s, individuals
who have been occupying key positions of power and privilege in post-
war times. In other words, to the scholars focusing on grand structures,
the stealth “slave revolt” within Iran’s otherwise genuine postcolonial and
democratic Revolution remains imperceptible. The new nomenklatura
(following Milovan Djilas) rose to power not just by staying close to the
political inner circle and participating in the war effort (or pretending to).
Moved by ressentiment, they rule the masses by actively abandoning them:
the very masses from which they had emerged, the masses they had helped
mobilize during the Revolution and war effort, those who represented the
new elite’s social origins. These masses generated the selfless and social
justice-oriented revolutionary cadres loyal to the Imam’s original ideas (to
varying degrees), those lost to the war, and suppressed or marginalized
due to their opposition to the Islamic Republic. The nouveau riche from
humble backgrounds, to borrow Nietzsche’s term, literally “exhorted”

the deprived classes for their own caprice for wealth and power. The poor
and vulnerable were relegated to fend for themselves in the postwar era, as
the rising elite from humble backgrounds, driven by ressentiment and rac-
ing to imitate (unsuccessfully) the ruling class they had subverted, secured
key political, security, and military positions. No wonder, then, that there
emerged an authoritarian oligarchy organized around a lucrative rentier
state. Democracy and social justice—the core ideals of 1979—would not
feed the ressentiment of this oligarchy. For this new monstrous chimera of
insatiable avarice and unending control, committing their underprivileged
past to history involved leaving behind the very masses with which they
once shared their underprivileged realities. As the ruling elite rises in eco-
nomic positions and political power, it proportionately declines in social
status and in the eyes of the public. No matter. After all, this is now their
historic chance to avenge their underprivileged past and internalized pain-
ful memories of deprivation and humiliation.
Privatization of Iranian Economy

“Eradication of poverty and deprivation thus became one of the Islamic
Republic’s principal duties and its leaders’ principal aims” (Amuzegar
2007: 60). It so happened that in the aftermath of the “revolution of
the downtrodden,” the “reconstruction effort” policies brought about an
effective abandonment of the marginalized masses that had brought the
Islamic Republic to power. The social justice streaks of the Revolution
now became rhetorical ruses, devoid of substance, monopolized by the
statesmen’s official discourse to divert public attention from the new eco-
nomic policies. The new turn was rather a turning away from the core rev-
olutionary ideals that had once unified Iranians. With this turning away,
what is left of the Revolution is authoritarianism and social disintegration.
This chapter does not intend to provide data-supported proof of priva-
tization within Iranian economy: this is a fact beyond dispute. In addi-
tion to being state policy declared by current President Hassan Rouhani
(2012), in addition to an International Monitary Fund (IMF) compre-
hensive assessment (Jbili, et al. 2007), numerous valuable studies have
registered this economic shift (Behdad 2000; Behdad and Nomani 2002;
Amuzegar 2007; Molavi 2009). In Iran, privatization means giving up
state-owned economic sector, legislated under Chapter IV, Article 44 of
the Constitution (that identifies state, cooperative, and private sectors),
which bestows upon the state the monopoly over major resources, indus-
14 P. VAHABZADEH
tries, transportation, and communication. About 80 % of Iranian economy

falls under Article 44 (Amuzegar 2007: 67), with the share of the state
being about 70 % of the economy. In 2006, Supreme Leader Ayatollah
Khamenei ordered privatization of economy, declaring, “Ceding 80 per
cent of the shares of large companies will serve to bring about economic
development, social justice and the elimination of poverty (quoted in
Molavi 2009: 8). For this to happen, Article 44 seems like an obstacle.
“Two convenient escape routes thus suggested themselves: simply ignor-
ing the mandate of Article 44 and proceeding with the transfer of pub-
lic-sector assets, or searching for an enabling ‘interpretation’,” observes
Amuzegar. “Unthinkable as the violation option might appear …, the deci-
sion was not precedent setting in the Islamic Republic. In previous years,
various administrations had routinely sidestepped, bypassed, ignored or
even boldly violated various principles of the country’s 1979 Constitution
and its 1989 amendment” (2007: 65–66). Precisely because of the consti-
tutional emphasis on social justice through state ownership, we shall see, a
new privatization discursive game has emerged to justify the turning away.
Privatization has unleashed three major processes: (a) the rise of an eco-
nomic elite tightly linked to the rentier state; (b) dismantling or bypassing
of the laws and constitutional provisions pertaining to the role of the state
and cooperative sectors (legacy of the Revolution); and (c) abandonment
of the working class, the middle class, the poor, and socially and economi-
cally vulnerable (retirees, disabled, mentally ill), often relegating them to
charity organizations through removal of legal codes that protected mini-
mum wages, collective rights, and fair employment contracts. The revolu-
tionary economy was based on the values of ‘adl (justice), qest (roughly,
share), and ensaf (fairness), but we must note, with Behdad and Nomani,
that this economy was more of a (Islamic) utopian type and thus never
really put on trial, let alone properly implemented (2002: 673). We must
add that this utopian ideal, legalized in the Constitution and partially insti-
tutionalized in postrevolutionary bonyads (foundations), was at its zenith
during the war. As such, this model never had a chance to be tried in times
of peace: state-centric redistribution was thus equated with war economy
in the public discourse of the reconstruction era.
As mentioned, what justified Iran’s new economic turn was the war. And
who to initiate—and legitimize—this process more rightfully than those
who rose to power through the war: the Iranian Revolutionary Guards
Corps (IRGC). The IRGC moved into economic activity through the
reconstruction and development efforts, and their “reconstruction bases”
(qarargah-e sazandegi), Khatam al-Anbia and Qorb, launched this process
and became economic powerhouses that initiated privatization through

state contracts (Alfoneh 2010; Alam Rizvi 2012; Harris 2013; Vahabi
2015). Since then the involvement of the IRGC and those associated with
the rentier state has only increased multiple times. Privatization and neo-
liberalization of the economy spawned an exclusive economic elite. Thus,
the process of economic liberalization guaranteed two things: first, only
those connected to the highest ranks of statesmen, and their military and
security affiliates, enjoyed the exclusive privilege of becoming economic
keyholders to privatization through the distribution of subcontracts.
They formed a new class around the country’s rentier state. Second, the
distributive system was set up such that from Iran’s entrepreneurial class
only those with solid connections to the ruling elite would receive a share
of subcontracted projects. As such, Iran’s privatization process has never
resembled the competitive system one observes in the West in which (sup-
posedly) the top bidder wins the contract or state sales. Here we have a
clientelist system that guarantees that privatization actually benefits those
associated with the ruling elite (like Mexico under Partido Revolucionario
Institucional that ruled for 71 years). The sanctions strengthened this
exclusive group. Iran’s stagnating entrepreneurial class is thus left with
that which trickles down. In a country in which about 70 % of economy
is state owned and its state is mandated to relinquish 80 % of state owner-
ship, the amount of wealth to be transferred can only be fathomed. Under
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (presidency: 2005–2013), privatization
was pitched to the masses in a populist light, as he introduced the Justice
Shares: a gimmick to hold social justice ideals of the Revolution together
with ongoing privatization (Amuzegar 2007). The plan was to distribute
among millions of families shares of state-owned firms the dividends of
which would be cashable within 20 years. Valued at $36 billion as of 2014,
Justice Shares represented subsidy payments as the government severely
cut back on various food, fuel, and services subsidies. To get the complete
picture, we must add the liberalization of foreign exchange as well as price
liberalization and wage reductions (Behdad 2000: 115–131).
Rise of the New Public Discourse

Naturally, for a revolution whose ideals hinged on participatory democ-
racy and social justice, the turning away in economic policies from those
ideals at the expense of increasingly impoverished population has been
concomitant with a discursive shift away from those ideals. The new dis-
course was carefully, incrementally, and successfully crafted across several
16 P. VAHABZADEH
administrations and through efforts of state-funded think tanks. Several

key features enable us to understand the new public discourse promoting
privatization, neoliberalism, and free-market capitalism.
First, instead of rejecting the concept of social justice, the rising neo-
liberal discourse counterintuitively appropriates it, equating social justice
with the massive but wasteful and unproductive state ownership, misman-
aged state-initiated developmental programs riveted with corruption,
and failing government-run social safety nets (health care, social security,
old-age pension) due to lack of accountability. Once the signifier “social
justice” is uprooted from its original revolutionary, egalitarian discourse
and attached to signifieds that evoke the public’s moral abhorrence, the
proponents of neoliberalism will be able to depict market liberalization
and privatization (of not only state-owned industries but also social ser-
vices) as the “true” manifestation of justice, one that reconciles respect for
individual reason and choices with social charity. Fingers are pointed at
the “welfare state” (dowlat-e refah)—which has never existed in Iran—as
equivalent to “big government”: the culprit in failing to deliver social jus-
tice to the masses.
Massoud Nili (President Rouhani’s advisor on economic issues) and
company (Moussa Ghaninezhad, Mohammad Tabibiyan, and Gholamali
Farjadi) intentionally evoke the term “justice” so that they would challenge
the idea that “justice” necessitates redistribution and thus state agency.
They then flip this false predicate to yield laissez-faire neoliberalism as
the sole alternative. They even pose individual right of ownership and
personal freedom, which they deem as principles of free-market economy,
as the necessary condition for realizing personal morals and social virtues
(Nili 2008). Referencing Friedrich Hayek, Ghaninezhad argues, “contrary
to existing notions, social justice is an ultimately subjective and fluid con-
cept to the extent that one cannot perceive of an objective, distinct, and
commonly acceptable content [meaning] for it” (2000: 781–782).
Second, the neoliberal discourse’s equation of social justice with gov-
ernment ownership and state distributive system enables it to effortlessly
opt for the reversal of former policies. It dwells in the popular, and jus-
tified, disgust for government corruption and mismanagement of pub-
lic funds—a sentiment widely shared by Iranians. In the absence of any
clear long-term roadmap developmental plans for the country, liberaliza-
tion ironically relies on President Rouhani’s government to remove the
impediments to unfettered free-market economy. “According to this doc-
trine, called supply-side or neoliberal economics, solutions to economic
stagnation, poverty and underdevelopment lie in unhindered market mech-

anism and unreserved integration into world capitalist system. Recessions,
joblessness and economic hardship in many less-developed countries are
not so much due to economic mismanagement or the nature of global
capitalism as they are because of government intervention and/or exclu-
sion from world capitalist markets” (Hossein-Zadeh 2014). In the liberal-
ization discourse, therefore, the state’s (re-)distributive powers acquires an
entirely new meaning: social justice requires the commonwealth to func-
tion as the agent of citizens’ welfare while economic liberalization requires
the state’s distributive powers to be deployed for the privatization of state-
owned corporations. In this model, social justice is rhetorically tethered
to “development,” and the only plausible option to properly “develop”
remains market-oriented competitive system (as opposed to state-centered
and market-oriented monopoly) (Nili 2011: 29).
Third, in the emerging privatization public discourse, a slide has taken
place: the term kargar (worker)—once the ultimate referent of social jus-
tice discourse—has been gradually transformed into karafarin (job cre-
ator). The term karafarin has gradually replaced the word “capitalist”
(sarmayehdar) with its negative connotations in Persian as someone who
thrives off others’ toils. The word sarmayehdar (capitalist, entrepreneur)
is, depending on the context, sometimes even used to mean “thief.” As
such, karafarin intends to put a positive spin on “capitalist”: karafarin
is the one who creates jobs for others, rather than produce wealth for
himself (as in sarmayehdar). The term sarmayegozar (investor) accompa-
nies karafarin: both terms denote generating for, and adding something
new to, society. This linguistic ploy is significant as “a ‘slide’ refers to
the characteristic of a ‘discourse,’ which is not a single statement but an
organized field of statements” (Angus 2008: 18). The phonetic quasi-
homology of the two terms (sharing the word kar—meaning both “labor”
and “job”) allows for the shift in focus on the state policies backing those
who (supposedly) create jobs for workers instead of upholding the rights
of the workers. Those who recall the early postrevolutionary years—when
the Islamic Republic was forced by rival, primarily leftist but also Shi‘i
discourses to promote the idea of social justice—remember Ayatollah
Khomeini’s famous praise for workers in 1981: “Workers constitute
the most precious class and are the most beneficial group in societies,”
he declared. “The enormous wheel of human societies is turned with the
powerful arms of the workers. The life of a nation is owed to labour and
labourer” (Khomeini 2015). This is significant because it illustrates how
18 P. VAHABZADEH
badly the Islamist rulers wanted to wrest away workers’ representation

from the Left’s unwavering support for workers and the poor. Note that
the centrality of kargar (and thus the poor, minorities, the vulnerable, as
well as women under the new regime) within the discourse will require
the deployment of policy that protects the rights of the underprivileged.
This trajectory implies the state as the agent of protection of citizens. By
replacing kargar with karafarin, the privatization discourse replaces the
state’s agency with market mechanisms that in turn take care of employ-
ees (seemingly) in accord with economic productivity. And thus withers
away the concept of rights. It comes as no surprise, then, that President
Rouhani finds Iranian labor laws and minimum wage “very oppressive”
and obstacles to economic prosperity. “One of the main challenges that
employers and our factories face,” writes Rouhani, “is the existence of
labor unions. Workers should be more pliant toward the demands of job-
creators” (quoted in Hossein-Zadeh 2014).
Fourth and last, with the state now mandated to privatize the pub-
lic sector, security and political stability are posed in the new discourse
as the preconditions for economic liberalization. “As stable international
relations paves the grounds for economic development, economic devel-
opment, in turn, makes a country more secure or stable as it makes the
country less vulnerable to external threats” (Rouhani quoted in Hossein-
Zadeh 2014). As the country ends hostilities and makes concessions with
Western powers, it acquires the stability it needs to crush the resistances
of the vast majority of Iranians adversely affected by liberalization and
removal of collective bargaining rights (see Vahabzadeh 2016). Iran’s
turn to a full-fledged privatized capitalist economy, due to its linkage
to an avaricious ruling elite, has become an obstacle to democratization
and recognition of individual and collective rights (Nomani and Behdad
2012). Unlike Europe, Iran’s economic liberalization does not come with
political liberalization. But this is precisely the point: that capitalism and
free-market will bring Iran (or other countries) democracy is a myth. This
means that, once again, Iranians must simultaneously fight on two fronts:
for social justice and for democratic self-assertion.
The people have indeed felt the adverse effects of the increasingly
aggressive privatization policies. A 2004 survey shows 71 % of Iranians
are dissatisfied with “the economic situation of the country,” while 25
% are somewhat satisfied and only 5 % are very satisfied (Maljoo 2006).
“Economic crises, high inflationary trends, and persistently high rates
of unemployment put workers under pressure,” observe Nomani and
Behdad. “Job insecurity increases as factories close for various reasons.
Wages are low and workers’ payments are frequently delayed for months.
The use of temporary contracts, which are exempt from many benefits
of the Labor Code … is spreading. The repressive acts of government in
dealing with workers’ grievances have often forced workers into a defen-
sive struggle for their basic economic demands” (2012: 221). Today’s
expanding movements of workers and teachers are surgically repressed,
their union leaders facing long-term prison terms (Vahabzadeh 2016).
Minimum wage for 2016 has been set by the government at Rls 812,000
(US$236) per month, and while 7 million workers are paid even less
because they are not covered by the Labor Code (“7 Million Workers”
2016), this newly set monthly minimum wage is only one-third of the
living wages to support a family of four (“Minimum Wage of Workers”
2016). Seven major workers unions demanded in winter 2016 the mini-
mum wage of Rls 3,500,000 (US$1017) per month for maintaining
a decent standard of living (“Where Are You?” 2016). Twelve million
Iranians suffered from “food poverty” in 2015, even those with two jobs
cannot stay afloat (“Poverty in Iran” 2015), and 40 % or 30 million live in
poverty (“30 Million” 2016).
The above picture, by no means complete, constitutes the general
contours of the immediate historic context for renewed studies of social
justice in Iran. Evidently, the two key ideals that united revolutionary
Iranians from diverse walks of life in 1979—social justice and participatory
democracy—have been abandoned in the past three decades. However,
in order to guarantee the omission of revolutionary ideals, which are the
ideals of the majority of humanity today, the voices of those ideals had to
be silenced.
Clearance of Social Justice

In the pretext of the war, Iranian regime was able to suppress its opposi-
tion. The regime’s opposition often depicts the waves of repression in
the dark decade of the 1980s as monstrous, demonic, and vicious. Quite
the contrary, the repression of opposition was in fact calculative, surgical,
and cunning. Iranian security carried out the process of repression of the
opposition with considerable efficiency.
The period of state formation following February 1979 witnessed
the clerical push for the consolidation of power and establishment of
the Islamic Republic. This period witnessed rife conflicts. Following the
Revolution, the continued quest for social justice and egalitarian relations
first and most vividly manifested itself through ethno-regional m
ovements,
20 P. VAHABZADEH
most notably in the Iranian Kurdistan, in the Plains of Turkmen, the eth-
nic-Arab regions in Khuzestan, and to some extent in Azerbaijan. These
movements were either repressed or faded away with the exception of
the Kurdish quest for a federative arrangement which degenerated into
a prolonged civil war until around 1985. The Cultural Revolution in
1980—the state’s “coup” to close down universities under the rubric of
Islamization of education—provided the first opportunity to purge one-
third of nonconformist student population as well as faculty and staff.
The regime’s heavy-handed repression led to the armed resistance of cer-
tain leftist and Muslim opposition groups, leading to the June 1981 street
clashes, which brought about the mass arrests and summary execution of
members of militant groups until 1983. The purges continued through
careful repression and arrests of members of nonmilitant parties and orga-
nizations, some of which even having defended the new regime. Mass
flight of activists into exile consequently gained momentum. With thou-
sands of activists in prisons, by 1985, Iranian political scene was clearly
homogenized, bereft of any visible opposition. The process of consoli-
dation of power became conclusive by 1988 with the regime’s purging
of thousands of political prisoners, just before signing the UN Security
Council Resolution 598 that ended the eight-year war with Iraq.
So we can see that the dominant mode of collective action in this period
pertained to ethno-national movements and party politics. Movements
outside of these spheres of collective action—notably women’s movement
against new discriminatory measures—were marginalized or—like workers’
job actions—subsumed under ethnic movements or party politics of oppo-
sition groups. Obviously, the Revolution had opened up the possibility for
a new, egalitarian, and democratic Iran within reach, at least for a historic
moment, and this was due to the irreducible diversity of the social forces
that contributed to this historic turn, a diversity that has been erased from
the state’s official narratives. I call this process “clearance,” a concept with
Scottish origins whose highlands have been the sites of numerous clear-
ances of rebellions, peoples, and languages. Clearance is not an act per-
formed once and for all; it persists through “continued dispossession”
(Angus 2012). In our case, for the consolidation of power and for the
new political and economic turn to take place without hindrance, it was
essential for the regime to silence the articulators of the core ideals of the
Revolution. Without these articulators, the social justice and democratic
discourses died out. With the Reform government (1997–2005) and then
in the Green Movement (2009), the democratic ideals of the Revolution
were reinvigorated in new terms and in objection to, respectively, intoler-

ant everyday policies and disregard for the nation’s political will, but the
social justice element has remained largely un- or underarticulated.
By and large, Iranian leftist organizations have been rightly criticized
for their doctrinal ideologies, sectarianism, Stalinism, factionalism, mili-
tantism, or for making unprincipled compromises with the regime. Yet
none of these charges will detract from the Left’s appearance in postrevo-
lutionary Iran (and under the ancien regime) as the bearer of the public
discourse of social justice and participatory democracy. Leftist activists
have consistently brought the plights of the working class, the poor and
squatters, and ethnic minorities to public view, tried to organize work-
ers and the poor, educate the vulnerable, and mobilize and empower the
minorities. For a century now, the Left—Marxist or Muslim—has solidly
stood for the subaltern, articulating their demands. Although the unwav-
ering defense of women’s rights, as well as rights of sexual and religious
minorities, have been disturbingly absent from leftist discourse until recent
years, the Left was a defender of the ideals of the Revolution. It is for this
reason, for being a menace to the consolidation of power and the future
direction of the country, that the Left was subjected to clearance.
Aside from state-sponsored “intellectual” attacks, the anti-social jus-
tice assault continues from all sides. Liberal thinker Sadeq Zibakalam,
for instance, attributes Iran’s “backwardness” to leftism and populism,
expressing contempt for intellectuals (Matin-asgari 2004: 76, 78). Such
a gross misunderstanding reveals an intellectual crisis: in light of the col-
lapse of the “actually existing socialism” and the proven failure of the
state’s delivering of democracy and social justice to Iranians, and in the
absence of original thinking by the majority of intellectuals in the country,
these intellectuals simply take the unsurprisingly easy task of relegating
fundamental questions such as social justice and democracy to “unrealis-
tic” aspirations of a seemingly bygone generation of dreamers and instead
adhere uncritically to a diluted version of liberal discourse that tends to
resolve Iran’s problems of dispossession and impoverishment by erasing
the questions. In the context of the aforementioned clearance, the histori-
cal retrieval of the public and discursive legacy of the continually repressed
Left is in order.
Given Iran’s repressive measures, since the Reform movement, the
opposition has unmistakably been dwelling in the discourse of civil soci-
ety and human rights. The human rights discourse has significantly con-
tributed to women’s and minorities’ rights movements in challenging the
22 P. VAHABZADEH
state’s repressive measures and have brought about public awareness. The
mobilizing power of the human rights discourse is evidenced in the 2009
Green Movement. However, just like its Western liberal–democratic coun-
terpart, Iran’s human rights discourse lacks the concept of social rights
and has failed to articulate (indeed it has alienated) the demands of work-
ers, the poor and vulnerable. In the past decade, with the greater access
to the Internet and the coming of age of a new generation of young left-
ists (although few in numbers), the issues pertaining to social justice are
making a precarious return. It seems, though, the working people have
produced their own activists, workers and teachers above all, to fight for
their survival (Vahabzadeh 2016).
In our postcommunist era, doctrinal Left has largely faded away;
instead, democratic socialism, gender- and sexuality advocacy, green, eco-
logical, antipoverty, and anarchist networks of activists have emerged. This
is how the question of social justice is reactivated from under sedimented
layers of oblivion in the public and intellectual discourse.
Social Justice: The Floating Signifier

Finally, we need to attend to “social justice,” a concept that is as lasting,
motivating, and widespread as it is difficult to define for the positivist
who wishes to grasp the universal concept before observing the particular,
concrete phenomena. Perhaps this is precisely the key to the concept’s
vitality: it defies narrow and a priori definitions as it endures by continu-
ously adapting to the pulse of times, changing collective sensibilities, and
new possibilities for challenging perceived injustices. There is no point,
after all, offering a concept and then forcing the complex realities of our
times into compliance with it. The concept owes its reach to its diversity,
interpretability, and wide applicability. As a floating signifier, social justice
allows a changing and broadening range of signifieds under its banner:
gender justice, ecological justice, justice for the poor, workers, Lesbian,
Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer (LGBTQ), indigenous peoples, and
for ethnic, religious, and linguistic minorities as well. The signifier “jus-
tice” and its chain of equivalences are key because “justice” allows for the
agency of the oppressed to mobilize against what they deem oppressive
and challenge the conditions and forces that deny the oppressed their dig-
nity. Here, “dignity” refers to one’s recognition of his or her immutable
social rights: to live without the structural and institutional hindrances that
impede the agents’ personal and social self-realization. These hindrances
are the effects of denying the necessary social, economic, political, and legal
conditions for the (perceived) individual and collective self-realization, by

those who wield power over social, political, and economic institutions.
Only when one can fight for the rights that enable individual and col-
lective self-realization does the notion of social justice find a social and
political expression and becomes actable. Acquiring justice is therefore a
socialized process. This is why struggles for social justice are always inevita-
bly democratic, participatory, and collective struggles.
These condensed observations on the meaning of “social justice”
require two important clarifications. First, social justice primarily involves
struggles against structural violence. Human entitlement to subsistence
(food, shelter, clothing), and in modern societies, to have access to proper
education, healthcare, and employment, constitutes the fundamental prin-
ciple of social rights—the rights that are by and large absent in the current
liberal discourse of human and citizenship rights. The historical experi-
ment of welfare state in the West was an attempt at reconciling political
rights with social rights, but it is rapidly diminishing in our neoliberal
age. Withdrawing the basic necessities to which humans are universally
entitled, and imposing structural and institutional obstacles against the
people’s obtaining these necessities (despite their best efforts), consti-
tute denial of the proper social development of individuals and collec-
tives. Social rights are not simply expressions of values: they capture the
human capacity for personal and collective growth that depend on nurtur-
ing social conditions that, to borrow the idea from Johan Galtung, reduce
the distance between one’s actual and one’s potential. For Galtung, social
justice leads to the amelioration of personal and structural violence (1969:
185). Galtung rejects the “narrow concept of violence” as “somatic inca-
pacitation, or deprivation of health … at the hands of an actor who intends
this to be the consequence” (Galtung 1969: 168; original italics). Instead,
he states: “Violence is here defined as the cause of the difference between
the potential and the actual, between what could have been and what is.
Violence is that which increases the distance between the potential and
the actual, and that which impedes the decrease of this distance” (Galtung
1969: 168; original italics). Dying of a treatable disease due lack of access
to healthcare constitutes violence. A child’s working instead of attending
school because her or his family earn below subsistence will diminish the
child’s future life chances and increase the distance between her or his
present actuality and future potentialities. Once the actual falls below the
potential, there is violence (Galtung 1969: 168–169) and social injustice.
Unfortunately, this form of violence—social injustice—is often concealed by
24 P. VAHABZADEH
policy implementations and legal codes. Social justice, therefore, requires

resource redistribution through participatory decision-making, based on
the agreed-upon principles of “resource equity, fairness, and respect for
diversity, as well as the eradication of existing forms of social oppression”
(Feagin 2001: 5).
Second, democratic life is a socialized process. Meaningful and creative
social rights are inseparable from political rights associated with citizen-
ship. However, social justice will require the expansion of the sphere of
citizenship beyond the nominal membership in body politic. This means
that the disenfranchisement of the working class, teachers, the poor, retir-
ees, and minorities of their rights to equitable conditions in today’s Iran
is concomitant with the gradual but stealth political disenfranchisement.
Social justice holds that, by virtue of citizenship, human individual and
collectives are entitled not only to civil liberties and freedom of conscience,
but also to fairness, equitable conditions, and participation in forging their
communities according to the principles that simultaneously respect the
dignity of the community as well as the dignity of others. Without demo-
cratic participation and public deliberations on the future directions of
social justice-based programs, society will risk plunging into authoritarian-
ism, unresponsive rentier state, and corruption.
Conclusions
The history of Iran’s struggles for social justice goes back to the influ-
ential emergence of social democracy in the Constitutional Revolution
(1906–1911). Since then, the Iranian Left—in all of its ideological shades
and organizational embodiments, and notwithstanding its dogmatic
streaks—has been the steadfast defender of social and democratic rights
of Iranians and the articulator of demands of the oppressed. With the
absence of the Left from the public discourse and political scene in the past
three decades, the articulation of social justice in public discourse has sig-
nificantly faded. Authoritarian state and repressive policies have created a
backlash among activists and dissidents of the postwar generation who have
borrowed, quite understandably, their terms of reference in their struggle
for democratic rights from the liberal conceptions of human rights and
citizenship. For a couple of decades, Iranian activists have regarded the
rights discourse, articulated in the liberal vein, to hold universal utility and
a solution to all of Iran’s problems. Research on contemporary Iran was
for a while saturated with publications hinging on the politics of human

rights. Concurrent with the discursive rise of neoliberal discourse on the
side of the state, the discursive ascendancy of the human rights discourse
among activists has inadvertently led to the gradual absence of the social
justice public discourse. However, in light of the country’s repressive
policies in the past decades, it seems that the country’s fast-moving turn
to neoliberalism is gradually showing that the discourse of human rights
must be reconciled with the social justice discourse. In a country run by
a neoliberal and military-security oligarchy, the process of socialization
of democracy and social justice now rests with the generative power of
collective action of women, workers, youth, students, religious and eth-
nic minorities, and environmentalists. The relations of equivalence among
these movements will lead them to focus on the nodal points of democratic
participation and social justice. This means the Marxist-oriented Left is no
longer the privileged articulator of social justice demands. A new postcolo-
nial, feminist, and ecological Left—which will contain both (post-)Marxist
and egalitarian–liberatory Shi‘i elements—will need to be forged around
the demands for both democracy and social justice. It seems that today
the preferred term to bring back social justice and democracy among the
majority of scholars and activists is “social democracy.” What is impor-
tant, however, is to stay with that which distinguishes the democratic-Left
as a social project: “to liberate … fellow human beings from the chains
imposed on them by the privileges of race, class, rank” (Bobbio 1996: 47;
original emphasis), as well as gender, sexual preference, ethnicity, religious
belief, and sustainable ecology.
As Iran seems to be slowly recovering from the clearance of the social
justice activists, the struggles for social justice today are in need of end-
ing the collective, discursive amnesia about the conditions that hurt the
vulnerable sectors of the population, and to bring back solidarity and
compassion as the requirements for reintroducing the conditions in which
Iranians can live in peace and democracy, and of course with dignity.
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jsp?essayId=72626
CHAPTER 3
Gazing Upon the Land of Oil Through

the Prism of Structure, Elite Action,
and Civil Society
Hajar Amidian
Does natural resource wealth promote authoritarianism and construct

states immune to democratic social movements? The key to understanding
this relation is to investigate the political incentives produced by resource
“rents.” This constitutes a foundational research for studying social jus-
tice, since struggles for social justice are dependent on the process of
democratization. My research attempts to advance the understanding of
the correlation between the rentier state and degrees of authoritarianism
through the lens of the structural, elite, and civil society levels in Iran dur-
ing the presidency of Mohammad Khatami (1997–2005).
The 1997 election of Khatami provided a political opportunity for
change and the revival of civil society for the first time since the 1979
Revolution. To understand how a state “cursed by oil revenues” could
experience instances of uprising and demand for change we need a rigor-
ous typology that can describe indicators of authoritarianism and rent.
To understand the relation between these concepts, I look into the state
economic and political structures, elite action-oriented policies, and civil
society activism. Investigating these three elements that synthesize the
H. Amidian (*)
Department of Political Science, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-44227-3_3
30 H. AMIDIAN
political structure and socio-economic relations between consumers and

collectors of rent will offer a clearer depiction of change within the Islamic
Republic.
From Rentierism to Authoritarianism: A One-Way

Street?
In the early 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union, many scholars pre-
dicted that the Middle East would also embrace democracy (Anderson 2006).
However, the Middle East did not follow these predictions, and ever
since, this region has become the focal point in studying the persistence
of authoritarianism. Moreover, following the 2009 Green movement in
Iran and the late 2010 uprisings labelled the Arab Spring, the rentier
state’s euphoria failed to persist and these supposedly authoritarian rentier
states showed that they were not immune from demands for change, thus
requiring the examination of the contexts and circumstances of rentierism
and its relation to authoritarianism.
Studies show that countries with declines in freedom have outnum-
bered those that have gained for the past nine years (Freedom House
2015). So authoritarianism is not a particular phenomenon to the Middle
East, but it is the endurance and density of it in some Middle Eastern
countries that makes the region an interesting subject of analysis (Posusney
and Angrist 2005). Authoritarianism is considered a stagnant condition in
these countries, and they were left out of important studies on democratic
transitions in the developing world. Scholarly attention has been paid to
the analysis of non-democratic regimes, but the field lacks attention to
theories about authoritarian policies. This scarcity of research is even more
noticeable when compared to the plethora of work on democratization in
recent decades. Due to hopeful, normative commitments to democracy
in the 1980s and 1990s, scholars underestimated the possibility of transi-
tion from authoritarian rule leading to anything but a democratic regime,
while scholars who established the transitional framework (O’Donnell
and Schmitter 1986) concluded that transition from authoritarian rule
could lead to democracy, authoritarian regressions, revolutions, or hybrid
regimes. In the following, I will discuss how in Iran’s case, due to the dif-
fused nature of state power and some democratic traits alongside limited
pluralism and the importance of revolutionary mindsets, the state could
be considered a semi-authoritarian regime with a combination of positive
and negative traits.
GAZING UPON THE LAND OF OIL THROUGH THE PRISM OF STRUCTURE... 31
Initial studies tried to explain the reason behind the success or failure
of countries in becoming democratic based on “macro-structural variables
like socioeconomic development and corresponding cultural change that
fostered democratic politics” (King 2009: 19). For example, Lipset (1959:
72) studies values, social institutions, and historical events as important
factors in sustaining political systems, while Almond and Verba (1963)
look into national political culture as an element unifying individual atti-
tudes with the overall political structure. These studies claim: “Structural
factors such as economic development, cultural influences, and histori-
cal institutional arrangements influence the formation of actors’ prefer-
ences and power, but ultimately these forces have causal significance only
if translated into human action” (McFaul and Stoner-Weiss 2004: 60).
This emphasis on voluntarism focuses on individual elite choices as central
drivers of human action. So the structural approaches that characterize
the first approach to transitions need to be synthesized with the second,
voluntarist (actor based), approach. However, as Przeworski and Limongi
(1993) argue, the actor-centred approach emphasizes the role of politi-
cians to bypass structural obstacles on the way of transition to democ-
racy. It puts the onus solely on actors and hence disregards structure by
explaining difficulties in transitioning to democracy as the incapability and
wrongdoing of individuals. It also neglects the importance of civil society.
However, “in non-democratic countries where democratic institutions are
weak, civil society organizations could serve as multifunctional organs.
They could educate and also aggregate the citizens’ interests where the
party politics is weak” (Mahdavi 2008: 144).
Another main aspect of understanding authoritarian characteristics in
the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region focuses on the rentier
state model, which explains the links between authoritarianism and the
state’s rent revenue. Canonical studies have probed the effects of hydro-
carbon rent on authoritarianism in MENA (Mahdavy 1970; Beblawi and
Luciani 1987; Gause 1994). Other scholars have expanded this correlation
to other parts of the world (Ross 2001; Ulfelder 2007; Aslaksen 2010;
Clark 1997; Jensen and Wantchekon 2004; Karl 1997), other types of nat-
ural resources (Ross 2001), other sources of non-tax revenue (Morrison
2005), and other outcomes (Jensen and Wantchekon 2004; Smith 2007).
While some of these studies look into the relation between oil revenues
and authoritarianism by emphasizing differences or change in the degree
of democracy others focus on the transitions from authoritarianism in
32 H. AMIDIAN
light of the survival of autocracies. However, the rentier state literature

looks into the issue of authoritarianism mostly through a narrow lens pro-
vided by Ross in his “oil hinders democracy” thesis (Ross 2001). In his
“first law of petropolitics,” Friedman concludes that high oil prices under-
mine democracy and sustain autocracy (2006: 3). However, this simplis-
tic explanation does not take into account the wide range of elements
involved in the correlation between oil revenue and authoritarianism.
These approaches usually take the state as a homogenous entity associated
with underdevelopment, authoritarianism, dictatorship, or populism.
In Iran, however, different administrations have displayed varying
approaches to using the oil revenue. While Khatami’s pre-election state-
ments focused on social and cultural aspects of governance, he refused to
outline any specific economic proposal other than implementing social
justice. His solution for dealing with Iran’s unsupervised inflow of oil rev-
enue was to establish the Oil Stabilization Fund and its supplement the
National Development Fund, a national reserve fund for saving the sur-
plus oil and transforming oil and gas revenues to useful investment for
future generation. On the other hand, one of Ahmadinejad’s principal
campaign slogans was to bring the oil proceeds to the tables of the people
(direct distribution of oil income). While his government had the advan-
tage of receiving the highest oil revenues compared with any other post-
revolutionary administration in Iran, he failed to meet the expecting 8 per
cent growth rate of the Fourth Five Year Plan (Pesaran 2011). Despite
these differences in policy implementation, the existing literature generally
relates Iran’s oil revenues to lack of democracy, generalizing Friedman’s
“oil hinders democracy” thesis (Boix 2003; Friedman 2006; Schubert
2006). When it comes to authoritarian characteristics, the literature on
Iran usually focuses on how a theocracy lends itself to authoritarian fea-
tures in a state, without considering historical perspectives (Bina 2006).
Katouzian and Shahidi (2008) and Gelb and Grasmann (2010) look
into the heterogeneity of countries and conclude that in the case of poorer
countries the manner in which oil wealth is used could be interpreted as a
curse, but oil revenues are not a curse in and of themselves. Hence, a general
shortcoming in the rentier state literature is that the state is considered a
homogenous entity. In the Iranian case, an array of voices can be heard
from inside the society. Moreover, in the literature on rentier states, there
is no consensus on the direct relation between authoritarianism and
rentierism. Contrary to Ross (2001) and Beblawi and Luciani (1987),
Dunning (2008) argues that based on recent research in political economy
and political sociology, rents could push a country towards the process
of becoming more democratic. In Iran, however, the more recent argu-
ments are rarely taken into consideration, mostly because of the focus of
scholars on the first waves of rentier theory. In addition, even scholars like
Dunning, who take a longitudinal and more critical approach to rentier
theory, do not consider separate administrations and usually suffice to a
cross-national method.
Nevertheless, the rentier character of the Iranian state structure plays
a major role in explaining the causes of authoritarianism in the literature.
Regardless of different approaches, most scholars have settled on identify-
ing two broad categories when studying the effects of resource rents on
regime type. They place emphasis either on the state or on society. Studies
that emphasize the state focus on the position and power of individuals
alongside the institutions and agencies within a country. Studies focusing
on societal variables study the interactions of the ordinary citizens with
the government.
Resource rents eliminate the need for governments to tax their citizens,
hence reducing the involvement of citizens on matters of government
accountability (Luciani 1990). So government accountability declines due
to reduced popular pressures and the key argument here centres on taxa-
tion or the lack thereof. This is while state autocrats resist and suppress any
demands for democratization through the internal security apparatus they
have secured through rent; hence, suppressing any demands for political
change (Bellin 2004; Clark 1997; Jensen and Wantchekon 2004).
By challenging distinction and distance between state and society, the
boundaries of which are fluid and permeable, I propose that the rentier
state theory should be refined by including factors such as state strategies,
political choice, and social groups into the equation. In other words, the state
socio-economic structure is not the only factors that should be considered when
examining the rentier characteristics of Iran; elite action-oriented policies
and the civil society must also be deliberated upon.
What About Iran?

Is Iran considered a rentier state? Beblawi and Luciani’s disputed obser-
vation qualifies those states that receive 40 % of their revenue from rents
as rentier states (1987: 70). However, Beck argues that many states that
receive rents at lower levels could be easily categorized as rentier states
(Beck 2009: 9). As Gause contends, Luciani’s qualifying percentage
34 H. AMIDIAN
actually fluctuates due to diminishing oil reserves in some of these coun-

tries (1994: 46). Beck further argues that despite this discrepancy, “Iran
has been a rentier state ‘par excellence’ … since the 1960s at the latest”
(2009: 9). The reason is that Iran’s economy relies heavily on crude oil
export revenues, representing an average 60 % of government revenues
in annual budgets (Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran 2013).
But as Mahdavy (1970) claims, the condition upon which a state could be
called rentier is arbitrary; hence defining the moment when Iran could be
considered a rentier state is not plausible. Also states are not homogenous,
neutral economic entities, and hence labelling them as rentier or not is
more complicated than simply relying on statistics.
For the purpose of this research, I consider post-revolutionary Iran as
a rentier state based on the existing statistics and the vast rentier state
literature (Mahdavy 1970: 455; Najmabadi 1987: 215; Karshenas 1990:
82). According to the recent British Petroleum statistical Review of World
Energy in June 2015, at the end of the year 2014, Iran had 157 billion
barrels of proven reserves, which compared to other figures in the same
report, shows Iran ranks second in the world in natural gas reserves and
fourth in proven crude oil reserves. This figure could also be interpreted
in the total share of the country from oil, which ranks Iran fourth with
9.3 % after Venezuela with 17.5 %, Saudi Arabia with 15.7 %, and Canada
with 10.2 % (BP 2015: 6). The statistics also demonstrate that Iran will
be able to produce oil and natural gas at the level of 2014 for over 100
years (BP 2015: 6). According to US Energy Information Administration,
“Iran’s crude oil and condensate exports started increasing in late 2013
and averaged 1.4 million b/d in 2014, almost 150,000 b/d above the
2013 level” (2015). Also, oil exports make up 80 % of Iran’s total export
earnings and around 50–60 % of its government revenue (EIA 2015).
Hence, it could be concluded that Iran possesses the main characteristics
of a rentier state, namely, (1) a predominating rent economy; (2) reliance
on substantial external rent; (3) state as principle recipient of external rent;
and (4) involvement of the majority of population in distribution or uti-
lization of rent.
External capital pouring into the reserves of the state makes it finan-
cially independent of domestic production. This independence is argued
to both strengthen and weaken the state. Theoretically, the strengthen-
ing of the state occurs through minimizing conflict by breaking the “tax-
ation” bond between the state and the society. In other words, without
the need for any fiscal extraction from their population, the state insulates
itself from citizen demands and expectations. Also, since the stream of oil
revenue lies in the hands of the state apparatus, the only way to access oil rent
is through state institutions. This dominance over oil revenues is thought to
be the reason behind patronage politics in rentier states, hence plummeting
the probability of any type of conflict. This rent also weakens the state, since
the productive domestic sectors like industry, agriculture, and manufactur-
ing remain largely underdeveloped, thereby undermining the overall power
of the state in the long run (Chatelus and Schemeil 1984).
In the rare case of any disruption in this clientelist relation and the
occurrence of any demand by social groups, Shambayati argues that the
financial independence of oil-rich states not only “allows them to func-
tion without being responsive to the demands of the domestic society
[… but this] autonomy allows it to function without developing the means
to negotiate with domestic interest groups” (1994: 309). This apparent
independence from the society leads some to believe that the oil-rich
Iranian state is an autonomous and independent acting agency.
Hence, the rentier state theory could be categorized as one of those theo-
ries that emphasizes the constraints put on human behaviour posed by mac-
rostructural variables compared to those that privilege human agency. What
I argue is that while rent influences the nature, structure, and functions of the
state, it cannot be held solely accountable for the disinterest of the state in society
and therefore the tendencies towards the situation that we call authoritarian.
In what follows, I will study the three elements of state structure, actor-
based policies, and civil society as interrelated factors during the Khatami
Presidency in order to show how we should encounter rentier theory.
Structural Level
In relation to discussions above, two structural factors are to be considered.
Economic Structure
Since the discovery of oil in Masjed Suleiman in 1908, the government has
been the collector of capital and the sole manager of the Iranian economy.
Hence, natural resources have played a significant role in Iran’s domestic
and foreign affairs and have dominated its economic structure. This domi-
nance and the importance of state-controlled oil revenue led to further
state intervention in the economy and the authority of the public sector
over the private. Oil revenues and its allocation residing within the hands
of the government have not only created competition for gaining favours
36 H. AMIDIAN
and proximity to the government but have also caused a destructive social
function, rent-seeking mentality which represents a break between the
work–reward causation, to prevail in place of a productive entrepreneur-
ial society. While oil revenues created a strong state independent from
the society, they also served as an important tool in the country’s speedy
economic development and growth rate during the 1960s and 1970s
(Amuzegar 1992).
With the fall of Pahlavi regime, new political and economic institutions
emerged based on the newly developed Constitution. This Constitution
recognizes “the economy as a means, not an end” and considers the pri-
vate sector, as a complement to the major State and Cooperative Sectors
(IRI Constitution, Article 44). Economic liberalization, and later privati-
zation, in Iran began in the late 1980s, when the phenomenon was gain-
ing popularity in both developed and developing countries. The initiation
of the policy began with Hashemi-Rafsanjani in 1989, and has since been
around during the later administrations. Despite this, and 24 years after
the initial steps towards privatization, many Iranian politicians, including
Gholamreza Kord Zangeneh (former Head of Privatization Organization;
Sazman-e Khosoosisazi), Mohammad Baqer Nobakht (Spokesperson of the
Government), and Abbas Akhundi (current Minister of Transportation),
recount it as a policy that leads to corruption, rent, and embezzlement,
which allowed a dominant political minority to maintain control over oil
revenues and the country’s economy in general (Shargh Daily 2015).
In 2006, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, urged the gov-
ernment to follow through with privatization projections of selling 80 per
cent of state-owned companies, mainly in the banking, media, transport,
and mineral sectors (Khamenei 2005). Hence, the Iranian Privatization
Organization (set up in 2004) practically commenced its activities based on
these new mandates as a governmental company a ffiliated to the Ministry
of Economic Affairs and Finance in 2008. Over a decade after the imple-
mentation of the Privatization Act, one could examine how the results
have maintained the dominance of certain groups in the state economic
and political structure by creating a new class that some call “khosulati”
(a Persian portmanteau of private, khosusi, and public/crown, dowlati). In
an exclusive interview with Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB)
TV2, the Head of Privatization Organization announced that “at times
the government also had no desire for p rivatization, and viewed the pri-
vate sector as an enemy, and instead quasi-governmental agencies have
been supported by the government” (Khabar Online 2015). He later
added that during the past 14 years about 50 per cent of the designated
companies have been privatized while about 13–14 per cent have either
been liquidated or amalgamated. The remaining 37 per cent are gener-
ally hard to privatize due to their nature—that is, due to the government
unwillingness to privatize them in anticipation of potentially unmanage-
able social consequences. However, privatization has to be viewed not as
an end itself, but as a means to change the dynamics between the pub-
lic and private sectors aimed at increasing the efficiency of the latter and
hence creating an independent socio-economic class.
Political Structure
It is somewhat difficult to categorize post-revolutionary Iran within a spe-
cific regime type or subtype. Iran lacks features of a totalitarian regime
and maintains aspects of an authoritarian one. Unlike many Muslim coun-
tries in the Middle East, Iran experiences regular non-violent elections,
albeit contested ones. The initial inclination towards a single party system
(Islamic Republican Party) has conclusively failed, and currently there are
several Conservative, Centerist–Reformist, and Reformist parties. Iranian
economy is by Constitution divided into State, Cooperative, and Private
sectors. Under the Constitution of the Islamic Republic, sovereignty
belongs to God and is delegated to all humans (IRI Constitution, Article
56). A combination of both “religious and secular principles, democratic
and anti-democratic tendencies” lends considerable platform for dis-
pute and a regularly changing political landscape (Boroujerdi 2001: 14).
The executive, legislative, and judicial powers are formed through both
popular elections and appointed officials that act as pious legal experts
(Keshavarzian 2005). This amalgamation of religious experts within a
republican entity creates a complex state structure.
The disputed nature of Iran’s regime type requires independent
research. But what is of paramount importance in the rentier state litera-
ture in regards to not only Iran but also most other countries categorized
as rentier is the underlying logic that assumes a bounded, autonomous,
and stable state agency in all these cases. This literature creates the illusion
of categorical unity, disregards historical differences and actor-oriented
policies among these states, and ultimately limits itself to the physical and
institutional boundaries of the state (Karl 1997). However, to avoid a mis-
representation of the Iranian state, I will examine the power of governing
elites, their policy choices, and the civil society.
38 H. AMIDIAN
As discussed earlier, the driving economic force within the Islamic

Republic is still based on oil rent, which has made the state independent
of its citizens’ tax. This independence is argued to have largely shaped the
relations between the state and civil society. Other characteristics include
extensive state intervention in the economy, unprofitable and unpro-
ductive enterprises controlled by state foundations (bonyads), multi-tier
exchange rates, capital control, price control, and unsustainable subsidies
(Saeidi 2004). Iran’s economy exemplifies the overpowering of state foun-
dations (bonyads) and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (Harris
2013). Meanwhile, we witness an urge within a faction of the political
elite for a privatized economy. Harris contends that this paradox is shifting
the Iranian economy from the state “toward a variety of parastatal orga-
nizations including banks, cooperatives, pension funds, foundations, and
military-linked contractors. The result is not a praetorian monolith but a
subcontractor state” (2013: 45).
It is difficult to imagine competing groups or actors that could exert
much influence on this tightknit structure around oil revenues. But while
the distribution and allocation of oil rent impacts the society, the state is
also not immune to the societal influences. This influence is more observ-
able when exercised by social groups that are invested in the status quo
and whose demands do not challenge the broader socio-economic situa-
tion. Hence, as Pesaran argues “the interconnectedness with the state of
so many social groups has ensured that no single individual or institution
can be targeted in expressions of public discontent” (2011: 14).
The Reformists could be considered a movement that is embedded in
state networks and structure that frame the interests of a semi-authoritarian
regime through alternative avenues. This argument could have held ground
at the time of the first Reformist government of President Khatami. But
with the advent of later administrations, and the making of a platform
for comparison and also an opening for debate, it is hard to imagine this
opening dying out easily. The greatest achievement of the Reformists was
to reveal the contradictions within the internal powers in Iran. Strong
state and semi-state structures which served as mechanisms for rent redis-
tribution and consolidation of power, along with the presence of exter-
nal threats, international sanctions, and the mistakes of the Reformists,
maintained internal cohesion and provided legitimacy for the status quo
and state institutions fed by external rent. Nevertheless, while oil revenues
continue to be an integral part of the Iranian economy, administrations
like Khatami’s disrupt the falsely homogenous depiction of the state and
require that we use a more nuanced explanation of rentier states.
Action-Oriented Policies
While political and economic state structures did not go through much
change despite the different administrations in office, action-oriented poli-
cies that encompass the ruling elites and their policy choices also could
transform structural impediments into opportunities. Khatami’s election
in 1997 came to represent the Reform Movement in post-revolutionary
Iran. His political agenda was based on concepts of moderation, tolerance,
accountability, and the supremacy of the rule of law. His campaign platform
entailed the cultivation of civil society by invoking the neglected articles
of the Constitution such as activating the City Councils and upholding
the dignity of citizens and civil rights based on Article 3. These changes
entailed an inclination towards liberal tendencies in the political, social, and
economic sectors. This liberal interpretation of the Constitution led to an
increase in the number of press outlets during Khatami’s first two years in
office, which facilitated the repoliticization of a generation—a potentially
disruptive challenge to the prevailing orthodoxies. He encouraged “the
population as a whole to break down the barriers to the establishment in
Iran of a democratic and pluralist state” (Ehteshami 2003: 61).
Khatami’s agenda focused its liberalization tendencies more in the
realm of sociocultural aspects of the Iranian society. Following Hashemi-
Rafsanjani’s reconstruction effort, the country was left in an economic stag-
nation and international isolation. Voting for Khatami was not a negative
response to the statist economic policies of his predecessor since Khatami
and his advisors were also invested in those policies. What differentiated
Khatami and gave him a landslide victory was mostly his stance against
the culture of bribery, corruption, and a considerable socio-economic gap
that followed Hashemi-Rafsanjani’s economic reconstruction. In his cam-
paign, Khatami insisted he did not want to change the economic policies
of the Islamic Revolution into capitalist policies, but at the same time he
asserted that he did respect the value of capital (Maloney 2015).
Maloney argues that the reformists chose to approach the situation by
making small political changes rather than tackling the economic issues
first hand. Khatami’s Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh, explained this tactic as
“rearranging and reorganizing ideas and thoughts as creating the grounds
and necessary conditions for facilitating economic activities” (quoted
in Maloney 2015: 264). With the reluctance of the hardliners and the
state to significant change and the economic hardship that the general
public felt, Khatami’s administration gradually lost public support. Right
before Khatami commenced his second Presidential term, Behzad Nabavi,
40 H. AMIDIAN
Member of Parliament from Tehran, stated, “We announced before the 2

Khordad [Khatami was elected on 2 Khordad 1376 or 23 May 1997] that
Khatami was not a man of action for the economy” (ISNA 2001). This
gradual but widespread consensus undermined the Reformist power and
they slowly gave in to the hardliners. The Reformists believed if they could
help recover the Iranian economy and the middle class, they could expect
a strengthening of the civil society and thus the latter’s increasing political
opposition against right-wing politics and the status quo. This case reveals
the fallacy of the rentier theory depicting the state as a homogenous entity.
In a complex state structure like that of Iran, the state could potentially
disrupt the status quo.
Civil Society
Civil society is another aspect that challenges the rentier theory’s care-
lessly attributing static characteristics to different states. State officials in
the Middle East use the term “civil society” to promote their projects of
mobilization and “modernization.” The Islamists use it to demand a legal
share of public space, while independent activists and intellectuals use it to
expand the boundaries of individual liberty (Bellin 1994: 509).
Within the Iranian circle of politicians and activists, “civil society” can
have different interpretations pertaining to relations between civil society
and the state. According to Chaichian, the liberal interpretations reject
the involvement of the state in controlled economies and call for a free a
market economy that could lead to the realization of a strong civil society
(2003: 28). A developmentalist–pragmatic approach considers civil soci-
ety as a public sphere between the state and the citizen. A developmen-
talist–democratic approach argues that civil society works as a mediating
entity between the state and citizens by protecting both sides (citizens
and government) from over-expectation of the other side. Khatami was
an advocate of an Islamist approach to civil society, which saw the Islamic
state as a major supporting force behind a sustainable civil society. This
interpretation analogized the Iranian society historically and theoretically
to the early Islamic community (umma) led by Prophet Mohammad and
argues that “personal and or group dictatorship or even the dictatorship
of the majority and elimination of the minority has no place … citizens of
the Islamic society enjoy the right to determine their own destiny, super-
vise the administration of affairs, and hold the government accountable.
The government in such a society is the servant of the people and not
their master …” (Khatami quoted in Chaichian 2003: 32). In light of this

approach, Khatami introduced the discourse of civil society into the public
sphere (Bakhash 2003). However, this attempt creates some confusion on
where human subjectivity stands both in early Islamic and modern defini-
tions of civil society. In other words, universal citizenship rights can range
between modern concepts of civil society and the early Islamic society, and
Khatami’s attempt at it was not well defined.
Despite this confusion, supporters of Khatami developed his vague
position in regards to civil society by emphasizing on the independence of
the civil society from the state, political democratization, and the suprem-
acy of the people’s will. These groups challenged privileging certain social
groups after the Revolution that they asserted was against their initial rev-
olutionary ideals. The vagueness in defining Reform and a lack of theoreti-
cal and practical definition for the concept was manifested in the student
uprising of July 1999. It was during this time that a difference of under-
standing in the meaning of reform created a rift between the Reformists
and the student movement. Nonetheless, peaceful demonstrations of dis-
content remained a major characteristic in Iran. As expected, the authori-
ties imprisoned student activists to contain the movement. Despite the
Reformists’ struggle to help the student movement achieve their demands
for strengthening the mechanism of democracy, the Khatami administra-
tion failed to overcome the stronger authoritative state apparatus. “The
relation between Khatami’s administrations and the main student umbrella
organization in Iran, Daftar-e Tahkim-e Vahdat, offers an example of
how conflicts and cleavages move and shift without disappearing while
the concept of civil society is constantly reshaped” (Rivetti and Cavatorta
2013: 650). As mentioned, this opposition was partly fostered by how oil
revenues were distributed by privileging certain social groups and creating
a considerable socio-economic gap within the society. This is why the rent-
ier state theory relegates civil society demands and the way they are dealt
with to structural economics. Hence, rentier theory could benefit from
associating state structure with the broader significance of the civil society.
Looking at rentier states from this perspective creates a more nuanced
version of what rentierism could mean, which is sequentially significant in
understanding the heterogeneity of state structure.
With the limitations imposed on civil society by state structures and
occasional agential factors like the President, the question to ask in regards
to Iran would be, how far can this force from below make significant
changes to policy and institutional reform?
42 H. AMIDIAN
Conclusion
A synthesis between the three concepts of state structure, elite action-
oriented policies, and civil society undermines the contention that rentier
states are immune to change. While the term “rentier state” might convey
a purely economic state of affairs, I tried to tie in other factors, namely civil
society and the actions of elite to demonstrate that social and political fac-
tors influence, if not determine, desired political outcomes such that sim-
plistic explanations, based on strict correlation between oil revenue and
authoritarianism, fail to see because the dominant rentier state literature
takes the state as a homogenous entity and attributes underdevelopment,
authoritarianism, dictatorship, or populism to it. I showed that this is not
the case, and while a state like Iran has both negative and positive traits
in terms of its proximity to democracy, there are other major concepts to
be considered before reducing the state to a position of stagnation. While
state structures are important, it is not the structure that pushes a state
towards democracy or dictatorship. Actor preferences and power and the
demands of the civil society both are influenced and influence these pre-
sumably stagnant structures.
So we go back to the initial triangle that we depicted: structuralism,
voluntarism, and civil society. As mentioned, Khatami came to Office with
sociocultural liberalization in mind, and his presidency attempted to push
civil society towards breaking down barriers to achieve a democratic and
pluralist state. But the rentier socio-economic structures remained intact
and prevented Iranian civil society to take a giant leap towards change.
Unfortunately, with strong state and semi-state structures that are based
on a rentier economy, the fate of civil rights movements remains at the
mercy of the voluntarist angle of the equation and also the dynamics within
the movement itself. Meanwhile, these contending groups are required
to reconcile with the heterogeneous state structure through negotiation,
cooperation, and reinterpretation.
Oil and its following functions did not form a state or society like Iran
in a void. The situation that we call rentierism came into an already exist-
ing array of identities, social forces, and processes among and between
the ruler and the ruled. Hence, it is important to remember that oil rev-
enues, while important to the current existence of certain states, cannot
be held solely responsible for the inclinations of these states to democracy
or authoritarianism. It is rather the manner in which rent is deployed that
makes all the difference. Therefore, going back to question posed e arlier,
does natural resource wealth promote authoritarianism and construct

states immune to democratic social movements?
I must say that the question itself feeds into the incompatibilities of
rentier theory by erroneously creating a direct link between rentierism and
the non/existence of democracy.
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CHAPTER 4
The Unmaking of the Iranian Working

Class since the 1990s
Mohammad Maljoo
Today, despite the increasing economic difficulties of the working-class

families in their own daily lives, one hardly witnesses effective workers’
individual and collective action in the Iranian scene. The question arising
here is: what transformed the Iranian workers into a set of economic actors
who have had little bargaining power since the 1990s.
In answering the question, the conventional economic argument
often rests heavily upon the relation between the demand and the supply
of labour in the labour market, holding that the decreasing bargaining
power of the workers and their own consequent deteriorating conditions
have their roots in the permanent excess of supply over demand in the
labour market. Of course, this argument has certain validity, adding to
our knowledge. The Iranian economy’s double-digit unemployment rate
throughout the post-revolutionary years has undoubtedly contributed
to the decreasing bargaining power of the workers and their subsequent
diminishing economic conditions. Nevertheless, one problem from which
the conventional argument suffers is its one-dimensionality, according to
which it, by exclusively emphasizing on the permanent excess supply of
labour in the Iranian labour market, explains the decreasing bargaining
M. Maljoo (*)
Independent Researcher, Tehran, Iran

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-44227-3_4
48 M. MALJOO
power and deteriorating living and working conditions of the workers as

an unfortunate natural process, neglecting the state-made dimension of
the phenomenon.
By focusing on the decreasing individual and collective bargaining
powers of the workers, mostly made by certain state policies implemented
in employer–employee relations since the early 1990s, this paper aims at
shedding light on the state’s role, through policy and legislation in the
deterioration of the living and working conditions of the Iranian workers.
Strongly adhering to the idea that the demand for labour in the labour
market is a derivation from the capital accumulation, since the end of
Iraq–Iran war in 1988 the policymakers have tended to restructure labour
relations in order to stimulate capital accumulation in the Iranian econ-
omy. In doing so, some substantial changes were gradually implemented
in the labour market against the workers and in favour of the employers,
be they private, public, or semi-public. In this way, what was expected
to be a solution for improving the living and working conditions of the
workers has conversely given rise to a part of the problem of the workers’
decreasing bargaining power.
Weakening of the Individual Bargaining Power

of Workers
The legislation and enactment of several labour laws in the past 20 years
have contributed to the increasing disempowerment of Iran working class.
Labour Casualization
In 1990, only 6 per cent of workforces had temporary contract (ISNA
2010). Today, according to the Deputy Minister of the Ministry of
Cooperative, Labour, and Social Welfare, about 90 per cent of workers
have temporary contract (“90% of Workers” 2014), being deprived of job
security. The severe job insecurity has immensely contributed to the weak-
ening of individual and collective bargaining power of workers at both
workplace and labour market throughout Iran’s post-war years. It was
the 1990 Labour Code which prepared the legal basis for such contracts.
According to the Second Clause of the Article 7 of the Labour Code,
“Jobs of continuous nature shall be considered indefinite in case no period
shall be mentioned in the employment agreement.” Another way of stat-
ing the above is that if the nature of the work is continuous, the employer
THE UNMAKING OF THE IRANIAN WORKING CLASS SINCE THE 1990S 49
can determine a set amount of time in his or her contract with workers,
and employ them on a temporary basis in types of work that are neverthe-
less continuous. Also, according to one of the clauses of Article 21 of the
Labour Code, the employment agreement may be terminated in some
cases including “expiry of duration of definite employment agreements
and their non-renewal explicitly or implicitly.” Nevertheless, the legal
valence of the Labour Code for making temporary employment contracts
was discovered but never used earlier than early 1995. Before this time,
it was customary to accept the point of termination of a given temporary
employment contract only once, such that its renewal for another definite
term would lead to considering the contract as non-temporary contract.
“But in the early 1995 the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs officially
notified a direction to allow employers to successively conclude tempo-
rary contract with a given worker for many times and any set amount of
time” (Monshizadeh 2010: 19). It is clear that the Labour Code not only
legitimized the signing of temporary contract in the continuous works,
but also legally facilitated expulsion of workers whose contract was tempo-
rary, producing a phenomenon which was not widespread before the end
of Iraq–Iran war, namely, the temporary employment contract through
which the employers can lay off the workers as they wish. By depriving the
majority of workforce of job security, the policy of labour casualization has
most strongly resulted in diminishing the individual bargaining power of
workers at both workplace and the labour market.
Labour casualization as a project has been implemented in different
economic sectors through many ways, even though there are few compre-
hensive researches in this regard. The oil sector is probably the only one
we can cite the way in which the labour had been trapped in the casualiza-
tion project. The implementation of this project in the oil sector was made
possible in several phases.
The first phase began during Ali-Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani’s first term
as the President, when oil workers were invited to take advantage of a pro-
motion to change their formal contracts from blue collar to white collar.
In the words of an oil worker, “We asked: what does this change imply?
We said that the task of white-collar staff in the oil industry is not to do
manual labour but to supervise the manual labour. Now if we blue collars
are to become white collars, then who should do manual labour in the oil
industry? We were told this was only a formal change without changing
our job description” (Rahmani 2010: 63). As another oil worker said, the
majority of blue-collar workers filled out the new employment forms and
50 M. MALJOO
were turned into the so-called white-collar employees while still defined
through their previous job description (JAFK 2011).
A minority of the blue-collar workers refused to change their contracts
and hence found themselves in a vulnerable situation. Although they were
legally entitled to protest in face of the financial difficulties which had
gripped them, they could not muster sufficient numbers to negotiate
effectively because they were now a minority within the workforce. They
were left with two options: to join the white collars or to opt for voluntary
early retirement in exchange for receiving their severance pay. The major-
ity of this small group opted for the latter option (Maljoo 2014).
Ultimately, the fate of the majority of the previously blue-collar but
newly white-collar staff was the same as those who had been terminated
with severance pay. However, this happened through a different route and
with a time lag. As a rule, the white-collar category in the oil industry is in
some way considered “managers.” Unlike blue-collar workers (kargaran)
who follow the regulations of Ministry of Labour, white-collar employees
(karmandan) follow the regulations of the Oil Ministry. Hence, as “man-
agers,” they do not have the right to complain to the Ministry of Labour
against Oil Ministry, thus losing the right to bargain collectively. This kind
of change in the oil industry in fact legally deprived the newly white-collar
staff from any right to protest or file a complaint with the Ministry of
Labour. Although they were many in number, now they had no right to
individually or collectively report to Ministry of Labour of their new prob-
lem when their white-collar classification benefits were gradually elimi-
nated over the course of two years and when they faced financial pressures
imposed by their managers. This sector of the labour force only had two
choices: to opt for either early retirement or forced termination with sev-
erance pay (Maljoo 2014).
The second phase in making the oil labour casual involved preparation
of administrative and legal prerequisites for enforcing these early retire-
ments and terminations with severance pay. Using both early retirement
and termination methods had its origin in the idea of downsizing gov-
ernment through, according to the Third Five-Year Development Plan,
“reducing the size of the public sector, beginning from the bottom rungs
of the administrative pyramid” (National Office of Management and
Planning 2003). Thus, the burden of downsizing government was shifted
unto the weakest shoulders.
The third phase was put on the agenda concomitant with the first
and second phases. This phase consisted of implementing an avalanche
of outsourcing the projects of the oil industry. Not only the outsourc-
ing widely took place within the oil industry, but it was also carried out
within the whole governmental structure and was particularly aided by
an enactment under the heading “the giving of administrative orga-
nizations’ backing activities to non-public sector,” ratified by Supreme
Administrative Council (Showra-ye ‘Ali-ye Edari) in 2000. The first clause
of this enactment ordained that all public organizations should give
their service and support activities to the private sector and eliminate all
related positions from their organizational charts (Deputy of Human
Resources and Management Affairs in Management Organization 2002:
61). As far as the oil industry was concerned, Clause 33 of the Third
Five-Year Development Plan ordained that “the government is allowed
to give activities of refinement operation, transportation and distribu-
tion of petroleum materials and their primary and subsidiary products to
real and legal domestic persons” (National Office of Management and
Planning 2003). Also, the Article 9 of Solutions of Administrative Plan
for Energy Sector (Rahkarha-ye Barnmeh-ye Ejraì-ye Bakhsh-e Enerzhi)
decreed that “those parts of refinement activities which are separable from
main section, including oil-making branch, container-making branch, and
auxiliary and repairing services, should be given to cooperative and pri-
vate sectors” (Mehrazma 2007: 109). “By signing of such contracts and
creating a middleman between the company and its labour force,” as a
worker of National Iranian Drilling Company in Khuzestan states, “the
Oil Company divested itself of responsibility towards its employees, thus
spreading the role of brokering through paying large amounts of money
to the subcontracting firms.” He continues:
The procedure was as follows: National Iranian Oil Company [NIOC;

Sherkat-e Melli-ye Naft-e Iran] would put its projects to tender. The sub-
contractor whose bid was accepted would sign a contract with NIOC and
receive funds from it. NIOC would then introduce its personnel to the
subcontractor. Ultimately, all services such as payment of wages, insurance,
benefits, etc. were put in the hands of the subcontractor. NIOC had rid itself
of its responsibility towards workers. (Peyman 2010)
However, the crude oil production increased from 2947 thousand barrels
per day in 1989 to 3557 thousand barrels per day in 2008 (Central Bank
of Islamic Republic of Iran 2010). Also, the production of gas increased
from 32 billion cubic metres in 1989 to 144 billion cubic metres in 2007
52 M. MALJOO
(Central Bank of Islamic Republic of Iran 2010). Therefore, it is clear

that, during the years after the Iran–Iraq war, the level of production in
the oil and gas industry steadily increased and required hiring a new cadre
of workers.
The fourth phase addressed this need. The mushrooming of human
resource contract firms in fact responded to this need. However, it is inter-
esting to note that the bulk of the labour force hired by this kind of con-
tract firms consisted of the personnel who had retired early or had been
terminated with severance pay. It is said that “about 200 human resource
contract firms in Abadan Oil Refinery Company are involved in recruiting
temporary contract labour” (Javaher Langarudi 2008). The distinguishing
feature of the type of employment offered by these contract firms was the
temporary character of the employment contracts. The common feature of
all employment agreements they made was job insecurity for the workers,
which substantially weakened the workers’ individual bargaining power.
Exclusion of Small Workshops from the Labour Code

Exclusion of small workshops from the Labour Code had already been
officially recognized by the 1990 Labour Code. According to its Article
191, “Small workshops with less than 10 individuals”, as considered expe-
dient, may be temporarily exempted from some of the provisions of this
Law. The cases of expediency and exemption shall be in accordance with
the bylaws to be proposed by the High Labour Council (HLC; Showray-e
‘Ali-ye Kar) and approved by the Cabinet. Nevertheless, this Article
did not come into effect until early 2000, when the “Act of Exemption
[Exclusion] of Workshops with less than five individual from the Labour
Code” was ratified by the Parliament for only three years. After the expiry
of this period, the “Bylaw of Exemption of Small Workshops with less
than 10 Individuals from some Provisions of the Labour Code” was
approved by the Council of the Ministers in late 2002, again only for
three years. According to the Article 1 of the 2002 Bylaw, these work-
shops were exempted from 36 articles of the Labour Code as well as from
the relevant Clause in Article 10. Also, according to the Article 2, the
duration of the exemption was three years. After expiry of this period, the
same Bylaw was extended for another three years in late 2005. But, before
the time of expiry of the extension in late 2008, this second Article on a
temporary three years “was nullified by a legal precedent issued by the
Court of Administration Justice in 2007” (Elahian 2010: 64). With this
last attempt, as if the Exemption Bylaw was extended indefinitely, even

though this legal precedent was not consistent with the Article 191 of the
Labour Code with its emphasis on the temporariness of the Exemption.
In any case, the Exemption has deprived many workers of the support of
non-market institution of the Labour Code not only in small workshops
but also in other workshops whose managers pretend to be running small
workshops. It is exactly this legal exemption of the support of the Labour
Code which has substantially diminished the individual bargaining power
of a wide range of workers whose relative size is more than 50 per cent of
total employed workforces.
The Rise of Human Resource Contract Firms

The human resources contract firms are the highly organized and
well-connected contract firms. They were born in the first half of the
1990s, achieving mushroom-like growth throughout the Reform era of
1997–2005. Selling themselves as experts in collective bargaining, they
function as mediators between workers and employers, public, semi-
public, or private. They are main agents of the triangular employment
relations whereby an employee works under the direction of an employer
but is actually employed by a private third party called a human resources
contract firm. The employer sets the working conditions but the workers
receive their remuneration from the third party. The portion of the budget
intended for salaries and wages is delivered to the private contractor, which
divides the given amount among the workers. If employees want to bring
legal action against the public employer for whatever reason, they have to
do so through the private firm. Many of the owners have close ties with
the top echelons of the Ministry of Labour as well as with other power
centres within the establishment. But the contractors seldom have face-
to-face interactions with the workers they hire, except when the workers
try to bring legal action against the employers. By using their close ties
with different branches of the Ministry and thanks to their full-time con-
centration on recruitment process of labour force, human source contract
firms are experts in providing employment contract against the employees
and on behalf of the employers. They are very articulate and organized.
Their most well-known collective organization is “the Centre of the Guild
Societies of Employers of Service, Backing, Technical and Engineering
Firms” (Kanun-e Anjomanha-ye Senfi-ye Karfarmayan-e Sherkatha-ye
Khadamati, Poshtibani, va Fani-Mohandesi-ye Sarasar-e Keshvar) with
54 M. MALJOO
nationwide network. The Centre has strong ties with the decision-making
and policy-making body. “The Centre enjoys the high position,” accord-
ing to the head of its Board of Directors. “Those organs that work with
us, such as the Social Security Bureau [Sazman-e Ta`min-e Ejtemaie],
the Ministry of Labour, its provincial offices, the Ministry of Economic
Affairs and Finance, the National Tax Administration, the Expediency
Discernment Council of the Country (Majma‘e Tashkhis-e Maslehat-e
Nezam), and the Social Affairs Subcommittee of the Parliament have
good relations with us,” he maintained. “Our provincial branches can eas-
ily contact and negotiate with all these organs” (“A Conversation” 2010).
Although there is no official data on the number of these human
resource contract firms, they have played a crucial role in weakening the
individual bargaining power of workers by cutting off the direct legal rela-
tions of the employees with their own employers.
ontracting Out State Employment Umbrella

C
Since the early 1990s, the number of low-echelon official state employ-
ees has gradually decreased, so that there has been a decline in the share
of state employees in total employment from about 31 per cent in 1986
to 24 per cent in 2006 (Behdad and Nomani 2009). This adjustment
has been supported and directed by all upstream and downstream official
policy-making documents. Depriving the low-echelon employees of pro-
tection of state employment umbrella and dispatching them to the free
labour market has contributed to the weakening the individual bargaining
power of workers.
Atomizing Effect on the Workers’ Weakened

Individual Bargaining Power
The consequence of restructuring labour relations in the Iranian economy
since 1990s was the atomizing the labour force. The spread of temporary
contract labour “means that job security and collective bargaining have
been abolished” (Mather et al. 2007: 16). Recruiting the workers through
temporary contract allows the employers to bypass the Labour Code in
such a way as to employ labour force at the lowest possible wages. While
securing a cheap and flexible labour force, such temporary contracts have
the effect of atomizing the workforce and hence undermining the work-
ers’ solidarity in the workplace, because workers within a plant are now
subject to very different rules and regulations, various levels of wage, and
different contract terms, and as a result, they do not identify with each
other. Each employer decides its own rules, determining its own wages.
Also, every worker now faces not a single employer but many contract
firms, just as he or she is not a part of a collective but rather a specific
contract with his or her contractor(s). The workers are now proportion-
ally less able to construct their own collective identity. Facing relative lack
of collective class identity, the workers find it easier to resort to individual
solutions for solving their own problems.
The narratives stated by the workers themselves on the political conse-
quences of spread of temporary contracts are suggestive of the atomizing
effect. An account made by a worker in the car-making industry shows
how the high rate of unemployment forces workers to submit to tempo-
rary contracts: “The temporary contract and the army of the unemployed
are the main factors in imposing the high rates of exploitation on the work-
ers. The rate of unemployment is so high, so that currently more than
12,000 unemployed workers have applied for jobs with minimum salary
and any contract terms in Pars Khodro Company” (Naseri 2008: 19).
The next process after the recruitment in such a labour market can be
traced in a narrative made by an oil worker in Assaluyeh. “Our contracts
are called ‘blank paper,’ which means a blank paper is signed by the worker.
Frankly there is not even such a paper. In fact, we are dismissed every
three months, then hired back immediately,” states the worker. “We are
also entitled no fringe benefits such as insurance. Whenever the employer
wishes he could throw us out … But to get our wages from the employer
is really hard. Our wages are always paid after six to eight months’ delay.
The employer always owes us.” He adds,
Only after exerting ourselves … the employer pays our wages partly in cash
and partly by post-dated cheque. If you don’t submit to this process, you are
told to resign. Then having received a post-dated cheque, you would still be
dismissed. Now you would find that cashing such a cheque is a big problem.
Nobody is willing to cash the cheque. Sometimes the cheque is a bad cheque.
And, you know, no bank notices why a large firm has written a bad cheque
… With this procedure, the worker has no choice but continue on his job in
the contract firm in order to be paid some day in the future. By using such
a procedure, the employers are able to keep the workers dependent on the
company … For making their own subsistence, all workers have no choice
but borrow money from usurers … The employers’ profit from workers’
delayed wages, and the usurers from the interests paid by workers … We are
situated in such a way as to always be both creditor and debtor. (Koosha n.d.)
56 M. MALJOO
The way in which a dismissed textile manufacturing worker recounts the

consequences of temporary contracts for trying to create collective action
among the workers is true with all temporary labour forces as well. As he
laments, “due to the prevalence of blank contracts, although many work-
ers are aware they cannot come to the scene for imposing their will because
they are deeply involved in finding and keeping their job.” He adds,
They say to find job is too hard to give up this job by people like us who
have a number of dependents and children. Their involvements are mostly
focused on finding and keeping a job for financing their own family. They
are conscious but are unable to come into the scene exactly because of this
problem. (Asgari and Maleki 2000)
But an oil worker mentions that even “when somebody among the workers
is elected as workers’ representative, the managers of the contract firm as
the representative of the Oil Ministry put strong pressure on him through
various ways such as postponement in paying his wages or fringe benefits,
threatening him with changing his workplace, and dismissing him, so that
he is forced to either resign or stay quiet” (“Workers of Bandar Abbas Oil
Refinery” n.d.).
Moreover, a group of labour activists in Assaluyeh emphasize on a key
precondition for the continuous presence in the temporary contract labour
market: “No protesting worker can be employed by any contract firm. His
name would put on the blacklist. This is so because any worker who fin-
ishes his work in a firm should receive a recommendation letter, otherwise
he would not be recruited by other contract firms” (“Asaluyeh” n.d.).
Finally, to the question if there are any ties between workers who work
in different contract firms, another oil worker in Abadan Oil Refinery
Company replies with emphasis on the spatial consequences of restruc-
turing labour relations for the oil workplaces: “There is no such tie at
all since its objective conditions have been destroyed. One of these con-
ditions involved the permanent work contracts. Another condition was
that workers of different units visited each other on the daily basis in the
canteen of the Company during lunchtime and were so informed of the
situation of each other” He adds,
For example, about 500 workers gathered in the canteen at lunch and chat-
ted with each other. There is no longer such canteens in the Company.
Workers who work at the contract firms have no lunchroom. In addition,
the Abadan Refinery was compartmentalized, and every unit was enclosed
and fenced. When this happened, workers from different units can no longer
see each other at all. (Rahmani 2010: 64)
The main function of the economic project of restructuring labour rela-

tions was atomizing the labour forces (Maljoo 2014), while there has been
a political project in the post-revolutionary Iran whose function was to pre-
vent the atomized workers from getting out of their own isolated situation.
Weakening of the Collective Bargaining Power

of Workers
In addition to weakening the individual bargaining power of workers

by the four aforementioned state policies, there has been a set of legal
approaches that successfully prevent the formation of independent orga-
nized labour, thereby contributing to the diminishment of collective bar-
gaining power of workers.
According to the Clause 4 of Article 131 of the Labour Code, “The
workers of a unit may have only one of these three cases: an Islamic labour
council, a guild society, or a workers’ representative.” The Labour Code
does not officially recognize other possible labour bodies. According to
Article 15 of the “Law of Establishing Islamic Labour Councils” (ILC;
Qanun-e Tashkil-e Showraha-ye Eslami-ye Kar), ratified in 1985, only units
employing more than 35 permanent workers are allowed to establish an
ILC. Also, those units that already have an ILC are not allowed to establish
a Guild Society (GS; Anjoman-e Senfi-e Kargari). Finally, according to the
first article of the “Directive on Electing Workers’ Representative,” units
that have neither ILC nor GS are allowed to elect a workers’ representative.
Nevertheless, all authorized labour organizations suffer, legally speak-
ing, from five fundamental deficiencies, which in turn contribute to the
unmaking of the collective bargaining power of workers.
1. No Right of Organization for the Unemployed

The Labour Code officially recognizes the right of organization, at best,
only for the employed workers. According to official estimation, for exam-
ple, the unemployment rate was 13 per cent in 2006. The right to orga-
nize this large population is legally denied.
58 M. MALJOO
2. No Right of Organization for the Employed Workers

of the Large Public Firms
In spite of this, it cannot be said that the Labour Code and the bylaws
derived from it officially recognize the right of organization for all
employed workers. Those workers employed in large public firms
have been somehow deprived of right of organization. According to
the Clause in Article 15 of the “Law of Establishing Islamic Labour
Councils,” the formation of an ILC in such large public firms as sub-
sidiary and affiliated firms in the Oil Ministry, National Iranian Steel
Company, and National Iranian Copper Industries Company were
subject to the approval of the HLC (Showra-ye ‘Ali-ye Kar). The HLC
was set up at the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, whose func-
tion is to perform all the obligations assigned to it under the Labour
Code and other related laws and bylaws. But, until 1998, the HLC
never practically allowed any large public firm to establish an ILC. It
was only in 1998 that the HLC decided to remove such an obstacle for
establishment of ILCs in large public firms. Since then the establishing
of ILCs in these firms was legally allowed. But we should note that
this happened exactly when the number of permanent workers of large
public firms had already decreased substantially because of the suc-
cessful implementation of labour casualization project implemented
since the early 1990s, as a result of which the permanent labour force
became an absolute minority in a defensive situation facing Article
1 of the “Bylaw of Elections” in the “Law of Establishing Islamic
Labour Councils,” which allows only units with more than 35 per-
manent workers to establish an ILC. Clause 3 of this Article also adds
that “permanent employed workers are those who are employed in
one of the permanent occupations in the unit.” Moreover, although
establishing ILCs has been legally allowed since 1998, administratively
speaking, the attempts at establishing ILCs in large public firms have
always faced many administrative obstacles. These laws and procedures
mean that the right of organizing for workers of the large public firms
was officially recognized when paradoxically the numbers of perma-
nent workers had already decreased substantially in such a way as to
make it practically rather than legally impossible for workers to use
this right.
3. No Right of Organization for Workers Employed

in Small Workshops
By the same token, there is no clear way for workers employed in small work-
shops to organize themselves. More than 50 per cent of the total employed
workforces are employed in small workshops with less than ten workers.
None of three authorized options for using the right of organization are
legally accessible for workers of the small workshops. These workers are not
allowed to establish ILC because, as mentioned, Article 15 of the “Law of
Establishing Islamic Labour Councils” only allows workers in units with more
than 35 permanent workers to establish an ILC. Workers are not allowed to
establish their own guild society either, because according to the Article 2 of
the “Bylaw on the Manner of Formation, Scope of Functions, and Powers as
well as the Modes of Operation of the Guild Societies and their Centres, sub-
ject of the Article 131 of the Labour Code,” the required minimum number
of workers in small workshop for establishing GS is ten. Finally, workers are
implicitly not allowed to have their representatives because the “Bylaw of
Exemption of Small Workshops with less than 10 Individuals from some
Provisions of the Labour Code” weakens the individual bargaining power
of workers employed in small workshops so that they are practically unable
to attempt electing their own representative(s). Therefore, the Labour Code
and its subsidiary laws and bylaws legally or practically recognize no right for
workers employed in small workshops to organize themselves.
4. Dependency on Employers
Apart from the lack of right of organization for unemployed workers as well
as employed workers of large public firms or small workshops, even those
workers whose right of organization is officially recognized suffer from
being dependent on employers. The “Law of Establishing Islamic Labour
Councils” defines ILC as a council consisting of workers’ and employees’
representatives qualified by the General Assembly and the employer’s rep-
resentative. This is the case with both GS and workers’ representatives. As
one of the publications of the Labour and Social Security Institute (affili-
ated to the Ministry of Labour) correctly says, “None of the collective
labour bodies authorized by the Labour Code can be regarded as pure
labour organization because those not elected by the workers themselves
are likely to become a member of these bodies. And this is not consistent
with the definition of a labour organization” (Zahedi 2010: 28–29).
60 M. MALJOO
5. Dependency on the Government
The labour organizations recognized by the Labour Code are dependent on
the government too. ILCs are dependent on government because, accord-
ing to the note of the Article 2 of the “Law of Establishing Islamic Labour
Councils,” the candidates of ILCs should be qualified by a board con-
sisting of the Ministry of Labour’s representative, the relevant Ministry’s
representative, and the representative elected by the Board of Employees.
ILC elections should be held under the supervision of the Ministry of
Labour, according to the Article 3 of the Law. Also, GSs are dependent
on government because, according to the Article 19 of the “Bylaw on
the Manner of Formation, Scope of Functions and Powers as well as the
Modes of Operation of the Guild Societies and their other Centres, subject
of the Article 131 of the Labour Code,” the elections and activities of GSs
should be supervised by the Ministry of Labour. Finally, the workers’ rep-
resentatives are dependent on government because, according to Article
5 of the “Directive on Electing Workers’ Representative,” all candidates
for representative should be qualified by a Board of Control consisting,
among others, of the local representative of the Ministry of the Labour.
Legally speaking, these five characteristics have most strongly prevented
workers from establishing their own independent organizations, contrib-
uting in weakening their collective bargaining power since the late 1980s.
Conclusion
It is as if since the 1979 Revolution the Iranian workers have entered a
crucible of events, gradually emerging with decreasing bargaining power.
However, the workers diminished bargaining power is not a naturally
occurring phenomenon but as it is the result of a set of state policies.
Having swept the majority of pre-revolutionary-affiliated economic
elites away while creating some new revolutionary economic ones
instead, the newly established revolutionary regime, which was engaged
in a severe war, caused a retrenchment of capital and disruption in capi-
tal accumulation in the first decade of the Revolution. With the end of
the war—now that a newly ideologically tested economic elites had been
created in the first revolutionary decade—it was the right time for the now
well-established regime to reinvigorate capital accumulation with the help
of the newly established economic elite highly connected to the political
power centres. The weakening of the working-class’ bargaining power is
traceable within the economic and developmental paths adopted by the

post-revolutionary regime to provide the requisites for reinvigorating cap-
ital accumulation with the ruling economic elites as pioneers of capitalist
economic development.
Nevertheless, the restructuring of labour relations was one necessary
rather than sufficient condition for reinvigorating capital accumulation.
To achieve the goal, other requisites were required but scarcely met.
Firstly, owing to the prevailing of unproductive over productive capital, a
great deal of economic resources of the upper classes has been tended to
channelize into a wide variety of speculative economic activities. Secondly,
due to the prevailing of commercial capital over the domestic production,
domestic producers do not have sufficient effective demand for their prod-
ucts in the domestic markets substantially conquered by foreign producers
with the help of commercial capital as mediator. Last but not least, since
tendency towards accumulating capital within national frontiers tends to
be weaker than tendency towards flight of capital, the rate of reinvest-
ment has been too insufficient to make capitalist development functional
in the post-revolutionary Iran. Therefore, the failure in achieving these
three prerequisites has tended to strongly prevent reinvigorating capital
accumulation in the Iranian economy, hence causing a serious weakness in
the capitalist production.
Since the early 1990s, insofar as the living and working conditions of
the Iranian workers are concerned, the compromise made by the social
and political ruling classes for reinvigorating the capital accumulation in
the Iranian economy has remained politically rather than socially unchal-
lenged, with a thickening texture of economic corruption and Islamic fun-
damentalism. As if the social justice challenge has altogether dispersed,
even though the spectre of a social justice discourse revival is often con-
jured up. Between bourgeoisie and unproductive fractions of the ruling
political class, the unmade Iranian working class must now steer its course.
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CHAPTER 5
Charity or Mass Mobilization? Public

Religion and the Struggle for Economic
Justice
Siavash Saffari
In this chapter, I use the two categories of charity and mass mobilization
to examine the relationship between public religiosity and the struggle for
economic justice in contemporary Iran. A case is made that in the course
of the late 1970s revolutionary uprising the synthesis of public faith and
egalitarian ideals played an important role in mobilizing the economi-
cally disenfranchised masses, and this mobilization, in turn, compelled the
post-revolutionary state to take steps toward creating a more equitable soci-
ety. Since the late 1980s, however, the Islamic Republic has gradually moved
away from its early pro-poor commitments and toward economic liberal-
ization. This period has also witnessed a corresponding rise in charitable
The research for and writing of this paper was carried out during the author’s
tenure as a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada post-
doctoral fellow at Columbia University. The author wishes to thank Professors
Hamid Dabashi, Victoria Tahmasebi-Birgani, Peyman Vahabzadeh, and Carol
Dauda for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.
S. Saffari (*)
Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations, Seoul National University,
Seoul, Korea

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-44227-3_5
66 S. SAFFARI
a ctivities undertaken by religiously inspired groups. I end the chapter by

offering my analysis regarding the decline in religiously based mass mobili-
zation initiatives aimed at advancing the cause of economic justice. It is also
proposed that the dual factors of (a) the continuation of economic liberal-
ization policies under Hassan Rouhani’s presidency, and (b) the long-term
unsustainability of the charity approach for realizing economic justice, will
inevitably necessitate a revival of mass mobilization initiatives.
Faith and Justice in Comparative Frames

In his 1843 essay, “A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy
of Right,” Karl Marx famously described religion as “the opium of the
people,” positing that the true emancipation of humanity required, among
other conditions, “the abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of
the people” (Marx 1982: 131). Religious faith, for Marx, was part of the
superstructure at once reflecting and reinforcing the dominant economic
relations that formed the base of all reality. But perhaps he would have
held a somewhat different view had he known that nearly a century later
many from around the world, representing various religious traditions,
would seek to wield the power of faith in the service of emancipating
the disenfranchised classes by combining theological beliefs with mod-
ern socialist ideas. In Iran, this synthesis was abundantly present in the
intellectual discourses of Mohammad Nakhshab, Ali Shari‘ati, and Seyyed
Mahmood Taleqani, among others. It was also the main ideology of such
groups as the People’s Mojahedin (Mojahedin-e Khalq-e Iran). Still, in
Iran as well as elsewhere, pious individuals also engage in justice-focused
and antipoverty initiatives that are outside of socialist, or leftist, modes of
analysis and action. My objective here is to briefly examine some of the
approaches used by religiously oriented individual and groups for advanc-
ing the cause of economic justice.
By economic justice, I have in mind a condition under which all per-
sons are enabled, through some form of redistribution of wealth, to live life
in dignity, to exercise self-determination, and to engage in creative activity
beyond labor. Such a conception is consistent with C. B. Macpherson’s defi-
nition of the term as a standard that imposes “on economic relations some
ethical principle deduced from natural law (or divine law) or from a sup-
posed social nature of man [sic]” (Macpherson 1985: 3). It also corresponds
to the capability approach to justice, as articulated by Amartya Sen and
Martha Nussbaum, among others (Sen 1990; Nussbaum 1992). In light
CHARITY OR MASS MOBILIZATION? PUBLIC RELIGION AND THE STRUGGLE... 67
of this conception, it is possible to distinguish between at least two types

of religiously inspired collective action aimed at attaining economic justice:
charitable activity, and mass mobilization.1 In the charity approach, religious
entities (REs) and faith-based organizations or initiatives (FBO/Is) set out
to provide services to the poor in the areas of health care, education, hous-
ing, sanitation, and so on. Their services function to either complement or
substitute public, state-provided, services. In the mobilizational approach,
religiously oriented groups and activists work to mobilize the poor (or other
sectors of the population on behalf of the poor) in order to move forward,
often by means of applying pressure on the state, an egalitarian agenda of
economic restructuring and legal reform.
As distinct approaches to attaining economic justice, charity and mobi-
lization offer both capacities and limitations. The indisputable advantage
of charity is the capacity to address the immediate needs of those affected
by homelessness, hunger, disease, and a variety of human and natural disas-
ters. Take, for instance, a 2006 study by the World Health Organization
(WHO) indicating that in various sub-Saharan African countries FBO/
Is were responsible for providing 30–70 % of all health services (ARHAP
2006: 20). Other examples can be recalled. In the months following
Haiti’s catastrophic 2010 earthquake, in addition to raising $192 million
in donations, Catholic Relief Services maintained 600 volunteers in the
country offering a range of services, from HIV/AIDS work to emergency
food and shelters (Grossman 2011). In Gaza, to take yet another example,
where nearly 80 % of the 1.8 million inhabitants depend on food assis-
tance, Islamic Relief provided direct food assistance to more than 100,000
families during the Israeli invasion of 2008 (Islamic Relief 2010: 6).
There are, despite these examples of benevolence, a number of prob-
lems associated with the charity approach. To evoke the oft-repeated criti-
cism, charities are not in the business of challenging the structural causes
of poverty. Moreover, it is not an insignificant fact that many charities are
themselves products of the neoliberal age. The worldwide proliferation of
charitable nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) since the early 1990s
is directly related to the implementation of a series of structural adjust-
ment programs, promoted throughout the global South by the World
Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which have severely under-
mined the ability of national and local states to deliver public services, and
to reduce the levels of poverty and inequality (Clarke 2006: 837). Thus,
today even the World Bank acknowledges that the increased NGOization
of development has contributed to the withdrawal of states from this vital
68 S. SAFFARI
sector (World Bank 2004: 17). A charge is also made by critics that in
most areas NGOs have been poor substitutes to states and ineffective in
delivering services to the needy (Salehi Esfahani 2005: 498). What’s more,
there currently exist few mechanisms for making NGOs accountable and
democratically representative. The condition imposes further restrictions
on the agency of the economically marginalized groups who are at the
receiving end of charity services (Arena 2011: 170).
Mobilizational Approach in Shi‘i Liberation

Theology and Leftist Islamism
Near the middle of the twentieth century, Iran witnessed the rise of a reli-
gious-political current which may be identified as Shi‘i liberation theology.
Aside from its adherence to a monotheistic-Islamic frame of reference, the
twin doctrinal pillars of this current, and what links it to other liberation
theologies (i.e. Catholic liberation theology in Latin America, black libera-
tion theology in the USA), are humanism and egalitarianism. These features
also determine the nature of the relationship between Shi‘i liberation theol-
ogy and two other (nontraditionalist) religious-political currents in modern
Iran: Islamism, and Islamic liberalism. Shi‘i liberation theology’s human-
ist position distinguishes it from Islamism’s opposition to human sover-
eignty, even though its egalitarian ideas are mirrored by some Left-leaning
Islamists. On the other hand, whereas Shi‘i liberation theology’s egalitarian
views are at odds with the pro-market orientation of Muslim liberals, the
two groups often find themselves in a pro-democracy political alliance.
Mohammad Nakhshab (1923–1976) must be credited as a pioneer of
this radical current. In a real sense, his particular brand of thought was nei-
ther explicitly Shi‘i nor strictly Islamic, but rather broadly monotheistic.
He was, nevertheless, among the first Iranian thinkers to bring together
modern European socialism with an Islamic worldview. Islam, according
to his narrative, was at its origin “a socialist religion that brought peace
and social justice, transformed the dominant class structure, and created a
classless society in which the most powerful and least powerful individu-
als lived under similar material conditions” (Nakhshab 2001: 20). In an
essay titled “The Material Man,” he went after those who appealed to
the jurisprudential principle of taslit (ownership) in order to justify their
opposition to redistribution of wealth. Invoking another jurisprudential
principle, zarar (harm), he argued that in Islam private ownership was
protected only (a) “when gained justly and through the application of
one’s own labor,” and (b) “to the extent that its accumulation did not
harm or disadvantage others” (Nakhshab 2001: 20). Elsewhere, citing a
call on the faithful by the first Shi‘i Imam, Ali ibn Abi Talib, to “always
fight against the oppressors and on behalf of the oppressed” (Nakhshab
2001: 113), he condemned the political quietism of Muslim traditional-
ists and called for mass mobilization led by a revolutionary vanguard party
(Nakhshab 2001: 115–129).
If Nakhshab laid out the foundation, it was Ali Shari‘ati (1933–1977)
who skillfully articulated an indigenous ideology of revolutionary mobili-
zation in his radical rereading of Islam and Shi‘ism. According to Shariati,
although Islam initially emerged as a social revolt with the promise of
tawhid (unity) and the elimination of class and other forms of social
stratification, its institutionalization soon led to the rise of a reactionary
and oppressive current (Shari‘ati 1977). The deviation from the original
path first became evident during the Third Caliph Uthman’s rule, and
though Islam regained its revolutionary spirit during Imam Ali’s reign
as the Fourth Caliph, the corruption continued with the founding of the
Umayyad caliphate. Shi‘ism in this context became the leading voice of
opposition to materialism, excess, class-based privileges, and the wor-
ship of money (Shari‘ati 1977). However, with the advent of the Safavid
dynasty in 1501, Shi‘ism too produced its own religion of domination,
and “Shi‘i jurisprudence assumed a position of rewarded obedience by
the side of the Sultan’s throne” (Shari‘ati 1977). In Class Orientation in
Islam, Shari‘ati provocatively declared that “the entirety of what is called
Islamic economics is actually petite bourgeoisie economics …, all to do
with rent, lease, and sale. This religion belongs only to the middle class
and addresses the economic concerns of this class … Islam must be eman-
cipated from such relations” (Shari‘ati 1977).
Like Nakhshab, Shari‘ati rejected the use of the principle of taslit
to defend the interests of capital. Recalling the dual voices of religion,
he argued that reclaimed by a progressive jurist taslit could become “a
weapon in the hands of slaves, peasants, and workers, requiring that the
added value that is produced by the worker but appropriated and turned
into private profit by the capitalist class must be returned to the worker
and the peasant” (Shari‘ati 1977). The zarar principle too, he held,
could be used to stipulate a total prohibition of any economic activity
that causes harm by means of exploiting others (Shari‘ati 1977). To refer
to the poor masses, Shari‘ati often used the Quranic term of mostaz‘afin
(downtrodden). Citing a verse from Sura al-Qasas (28: 5), in which God
70 S. SAFFARI
promises his favors to the mostaz‘afin, he proclaimed that the historical

conflict between oppressor and oppressed will come to an inevitable end
with the triumph of the mostaz‘afin, the total collapse of all systems of
oppression, and the formation of a classless society (Shari‘ati 1969).
Whereas Nakhshab and Shari‘ati were lay religious intellectuals, Seyyed
Mahmood Taleqani (1911–1979), another leading figure of Shi‘i libera-
tion theology, was a senior cleric, an Ayatollah within the Shi‘i ecclesiastical
hierarchy. Taleqani’s concern for the poor and his open sympathy toward
socialism had earned him the nickname the “red Ayatollah” (Jabbari
1983: xiii). He had once stated that although he disagreed with their
“belief in the prominence of matter,” he held “common views with the
Marxists in so far as we too reject colonialism and oppression, and defend
freedom” (qtd. in Jabbari 1983: xiii). In Islam and Ownership, Taleqani
argued that Islam imposed restrictions on private ownership in the interest
of advancing “public welfare”; otherwise, he wrote, “property ownership
leads to concentration of wealth, exploitation, and rise of class difference”
(Taleqani 1983: 71). The formation of classes in Muslim societies was not
a product of Islamic economics, but rather of “the deviation of individu-
als and society from the principles of truth [and] justice” (Taleqani 1983:
148). By invoking the notion of “deviation,” Taleqani made the same
distinction that Nakhshab and Shari‘ati did between two contesting cur-
rents within Islam: one represented by Ali and his “revolution against the
feudals and oppressive landlords,” and another by Uthman and a sequence
of corrupt caliphates (Taleqani 1983: 97). He called on the Shi‘i ulama
to return to the Quranic principle of qest (justice) and to rid Shi‘i jurispru-
dence of capitalist permeation (Taleqani 1983: 147).
Shi‘i liberation theology’s religiously mediated political radicalism and
economic egalitarianism attracted many among the ranks of the urban
poor in the years leading to the 1979 revolution. Among the major
political organizations of this period, the militant People’s Mojahedin
had adopted an ideology based primarily on the teachings of Shi‘i libera-
tion theology. Two of the original three founding members, Mohammad
Hanifnezhad and Said Mohsen, came under Taleqani’s influence while in
prison in the early 1960s, and when the initial nucleus of the group was
formed in September 1965, Shari‘ati’s and Taleqani’s works were among
the first texts to be studied and discussed (Abrahamian 1989: 88). There
were, in addition to the Mojahedin, a number of other groups formed in
the late 1970s that adopted a pro-poor, often socialistic, Islamic discourse.
Ali Shari‘atis followers established the Aspirations of the Oppressed
(Arman-e Mostaz‘afin), the Revolutionary Monotheists (Movaheddin-e

Enqelabi), and the Council of Muslim Socialists (Showra-ye Mosalmanan-e
Sosiyalist). Mohammad Nakhshabs allies were gathered primarily in two
organizations: the Revolutionary Movement of the Muslim People of
Iran (Jonbesh-e Enqelabi-ye Mardom-e Mosalman-e Iran; JAMA) under the
leadership of Kazem Sami, and the Movement of Combatant Muslims
(Jonbesh-e Mosalmanan-e Mobarez) under the leadership of Habibollah
Peyman. Both groups were offshoots of the remnants of the Movement of
God-Worshiping Socialists (Nehzat-e Khodaparastan-e Sosiyalist), which
Nakhshab had cofounded in 1945.
Though it played a vital role in mobilizing the masses, Shi‘i liberation
theology was not the sole religious-political current in prerevolutionary
Iran to adopt a discourse of economic justice. Islamist forces under the
leadership of Ruhollah Khomeini also espoused a pro-poor position in the
course of the revolution. However, if concern for the poor was a basic tenet
of Shi‘i liberation theology since its initial surfacing in the mid-1940s, eco-
nomic justice issues were late, arguably strategic, additions to Khomeinis
discourse. As Ervand Abrahamian notes, it was only in the late 1970s that
Khomeini adopted a pro-poor rhetoric, declaring that the goal of Islam
was to liberate the mostazain “from the clutches of the rich” (Abrahamian
2008: 148). Asef Bayat too argues that by successfully appropriating the
Lefts discourse of social and economic justice, Khomeini and Islamists
were able to mobilize the urban poor in the critical revolutionary period
of 1979 and 1980, and in doing this they managed to create an important
social base for their power (Bayat 1997: 43). The most prominent Islamist
figure at the time to articulate a pro-poor position was Seyyed Mohammad
Beheshti (1929–1981). Discussing the principles of Islamic justice in a
sermon, he once pledged that in a society organized on the basis of such
principles “stomachs are full and no one sleeps hungry; the sick receive
medical care and no one is left without a doctor and proper medication;
everyone has shelter and a place to stay, and there are no homeless people”
(Beheshti n.d.). Beheshtis economics ideas, one economist observes, were
much closer to the positions of Taleqani and the Mojahedin than to those
of the high clergy and the merchants of the bazaar (Valibeigi 1993: 810).
Consistent with the Islamists newly adopted pro-poor discourse, in
the early years following the revolution the Islamic Republic introduced a
number of measures aimed at actualizing the promise of economic justice
as well as boosting its own political legitimacy among the lower classes.
These measures included an extensive antipoverty program bringing
72 S. SAFFARI
e lectricity, safe drinking water, health services, and schools to millions of

poor households in urban and rural areas, as well as a generous system of
subsidies for basic goods (Salehi Esfahani 2005: 499). The implementa-
tion and continuation of such poverty-reducing policies was made possi-
ble, to no small degree, by a rentier economic structure inherited from the
previous regime (Badiei and Bina 2002: 15; Alizadeh 2014: 79). Another
important pro-poor measure taken by the new state was the creation of a
number of autonomous public foundations (bonyads) to facilitate public
service delivery and redistribution of income to the poor (Salehi Esfahani
2005: 499; Alizadeh 2014: 80). In the immediate postrevolutionary con-
text, some of these newly founded bonyads were also actively coordinating
mobilization efforts by the poor and working classes. As Bayat reports,
such organizations as the Office of Housing for the Downtrodden
(Daftar-e Khanesazi Baray-e Mostaz‘afin), founded by Hassan Karroubi,
had a key role in promoting, facilitating, and consolidating the takeover of
abandoned homes and unused properties by the poor (Bayat 1997: 63).
Considering the combined effect of these measures, economist Djavad
Salehi-Isfahani observes that the 1979 revolution “has been as a whole a
very successful anti-poverty endeavor,” substantially reducing Pahlavi era
poverty rates (Salehi-Isfahani 2009: 7).
Neoliberal Shift and Proliferation of Charitable

Initiatives
During the first decade after the revolution, in addition to implementing a
number of economic justice programs, the Islamic Republic also advanced
a violent and systematic suppression of its Leftist (religious and secular)
opponents. Then, in the late 1980s, the Islamist state began a gradual
shift away from its early egalitarian commitments and toward economic
liberalization. This shift has been documented in a number of economic
studies. Thus, nearly two decades after the revolution, Sohrab Behdad
identified three distinct phases in the evolution of postrevolutionary eco-
nomic policies: revolutionary disruption (1978–1981), Islamic populism
(1981–1989), and liberalism (post 1989) (Behdad 2000: 100). What cap-
tured, for Behdad, the essence of the first phase was “takeovers and confis-
cations” of land and property, in some instances by newly formed workers
councils and in other cases by the Provisional Revolutionary Government
or the Revolutionary Islamic Courts (Behdad 2000: 101).
Behdad’s second proposed phase, Islamic populism, corresponded

roughly to the eight-year period of the Iran–Iraq war. In this period the
“populist-statist” faction of the Islamic Republic, concentrated in the
Majles and in Mir-Hossein Mousavi’s administration held the upper hand
over the promoters of laissez-faire economics who were concentrated
in the Council of Guardians (Behdad 2000: 104). Mousavi’s “Islamist
Left” government, according to Peyman Jafari, was generally success-
ful in protecting “the lower classes against the effects of economic crisis
and the war,” and increasing “the relative share of income going to poor
and middle income households” (Jafari 2009). The third phase began
when, under the administration of Ali-Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, Iran
embarked on an economic liberalization agenda “with its three essential
components: (i) exchange rate unification and floating the currency, the
rial; (ii) decontrolling prices and eliminating subsidies; and (iii) privatiza-
tion of the state owned enterprises” (Behdad 2000: 115). According to
Assadzadeh and Paul, by the mid-1990s “freeing the prices of consumer
goods and phasing out the system of rationing” had already led to “a rise
in income inequality” (Assadzadeh and Paul 2004: 645).
Mohammad Khatami, too, despite making several references to social
and economic justice issues early in his presidency (Amuzegar 1999: 539),
pursued for the most part the economic liberalization agenda of his pre-
decessor. Near the end of his first term as president, Behdad assessed that
although Khatami had initially “quietly discontinued” various aspects of
Hashemi-Rafsanjani’s economic liberalization policy, the “internal contra-
dictions” of his coalition ultimately resulted in his administrations “zigzag-
ging toward liberalization” (Behdad 2001). The contradiction to which
Behdad points was the result of a tension between Right-leaning and Left-
leaning forces within the alliance that brought Khatami to power. Following
the June 2005 presidential elections, it was argued by some, including by
leftist economist Mohammad Maljoo, that popular dissatisfaction with the
neoliberal policies of Hashemi-Rafsanjani and Khatami was responsible for
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s unexpected win (Maljoo 2006). The accuracy of
this claim, however, is questioned by Salehi-Isfahani whose statistical analy-
sis reveals that while inequality rates generally stagnated throughout the lib-
eralization phase, poverty rates in fact declined (Salehi-Isfahani 2009: 24).
Salehi-Isfahanis conclusions are consistent with Parvin Alizadeh’s observa-
tions about the relative success of “poverty reduction” strategies imple-
mented during Khatami’s reformist era (Alizadeh 2014: 76).
74 S. SAFFARI
Notwithstanding the reasons for his electoral victories, and despite

r unning a populist campaign in which he positioned himself as a defender
of the poor and the working class, Ahmadinejad continued the imple-
mentation of the economic liberalization program. Mere months after
his appointment, then labor minister, Mohammad Jahromi, submitted to
the Majles the draft of proposed amendments to Iran’s 1990 Labor Law.
The amendments, according to Maljoo, sought to weaken the mobili-
zational power of workers by “giving employers the right of expedited
dismissal while not recognizing workers right to establish their own inde-
pendent trade unions” (Maljoo 2007: 10). Two years later, in 2008, the
government submitted to the Majles yet another major economic pro-
posal, this to reform the country’s subsidy system. The proposal was sub-
sequently approved and became law in 2010, cutting subsidies on many
staples, including fuel, food, and electricity. While advancing this neolib-
eral agenda, Ahmadinejad also introduced a number of ad hoc initiatives
to transfer wealth to the lower classes. One such mechanism was Justice
Shares (Saham-e Edalat), by which the government distributed at highly
discounted prices 40 % of the shares of privatized public assets among
low-income households (Habibi 2013: 3). Similarly, just as subsidy cuts
on basic goods were introduced the government also began offering cash
subsidies in the form of monthly payments (Habibi 2013: 4).
Alongside economic liberalization, a parallel development in Iran since
at least the 1990s, is the increased NGOization of social services. A number
of studies point to this important shift. A United Nations Development
Programme paper published in 2000 reported that the Iranian govern-
ment had “adopted a more positive attitude toward the idea of involving
local NGOs as partners in development” (Namazi 2000: 38). Nearly a
decade later, a study by Ali Akbar Bromideh showed that most of the
country’s estimated 7000 active NGOs had “blossomed in the past few
years,” and projected an exponential growth in the nongovernmental sec-
tor (Bromideh 2011: 198). Bromideh’s research also indicated that most
of the recipients of the services provided by these NGOs were women,
children, and the poor (Bromideh 2011: 199). According to economist
Hadi Salehi Esfahani the push for the NGOization of social services has
been championed by the reformist members of Iran’s elite who have come
to view the state and autonomous public foundations as impediments to
the development of civil society and the private sector (Salehi Esfahani
2005: 499). In the face of this push for further economic liberalization
and the gradual removal by the state of protections offered to the poor
and the working class, the representatives of Shi‘i liberation theology have
generally failed to engage effectively in mobilizational initiatives with an

economic justice focus. Instead, we have seen in recent years the increased
appeal of the charity approach among religious citizens and FBO/Is.
A 2008 study estimated that nearly 75 % of all Iranian NGOs in the
area of social services are set up by religious individuals and organizations
(Bagheri et al. 2008: 87). The estimation appears inflated when compared
to statistics from other countries; for example, 20 % in Egypt, or 18 % in
the USA (Clarke 2006: 841). Still, the overall increase in the number of
charitable FBO/Is in Iran since the early 1990s corresponds to a broader
regional pattern, during the same decade, of the proliferation of similar
FBO/Is across the Middle East, which is, in Clarkes analysis, “a result of
political reform and economic liberalization” (Clarke 2006: 842). Many
religiously oriented charities that provide services to the poor were formed
after the Islamic Republics neoliberal shift. The Imam Ali Popular Students
Relief Society (Jam‘iyyat-e Emdad-e Daneshju’i-Mardomi-ye Emam Ali) is
one such example. Founded in 1999 as an independent student group in
Tehran’s Sharif University of Technology, the organization currently has a
countrywide volunteer base of over 5000 (mostly university students). Their
activities include providing food, shelter, medical and social services to vari-
ous groups of vulnerable youth (child workers, homeless children, out of
school youth, young criminal offenders), women (homeless women, poor
single mothers, women forced into sex trade), and other groups affected by
poverty. Their organizational motto is a teaching by the first Shi‘i Imam that,
all persons bare responsibility toward their society (“IAPSRS Catalogue” n.d.).
A Return to Mass Mobilization?

A thorough investigation of the reasons for the decline of Shi‘i liberation
theology and its mass mobilization approach in postrevolutionary Iran
must take into account a wide spectrum of factors at the local, regional,
and global levels. Although some scholars look for its continued legacy in
a number of recent social movements (Martin 2003: 82), Latin America’s
Catholic liberation theology too, which had emerged as a powerful pro-
poor voice in the 1960s and 1970s, experienced, by most accounts, a
notable decline in the late 1980s (Issa 2007: 127). Similarly, the implo-
sion in the same period, of the number of charitable FBO/Is offering ser-
vices to the poor is, as mentioned previously, by no means a phenomenon
exclusive to Iran. Having acknowledged some of these broader patterns,
however, I wish to set aside a discussion of regional and global factors
for perhaps a future occasion, and instead simply offer my thoughts here
about some of the local, internal, explanations of this decline.
76 S. SAFFARI
One apparent factor is the severe impact of the violent suppression,

including mass executions, of the (non-Islamist) religious and secular
Left throughout the 1980s, and the persistence of a condition of political
authoritarianism. In addition, there has been the Islamic Republic’s relative
success in reducing poverty and maintaining a critical degree of legitimacy
among the lower classes. The continuity of this success during a period of
over three decades is owed to the combined effect of the rentier nature of
the Iranian state, the state’s antipoverty programs, the role of bonyads and
ad hoc wealth redistribution mechanisms, and the state’s use of an expan-
sive military and paramilitary apparatus (i.e. the Revolutionary Guards
and the Basiji Militias) to offer a range of economic, social, and political
opportunities to the lower classes (Golkar 2015). This relative success,
along with an effective appropriation of the pro-mostaz‘afin discourse of
Shi‘i liberation theology, has on the one hand allowed the Islamist state,
despite its neoliberal turn, to claim a position as the defender of the poor,
while eroding on the other hand the ability of the religious and secular
Left to launch economic justice–focused mass mobilization initiatives.
Furthermore, unlike the prerevolutionary context, Shi‘i liberation the-
ology is today faced with a theocratic state that draws its legitimacy, in large
part, by appealing to religion. While appealing to the power of public faith
provided important opportunities for mass mobilization in the course of
confrontations with a secular monarchy, the strategy may not be as effective
for challenging a religious state. Still another factor to take into account
is that faced with an authoritarian religious state, many Iranian religious
reformers have focused their efforts on advancing a liberal–democratic dis-
course of sociopolitical development and promoting the values of human
rights, democracy, and political pluralism. Although the champions of this
discursive shift are, for the most part, Muslim liberals including Abdolkarim
Soroush, Mostafa Malekian, and Mohammad Mojtahed Shabestari, many
followers of Shi‘i liberation theology too, including the Left-leaning fac-
tion of the Council of Nationalist-Religious Activists (Showra-ye Fa‘alan-e
Melli Mazhabi), seem to have prioritized sociopolitical issues over socio-
economic concerns.
If the decline of Shi‘i liberation theology as a pro-poor voice is indeed
due to some combination of the factors noted above, then it is not difficult
within the current context to imagine the reemergence of objective con-
ditions in which mass mobilization initiatives for demanding economic
justice can be launched. Under Rouhani’s presidency, the Islamist state
continues apace with the policy of economic liberalization. Still, the c learest
anifestation of Iran’s neoliberal turn is to be found neither in poverty nor

m
in inequality rates, which according to Salehi-Isfahani’s analysis have either
declined or stagnated over the past three decades, but rather in a sharp
increase in workforce insecurity and the loss of protective measures for
workers. In 2013, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC)
reported “70–80 per cent of Iranian workers are working on temporary
contracts without any job security” (ITUC 2013: 69). Two years later, in
December 2015, Ali Beigi, chairperson of the High Coordinating Centre
for Islamic Labour Councils informed reporters that no less than 93 % of
workers were employed on the basis of temporary contracts (“Over 93%
of Workers on Temporary Contracts” 2015).
The continuation of Iran’s neoliberal turn is bound, on the one hand,
to alter the relationship between the Islamic Republic and the poor and
working classes, and on the other hand, to test the limitations of the char-
ity approach for advancing economic justice. The gradual deterioration of
workers’ rights and protections has been met, since at least the late 1990s,
by a continued wave of workers’ protests, most notably those organized
by schoolteachers and bus drivers. The possible persistence and growth
of such collective actions for social and economic justice will also provide
an opportunity for Shi‘i liberation theology to reclaim its radical past and
utilize its mobilizational capacities in the service of supporting emancipa-
tory struggles waged by economically vulnerable groups. To seize such an
opportunity, however, would require, among other factors, reviving the
egalitarian discourses of the original articulators of Shi‘i liberation theol-
ogy, while at the same time abandoning a view of religious identity as the
singular motivator of radical sociopolitical engagement, embracing diver-
sity and alterity, and forging solidarity with ongoing workers’ mobiliza-
tions against austerity and neoliberalism.
Note
1. The two approaches, charity and mass mobilization, are not necessarily
mutually exclusive, and it is not uncommon for REs and FBO/Is to simul-
taneously pursue both. Consider, for example, the case of Hezbollah in
Lebanon. As a political party it enjoys a tremendous mobilizational capacity,
as well as the capacity to affect decision making at the state level. As a FBO,
however, Hezbollah has since its foundation in the mid-1980s provided
hundreds of thousands of people in Lebanon’s Shi‘i areas with charitable
education, health, and welfare services.
78 S. SAFFARI
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CHAPTER 6
Iran’s Cooperative Movement: Agony

of Development
Kaveh Sarmast
Social justice is a complex, multidisciplinary subject, deeply rooted in the

social, economic, historical, and cultural circumstances of any society.
Social justice can be observed through the angle of various topics, among
which perhaps we may find such significant areas as class interests, global
geographical location, the principal social contradictions of the era, the
degree of socioeconomic development, economic and political relations,
harmony with the outside world, and so on. Dealing with such a vast area
of related domains of study requires a lifetime. This chapter, therefore,
takes the task of shedding light on one specific aspect of Iran’s present
socioeconomic development, namely the condition of the cooperative
movement and its influence in providing just social and economic relations
in contemporary Iran. Cooperative movement represents a socioeconomic
order instituted by groups of people for the purpose of addressing their
needs. The cooperatives constitute inherently democratic and egalitarian
economic and social relations. Therefore, they stand in contrast with the
capitalist mode of economic and social order whose main component is
capital and its accumulation. The social relations arising from capitalist
economic order would inevitably generate separation of interests between,
K. Sarmast (*)
Former lecturer of cooperative courses at the Allamae Tabatbaei University,
Social Sciences Faculty, Tehran, Iran

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-44227-3_6
82 K. SARMAST
on the one hand, those who have financial power and take advantage of
their investment to participate in the economy with the goal of increasing
their wealth, and on the other hand, those who lack sufficient financial
resources to become investors and therefore have no way of participat-
ing in the economy other than as working people. This brings about the
discrimination between large groups of people or classes. Contrary to
profit-driven capitalist economy, it is the cooperative economy that carries
social justice forward. This chapter offers a brief outline of the principles
of cooperative economy, and then it presents a quick review of the coop-
erative movement in Iran and its specific path of development, before,
finally, discussing the present situation and offering an assessment of the
cooperatives in Iran.
Cooperatives: Socioeconomic Organizations

for a New Era
Iranian cooperative movement has had some unique paths of development

while sharing some common elements with those of most of the develop-
ing countries. To understand these elements, we should first have a proper
understanding of what constitutes cooperatives. Although cooperatives
are present in all countries and play a significant role in the economic and
social life of the people, they may still not have been properly understood.
Sometimes, this lack of knowledge can even be seen among social sciences
experts, including economists and sociologists.
What Are Cooperatives? What Is Cooperative Economy?

After several years of teaching cooperative theory, I have noticed that to
use the principle of reductio ad absurdum can be a very effective technique
to describe cooperative theory, because usually, the immediate feeling is
more understandable than pure theoretical phraseology. We therefore
begin by analogizing cooperative economy with the present socioeco-
nomic order (private enterprise), which is understandable for most.
Cooperatives are different from private enterprises. A private business
is, obviously, based on ownership: any business has an owner or owners,
or put simply, a business is privately owned. Generally, taking “ownership”
as a noneconomic term, we can arrive at two kinds of conceptions: own-
ership as a legal phenomenon and ownership in the psychological sense.
IRAN’S COOPERATIVE MOVEMENT: AGONY OF DEVELOPMENT 83
Legal ownership can be called proprietorship, whereas its psychological

aspect produces a “sense of belonging.” Proprietorship represents capital-
ist ownership: having assets that can turn materials to commodities that
are exchangeable into money in the market. One can sell the ownership,
expand it, give it to others, or leave the business dormant. Generally, the
owner in this sense has the full power and control over what he or she
owns. In business circles, a logical behavioral expectation is to invest your
ownership for producing commodities and to turn it into money with
profits. This is a never-ending process. The entire process aims at gaining
and maximizing profit. Therefore, profit is an income out of investment.
Since the aforementioned process goes through repetitive cycles, profit
tends to increase and accumulate.
Nonbusiness ownership, however, is by nature different from commod-
ity–money relations within the market framework. It involves a sense of
belonging defined in psychological and sociological terms, in the way that
a country or a city belongs to its citizens, just as a school belongs to the
students. I say “my country,” “my city,” or “my school,” but I do not have
the right of proprietorship and have no power to sell my country or school.
Such “ownership” produces no commodity or profit, and the concept of
ownership is not grounded in market value. As a result, when referred to
cooperative members as owners, this sense of ownership is evoked.
The second characteristic that makes cooperatives different from private
businesses is profit. This is quite a well-known fact about cooperatives.
Nevertheless, that there are no profit-making incentives behind coopera-
tives that strike us as remarkable. Cooperatives are social organizations
because they respond to the needs of the deprived sectors of the popula-
tion, those without proprietorship kinds of ownership. Therefore, coopera-
tives primarily build a living and active body of social movement. The history
of the cooperative movement around the world has shown that coopera-
tives have emerged as a powerful social current under certain socioeco-
nomic circumstances, and they survive and grow as long as the existing
socioeconomic circumstances that gave rise to them continue to exist. To
enumerate such circumstances in the mid-eighteenth century England
that gave rise to the cooperative movement is unnecessary here. However,
as a quick reminder, we should mention the social and economic needs
and demands of the English working class. A cooperative is not merely
a social organization but also an economic one. The economic aspect of
cooperative societies does not suggest that they are businesses. They are
built and advanced to respond to the needs of the working class primarily
84 K. SARMAST
for subsistence and then for their growing life needs. Cooperatives literally
do not “invest” because their primary objective is not to earn profit; they
want to have jobs, or in proper phraseology, to earn wages. The wage they
earn is an income based on labor, and therefore cooperatives cannot be
considered businesses.
The third aspect that makes cooperatives different from private busi-
nesses is that they do not compete with each other. No business can ever
be imagined without competition, but cooperatives can. Cooperatives are
inclined to establish constructive, complementary, and progressive social
and economic solidarity. Even those cooperative scholars who believe that
cooperatives are a constituent part of capitalist socioeconomic order since
cooperatives should engage in markets and therefore are businesses still
believe that cooperatives are people’s business (Birchall 1994). Consider
the masses of the underprivileged (especially the working people) that
globally comprise of billions of people. Imagine how large and effec-
tive it might be when they establish their own cooperative economy.
Cooperatives are not meant to be a part of market economy; on the con-
trary, in a cooperative society the market becomes a part of cooperative
economy and is subsumed under its governing rules. For cooperatives,
markets are reduced to exchanges of commodities but not the primary
regulators of every single aspect of life. Cooperative economy is therefore
qualitatively different from neoclassical and neoliberal capitalism.
Cooperatives are mission-based organizations. This is the fourth reason
for not calling the cooperatives private businesses. Unlike privately owned
enterprises, the cooperatives’ ultimate objective is not the maximization
of profits but fulfilling their organizational mission. It has become an
established procedure for private corporations to use techniques of clas-
sic strategic management where they set a mission for their businesses to
maximize profits. Prominent corporate strategic scholars have explicitly
declared this fact and have even recommended that the highest corporate
mission is “wealth creation” (Hamel 2002: 192, 225–226, 286, 288),
which is another expression for maximization of profits. In contrast, the
mission of all cooperative organizations is to satisfy the needs of their mem-
bers and community in a single or multiple defined areas. They may grow
and develop new needs, diversify or abandon old needs, but as long as
they remain operational they address certain needs. In this way, they help
develop real but new forms of natural economy, an economy where all the
people are engaged in production of their ever growing needs. There are
no major social conflicts of interests in cooperative economy. Such mission,
therefore, distinguishes cooperative economy from private enterprise.
Modern Features of Cooperative Economy

Now, in the context of this chapter, the main question is how cooperatives
meet the social justice elements in a modern society? To answer the question
of how and why cooperatives lead to a modern and socially just economy,
the following remarks should be helpful. (a) Cooperatives are democratic
in essence. Unlike the capitalist company where decisions are made by the
capital owners, cooperatives are democratically managed and planned by
membership and employees. (b) Cooperatives can take limitless forms, as
they are capable of providing all the needs of society. Cooperatives can be set
up in rural and urban areas, or within manufacturing and service industries.
(c) In contrast to private business, which produces the needs of soci-
ety through profits, cooperatives directly respond to these needs. (d)
Cooperatives underlie sustainable and dignified employment, an employ-
ment that secures livelihood and is consistent with the individuals’ identity.
(e) In cooperative economy, wage competition does not exist, because it
does not focus on extraction of surplus value out of labor force. The wages
in cooperatives are fair. (f) Cooperatives have a significant, serious, and literal
share in the socioeconomic development of both developed and developing
countries. (g) Private investment in cooperative economy is meaningless,
because they are not seeking profit. No capitalist venture is interested in
investing on cooperatives. (h) The cooperatives are the messengers of equal-
ity and social justice for the essential reason that their functional processes are
free of those specifications that lead to antithetical social classes and groups.
(i) Cooperative economy aims at reducing or eliminating poverty. Fair dis-
tribution of resources and incomes in cooperative socioeconomic relations
constitutes one of its most important principles. (j) Cooperative economy
is based on education, and not just education of cooperative theory and
principles; general education also occupies a prominent place in a coop-
erative economy. (k) Cooperative economy aims at facilitating accessibility
to affordable and qualitative healthcare. (l) Cooperative economy guaran-
tees gender equality. (m) Cooperative economy strives for the reduction of
gap between wealthiest and poorest social strata. (n) A specific section in
cooperative economy is dedicated to securing cultural needs and therefore
leads to the escalation of cultural and artistic life. (o) Cooperative economy
is the messenger of peace and alleviation of tension among social groups.
“They [cooperatives] contribute or can contribute to the peace process,
consciously and unconsciously, in their own different ways” (McPherson
2013: 6). International Cooperative Alliance website is a great source for
firsthand information about cooperative values and principles, facts, figures,
and successful stories (http://ica.coop/).
86 K. SARMAST
History of Iranian Cooperative Movement

Now let us attend to Iran’s cooperative movement. General sense of
cooperation, particularly in agriculture, has always been present in Iranian
history. However, it is obvious that the historical–cultural sense of coop-
eration work is not the same as today’s modern cooperative organiza-
tions. The spirit of cooperation in Iran arises from a long-lasting record
of understanding and practice. It is not surprising that cooperation and
mutual help have been historically institutionalized: Iranians have been
constantly challenged by very harsh environmental, economic, and politi-
cal conditions. Poverty, lack of security, the threats of governments, con-
stant danger of foreign invasion, natural malice, lack of adequate water
resources, and many other factors have made the Iranian rural popula-
tion tend to establish joint efforts. This has not been specific to Iran;
the ancient peoples everywhere had to face series of hard challenges they
could only face collectively.
There have been many different collaborative and cooperative types of
work in Iran for a very long time. Examples include grassroots-initiative
building of roads, bridges, water storages, Kariz,1 and farming in Iranian
villages where peasants work together based on customs and traditions
instead of modern cooperative organizations. Boneh2 and Vareh3 consti-
tute examples of traditional forms of cooperation that still exist and are
practiced. Therefore, the tradition of cooperation, above all in rural areas,
have already existed and been practiced in the country (Taleb 1988). The
modern Iranian cooperative organizations do not have a long tradition
compared to Europe or even such Asian countries as India. The origin of
Iranian cooperative movement only goes back a few decades. Thus, the
modern cooperative movement in Iran can practically be divided into two
phases: phase one, from the beginning to the 1979 Revolution, and phase
two, between 1979 and today, in the era of Islamic Republic.
Phase One: Exogenous Development

The official birth of cooperative movement in Iran has been accompa-
nied with the legislation of the Law of Trade (Qanun-e Tejarat) in 1932.
Some sections of this Law discuss consumer and productive “cooperative
companies” (sherkatha-ye ta‘avoni). Section Seven of the Law is titled,
“Consumer and Productive Cooperative Companies and is consisted of
five Acts. Article 191 states, “Productive cooperative is a company estab-
lished by a group of tradesmen who produce and sale their commodities”
(Law of Trade 1932 in IPRC 2016). Likewise, Article 192 states, “The
consumer cooperative is a company for the following purposes: (1) sales of
commodities needed for general consumption, either made or purchased
by cooperative members; (2) distribution of profit or loss in proportion to
their purchase” (IPRC 2016). But there were still no cooperative compa-
nies until 1935 when the first agricultural cooperative was established in
a village near to the city of Garmsar in central Iran. From this date until
1941, two more agricultural cooperatives were established and a total of
1050 peasants were members of these three cooperatives (MCLSW n.d.).
The establishment of these cooperatives was due to the attention and
efforts of those who had studied and worked in Europe for a long time
and were therefore familiar with the advantages of cooperative societies
especially for rural areas (MCLSW n.d.).
These cooperatives did not prove successful and did not bear the
expected results. The main reason behind their failure was claimed to
be the lack of education of the peasants (MCLSW n.d.). Unfortunately,
there are no accounts about the prevailing socioeconomic relations of
the countryside. We know that the emergence of cooperative movement
is a result of development of industry and creation of working class as
wage earners while still feudal socioeconomic relations were dominant in
Iran. There was neither agrarian reform and distribution of land nor mar-
ket economy and commodity–money relations. Peasants did not possess
land and were not entitled to freedom to participate in economic trans-
actions. Nevertheless, this very first cooperative organization in Iranian
countryside has truly acted as a decisive breakthrough within stagnant
rural socioeconomic conditions that had lasted for centuries. A bright new
era was therefore opened before the eyes of the peasants. Although these
very first cooperatives failed, they were the result of the endogenous ini-
tiatives of a handful of intellectuals. However, this was a very brief period
in the outset of cooperative movement in Iran, and therefore it cannot be
called as a separate phase. The very first cooperatives became the basis for
beginning of the exogenous phase.
After 1941, the government endorsed a plan to introduce the concept
of cooperative economic activity and its advantages to the large groups
of the peasants. To facilitate the promotion of cooperatives, the govern-
ment handed over the distribution of certain state-produced commodities
such as agricultural tools, machinery, and groceries to rural coopera-
tives. Unfortunately, the outbreak of WWII hit these programs to doom
(MCLSW n.d.). After the war, the interest in cooperatives reappeared in
88 K. SARMAST
the works of some individuals. However, in the meantime on behalf of

specific countries especially the United States and international agencies
such as FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) and ILO (International
Labour Organization) necessary technical and financial helps for the
foundation and development of cooperative organizations were granted
(MCLSW n.d.).
With the participation of UN delegates and American experts of the
Fourth Truman Principle (US President Harry Truman’s 1949 techni-
cal assistance program for “developing countries”), the first Cooperative
Commission was held in National Planning and Budgeting Department
(Sazman-e Barnameh va Budjeh) in 1951. At this time, the number of
cooperatives including consumer and rural credit could hardly reach 100
(MCLSW n.d.).
The first Cooperative Law was enacted in 1953. This law was simi-
lar to the laws in European countries. In fact, it seemed like a copy of
cooperative acts of these countries. Nevertheless, this law, with its 1955
amendments, became the foundation for the establishment of many other
cooperative companies (MCLSW n.d.). Agrarian reform appeared in 1963
and land was distributed to the peasants. According to the Law of Land
Reform, to receive land only those peasants were eligible who were already
members of a cooperative. This fact caused a mass inflow of peasants to
cooperatives. The result was registration of 8000 cooperatives in a short
period of time by 1967. Later some of these cooperatives ceased to exist
while others merged with each other, as a result of which the number of
cooperatives declined to 3000 (MCLSW n.d.).
To spread the true concept and principles of cooperative movement
all over the country and to endow them with the necessary tools and
facilities for further development of cooperative economy in Iran, Central
Cooperative Organization (CCO; Sazeman-e Markazi-ye Ta‘avoni-ye
Keshvar) was founded in 1967. All cooperative companies were now cov-
ered by the administrative authority of CCO. The members of CCO con-
sisted of all productive, service, distributive, consumer, housing, credit, and
manufacturing cooperatives totalling 1340 organizations including the 20
cooperative federations that have already been established (MCLSW n.d.).
Later, emulating the model of CCO, the Central Rural Cooperative
Organization (CRCO; Sazeman-e Ta‘avon-e Rusta i ye Keshvar) was
established. CRCO aimed to provide cooperative education for the man-
agement of rural cooperatives, grant credits to cooperative companies for
the purpose of increasing peasants’ revenues, help marketing and sales
of their products, establish lateral relations with consumer cooperatives,

and finally, represent Iranian rural cooperative movement in international
organizations. Until 1979, a total of 2939 rural cooperatives containing
3,010,202 co-operators, and 153 rural cooperative federations covering
2923 cooperative companies joined the CRCO (MCLSW n.d.).
The main characteristics of the first, exogenous stage of the develop-
ment of cooperative movement in Iran can be summarized as follows:
(a) the authentic, grassroots endogenous cooperative movement was halted
due to circumstances and failed to develop further. Exogenous coopera-
tive movement was prevented from growing further mainly because the
stagnant precapitalist socioeconomic conditions especially in the rural
areas have not yet been in the position to allow for the idea of coopera-
tive organization. (b) Instead, a new path of development of cooperative
movement was introduced and implemented through the intervention
of international and foreign organizations and countries, particularly the
United States. (c) This shift depleted the national development of the
cooperative movement from its natural and historical process of progress.
This was not a phenomenon initiated by the people and for the people.
(d) Promoting comprador capitalist social relations was the main reason
behind this intervention. (e) Due to the above factors, this stage of devel-
opment of cooperatives can be characterized as “exogenous.”
Phase Two: Endogenous Attempts

The first, exogenous stage can also be correctly called the “developmental
stage”; however, as mentioned, the stage was initiated and mainly shaped
up by outside forces rather than being the result of the domestic social
and economic development. But the second stage can hardly be called a
developmental phase. That is why I have chosen the term “attempt” in
referring to the fact that in spite of the growing numbers in cooperative
organizations and members, a widespread and effective cooperative move-
ment did not form and did not become an essential part of the economy.
In spite of abundance of errors, mistakes, obstacles, and disruptions, there
have been genuine and sincere attempts to develop a real and efficient
cooperative movement in the beginning of the second phase. “Through
Local Consumer Cooperative (LCCs), poor urbanites attempted to secure
easy success to inexpensive consumer goods by removing greedy middle-
men” (Bayat 1997: 97).
90 K. SARMAST
The second, endogenous phase of cooperative development in Iran

begins with the victory of the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Certain lead-
ers of the Revolution were enthusiastic about cooperatives, and conse-
quently the status and importance of the cooperatives as third economic
sector of the economy, besides state-owned and private sectors, is con-
firmed in the Constitution of the Islamic Republic, Chapter IV, Article
44. A devoted promoter of the cooperative movement was Ayatollah
Mohammad Beheshti, a prominent leader of the Revolution. He mainly
interpreted the cooperatives as democratic means of economic practice in
which major, chronic shortfalls of the capitalist economy such as unem-
ployment and inflation would be alleviated. He advocated the cooperative
economy also because it provided both production and distribution in a
single economic entity and eliminated several points in the distribution
channel. “Another point in cooperatives … is getting rid of unnecessary
middlemen in the supply chain. In the capitalist systems [supply] is trans-
ferred through number of middlemen till it finally reaches the final con-
sumer, [a process] that is absolutely unnecessary, but it [the product] can
be reached to the consumer directly … Elimination of middlemen is fight
against quasi-employment and quasi elements [eshteghal-e kazeb va ana-
sor-e kazeb] that are imposed on the producer and consumer” (Beheshti
1996: 5). Ayatollah Beheshti also believed that cooperatives are a kind
of common property: “there is no doubt that property in cooperatives
is definitely a sort of common property, i.e., shareholders in productive
or consumer cooperatives all share the total assets, presuming a pen, or
a paper, or a chair, car, building, or any agricultural machinery; these all
belong to all the members. Therefore, the property is common in coop-
eratives” (Beheshti 1996: 8).
For the first time after the Revolution, the Law of Cooperation
(Qanun-e Ta‘avon) was passed in the Parliament in 1991. Act 1 in the Law
reveals the objectives of the Law as follows: (a) providing the conditions
and facilitating for employment of all the people (i.e., full employment);
(b) providing means of production for those who do not afford to acquire
it; (c) preventing concentration of wealth in the hands of certain people or
groups in order to bring about social justice; (d) preventing the state from
growing into a monopolist entrepreneur; (e) binding capital and labor
together; (f) preventing monopoly and inflation; (g) encouraging public
participation in cooperative work (Islamic Consultation Assembly 1991).
The Law of Cooperation contains provisions for productive, distribu-
tive, and multipurpose cooperatives. The productive cooperatives include
agricultural, livestock breeding, fishing, industrial, mining, housing, and

similar rural and industrial institutions. Productive cooperatives have a
preference for government support including financial support. Members
of productive cooperatives are those who work in the cooperative. This
is very similar to labor cooperatives elsewhere. The distributive coopera-
tives are those that either supply the needs of productive cooperatives or
distribute their products among the people. It is claimed that these coop-
eratives mainly aim at cutting costs and keeping prices low. Members in
distributive cooperatives are not obliged to work in them. Lastly, there is
another type of cooperative considered under in the Law of Cooperation:
multipurpose. Multipurpose cooperatives are a mixture of productive and
distributive cooperatives. These hybrid cooperatives can mainly be estab-
lished in rural areas for the purpose of development of the village. All
residents of a village are entitled to be members of this cooperative but
they are not required to be employed in it. The managing board and the
Director must be selected from the members, according to the Law of
Co-operation (Islamic Consultation Assembly 1991).
The Law of Cooperation also specifies detailed information about the
cooperative governance, membership, registration, taxation and dividends,
termination, and so on. Moreover, another kind of cooperative organiza-
tion that was introduced in this period of cooperative movement was the
so-called “Common Utilization Lands” (Ta‘avoniha-ye Tolidi-ye Mosha‘).
These are units of lands distributed to groups of five to ten peasants. These
peasants are expected to jointly work on the land and sell their products
to the government. Machinery and tools in these units are owned by the
group. This kind of work arrangement is rather different from the coop-
erative spirit, but these units are sometimes considered to belong with the
cooperative sector (Ghanbari and Barqi 2010).
Cooperative organizations in the endogenous phase show a tremendous
growth. According to General Secretary of Iran Co-operators Chamber,
there were 191,077 cooperatives by the September 2013 of which 43
percent were inactive and 6 percent were closed down (ISNA 2014).
But despite the considerable growth of the cooperative organizations in
numbers, unfortunately the share of cooperative economy, in terms of net
income, has not exceeded 5 percent of the total GDP. Therefore, 5 per-
cent cannot be used as a basis for the general development of the coopera-
tive movement. The reason lies in the fact that cooperatives suffer from a
number of problems that are approximately captured as follows:
92 K. SARMAST
(a) The real cooperative share in the economy is even lower than the 5
percent figure mentioned above, because there is a large number of
cooperative companies with very limited membership, most of
them consisting of only seven individuals (the minimum required
number of individuals for registering a cooperative company with
Ministry of Cooperation, Labour, and Social Welfare). These coop-
eratives are mainly established to take advantage of the opportunity
to benefit from the low-interest credits. As a matter of fact, mem-
bers of these cooperatives do not regard the principle of openness
and treat the cooperative more or less like a joint-stock company.
(b) Cooperative economy in Iran can hardly qualify as cooperative
movement. The so-called cooperative movement has expanded as a
result of the government’s need for the distribution of food and
other basic commodities during the Iran–Iraq war when commod-
ity shortages were common due to war economy. In fact, in the
1980s the cooperatives were developed under excessive control of
government. Despite existence of cooperative federations, there
are no genuine cooperative federations. The existing federations
more or less act as trade unions. Cooperatives are not aware of or
do not bother to join efforts in a nationwide network. Their ten-
dency toward working in isolation resembles the environment
dominating private joint-stock companies. The highest national
body of cooperative organizations is the Ministry of Cooperation,
Labour, and Social Welfare (Vezarat-e Ta‘avon, Kar, va Refah-e
Ejtema‘i). All the matters regarding cooperatives including laws,
regulations, credits, initiatives, and registration are decided by this
Ministry, and the cooperatives do not possess their own central
independent body such as national federation. Therefore, the rela-
tions among cooperatives are not harmonized by the overall strate-
gic plans of a national body.
(c) The democratic and economic justice ideals of the first years of the
Revolution have been changed into today’s orthodox and prevail-
ing ideas of free-market economy and neoliberalism. Most of the
Iranian economists are constantly repeating the theories of the
neoliberal economic bodies such as International Monetary Fund,
World Bank, and other conventional theory-generating think
tanks, and the current economic course is based on the same ideals
and theories. There are continuous dialogues about globalization

and privatization. Particular attention to cooperatives is at best
very little and ineffective. Private business is considered to be the
ultimate ideal of economic development and all efforts are directed
to this purpose. Propaganda for privatization is extended in all cor-
ners. “Unfortunately, the last 20 and some years have been the
peak of formation of this new bourgeoisie comprador social class
during which the economic adjustment theory has been imple-
mented” (Razzaqi 2015). Therefore, there is no room for coopera-
tives. Skepticism about cooperatives among economists and official
authorities is evident. Cooperatives are considered to be superflu-
ous simply because it is alleged that they heavily rely on govern-
ment assistance, while a “real economy,” it is claimed, must survive
autonomously or else it had better stop working. These simplistic
ideas about market economy are unfortunately in boom at the
moment, preventing the weak cooperative movement from grow-
ing at a natural pace.
(d) Cooperative education plays an insignificant role. Most people

seem not to believe that cooperatives can help them fulfill their
needs. Cooperatives are mostly considered as vendors that distrib-
ute low-quality state-produced goods at cheap prices and/or as a
tool for distribution of rationed commodities at the time of short-
age. A general awareness about cooperatives is not present at this
time in the public discourse.
(e) There are no official statistics about the total number of coopera-
tive members in Iran (or if there are any statistics, unfortunately it
is difficult to get hold of it). However, it is a general knowledge of
cooperative activists that today the cooperatives consist of a total
membership of 30 million nationwide. But very little of this huge
number really gain from their cooperative membership. A large
number of cooperative members either are not even aware of their
membership or simply have no interest knowing about it. Therefore,
statistical reliance on cooperatives is misleading, because the major-
ity of the cooperative members are simply passive.
The endogenous phase of cooperative movement in Iran, we can

conclude, has been unsuccessful.
94 K. SARMAST
What are the Causes?
Countries like India or ex-socialist countries of the Eastern Europe are

good examples of the successful and impressive role of the cooperatives
in the lives of the masses. In India, for example, “the cooperative move-
ment has made significant progress. Cooperatives have extended across
the entire country and there are currently an estimated 230 million mem-
bers nationwide” (Das et al. 2006: 2), or in ex-socialist countries coopera-
tives were one of the main sectors of the economy. The importance of the
cooperatives in socialism can be seen in the words of V. I. Lenin. “Indeed,
since political power is in the hands of the working-class, since this politi-
cal power owns all the means of production, the only task, indeed, that
remains for us is to organize the population in cooperative societies”
(Lenin 1965 [1923]: 467). But incomplete and faulty development or
rather underdevelopment of Iranian cooperative movement has failed
to present better and hopeful life for the deprived and underprivileged
classes. Why has Iran failed to cultivate a genuine cooperative economy
that works for the people? What are the reasons and causes behind it?
While these questions require an independent study, we can venture indi-
cating the following causes.
The first cause relates to the prevailing belief that the 1979 Revolution
changed Iran’s path of development. As a major participant in the
Revolution, the traditional mercantile bourgeoisie—that is, the bazaar—
occupied the key positions in the leadership of the Revolution. The bazaar
practically prevented the Revolution from reflecting the interests of the
working people. On the contrary, with the growing power of traditional
bourgeoisie, the popular slogans reflecting the interests of the oppressed
and marginalized were gradually forgotten and replaced by strong inclina-
tion toward overt capitalist socioeconomic relations. This trend has gone
so far that in the last couple of decades the official social and economic pol-
icies of the government openly advocated the development of neoliberal
principles including privatization and globalization (see Rouhani 2010).
Now the predominant socioeconomic stream in the country is neoliberal
policies. The state’s fascination with market economy and the develop-
ment of the country based on private initiatives (mainly based on foreign
capital intervention through the so-called Direct Foreign Investment [sar-
mayegozari-ye mostaqim-e khareji]) has led to the stagnation of alternative
modes of socioeconomic development including the cooperative econ-
omy. The anti-labor positions of the present economic order can easily
and openly be observed. The ruling bodies strongly defend the interests
of large capital.
Second, cooperative organizations are under the influence and con-
trol of the government. The main trustee and operator of cooperative
organizations was the Ministry of Cooperation (Vezarat-e Ta‘avon) which
a few years ago was combined with the Ministry of Labour (Vezarat-e
Kar) in order to scale down the government, and as a result the Ministry
of Cooperatives, Labour, and Social Welfare arose. Authorities in the
Ministry do not exert any effort to transform the existing cooperative
organizations into a real and genuine movement.
Third, cooperatives are deliberately transformed into private organiza-
tions. The majority of Iranians either do not believe in the effectiveness
of the cooperatives or consider them more or less as private enterprises.
The difference between the two options lies in that if cooperative directors
have key connections in various related offices, they can benefit from low-
cost credits and other benefits provided under the Law.
Fourth, the majority of people have never had a chance to actually and
genuinely participate in cooperatives. The prime incentive for the partici-
pants in cooperative organizations is basically having access to easy and
lucrative capital return, an aspect that is absolutely contrary to cooperative
philosophy and principles, according to which cooperatives aim at pro-
viding their members with supplies that address their various needs at an
affordable price. Cooperatives are primarily labor-economic organizations,
but the working class has little active participation in cooperatives today.
Fifth, neither popular nor academic cooperative education exists today.
Most of the cooperative courses have been eliminated from university
curriculum, and there are no or very few active centers for cooperative
education.
Sixth, Act 44 of the Constitution clearly emphasizes the priority of the
state and cooperative sectors of economy, but for the last two decades a
dominant, adverse interpretation of the Constitution has resulted in bring-
ing private enterprise to the frontline. And finally, cooperative Ministers,
one after another, underline their priority of raising the status of coop-
erative in the national economy from the present 5 percent to 25 per-
cent. One of the latest comments was given by the Cooperatives Deputy
Minister of the Ministry of Cooperatives, Labour, and Social Welfare: “the
Fifth Development Plan forecasted the share of cooperative sector will
be 25 percent of the GDP by the end of the program, but unfortunately
we have long way to that point” (Kalantari 2013). However, there have
96 K. SARMAST
been no detailed programs, nor any practical projects for that matter.
One of the ways claimed to increase the share of cooperative economy is
the allocation of the so-called “Justice Shares” to the cooperatives, but the
nature of Justice Shares is not clearly known, and no instruction has been
provided on how this increase should take place.
Conclusion
This chapter provides the overall picture of the cooperative movement
in Iran. Today, cooperative organizations play no major role in improv-
ing the living conditions of millions of working class and wage earning
Iranians. A great deal of deeply rooted social shortcomings and deficien-
cies are not addressed by the government, let alone by the private sector.
One of the popular and effective ways to address the people’s needs in
today’s socioeconomic conditions will involve the rebirth and growth of
a genuine cooperative movement in which working people can establish
their own economic organizations for the purpose of improving on their
lives. Within this gloomy picture, however, there are exceptionally posi-
tive cases that show genuine cooperatives could prove their value to the
working people. An example is the Housing Cooperatives (Sherkatha-ye
Ta‘avoni-ye Maskan) that emerged within the first decade after the
Revolution through which millions of people including laborers, govern-
ment employees, and even university professors managed to build their
own homes. “Up until the end of 2012 there has been 25,000 housing
cooperatives for workers, government clerks, teachers, and various other
groups of people comprising of 3,000,000 members” (IRIACF 2014).
The Housing Cooperatives provides a success story but, unfortunately,
they have not been so active in recent years (see MCLSW 2012).
Since 1935, when the first agricultural cooperative was established,
until today, nearly 85 years has passed, but the cooperative movement in
Iran is still challenged in the agonizing process of its development.
Notes
1. Kariz is a long tunnel dug underground used more or less as a technology
like pipeline to transport water from mountains to the flat terrains. There
are still thousands of underground kariz networks in Iran underutilization.
Some of these tunnels are more than 4000 years old and some are as long as
70 kilometers.
2. Boneh is a farming unit consisting of groups of peasants who utilize a few

patches of land together for one year. The land either might belong to the
farmers themselves or to a third person (Taleb 1988: 11).
3. Vareh is a kind of women’s sheep breading cooperation in villages. Peasant
women agree to take their livestock together to the pastures and distribute
the milk proportionately.
References
Bayat, Asef. 1997. Street Politics: Poor People’s Movement in Iran. New York:
Beheshti, Mohammad. 1996. Ahamiyat-e shiveh-ye ta‘avon az did-e shahid-e
mazlum Ayatollah Beheshti (The Significance of the Cooperative Model from
the View of Innocent Martyr Ayatollah Beheshti). Ta‘avon 58: 4–9. Accessed
March 15, 2016. http://ierc.sbu.ac.ir/File/Article/fali7_95268.pdf
Birchall, Johnston. 1994. Co-Op: The People’s Business. Manchester: Manchester
University Press.
Das, Banishree, Nirod Kumar Palai, and Kumar Das. 2006. Problems and Prospects
of the Cooperative Movement in India Under the Globalization Regime. XIV
International Economic History Congress, Helsinki 2006, Session 72. Accessed
March 15, 2016. http://www.helsinki.fi/iehc2006/papers2/Das72.pdf
Ghanbari, Yusef, and Hamid Barqi. 2010. Naqsh-e ta‘avoniha-ye mosha‘ dar tose‘eh-
ye manateq-e rusta‘i-ye taht-e pushesh: motale‘eh-ye moredi-ye ostan-e Esfahan
(The Role of Common Co-operatives in the Developing Rural Areas They
Cover: A Case Study of the Province of Isfahan). Faslnameh-ye Rusta va
Towse‘eh 13(2): 81–101.
Hamel, Gary. 2002. Leading the Revolution: How to Thrive in Turbulent Times by
Making Innovation a Way of Life. New York, NY: Plume.
IPRC (Islamic Parliament Research Center). 2016. Qanun-e tejarat 1311 (Law of
Trade, 1932). Islamic Parliament Research Center Website. Accessed March 12,
2016. http://rc.majlis.ir/fa/law/show/92349
IRIACF (Islamic Republic of Iran Army Cooperative Foundation). 2014.
Vaz‘iyat-e ta‘avoniha dar Iran beh ravayat-e mo‘aven-e vazir: 45% ta‘avoniha
gheyre-fa‘aland (Cooperatives’ Status in Iran According to Deputy Minister:
45% of the Cooperatives Are Inactive). Army Cooperative Foundation Website.
Accessed March 22, 2016. http://goo.gl/jkGsW5
Islamic Consultation Assembly [Parliament]. 1991. Qanoon bakhsh-e ta‘avon-e
eqtesad-e Jomhury-e Eslami-ye Iran (Law of Cooperatives Section of the
Economy of the Islamic Republic of Iran). Tehran: Ministry of Cooperatives,
Labour, and Social Welfare. Accessed March 20, 2016. http://www.mcls.gov.
ir/fa/law/227
98 K. SARMAST
ISNA (Iranian Students News Agency). 2014. Chand darsad-e ta‘avoniha-ye kesh-
var fa‘aland? (What Percentage of Cooperatives Are Active in the Country?).
Accessed March 12, 2016. http://isna.ir/fa/news/93051506819
Kalantari, H. 2013. Vaz‘iyat-e ta‘avoniha dar Iran beh ravayat-e mo‘aven-e vazir:
45% ta‘avoniha gheyrefa‘aland (The Status of Iranian Cooperatives According
to the Deputy Minister: 45% Are Inactive). Islamic Republic of Iran Army
Cooperative Foundation. Accessed April 15, 2016. http://goo.gl/jkGsW5
Lenin, V. I. 1965 [1923]. On Cooperation. In Collected Works, vol. 33, 467–475.
Moscow: Progress Publishers.
MCLSW (Ministry of Cooperatives, Labour, and Social Welfare). n.d. Tarihkcheh-ye
ta‘avon dar Iran (History of Cooperatives in Iran). Gilan Province Office of
Ministry of Cooperatives, Labour, and Social Welfare Website. Accessed March 4,
2016. http://guilan.mcls.gov.ir/fa/taavon/tarikhcheh
MCLSW (Ministry of Cooperation, Labour, and Social Welfare). 2012. Kholaseh-ye
vaz‘iyat-e sherkatha-ye ta‘avoni-ye maskan (Summery of the Status of Housing
Co-operatives). Accessed April 16, 2016. www.mcls.gov.ir/icm_con-
tent/.../28839_orig.doc
McPherson, Ian. 2013. Cooperatives, Cooperation, and Peace: An Important
Theme in Cooperative Studies. Presented at the International Cooperative
Alliance Global Research Conference, June 15, European Cyprus University,
Nicosia, Cypress.
Razzaqi, Ebrahim. 2015. Shavahed-e hajmeh-ye siyasat-e noliberal-e Amrika‘i baray
nofuz dar eqtesad-e Iran (Evidences of American Neoliberal Policy Attack for
Penetrating the Iranian Economy). Tasnim News Agency, October 5. Accessed
March 2, 2016. http://www.tasnimnews.com/fa/news/1394/07/13/879157
Rouhani, Hassan. 2010. Amniyyat-e melli va nezam-e eqtesadi-ye Iran (National
Security and the Economic System of Iran). Tehran: Center for Strategic
Research.
Taleb, Mahdi. 1988. Shivehha-ye hamyari dar jame‘eh-ye rusta‘i-ye Iran (Methods
of Cooperation in Rural Iran). Nameh-ye ‘Olum-e Ejtema‘i 1: 167–180.
CHAPTER 7
Social Justice; Anti-imperialist, Racist,

Persian-centric, and Shi‘i-centric Discursive
Formations of the Ideal Citizen and Iranian
School Textbooks: A Social Biography
Response
Amir Mirfakhraie
This chapter offers a deconstructive analysis of post-revolutionary Iranian

textbooks from a poststructuralist and anti-racist perspective. I decon-
struct the present and non-present discourses that inform the narration of
national and global relations of power. An important issue that has not
been critically explored after the Revolution of 1978–79 is: whose vision of
national identity and social justice pedagogy informs official/mainstream
school knowledge? How are factors such as nationalism, “race,” ethnic-
ity, patriarchy, religion, development, progress, and rights and obligations
constructed/represented for students? This intersectional anti-oppressive
critique of textbooks explores how national and global ethnic/racialized
relations are portrayed in various editions of Iranian elementary and mid-
dle school textbooks. I argue that despite the revolutionary propaganda
of the Iranian state, school knowledge does not represent the oppressed
A. Mirfakhraie (*)
Department of Sociology, Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Surrey, BC, Canada

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-44227-3_7
100 A. MIRFAKHRAIE
groups across the globe through emancipatory discourses that are repre-
sentative of their struggles/histories. Iranian school textbooks function as
hegemonic tools of domination that identify the ideal citizen as the leader
in anti-imperialist movements without questioning the role of the Iranian
Self in promoting discrimination against various forms of internal/exter-
nal Self-Other-Other. This analysis of school curricula is informed by the
argument that anti-racist/anti-oppressive educators in non-Western parts
of the world must become critical of the ideological dispositions of those
post-colonial subjects, such as the revolutionary elite of Iran, who claim
to promote anti-oppressive policies and represent their approaches to
social justice as anti-imperialist. It is imperative to account for the extent
to which such self-acclaimed progressive movements advance nationalist/
imperialist frameworks of domination and hegemonic relations of power
and ideological codes that undermine the broader social justice agendas
they profess for their “subjects.” I argue that an inclusive anti-oppressive
social justice requires a critique of imperialist possibilities of anti-imperialist
movements, or what I refer to as the imperialism of anti-imperialist dis-
cursive formations, by accounting for the effects of dialectical relations of
oppression on marginalized groups across and within categories of differ-
ence from multiple intersectional perspectives.
I explore how racialized/ethnicized identities are constructed in various
editions of Persian-Reader (P), social studies (SS), history (H), geography
(G), and Teacher’s Guide (TG) textbooks by exposing the ideological codes
that inform the narration of nation. I maintain that school textbooks invoke
a racialized nation-centric understanding of Iran and the world without
accounting for how the processes of racialization/ethnicism have affected
marginalized groups within Iran or across the world. Such a construction
results in positioning school-aged readers to imagine themselves differen-
tially/hierarchically in relation to the national Self and multiple/contradic-
tory constructions of internal/external-Others that are depicted as either
friendly-insiders/outsiders and/or enemy-insiders/outsiders. The curricula
construct the ideal Iranian Self in relation/opposition to multiple forms of
Otherness through a set of binary oppositions that situate the ideal citizen
as a resilient anti-hegemonic subaltern Other that has freed itself from the
shackles of imperialism by depicting marginalized/subaltern and Western
Others through racist and modernizing discourses of domination that
ideologically/hierarchically distinguish between the ideal citizen, Western
Self, and national/transnational Muslim and non-Muslim oppressed and
oppressor Other(s). The narration of nation is based on interlocking sets of
SOCIAL JUSTICE; ANTI-IMPERIALIST, RACIST, PERSIAN-CENTRIC... 101
discourses that act as logocentric metanarratives, providing homogenized/

concrete/essentialized accounts of the history of Iran. The ideal citizen is
constructed by references to conflicting/contradictory discourses of Iran-
dusti (Loving Iran), mostaz‘afin (the oppressed), jihad-e sazandagi (devel-
opment/modernization), ‘ashayir (nomadic tribes), mardom, Ummat-e
Islami (Islamic Nation/Community), militarization, violence, martyrdom,
soldier, the Aryan migration, Velayat-e Faqih, (Shi‘i Leadership), and colo-
nialism and binary oppositions such as believer/non-believer (ba-iman/bi-
iman), developed/underdeveloped, rural/urban, civilization/paganism/
barbarism, Sunni/Shi‘i, Aryan/Semite, and Pars-Aryan/Non-Pars-Aryan.
In their discursive formations, nationalist, anti-imperialist, Islamic (Shi‘i),
middle-class, and Orientalist narratives construct a fixed Iranian citizenry
who has always been active in scientific, anti-oppressive, and emancipa-
tory regional/global relations of power. Through the invocation of sev-
eral “shifting collectivities,” the ideal citizen is normalized/presented as
“White,” male, Shi‘i, Aryan-Pars, progressive, independent, pious, mod-
ernizing, and a leader in the Islamic world.
The Discourses of Loving Iran, Protection,

Development/Modernization as Ideological Codes:
Homogenizing Diversity and Silencing the Voices
of Others
Central to the narration of Iranian nation is the discourse of Loving Iran

as an ideological code that normalizes caring for the nation as a fundamen-
tal characteristic of the ideal citizen (P1 2015: 47; P1 2004: 51; P2 2015:
79). In the lesson “Beautiful Iran” (P2 2015: 79), for example, students
read that they live in Iran and love their country. They are textually posi-
tioned to be proud of their beautiful country, its natural resources, and
historical sites. Iranian men and women are constructed as faithful indi-
viduals who will defend their nation against any foreign incursions. This
requires the ideal citizen to be vigilant and to defend Iran against invasion
by external forces, another ideological code that is formalized in light of
the invocation of the discourses of martyrdom, militarization of Iran,
soldier, and self-sacrifice (P1 2004: 49). For example, in a lesson entitled
“Prosperous Iran” (P3 2015: 80–81), which is based on student-centred
pedagogy and dialogical approaches to teaching and learning, the teacher
divides students into several groups such as history, geography, and
102 A. MIRFAKHRAIE
language, and asks them to research the topic of “Country/Fatherland

(mihan)” and present their findings to the class. During the debriefing
session, the “Geography Group” elaborates on the role of those citizens
who live at the borders of the country (the reference is to non-Persian
ethnic “minorities”) as the first line of defence against Iran’s enemies and
expresses their love and affection for these ethnic groups. The “History
Group” discusses the importance of knowing one’s national history as a
central ideological component to defend the nation. The protection of
the Persian language and culture is another topic of discussion that is pre-
sented by the “Language Group.” The lesson highlights the importance
of Persian as the national language and as the source of national pride
and a central component of guarding the country/Fatherland against
non-Persian influences. Although the group members acknowledge that
many Iranians speak their own mother tongues and regional languages,
which are referred to as national treasures, it is the Persian language that
is presented as the only viable element that unites the diverse popula-
tion of Iran and brings the nation together. In this lesson, qualities such
as developing Iran, defending the country and the Islamic Republic,
and martyrdom intersect one another as important characteristics of the
ideal citizen. The accompanying pictures of the martyrs of the Iran-Iraq
War and the fighter jets, furthermore, symbolize the centrality of the
discourse of militarization in the narration of nation. The “Knowledge
Group,” moreover, emphasizes the importance of scientific discoveries
in various fields to make Iran into a developed and “prominent country
in the world.” The term “abad” (prosperous) in the title of the lesson,
thus, is an ideological code that propels students to position themselves as
individuals who will be active participants in the modernization of Iran
by fighting its enemies, developing the economic infrastructure of the
nation, and becoming vigilant citizens. Such ideological codes are perva-
sive elements of the curricula: in P1, for example, students had already
been informed about their basic functions and roles in the rhyme: “abad,
abad [prosperous], Iran abad [Iran prosperous], bidar, bidar [vigilant],
Irani bidar (Iranian vigilant)” (P1 2015: 44; P1 2004: 48). Moreover,
in “Dear Iran” (P3 2015: 73–74), the natural and physical resources of
the country are depicted as belonging to all Iranians, which, they learn,
must be protected from abuse and plundering by external forces. Iran is
narrated as an ancient country that has contributed to the world’s cul-
ture and produced many important scientists and scholars (the discourse
of civilization). This lesson also emphasizes preserving the name of the
“Persian Gulf” into perpetuity, which is non-presently informed by the

Aryan/Pars-centric assumptions of the authors of the textbooks. In fact,
in another lesson in SS6 (2012: 91), the authors reference a number of
Aryan/Persian, Arabic, and Orientalists texts and historical maps as evi-
dence that this waterway in southern Iran has always been referred to
as the Persian Sea/Gulf since the arrival of the Aryans into Iran. This is
a paternalist construction that dictates that the students must love and
care for Iran and preserve Iran’s cultural heritage in the region. It is in
light of the discourse of Loving Iran that the ideal citizen must become
an active participant in the economic, social, and moral development and
prosperity of Iran (P1 2015: 48–49; P1 2004; SS4 2015: 98), assisting
the country to become a competitive force in global economic affairs
(SS8 2014; SS3 2004). The discourses of development and progress inter-
sect the discourse of protection by positioning the ideal citizen to view
his/her main responsibility to guard the country in light of his/her obli-
gations to modernize Iran in order to secure its independence (P4 2004:
143; SS3 2004; SS5 1993: 204; SS5 2004: 144; P5 2004: 42–43).
Loving Iran is a Persian/Shi‘i-centric framework that obliterates cul-
tural/religious diversities and turns them into hegemonic tools of domi-
nation. It is constructed in light of a number of historical/contemporary
internal/external-enemies that must be feared and controlled (see below).
The love for the nation/country, Iranians, and non-Iranians, irrespec-
tive of their ethnic, racial, and national backgrounds, is narrated within
a nationalistic discourse with Orientalist sentiments that is devoid of any
references to inequalities and violence experienced by “minorities” in Iran
and other parts of the world. The history of nation is framed through
Aryan/Pars Muslim Shi‘i male perspectives, excluding the historical mem-
ories/voices/experiences of diverse groups of women as important ele-
ments of the nation-building process (SS3 2004; SS7 2015; SS8 2014;
P3 2004). The narration of nation is a heteronormative construction that
celebrates the role of heterosexual male leaders/heroes of the nation (P4
2015: 54–55; P5 2015: 56–57). “Race” and ethnicity are reified/essen-
tialized as objective categories of difference in imagining the national Self
and contrasting/relating it to other populations in the world. Colour of
skin, facial characteristics, religion, nationality, ethnicity, and clothing are
drawn upon to present diversity globally without critical reflections on
how “minority” peoples view the effects of racist ideologies and pater-
nalistic policies. Love for Iran/Iranians is devoid of any critical intersec-
tional analysis of how oppressive ideas/practices have been the basis for
unfair treatments of individuals/groups due to the intersection of various
104 A. MIRFAKHRAIE
c ategories of difference. Loving Iran is a discursive myth that normalizes

hegemonic relations of power that have been effective tools of assimilat-
ing the non-Persian populations of Iran (see below). It is an ideological
code through which Iran is constructed as a country that has always been
involved and been a leader in peaceful policies and collaborative relations
with other countries/peoples of the world (P4 2012: 22–25).
Rights, Laws, and the Discourses of Loving Iran,

Mostaz‘afin, the Constitution, Mardom,
and Velayat-e Faqih: Islamic Laws are Supreme
The non-present trace in the narration of nation is the discursive formation

of the legal rights of Iranians: that irrespective of one’s “race,” gender,
colour of skin, and language, Iranians are equal before the law and their
human/legal/political/social rights are protected by the state (SS7 2015,
p. 16). Iranians have natural rights, which are determined by God, such
as the right to life, to work for their needs, to form families, to learn to
choose their own paths in life, to satisfy their basic needs, and to improve
their status (SS7 2015: 2). They also have the right to be treated equally
and to express their opinions (SS7 2015: 3–5).
The inclusion of these rights, however, is framed within a nationalist/
Islamo-centric perspective that requires Iranians to submit themselves to
the laws of the state that, as the curricula assert, are designed to ensure
the prosperity of all citizens and to safeguard order in society (SS3 2012:
24–27). Personal rights are considered as provisional (SS7 2015: 11–12),
and those who do not abide by the laws of society, some of which cannot
be questioned and/or ignored since they are ordained by God, are con-
sidered to cause harm on others and are, thus, categorized as outsiders and
enemy-Others (SS7 2015: 15). The Islamic constitution of Iran is symbol-
ized as the supreme law of the country or “the mother of all laws,” and
the responsibility of Iranians is idealized to protect the constitution and
the leadership (SS7 2015: 15). The Islamic Republic signifies a return to
the rule of law and the first community of Islam established by Prophet
Mohammad. The establishment of the Islamic Republic that has resulted in
true equality/independence/progress/freedom is normalized as the third
stage of evolution of the nation (SS4 2004: 130). In “What Is the Role
of Our Leader in the Government” (SS8 2012: 51–54), for example, the
role of the revolutionary leadership in resisting the Shah’s regime as the
agent of imperialism and the concept of the Velayat-e Faqih are discussed.
The non-present ideological code that informs this lesson emphasizes the
axiom that the Supreme Leader of Iran is a representative of God and the
Prophet; thus, obeying him is central to accepting the sanctity of God and
“his” rule over humanity. This is a patriarchal and Shi‘i-centric construc-
tion that does not account for whether or not non-Shi‘i/Muslim people
and/or women could ever rule the state and act as its Supreme Leader.
The male leader of the nation is depicted as a fair and learned individual
who is well-versed in current issues and is aware of the needs of the nation.
Intertextually, opposing him (the Supreme Leader) is equated with under-
mining the constitution, nation, Islam, and God. Moreover, the lesson
“The Constitution” (SS5 1993: 214), with its accompanying drawing of
the Iranian constitution symbolized as a tree with the icon of the Islamic
Republic, Allah, written in the middle of its branches, idealizes the Islamic
Republic as a sovereign state that adheres to the principles of freedom and
equality. In this depiction of Iran (the country) and the Islamic Republic
(the state), tribal and ethnic groups are represented in their traditional
clothing encircling the tree looking up towards the symbol of Allah, imply-
ing that they both celebrate and protect the nation, the country, and the
state. This representation of the state is based on an ideological code that
assumes that the legal, cultural, economic, and political rights of both male
and female ethnic Iranians are protected by the Islamic Constitution. The
Islamic Republic is constructed as an ideal society with unified citizens who
have common goals, despite their perceived ethnic differences. These dif-
ferences are normalized and viewed apolitically as reflections of cultural
diversity rather than as manifestations of years of Persian-centric and rac-
ist policies of the central government(s). The non-present discourse that
defines the tree, however, is the Aryan thesis that assumes that the Pars
tribe is the founding “father” of the nation and the core of national identity
(see below). The discourses of the constitution, ‘ashayir, and the Aryan
migration intertextually define Iran as a White and Shi‘i nation/country
and as such sanitize the history of state violence against “minority” groups.
The Aryan migration and the introduction of Islam into Iran are
considered as the first and second stages of evolution, respectively
(SS8 2014: 63–64). The lesson, “A Trip to the Historical City of Hamadan”
(SS4 2015: 47; in the previous editions, the title of this lesson was “The
Migration of the Aryans,” SS4 2008: 86–88), represents and objectifies
Iran as “the land of the Aryans” and, intertextually, identifies Iranians as
members of the White “race.” The map illustrates the migration patterns
of three Aryan sub-tribes into Iran: the Parthian, the Pars, and the Medes.
The location of the Pars settlement corresponds to the geographical
space where the Achaemenidan civilization also established the first world
106 A. MIRFAKHRAIE
empire. The leader of this civilization, Cyrus the Great, is, furthermore,
represented as an intelligent, rational, and sensible person who treated the
people of the territories he conquered with fairness and care (SS4 2015:
51), thus historicizing and affirming the qualities associated with modern
and contemporary Iranian leadership. Moreover, in the lesson “A New
Epoch in Iranian History” (SS8 2014: 63, 64, 66), the introduction of
Islam into Iran is narrated as a new era in Iranian history (the first epoch
being the migration of the Aryans, read the settlement of Pars group in
Iran proper). Although the initial Muslim “invasion” of Iran is positively
constructed, the formation of Sunni Caliphates is depicted in light of their
oppressive practices. Iranians, students learn, openly accepted Islam and
were one of the first groups that converted to Islam. They are also pre-
sented as active participants in the dissemination of Islamic faith and as
supporters of Shi‘i Imams who resisted the hegemonic policies of Arab
Sunni rulers. In these lessons, the Islamization of Iran is celebrated but
in the context of Persian supremacy. The Aryan, Shi‘i, and Islamic identi-
ties intersect one another to construct a unified and fixed image of Iran
despite intense social, economic, and political changes that accompanied
the Aryan migration and the Arab “invasion” of Iran.
The curricula construct the Islamic/Iranian leaderships through a
patriarchal/Persian-centric lens. The Iranian nation and people (the dis-
course of mardom, which does not distinguish between Persians and non-
Persians and lumps them under one category of sameness with specific
shared norms/values that highlight Persian cultural capital, thus subsum-
ing ethnic “minorities” under Persians) are supposed to follow/obey/care
for their male religious leader (SS6 2008: 69), who is conceptualized as
the representative of the Prophet. The Supreme Leader is a fair/rational/
learned individual and “a complete Muslim,” a faqih (jurist), which is a
position that very few Iranians can actually achieve (SS5 2013: 144–146).
The current leader of Iran is also constructed as a trailblazer within the
Ummat-e Islami, whose leadership is accepted by the oppressed Muslims
of the world (SS5 2013: 133–134; SS4 2015: 97–98; H8 2008: 85–87).
The discourses of mostaz‘afin and Velayat-e Faqih intersect one another
and depict the Islamic Republic as the source of resistance against impe-
rialism and hope for the poor and oppressed of the world (irrespective of
their religious beliefs) to free themselves from domination through Irano-
Islamic–inspired transnational anti-imperialist revolutions (SS7 2015: 8).
Those who question/undermine the legitimacy/sanctity of the central
government/the ruling elite (i.e., those who question institutionalized

state forms of oppression) are constructed as anti-God and insider-enemy-
Others (SS8 2008: 47–49).
Persianization of Diversity; the Discourses

of Mardom, ‘Ashayir, and the Arab Other;
and the Role of Historical Documents: “Persian Is
Our National Language”
The curricula Persianize diversity and affirm/legitimize the superiority of
Persian culture/traditions over all other groups (TG P1 2012: 102). The
racialized biases of the nationalist discourses remain important elements
of the education system despite the Islamization of the curriculum. The
identities of ethnic “minorities” are only superficially reinforced as part
of the collectivity of Iranian people through the discourses of clothing,
colour of skin, mardom, and ‘ashayir that are devoid of critical analyses
of the politicized forms of difference and their consequences (see below).
They function as ideological codes that represent diversity without pro-
viding oppositional spaces for the marginalized peoples to critique the
nation-building policies as hegemonic Persianizing discourses of power.
The histories of opposition to the Persianization process is ignored and
ethnic “minorities” are presented as passive citizens who support the cen-
tral government and the nation-building process (see above). Despite
their differences, the people of Iran (the discourse of mardom) are con-
structed as a homogenized/essentialized entity that have a common past
and, for centuries, have defended their common religion and country
(SS4 2004: 132).
This common past is narrated through Persian-centric sources and his-
torical documents such as Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh (Letter on Kings, orig.
1010 CE), which is symbolized as a quintessential source of how to imag-
ine and think about the Self in relation to various forms of Otherness. The
Shahnameh, along with the poetry books of Hafez and Sa‘di as well as
the Quran and Nahj ul-Balagheh that every ideal family possesses in their
home libraries, defines the cultural capital of the ideal citizen (P1 2015:
2; SS3 2004). In the lessons “Welcome to Our House” (P1 2015: 2) and
“Reading Book[s]” (P1 2015: 2), for example, students are introduced
to a homogenized image of the family that defines and sets the charac-
teristics of all other families discussed and depicted in the curricula. It is
108 A. MIRFAKHRAIE
a representation of the model family, which is portrayed as a White fam-

ily that owns a collection of Persian and Muslim/Shi‘i books. It is not a
Black Arab family that collects and reads Arabic or Sunni religious books.
This family represents the ideal middle-class Persian(ized) family. It is a
consuming unit that is proud of its Persian (read Pars) culture and values.
The daughter of this family, for example, reads from the “Stories of the
Shahnameh” to her brother at bedtime (P1 2015: 2). This choice of read-
ing materials highlights the Persian-centric biases of the authors of the text-
books who reference a manuscript that has also been used as a scientific and
historical source by Iranian historiographers to justify Persian supremacy
(see below). The ideological code in this construction is the assumption
that the Shahnameh provides a comprehensive history of all Iranians in
antiquity, and by reading it, non-Persian students can also learn about their
(read: Persian) history. This supposition ignores the fact that this poetry
book only celebrates Pars culture and its heroes by demonizing the his-
torical, non-Persian enemies of Iran. In such lessons, the Aryan discourse
non-presently informs how students should conceptualize Iran and relate to
the stories of Shahnameh: they must love these stories, as they must also
love Iran. As such, the hegemonic status of Pars/Shi‘i identity of the ideal
Iranian family is affirmed early on in students’ educational journey.
The love for the nation is also expressed through emotional attachments
to and respect for the heroes of Iran documented in books such as the
Shahnameh (P1 2015: 75; P4 2012: 37; P6 2012: 27–30). These poetry
and religious books function as ideological codes that reinforce the cultural
capital of the middle-class Persian/Shi‘i majority. They institutionalize the
Persian language as the source of identity and as an indication of the Persian
character and resilience to protect Iran’s rich national cultural heritage (P3
2015; G8 2004). Persian represents the language of art/sciences and the
discourse through which Iranian scientists have been communicating with
the world (P6 2012: 25; P3 2013: 81). To be Iranian implies speaking
Persian, and to undermine the national language is to question the legiti-
macy of the nation (P1 2015: 75; P3 2013: 80–81; P6 2012: 23–24, 26;
SS8 2014; TG P1 2012: 127). “Ethnic” languages are not viewed and con-
sidered as legitimate national languages, and the linguicism of the domi-
nant society and its effects on marginalized groups are not interrogated.
Such constructions of Persian language ignore the politics of linguis-
tic diversity and the hegemonic aspects of the national language as a
source of domination/exploitation. They silence the experiences of non-
Persian–speaking students and ignore the cultural violence they have faced
(P6 2012: 34–38). Although linguistic differences amongst students are

acknowledged, the curricula emphasize their shared nationality, religious
beliefs (however, not all Iranians are Muslim; there are a significant num-
ber of Baha’i Iranians, who by definition are considered as enemy-insiders
and agents of Zionism/imperialism, H8 2004), and cultural values/norms
that unite Iranians into a cohesive/resilient collectivity. The enemies of
Iran are blamed for trying to destabilize the country using language as
a political tool of divisiveness (e.g., setting the different provinces and
their populations against one another over language issues). The ideologi-
cal code that is disseminated assumes that questioning the legitimacy of
the Persian language and emphasizing the right of “minority” students
to learn in their own languages promote divisive politics that is promoted
by external-enemies of the country who want to instigate disunity/chaos
(P6 2012: 34–38).
The construction of Persian culture/language is also based on racial-
ized/Shi‘i-centric discourses that depict Iranians as active agents of change
who have always revolted against their invaders, such as the racist Arab
Other after the Muslim invasion of Iran. Sunni Arab rulers are constructed
as ineffective/incompetent administrators, who relied on the expertise/
knowledge of Iranians to administer their territories (SS5 2004: 95). They
are also depicted as violent/ruthless individuals who not only murdered
many of the Iranians who assisted them to rule over the country, but
also martyred several Shi‘i Imams who rose against the exploitation of
the people during the reign of unjust Sunni Arab rulers (SS8 2014: 66).
The artistic/moral/scientific progress experienced during this period is
credited to the efforts of Iranian Viziers who encouraged writers/poets/
scientists to pursue knowledge production (SS5 2004: 98). For example,
in “The Government of Abbasid Caliphate” (SS5 2012: 97–99), which
narrates the rise of the Abbasid Caliphate, the history of Iran is told in
light of the depiction of the Umayyad Caliphate and their rulers as racist
and un-Islamic individuals, who considered the Arab “race” as superior
to others. Students learn that Imam Hussein was martyred during the
reign of the Umayyad Caliphate, which resulted in Muslims’ anger and
uprisings against this Caliphate’s rule over the Islamic territory (SS5 2012:
94–96). In these lessons, the Arab non-Shi‘i Other is normalized and
symbolized as racist and violent, and Iranians as the “victims” of racism,
which non-presently reaffirms the construction of the Aryan/Pars category
as a peaceful and fair group of people whose civilization promotes justice
and equality. In “The Scientific Progress of Muslims” (SS6 2015: 49–50),
furthermore, the authors explore the role of science and progress in the
110 A. MIRFAKHRAIE
Islamic world. However, the emphasis is mainly on Iranian scientists’ func-

tions in the progress of knowledge. Students learn about the names of five
Iranians whose contributions to the fields of medicine, chemistry, math-
ematics, and astrology have been significant. Science is narrated through
Islamic- and Iranian-centric frameworks that do not explore the contribu-
tions of other non-Persian and non-Arab scholars to the development of
science after the introduction of Islam across the globe. Non-presently,
the discourse of Ummat-e Islami is Persianized and Aryanized, and the
descendants of the Pars tribe are constructed as mavericks and the leading
figures within the Islamic world. For example, in a lesson that explores
the establishment of independent dynasties after the “invasion” of Iran by
Arab Muslims, the role of Nizam al-Mulk in the creation of Nezamiyeh
Schools is discussed (SS5 2012: 103). Students are informed that Iran
was also ruled by the invading Turkish tribes who formed a number of
dynasties during this period. Furthermore, they learn that Iranian Viziers
played important roles in the governance of Iran during the reign of these
various Turkish dynasties, which are constructed as cruel and oppressive
outsiders who “migrated” into Iran after the introduction of Islam (thus,
also constructing their descendants as eternal outsiders within). Nizam al-
Mulk is referenced as an example of one of these Iranian Viziers who was
responsible for the establishment a series of institutions of higher learning
known as Nezamiyeh all over the country. In this and similar lessons, the
role of Iranians in promoting science and knowledge is celebrated, and
the resiliency of Persians to not succumb to the assimilationist policies of
their invaders is also emphasized: the invader Others have not been able
to alter the Persian character and integrate Iranians into their respective
cultural traditions. In other words, the various Others have not been able
to annihilate and/or assimilate the Iranian Self: The Aryan/Pars core of
the Iranian identity remains intact throughout Iranian history. The role
of Iranians in promoting science and knowledge during these periods is
objectified as a reflection of the historical involvements of Aryan/Pars Self
in promoting progress—locally and globally. The discontinuities between
Islamic and Aryan periods are textually resolved by highlighting the roles
of Iranians as leaders in the promotion of arts, architecture, and sciences.
The curricula represent Iranians as resilient people who have continued
to speak Persian and practised Iranian cultural traditions. Iranians are also
celebrated as active social actors who freed themselves from, for instance,
Arab control by establishing a number of independent local governments
such as the Sāmāniyān Dynasty (819–999 CE), which is also credited to
have played an influential role in promoting scientific progress (SS5 2004:
100). The Persian revival is also associated with the efforts of Sāmāniyān
rulers and Iranian poets such as Rudaki (referred to as the father of Persian
poetry) and Firdowsi, who is constructed as a national hero who kept
“alive the Persian language that Iranians speak today” (P2 2004: 135–136;
P2 2013: 73; P5 2014: 14–17, 8–10, 21–26). Heroes of the nation are
constructed in light of a Persian-centric lens and religious perspective. For
example, in the lesson, “Aryo Barzan” (P5 2012: 130–131; the title of
this lesson changed to “Defending the Fatherland/Country” in P5 2015:
56–57), the discourses of martyrdom, sacrifice, and Loving Iran intersect
one another as ideological codes through which General Aryo Barzan, who
defended the country against the Greek invasion, is idealized as the sym-
bol of heroism, much in the same way that the martyrs of the Iran–Iraq
War protected the nation during the 1980s. He is represented as a histori-
cal role model. All Iranians are required to non-presently act and behave
like this “Glorious” Aryan/Pars. In fact, in “The Champions of Iran in
Antiquity” (SS8 2014: Worksheet Number 18), students learn that Aryo
Barzan means the “Magnificent Aryan.” His bravery is illustrated in light
of his desire to die for Iran as he defended the capital of the Achaemenidan
Empire against the enemy invaders. In addition, students also read about
General Surena, a Parthian warrior, whose name, they learn, means
“Powerful.” Surena, the text asserts, defeated the Roman army and killed
Crassus, the Roman Legion Commander (SS8 2014: Worksheet Number
18). The important ideological codes in these depictions of the historical
heroes of the nation are the idealization of self-sacrifice and bravery as
two of the most important characteristics of the Persian/Iranian character
since antiquity: the “Magnificent” and “Powerful” Persian will never give
up the land of the Aryans. The Aryan thesis informs the construction of
Iran and its citizens, whose characteristics are reflected not only through
Eurocentric Orientalist accounts, but also in the light of references to
Persian historical documents (e.g., the Shahnameh): we will rather die
than submit to domination (P5 2012: 130–131). The curricula intertex-
tually narrate the defence of the fatherland in light of the construction of
the ideal citizen as the reincarnation of the “Magnificent” and “Powerful”
Aryan Self. By referencing the Shahnameh, the Achaemenidan dynasty as
the symbol of one of the greatest civilizations is constructed as one of the
central defining elements of Iranian national identity (P5 2015: 56–57).
The ideological code of such lessons promotes the assumption that the
Iranian Self is dependent on the preservation of Persian culture and tradi-
tions. The task of defending the nation is historicized as a characteristic
112 A. MIRFAKHRAIE
of the Persian “race.” As already mentioned, “our land” (read: Persian

land) is idealized and normalized as an important historical space that will
never be surrendered. The discourses of fadakari (sacrifice) and martyr-
dom intersect one another from a highly paternalistic perspective to situ-
ate the Aryan/Pars people as the founding nation of Iran by references to
a poetry book that all Iranians are supposed to cherish and celebrate. For
example, in the lesson, “Arash the Archer” (P4 2015: 54–55), students are
introduced to another hero of the Shahnameh. This lesson historicizes the
undeniable love Iranians have for Iran in light of the discourse of sacrifice
and the mythical wars between Iran and Turan in antiquity. Arash the
Archer (Arash-e Kamangir) is presented as a historical champion who was
not only God-loving but also willing to sacrifice his life for Iran in order
to protect the country against its enemies (P4 2015: 54–57, 129). He is
also credited for establishing the historical boundaries of Iran. In this and
other similar lessons, the discourse of sacrifice is constructed as a chief
characteristic of Iranian/Aryan/Persian/Muslim culture and the ideal cit-
izen (see also SS4 2015: 46–53; P4 2015: 54–57; SS7 2015: 115–134; SS8
2014: 98–99). To die for the nation, country, and state is normalized and
celebrated in the light of nationalist, religious, and Orientalist discourses.
The ideological code in these depictions of Persian poets/scientist/
administrators/heroes is the normalization of Persian cultural capital
(P1 2015: 75; P4 2015: 129; P3 2012: 73–74, 66–67; SS3 2004). The
Shahnameh is idealized/normalized as a historically verifiable source of
information about Iran and its nemeses in antiquity through which the
Self is contrasted to multiple forms of Otherness (one of them being
the racist Arab Other) that have always threatened Iran. It is through an
emphasis on the Shahnameh, as a central component of the discourse of
Loving Iran, that the willingness to defend the country and the state as a
historical invocation of the Persian “race” is also normalized/celebrated
(P4 2004: 143). The heroes of the Shahnameh historicize the discourses
of sacrifice/martyrdom from nationalist/Shi‘i perspectives as the defining
elements of the ideal citizen (P4 2015: 54–57, 129; SS4 2015: 46–53; P4
2015: 54–57; SS7 2015: 115–134; SS8 2014: 98–99). In these construc-
tions, the Shi‘i Islamic state and the Pars/Aryan nation are intertwined
entities. The history of Persian and Shi‘i Iranians is presented as the com-
mon past that unites all Iranians irrespective of the diverse languages spo-
ken by them or their ethnic/religious affiliations. The land of the Aryans
is Islamized, and the Islamic Republic as its heir is non-presently depicted
as the most independent era in Iranian history.
The Aryan Myth, the Founding Nation, Otherness,

and the Orientalist Knowledge: The Dravidian
Other, Pars Self, Whiteness, and Christian
Ideology
The discourses of Loving Iran and the Islamic Republic are informed by
the non-present discourses of Whiteness and the Aryan thesis without any
critique of their Orientalist/Eurocentric and nationalist connotations. In
various versions of the “Map of Racial Diversity in Asia” (SS5 1993: 67;
2004: 16; SS8 2014: 115), for example, Asia is represented through a
racialized discourse that compartmentalizes specific regions of the con-
tinent according to skin colour differences: the colour yellow is used to
represent the Yellow “race” (nizhad-e zard), white is used for the White
“race” (nizhad-e safid), and black for the Black “race” (nizhad-e siyah).
The Dravidian group in India is symbolized as the representation of the
Black “race,” and Arabs and Iranians are constructed as white-skinned
people. In the 1993 edition of this map (SS5 1993: 67), Iranians and
northern Indians are labelled as members of the Indo-European racial-
ized groups. In the 2014 edition of this map (SS5 2014: 115), linguis-
tic categories such as Farsi (Persian), Armenian, Turk, Urdu, Hindi, and
Bengalis are used to represent language diversity in Asia, whereas in the
1993 edition, only racial labels are used as categories of difference to dis-
tinguish between various groups through the non-present discourse of
Orientalism (e.g., Indo-European category). In these maps, language
is racialized since it is associated with the colour of skin. The Dravidian
Other, thus, is a reference to both racialized and linguistic categories. In
the “Map of Religious Diversity” (SS8 2014: 116), furthermore, Judaism
is constructed as a “minority” religion whose members reside in today’s
“Israel,” which is non-presently defined as the enemy of all Muslims in
other lessons (see below). In these maps, linguistic, racial, ethnic, and
religious diversities within various parts of Asia are ignored. Iran is con-
structed as a nation where only Muslims (read: Shi‘i), Persian speakers,
and White Indo-Europeans live, ignoring the fact that many non-White,
non-Persian-speaking, and non-Indo-European peoples also reside there.
Diversity is homogenized by silencing multiplicity within these categories
of difference. For example, in the “Faces of Various Asians” (SS5 1993:
67–68), pictures of various racialized groups in Asia—Japanese, Indo-
Chinese, Mongolian, Indian (Hindi), Western Asian, and Dravidian—
are presented to students, essentializing racial imagery of the Other and
114 A. MIRFAKHRAIE
homogenizing these groups without accounting for ethnic, religious,

racialized, and linguistic diversities within each of these categories. The
Dravidian Other, furthermore, is represented as partially clothed, rural,
and “uncivilized,” an image that is in contrast to how the Persian char-
acters in modernity and antiquity are presented, as tall, fully clothed, and
“civilized,” which reproduce the Orientalist construction of the Aryan Self
and the indolent Dravidian Other (see below).
As already mentioned, the curricula also symbolize the Pars sub-
tribe of the Aryan “race” as the founding nation of Iran (SS4 2004: 86;
H6 2004: 34; H6 1994: 23). The Pars tribe’s final destination is repre-
sented as the core of “Our Land,” excluding other groups such as the
Kurd and the Lur (identified as descendants of the Medes) from the status
of co-founding fathers of the nation. They are omitted from the ideal
citizen category since they are not Pars (the Medes are distinguished
from the Pars tribe, despite their Aryan heritage, and are constructed as
part of the European tribe whose kings, after migrating to Western Iran,
exploited the people, H6 2004: 35–39; SS4 2004: 86) (Provincial Studies,
Ilam 2012: 77). The discourse of the Aryan-Pars migration historicizes/
legitimizes Persian cultural capital as the source of Iranian identity (P1
2015: 44, 48; P1 2004: 48; G7 2004; SS5 2004; SS7 2015; SS3 2004).
They are constructed as civilized/noble/honest individuals (TG, SS4 n.d.:
Lesson 11), and the Pars culture is celebrated as a significant world civili-
zation (SS4 2015: 37). The Achaemenidan Empire is idealized as a just/
fair “state” that promoted equality for all, including for those nations they
conquered (SS4 2015: 49). Their military/administrative/legal innova-
tions are considered to have global consequences/influences (SS7 2015:
115). The ideological code that is promoted assumes that the invasion of
other parts of the world by Iranians did not result in the exploitation of
Otherness and was not hegemonic. The history of Iran, students learn,
begins with an event that was liberating due to the importance of equal-
ity/honour/freedom amongst the “Aryans.” The founding “fathers” of
the nation are idealized as peaceful men who pursued truth and struggled
against evil (Vaziri 1993).
This narration of the genesis of Iran non-presently situates Whiteness as
superior to various forms of Otherness (G7 2004). As already mentioned,
in depicting India and Iran in the lessons about Asia, for example, Iranians
and northern Indians are classified as Indo-Europeans (as the symbol of
the White “race”) and contrasted to a number of other non-White and
mixed racial groups such as Black Dravidians (see above, SS8 2014) whose
members are presented in a picture as slender, partly clothed, non-urban,
and non-developed (SS5 1993: 68). The non-present discourse in this rep-
resentation of Asia is the centrality of Orientalist knowledge as the foun-
dation to imagine the Self without any detailed critical reflections on the
consequences of British imperialism and colonial policies in the region,
despite the fact that students learn that Asians defeated colonial forces
due to their shared religious convictions (SS5 1993). The consequences of
nationalist movements in terms of genocidal policies/practices are silent
aspects of the curricula. The representations of Asia based on factors such
as colour of skin, nationality, and facial differences and the discourse of
Indo-Europeanism, nevertheless, incite another non-present discourse: the
Christian theology, which is informed by the European conceptualization
of the Aryan thesis that emphasized language and its relations to ethno-
cultural characteristics as the basis to prove the accuracy of the book of
Genesis and the idea of monogenetism prevalent during the nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries. Students are not provided with critical
oppositional knowledge to interrogate how Aryanism was a crucial frame-
work for analysing the pre-colonial history of the colonized people and
“for the interpretation of the imperial present” (Ballantyne 2002 p. 3).
The uncritical reference to the Dravidian category as the symbol of
the “Black race” non-presently reproduces the racist distinctions made
between the northern Aryan Indians and darker skinned indigenous
southern Indians in the Orientalist writings: Aryans were imagined as tall/
civilized/light skinned, and the Dravidians were viewed as uncivilized/
backward/indolent/idol (Ballantyne 2002: 50). The inclusion of the
Dravidian category highlights how the Orientalist knowledge continues
to influence the extent to which subaltern people construct their national
selves from highly charged racist perspectives that hierarchically relate
them to other subaltern categories of difference. The racist epistemologi-
cal assumptions of this construction cannot be rectified by simply vilifying
colonialism/imperialism. The pedagogical discourses used to imagine the
nation are based on a colonial language that needs to be interrogated.
This means decentring the idea of Iran by rejecting the Aryan thesis and
making spaces for the histories of other oppressed and subaltern groups
as part of the definition of Self, expressed through their voices and critical
epistemological standpoints.
116 A. MIRFAKHRAIE
The Aryan Myth, Multiple Arab Others, Shi‘i Self,

and the Discourse of Martyrdom
Another important exclusion within the narration of nation is any reference

to the internal Arab “race” and how they fit into the Aryan migration myth
and the “evolution” of Iranian society, despite the fact that the civilization
of Elamites in today’s Khuszetan (where Iran’s ethnic Arabs live) is dis-
cussed (SS6 2015). The Iranian Arab population is excluded from the his-
tory of the nation in antiquity and contemporary Iran. They, like the Turkic
“races,” are constructed as external-insiders, as immigrants. Nevertheless,
the Iranian Self is imagined in light of multiple images of Arab Others that
situate them within conflicting binary oppositions of friendly-insiders and
friendly-outsiders, and external-outsiders and external-insiders (SS4 2004:
104–105; SS4 1999: 113–114; SS4 1994: 126). The migration of Arab
tribes from Arabia towards the borders of Iran during the Sassanid period
(224–651 CE) is characterized as a destructive process (H6 2004: 67; H6
1994: 58–59). This first image of the Arab Other constructs them as his-
torical outsiders and dangerous external-Others. They are also represented
as friendly-outsiders, as in the case of a group of Arabs who were permitted
to settle in southern parts of the Persian Empire in order to prevent fur-
ther Arab encroachment into Iran (H6 2004: 67; H6 1994: 58–59). The
authors’ discursive account of history highlights that no Arab tribes had
ever lived or migrated within the current boundaries of Iran before or dur-
ing the reign of the Sassanid. The invading Arab Other is non-presently con-
structed as the unwanted historical Other whose descendants could never
have any real political and geographical claim to Iran.
The pre-Muslim Arab in Arabia is also constructed as the pagan Other,
who worshipped “man-made” gods (SS5 2004: 76–78; SS5 2001: 75–77;
SS5 1993: 93–97), much the same way the Baha’i Other is depicted as the
follower of a “man-made” religion and as the agent of colonialism (H8
2004) and some Black Africans are portrayed as followers of paganism (G7
2004; SS8 2014). The pre-Islamic Arab is an uncultured and illiterate per-
son who lived in the state of “barbarism and paganism,” was not involved
in scientific discoveries, was ethnocentric and only concerned with his/her
own tribal matters, and did not have any sense of justice towards non-tribal
members (SS8 2014: 49). In contrast, after the introduction of Islam, the
Arab Other is perceived as a spiritual Other who helped the poor and
freed slaves (SS8 2014: 49). Faith in Islam is highlighted as the main rea-
son for the success of Muslim Arabs in their quest to spread their new
religion and rise up against tyranny (SS4 2004: 104–105; SS4 1999: 111;
SS4 1994: 122–123). However, Islam, and not the Arab Other (excluding
the Prophet and Shi‘i Imams), is presented as an emancipatory force that
enabled Iranians to fight poverty and free themselves from the shackles
of injustice (SS4 2004: 104–205; SS4 1999: 111; SS4 1994: 122–123;
H6 2004: 67; H6 1999: 65; H6 1994: 65). Iranians are also represented
as one of the first major supporters of Prophet Mohammad because of
Islam’s focus on equality and the Prophet and Shi‘i Imams’ emphasis on
justice and peace. Imam Ali, for example, is depicted as an anti-racist indi-
vidual who did not consider Arabs as superior to others, a message that
attracted Iranians to his teachings. The ideological code in these depictions
assumes that Iranian people (read Aryan-Pars) were subjects with agency
who chose to accept Islam and become involved in its rise and dissemina-
tion, much the same way they promoted the Islamic Republic (P3 2004;
SS3 2004). After the death of Prophet Mohammad and the arising con-
flicts over the leadership of the Islamic community, however, non-Shi‘i
Arab rulers are portrayed as ruthless leaders who martyred several Shi‘i
Imams (SS8 2014: 68).
The non-Shi‘i Umayyad Caliphate is demonized: their rulers are con-
structed as racist individuals (SS5 2004: 95) who maltreated the people,
abused their political power (SS5 2004: 97), and discriminated against
Iranians and other non-Arab populations (SS8 2014: 66). However, not
all Arabs are constructed as abusive external-Others. Representations
of Shi‘i Imams construct the Arab Other as friendly-outsiders/insiders
(SS8 2014: 56–61). Their constructions as peaceful men who, at times,
were forced to choose violence to stand up against tyrant leaders and bring
about social justice is framed in light of the discourse of martyrdom (SS5
2004: 94–95; SS8 2014: 56–61), which is idealized as a necessary defen-
sive political tool in resisting autocracy (SS8 2014: 66). In these construc-
tions, the (non-Shi‘i) Arab Other non-presently stands in opposition to the
Persian category. Unlike the leaders of the Persian Empire who brought
justice to the people they dominated, the non-Shi‘i Arab Other discrimi-
nated against the “fathers” of Shi‘ism and their Persian followers. The
continuity between Iranian-Pars traditions and Shi‘i Islam is historicized/
normalized. Islam is non-presently Aryanized, and the superiority of the
Shi‘i-Aryan-Pars is legitimized. The textbooks present the religious gen-
esis of martyrdom in light of a nationalist perspective and racialized pro-
cess that textually turns the Aryan brave warrior into a Pars White Shi‘i
martyr. Iran, for example, is symbolized as the land of many thousand
individual martyrs like Aryo Barzan (the Achaemenidan General who
challenged the invasion of Persia by Alexander the Great, see above) who
118 A. MIRFAKHRAIE
have victoriously sacrificed their lives for Islam, Iran, and freedom (P5
2014: 130–134). The ideological code that is promoted assumes that the
Iranian Self can never be dominated because an important characteristic
of the Iranian consciousness is self-sacrifice, fadakari (P3 2004: 48–50;
P5 2004: 42–43). The discourse of martyrdom signifies the importance of
defending Iran against its enemies: Iran is idealized as the site of Islamic
power, and sacrificing one's life is considered as a quintessential character-
istic of Shi‘i Iranians (SS5 2008: 162–164; P4 2004: 18).
The Discourses of Loving Iran, Martyrdom,

Ummat-e Islami, Dispossessed Arab, the Zionist
Oppressor, and Militarization: Normalization
of Violence as a Means of Achieving Justice
The discourses of Loving Iran, Ummat-e Islami, martyrdom, leadership,

and defending the nation require constructions of enemy-Others who must
be resisted and oppressed Others who must be protected. In discussions
about the political economy of Western Asia, a number of enemy-Others are
juxtaposed against the friendly-oppressed-Arab-Other who must be saved by
the ideal citizen (SS8 2014). Western colonial/imperialist forces and their
regional agents are symbolized as enemy-Others who have created chaos in
the region (SS8 2014). Zionist Israel is identified as a dangerous-Other that
has historically benefitted from the support of American/British imperial-
ism and has systematically discriminated against the oppressed Palestinians
(SS8 2014: 128). In lessons such as “The Palestinian Teacher” (P3 2012:
133) and “Fadakaran” (Self-Scarifying Individuals), which reference the
Iran–Iraq War youth martyr Mohammad Hossein Fahmideh (P3 2012:
59), the ideals of dying for the nation and defending the country against
enemy-Others are emphasized from a transnational Islamic perspective. In
“Palestinian Teacher,” the youth involvement in the Intifada movement
is narrated for students. This lesson highlights the valour of Palestinian
children who resist Israeli soldiers and recounts how a three-year-old boy
is martyred by the Israeli soldiers (P3 2012: 135). Palestinian kids are
portrayed as self-sacrificing individuals (fadakar) who stand up to the
murderous state of Israel and their agents. They are constructed as the
innocent ones who are unfairly treated and their rights violated. The fact
that the three-year-old boy resisted the enemy-Other and lost his life for
the nation of Palestine (thus, Islam) makes him a great source of emula-
tion, just like those self-sacrificing Iranian youths who volunteered for
the Iran–Iraq War and died for the country (P3 2012: 59). The state of
Israel is non-presently constructed as an oppressive and evil regime that
does not adhere to the Universal Rights of Children. The discourse of
martyrdom is a central component of this lesson that in conjunction with
the discourses of Ummat-e Islami and self-sacrifice offers Iranian stu-
dents a standpoint to relate to other oppressed people as freedom-loving
Persians/Aryans who will liberate, in this case, the friendly Palestinian
Other from the enemies of all Muslims of the world, the State of Israel.
In fact, in the lesson, “Mashhad” (SS3 2012: 56–57), which is about the
travels of the Hashemi family from Shiraz, where the Pars tribe historically
settled, to Mashhad, the region where the Shrine of the Eighth Shi‘i Imam
Reza and Ferdowsi’s tomb are located, Mr. Hashemi, who is represented
as a staunch supporter of the “Imam’s Path” and the Supreme Leader of
Iran, tells his children, “God willing, there will be the day that all Muslims
will unite to free Palestine and Al-Aqsa Mosque [located in Jerusalem]
from the enemies of Islam” (SS3 2012: 56–57; SS3 2004: 57; SS3 2000:
75–76). In this construction of the enemy-Other, which includes an image
of the replica of Al-Aqsa Mosque in the Shrine of Imam Reza, a transna-
tional religious space is dislocated, and through its replica in the Shrine of
a Shi‘i Imam (who was martyred by the ruthless Arab Caliphate in Iran),
the ideal Iranian Self is non-presently constructed in light of the discourses
of Velayat-e Faqih, Ummat-e Islami, the Palestinian Other, the racist Arab
Other, martyrdom, leadership, and the Aryan migration.
The liberation of Palestine from the hands of the Zionist occupiers is
considered as the most important goal of all Muslims (SS8 2014: 131).
The Palestinian Other (as the symbol of the oppressed friendly-external-
Arab-Other, the discourse of mostaz‘afin) and the Jewish Zionist element
within Israel (constructed as the enemy-external-Other of Iran, Palestine,
and Islam) provide the Islamic Republic a framework to affirm its leader-
ship position in the Ummat-e Islami. This framework legitimizes its sym-
bolic claim to the city of Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque as important
sources of pan-Islamic identity for Iranians, albeit through the binary
oppositions of Shi‘i/non-Shi‘i and Pars/non-Pars that assume a hierar-
chical separation between Iranians and the Palestinian and Jewish Zionist
Others (SS3 2008: 56–57; SS3 2004: 57; SS3 2000: 75–76).
The state of Israel is depicted as a violent entity that has murdered
many innocent Muslim individuals, whose death must be revenged (SS6
2004: 47; SS6 1999: 39). The curriculum promotes violence as the main
option to bring about social justice for this oppressed group; however, it
120 A. MIRFAKHRAIE
also distinguishes between Muslim and non-Muslim Palestinian Others.

The discourse of revenge is a patriarchal and sexist framework that repro-
duces contradictory relations between internal- and external-Selves and
-Others. It espouses both hate and love for the Self and Other through
the normalization of the discourses of peace and violence. The proposed
revenge of the murdered Palestinian fathers by the enemy-Other, for exam-
ple, non-presently promotes violence against those Iranian Zionist Jews
who have immigrated to the State of Israel since the 1930s, undermining
the message of love, equality, and peace promoted in the textbooks. At
the same time, it is the love for the Self and Muslim-friendly-external-
Other that should impel Iranians to practise violence against the external-
enemy-Other. This love is contrasted to the violence that is imposed on the
Palestinian Other, which is memorialized in light of a historical amnesia
regarding the unequal conditions that the Baha’i and other ethnic “minor-
ity” groups have endured in Iran.
The curricula problematize the violent Israeli Other and the discourse
of Zionism as the ideological justification behind the hatred that is directed
against Palestinians. The unity of the Islamic world is perpetuated and
affirmed in light of an image of the enemy-external-Other that relegates it to
the category of non-human. In contrast, the Iranian Self is represented as
revolutionary, caring, seeker of social justice, and promoter of the rights of
the oppressed. Yet, the discourse of Loving Iran is turned on its head as the
ideal Iranian who should love all Iranians is non-presently asked to harm the
Iranian/Israeli Other. The enemy-Other in this sense lives within the Self,
which is conceived through a collection of global/national segmented/
hierarchical Self-Other-Other. Violence as an act of loving the exploited
external-friendly-Other and arising from revenge towards enemy-external/
internal-Other is normalized, becomes normative, to the extent to which
criticizing and escaping it is perceived and viewed as an act of betraying the
nation, the leadership, and Islam (see Giroux 2014: 96). The violence of
the authoritarian hold of the ruling elite over the power structure is turned
into and promoted in light of the discourse of humanitarianism that col-
lapses civic responsibilities into militaristic duties (Giroux 2014).
The normalization of violence is framed in light of the idealization of
the militarization of the Islamic Republic, which is promoted as an essen-
tial element of the modernization and progress of the country (P1 2015:
45; P1 2004: 49; TG P1 2012: 102; P5 2014: 34, 50–60; SS8 2014:
128–130). The curricula celebrate the military achievements of the armed
forces and their role in defending Islam and Iran against foreign imperialist
forces and their internal and regional agents (SS8 2014: 128–130). The
discourse of militarization, as a framework that both demonizes some for-
eign entities as the enemies of Iran’s independence and idealizes the armed
forces as a necessary requirement to protect Iranians and promote order in
other parts of the world, is a non-present trace in the discourses of Loving
Iran and development. The modernization of the armed forces is also a
non-present element of the discourse of independence since a technologi-
cally advanced military force is represented as essential in ensuring the
survival of the Islamic Republic.
However, the oppressive role of the military in the process of nation-
building, especially in regards to ethnic “minorities,” is not discussed. The
historical memories and struggles of “minorities” are either ignored or
only referenced by, for example, blaming internal-enemy-Others, such as
the Mojahedin-e-Khalq, whose members allegedly burnt and destroyed vil-
lages in rural areas of Kurdistan and assassinated many important political
figures of the Islamic revolution (H8 2004). Existing ethnic, racial, cultural,
and religious conflicts are blamed on the efforts of the external-enemies of
Islam and the revolution who take advantage of internal ethnic/religious
differences to cause chaos (Provincial Studies, Sistan & Baluchistan 2012:
51). Ethnic “minorities” who populate the border territories of the coun-
try, nevertheless, are constructed as the first lines of defence against the
enemies of Iran (see above, P3 2013: 80–81). The participation of the
‘ashayir as members of the paramilitary Basij during the Iran–Iraq War is
also celebrated (SS3 2000: 14). However, the history of their domination
through military conquest in light of the modernization policies since the
early decades of the last century is silenced. In Provincial Studies, Ilam
(2012: 60), for example, it is assumed that those ‘ashayir that were sed-
entarized had done so voluntarily and with the assistance of the central
government. The settlement patterns and urbanization of this region is
further narrated in light of uncritical approaches to the previous state’s
policy to control the boundaries of Iran and to establish strategic defen-
sive positions in the region (Provincial Studies, Ilam 2012: 66). Ethnic
and racial diversity is presented through de-historicized approaches to the
militarization and modernization of Iran that perpetuate the idea that the
process of nation-building has been non-violent (SS3 2004: 12–14; SS4
1999: 137). Although colonialism, Zionism, and imperialism and their
consequences in Asia, Africa, and the Americas are criticized (SS8 2014;
G7 2004; G8 2004: 73–75; G8 2002: 73–75), the imperialism of Iranian
Self against its many internal and differential forms of Otherness is cel-
ebrated in light of a racialized and Shi‘i-centric construction of Iran.
122 A. MIRFAKHRAIE
Conclusion
The present and non-present discourses that inform the narration of nation
are multiple and contradictory, but in their discursive formation, offer
a singular/homogenized history of Iran that is devoid of the voices of
multiple internal and external enemy/friendly-Others and -Selves. Iranian
school textbooks are politicized pedagogies (Giroux 2014) that normalize
and inculcate a Pars/Aryan/Shi‘i-centric national identity. Iranian curri-
cula do not provide a multicentric language of talking back (hooks 1989)
to various forms of power in local or global contexts that is inclusive of
the experiences and ways of knowing about the oppressed of the world. It
silences the voices of dissent and anti-hegemonic standpoints as the bases
for questioning nationalist/imperialist/racist ideologies and their destruc-
tive/violent consequences (hooks 1989). The curricula do not enable
students to become reflective of and confront the internalized forms of
racism and ethnicism that inform their lives and the structures of power
within Iran and/or across the world.
Iranians school textbooks are racialized, Orientalist, Persian-centric, and
Shi‘i-centric discursive formations that do not enable students to develop
multicentred/oppositional critical consciousness. Iranian curriculm needs
to be purged of its Persian-centric, Eurocentric, and Islamo-centric per-
ceptions of insiders/outsiders through the inclusion of the voices of ordi-
nary contemporary and historical forms of Otherness, which requires a
rejection of the national Self, its dislocation as the centre of identity, and
its replacement with a plurality of identities that reflect the histories and
experiences of marginalized peoples from anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist,
and anti-nationalist perspectives. There is a need for a social biography
approach to curriculum construction that highlights those points of diver-
gence and convergence that frame the contradictory/dialectical socio-
psychological–historical experiences of subaltern peoples (Burke Edmund
and Yaghoubian 2006). As Gramsci points out, the production of critical
consciousness should not be set in essentialist approaches to the role of
differentiated Others in identity construction but in how the Other in
its multiple forms intervenes in the production of the Self in dialectical,
emancipatory, and oppressive ways (2000). Such a transformative and lib-
eratory curriculum will enable students to critically know not only the
Self through the historical memories of subaltern Others but also Others
through the decentred Self (Gramsci 2000: 59).
References
Ballantyne, Tony. 2002. Orientalism and Race: Aryanism in the British Empire.
Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Burke Edmund, E., and David Yaghoubian (ed). 2006. Struggle and Survival in
the Middle East. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Giroux, Henry. 2014. Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education. Chicago:
Haymarket Books.
Gramsci, Anthony. 2000. Working Class Education and Culture. In The Gramsci
Reader: Selected Reader 1916–1935, ed. D. Forgacs, 53–75. New York:
New York University Press.
hooks, bell. 1989. Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black. Boston:
South End Press.
Vaziri, Mostafa. 1993. Iran as Imagined Nation: The Construction of National
Identity. New York: Paragon House.
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and Writing Company.
CHAPTER 8
Justice Interrupted: The University

and the Imam
Ardalan Rezamand
The University of Tehran was created during the reign of the first Pahlavi
monarch, Reza Shah, in 1934. It promised to be the nation’s premiere
site for the acquisition and exchange of Western knowledge, providing the
know-how necessary in authoritatively modernizing Iran while weakening
the yoke of imperialism, a step toward justice and national self-assertion.
As a Pahlavi project, conceived and directed by the Royal Court (darbar),
University of Tehran was closely associated with the Iranian state. In addi-
tion to its function as the center of higher education, the University was
used as a site to create, promote, and disseminate ideologies congruent
with the Pahlavi’s preferred national identity and modernity.
Concurrently, however, the University of Tehran became a recur-
ring site of criticism of, and protest against, the state, with the voices of
social justice and liberatory politics dominating student movements, up
to the 1979 Iranian Revolution, a testament to the Pahlavi state’s failure
in providing social justice while modernizing the country. There was a
qualitative difference between University of Tehran and Euro-American
universities—namely, a visible absence of true academic “freedom” and
“independence” from the state, hidden under the veneer of coopera-
tion and national interest. As Iranian society witnessed greater political
A. Rezamand (*)
Department of History, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-44227-3_8
128 A. REZAMAND
repression in the 1970s, conflict and tension manifested across universi-

ties in Iran. The dichotomy lay in the definition of university as a neutral
and critical site of state policy in the Western sense that conflicted with the
authoritarian-style enlightened monarchy that the Pahlavis tried to project.
The students welcomed the 1979 Revolution demanding an indepen-
dent institution of higher knowledge, free of state influence. In the ener-
gized atmosphere of the Revolution, the promise of social justice through
Islam seemed a reality. Ayatollah Khomeini’s charisma and the promise of
an equitable society ruled by ‘adl (justice) and qest (roughly: equal shares)
under Islamic guidance had led many students to anticipate such a condi-
tion. By 1979, student councils, representative of the ideological plurality
that existed on universities campuses, were created and voting took place
for the selection of governing bodies that included students and faculty.
For the first time since its inception, the University of Tehran seemed on
the verge of breaking free from the arms of the state and following a free
and independent path, with an egalitarian, civic-minded purpose. Instead,
the university soon became an ideological and at times even physical bat-
tleground between various political factions of postrevolutionary Iran,
in particular between students, in their plurality but united, versus the
regime’s forces and student supporters.
On March 20, 1980, Khomeini’s televised New Year (Nowruz) speech
initiated Iran’s Cultural Revolution. With the mandate to cleanse Iranian
society of Westoxication, those who answered the Imam’s call helped purge
the University of “undesirable” faculty, students, staff, and curricula. This
article explores the impact of the Cultural Revolution on the University
of Tehran, taking into account its historic development. I argue that the
ideology, namely the Islamization of the University through elimination
of Westoxication, employed in this Cultural Revolution as exhibited in
the words, deeds, and decrees of the Khomeinists who would become
vanguards of the new regime, was in fact a ruse, a calculated political
action directed toward the elimination of Khomeinits’ opponents from
the University. Within the Islamists proponents of the Iranian Revolution
(1979), the Khomeinists identified with the doctrine of Velayat-e Faqih
(Guardianship of the Supreme Jurist) and strove for the creation of an
Islamic State modeled after Ayatollah Khomeini’s ideas and under his lead-
ership (Abrahamian 1993). Thus, the Cultural Revolution interrupted a
process, initiated in particular by leftist university students, toward a dem-
ocratic notion of social justice that challenged the Khomeinists a bsolutist
vision for the University.
JUSTICE INTERRUPTED: THE UNIVERSITY AND THE IMAM 129
Founding of University of Tehran
Starting in the late 1920s, some civic associations in Iran that were also
closely involved with the darbar pushed for the creation of a western-
style modern university in Iran. Among these was the Society for National
Heritage (SNH; Anjoman-e Asar-e Melli). The activities of this society
demonstrate a legacy of cooperation between intellectuals and the govern-
ment in various Iranian modernization programs initiated in the twentieth
century. The goal of SNH was to use spatial imagery to create public
(architectural) symbols in supporting a new national identity favoring
Reza Shah’s modernization plans. SNH was responsible for housing the
emerging, modern institutions in architectural complexes with pre-Islamic
motifs during the Pahlavi dynastic reign (Grigor 2004: 22). Several
SNH members were responsible for founding University of Tehran. The
Society’s senior members were Cabinet Ministers under Reza Shah, but
they maintained independence in their governmental activities from the
Society. These members included the Royal Court Minister Abdolhossein
Teymurtash; “the scholar Hasan Pirnia, who wrote History of Ancient Iran
in four volumes”; Mohammad Ali Forughi, who “was Reza Shah’s first
and last prime minister”; Justice and Finance Minister Ali-Akbar Davar;
Isa Sadiq; and Ali Asghar Hekmat (Grigor 2004: 21). In the early 1930s,
several members of this society approached Reza Shah with plans to create
a modern university in the capital city.
The University of Tehran was founded in 1934, with the approval of
Reza Shah and at the recommendation of Ali Asghar Hekmat. Hekmat was
assigned with the task of creating the university with the aid of a commit-
tee consisting of Mohammad Ali Forughi, Gholam-Hossein Rahnamah,
Dr. Isa Sadiq, and Dr. Ali-Akbar Siyasi (Amir Faryar 2007: 30). Siyasi
became the first elected President of the University and remained in that
position for 12 years. The University itself was the conglomeration of sev-
eral independent colleges that were created at the request of the Cabinet
Ministries and preexisted the University, but then they were incorporated
into the University as its faculties. These included the School of Political
Science founded by Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1901, the College of
Agriculture founded by Ministry of National Economy in 1902, elemen-
tary and secondary teachers training college called the Normal School for
Boys founded by Ministry of Education in 1918, and finally, the School of
Law established by Ministry of Justice in 1921.
130 A. REZAMAND
Why Have a University?

The University of Tehran was to assume two functions—one was the
practical function in furnishing skilled and modern labor as part of Iran’s
modernization program, while the other entailed an ideological function
in creating a local intellectual base of support congruent with the Pahlavi
regime’s policies and orientation. Both functions envisioned students as
automatons, cogs in the Pahlavi modernization machine, patriotic to the
state, and void of independent and apposing political ideologies. In short,
Reza Shah envisioned the University as an arm of the state for the acquisi-
tion of knowledge to help modernize the nation, not as a partner of the
state in production, analysis, and critique of such knowledge. In short, the
Pahlavi monarchy did not allow the University to have a voice in the direc-
tion of Iran’s developmental policies. At a practical level then, the problem
was the replication of a European site of higher education while suppress-
ing the university’s civic function (in Europe) as a site of critical analysis of
the policies of state. This rift manifested itself in student movements that
consistently challenged the Pahlavis approach to the University.
Reza Shah created a modern military and bureaucracy that employed
hundreds of thousands of Iranians. This modern military and bureaucracy
needed an education system to supply them with skilled labor. As a result,
during Reza Shah’s reign, there was an explosion in the number of mod-
ern schools and educators. The 1930s marked the beginning of mass mod-
ern education in Iran. According to Faghfoory,
By 1936, the total number of schools rose to 4505 with an enrolment of

300,513 students, including 6495 girls. Educational expenses increased
from Rls. 100,000 in 1925 to some three million by 1940. The government
also sent students to Europe, and their total number exceeded 1651 by
1936. Meanwhile, many maktabs and madreseh were transformed into mod-
ern secular schools and some vaqf income was allocated to the establishment
of modem educational centers. (1993: 301)
A function of the University was to create that local intellectual base of

support. Mirsepassi argues that the clash of the all-encompassing effects of
European modernity with the all-encompassing nature of Islam produced
an uneven modernity (Mirsepassi 2000: 12). In particular, Mirsepassi states
that the existence of modernity depends on having an “other,” and in this
case, the other was Islam (Mirsepassi 2000: 12). In addition, however,
the lack of an institutionalized site for the production of modern state
ideology clearly contributed to the unevenness of this type of modernity.

If modernization was projected from above (the state), then it needed
a local site for the production and growth of its legitimizing discourse
with the population; this site became a reality with the creation of the
University of Tehran.
Two examples of collaboration between the state and University
of Tehran support this view. During the reign of the first Pahlavi mon-
arch, some university faculty participated in state-sponsored initiatives.
According to Mohammed Reza Fashahi, Reza Shah intended to under-
mine the religious authority of the Ulama, replacing the Ulama’s pro-
jected Irano-Islamic identity with a new form of national mysticism.
Doing so would create a national religion that was more conforming to
modernizing reforms by undermining the ability of the Ulama to project
an independent form of national identity based on a Shi‘i epistemologi-
cal worldview. A project for this purpose was implemented with the aid
of two of the founding members (and lecturers) of University of Tehran:
Mohammad Ali Forughi and Ali Asghar Hekmat. Fashahi contends that
Forughi’s ultimate plan was to replace Iran’s official Shi‘i religion with
a form of Sufism, Erfan-e monfa‘el or Passive Mysticism, a mixture of
Islamic and Iranian Sufism and the teachings of masonry lodges. This
form of Sufism even made its way into school and university texts and was
promoted in other manners (Fashahi 2000: 168–169).
The second Pahlavi monarch, Mohammad Reza Shah, wanted to use
Western science for economic and social development while practicing an
authoritarian political model disguised under the veneer of pre-Islamic
Persian kingship. This system was linked to Western political thought
through the efforts of a specific group of intellectuals, some of whom were
University of Tehran faculty. A member of the Department of Philosophy
at University of Tehran at the time, Seyyed Hussein Nasr, was involved in
this project. While at the University, Nasr used the philosophy of Shahab
al-Din Suhrawardi (1154–1191) to argue that the idea for le despote éclaire
predated Voltaire and the “Enlightened” reign of Frederick the Second in
Prussia, and it could be found in the twelfth century work of Suhrawardi
titled Hekmat al-Ishraq (Wisdom of Illumination) (Fashahi 2000: 172).
Nasr was further involved in the creation of Tehran’s Anjoman-e
Shahanshahi-ye Falsafi-ye Iran (The Imperial Institute of Philosophy, est.
1975). This institute initiated a project in comparing thirteenth-century
Irano-Islamic philosophy with Hegelian and Voltairean philosophy in
order to promote the historical underpinnings for the Pahlavi monarchy.
132 A. REZAMAND
More pertinent to this article, Nasr contends that in 1978, Empress Farah
Pahlavi asked him to become the president of her “Special Office.” Due
to the Shah’s illness, Farah and her “Special Office” became the de facto
executive body in place of the Shah, and Farah directed the replacement
and paksazi (purging) of many members of the darbar. It was through his
position in this Office that Nasr was able to mediate between key Ulama
and the Royal Court. Nasr claims that the majority of the Ulama did not
favor an outright revolution but rather preferred reforms in Iran, and he,
through his proximity and influence with the darbar and his long-term
relations with many of the Ayatollah’s in Iran, would act as a bridge for
needed political reforms. In fact, he claims that the Ulama approached
him with a plan for the creation of an Islamic Constitutional Monarchy
(Nasr and Jahanbegloo 2006: 185–187).
Combined, the desire to train an educated middle class while orienting
their ideological and national outlook to the Pahlavi’s preferred model
led to resistance in the form of student movements. In fact, Dar al-
Funun (est. 1851), the precursor to the University of Tehran had already
witnessed student protests against government polices as early as 1900
(‘Alam 2009: 89). Events surrounding the Constitutional Revolution fur-
ther compounded and gave some direction to student movements. The
problem for the waning Qajars was to create a center of higher education
while eliminating the free and independent discourse that is an extension
of higher education. Furthermore, any discussion or discourse on free-
dom, liberty, and developmental needs to include the independent view of
centers of higher education, a function of the Western university that was
denied to the Iranian academy by the state.
The creation of the University of Tehran, mainly as an accomplice in
the Pahlavi modernization plan, naturally led to the creation of an even
more organized student movement. There were almost immediate stu-
dent strikes in 1934 and again in 1936 about the cost of tuition, extra
costs of royal “visits” to the university, and other “political issues of the
day” (‘Alam 2009: 89). The state’s influence on the University hindered,
not eliminated, student and faculty desire for a free and independent uni-
versity. I will leave discussions of student’s activities during this period
to Roozbeh Safshekan (in this volume). In short, University of Tehran
and its student body were engaged in the events surrounding Mosaddeq
Premiership and oil nationalization in the early 1950s, as well as serving a
site for recruitment of students by militant organizations in the 1960s and
1970s. In particular, leftist and Islamist critical and liberation theories of
the 1970s made an impact on the direction and desire of students leading
up to the Iranian Revolution of 1979.
A function of university student organizations before the Revolution
was to teach students about democratic procedures, such as weekly meet-
ings, orderly discussions, and electing leaders and spokesmen. Most
importantly, students were acquiring, through these organizations, the
practice of democracy and how to disagree, debate, and develop pol-
icy without authoritarian pressures, a missing factor in Iranian politics.
Student organizations, in Iran and abroad, such as the Confederation of
Iranian Students–National Union (CISNU) helped fulfill this function
among Iran’s growing middle class. For example, CISNU members were
not a monolithic block; they were not all liberals, or leftist or Islamists for
that matter; they were nationalist pluralists engaged in a social movement
demanding a growing voice in Iran’s development and governance (Matin-
asgari 2001). Change from autocracy to democracy involves, above all, a
paradigm shift in the mentality of the ruling populace, from subject to
citizen; this transformation requires both an ideological know-how and a
technical–structural know-how. The university and student organizations
such as the CISNU, during the Pahlavi era, provided both.
In short, there was a fundamentally divergent conception of the univer-
sity’s function between the creators and consumers of the institution. The
Pahlavis envisioned the university as an extension of their modernization
program, producing technically superb but politically inert experts for
Iranian society. The students, on the other hand, envisioned the university
as a forum for the acquisition of higher knowledge in becoming active
participants in Iran’s social, economic, and political development.
University of Tehran During and Following

the Revolution
Following the repressive and malaise atmosphere of the University lead-

ing up to the Revolution, university students welcomed and widely
participated in revolutionary protests and activities of 1978 and 1979.
According to Sohrab Behnam, on February 11, 1979, protesting students
liberated the first tank of the Imperial Army and moved it to University of
Tehran’s campus. Soon after, the militant-Muslim People’s Mojahedin set
up their headquarters in the Faculty of Sciences, while the Marxist-militant
Fadai Guerrillas set up their headquarters in the Faculty of Engineering.
Lagging behind these vanguards, Islamist students also created their own
134 A. REZAMAND
rganization, Imam’s Committee, and set up headquarters in the University

o
mosque (Behdad 1995: 193). More significantly, the University’s soccer
field became the territory of Hezbollah thugs and permanently changed
the site into that of Tehran’s Friday prayers (Behdad 1995: 194). In the
ideologically charged atmosphere following the Revolution, anything
even remotely Western, even sports, could be accused of leading to Iranian
cultural decay and associated with Westoxication.
University of Tehran’s student body was a microcosm of the coalition
that overthrew the Pahlavi regime at the very site primarily created to train
the Pahlavi regime’s core civic personnel and to propagate state ideol-
ogy. Thus, like the social coalition that disintegrated after the success of
the Revolution and was subjected to the strict Islamic interpretation of
state as promoted by Khomeini and the Islamic Republic Party, the cam-
pus of University of Tehran literally became an arena for conflicting views
of the pro-National Front students, student supporters of the Mojahedin
and Fadaiyan, as well as Islamist students forming the Islamic Association
(Anjoman-e Eslami). By the spring of 1979, the campus was embroiled in
political activity. There were cases of student supporters of militant oppo-
sition storing weapons in their university campus offices. The unrest and
political activity at University of Tehran’s campus, as well as other univer-
sity campuses across Iran, caused great concern for the provisional govern-
ment and escalated into riots and physical confrontations.
More significantly, while the Khomeinists were gaining political hege-
mony in state institutions and through the replacement of key civil person-
nel, they were losing the ideological battle within the universities where
socialist, radical Muslim, and liberal views were popular and vocal (Behdad
1995: 193). For example, Mohammad Maleki, then University of Tehran
President, commented that leftist organizations had gained control of
university councils, and this enabled the Left to design the ideological
orientation (socialism, Marxism) at the universities (Razavi 2009: 3). That
is why by 1980, the Ayatollah and his followers regarded the current situa-
tion at universities as a major impediment to their consolidation of power.
The conflict between the Islamic Republic and the universities came
from two different areas: epistemological and political. Epistemologically,
as the modern institution of higher learning, the university challenged the
traditional and clerical higher education system in Iran—embodied by Shi‘i
seminaries or Howzeh-ye Elmiyyeh. The university introduced a new source
of knowledge in Iran. Politically, the universities were proven sites of social
movements through student organizations, a voice of dissention to the
Pahlavis. In particular, the University had become, since the Revolution,

a forum or public space for political debate and open criticism of the new
regime (Razavi 2009: 2–3). The period between the Revolution and the
Cultural Revolution, approximately 15 months, is significant, for it dem-
onstrates how the political problem was resolved through an essentializa-
tion of the epistemological.
Before the initiation of the Cultural Revolution, many university stu-
dents and faculty had organized for collective action, such as the Sazman-e
Melli-ye Daneshgahiyan-e Iran (National Organization for University
Professors). This organization issued a statement calling for the demo-
cratic management of and greater student participation in the university
affairs (Mahdi 1999: 6). This organization and its demands were not
unique to University of Tehran. Sharif University also experimented with
joint student–faculty councils (showra) demanding greater participation
in the affairs of the university. The fall issue of pro-regime magazine,
Daneshgah-e Enqelab (September 23, 1981), alludes to these organiza-
tions, referring to the (democratically) elected committees that formed
following the revolution (“Daneshgah az Enqelab” 1981: 29). This led to
the creation of the Showra-ye Hamahangi-ye Daneshgah (Council for the
Coordination of University), consisting of students, faculty, and university
staff. The student composition of the Council, according to the article,
was 15 members with a ratio of two pro-Mojahedin-e Khalq (Daneshjooyeh
Mosalman) student representatives for every Leftist (Chapi) student rep-
resentative (“Daneshgah az Enqelab” 1981: 29).
These organizations and associations were indicative of university stu-
dents’ desire for independent centers of higher education with a voice in
Iran’s future sociopolitical development. With a history of movements and
opposition to preceding governments, and with active participation in the
Revolution, students demanded and moved to create a university govern-
ing body reflective of this desire. University students, particularly those of
the ideological Left, offered an alternative, egalitarian, democratic notion
of social justice at the University Democratic and social justice tendencies
of generations of university students since the foundation of University
of Tehran reflects their yearning for having a voice in the developmen-
tal directions—both economic and sociopolitical—of the country. As is
expected, their vision and politics were unacceptable to the homogenizing
and hegemonic forces of Khomeinist Islamists.
I think beyond the ideological differences and political battles, and
the core of the Khomeinists argument was that having an “independent”
136 A. REZAMAND
and “free” University undermined the cohesiveness of an Islamic society

striving to rid itself of Westoxication. According to Mehdi Salari, Dean
of Research Tehran Polytechnic University, “the Imam of the people, in
his Nowruz message of 1980 initiated the Cultural Revolution” and his
student following “descended upon these centers [universities] of decay
[fesad], conspiracy [towteèh] and the watershed of satanic thoughts
[sarcheshmeh-ye andisheh-ye sheytani], meaning the dependent university
[daneshgah-e vabasteh]” (in Ahmadi et al. 1983: 10).
This argument was sold in three stages in preparation for the Cultural
Revolution. First, the university was increasingly viewed as chaotic and
unorganized, a bastion of foreign ideology with contradictory views on
the goals and directions of “the people” who used to respect the university
and now viewed it as a “bastion of anti-revolutionaries” (“Daneshgah az
Enqelab” 1981: 31). Second, the activities of student organizations were
deemed irrelevant to university matters, purely political and associated with
external political organizations. This allowed the regime justification to
curtail activities of university student organizations and councils under the
guise of return to public order. “On February 27, 1980, the Ministry of
Interior issued an order banning ‘activities of all political groups in univer-
sities’ and demanding that ‘cultural activities by students’ must conform
to the government and university regulations” (Mahdi 1999: 8). Finally,
some curricula, administrative practices, and faculty were deemed to be
un-Islamic, contrary to the ideals of the Revolution and the political doc-
trine of Velayat-e Faqih that has been the guiding principle of governance
in postrevolutionary Iran. As such, the Vali-ye Faqih (The Supreme Jurist),
who holds the highest office and is the de facto ruler of Iran, acquires and
disseminates knowledge, and public policy, within a Shi‘i epistemological
framework that does not allow for what it deems to be alien theories of
knowledge. Thus, concepts such as “free” and “independent” are applied
within an Ithna ‘Ashari (Twelver Shi‘ism) knowledge base. According to
this reasoning then, a university is free in an Islamic sense, a term that is
conveniently ambiguous and expedient to political advantage. All sciences,
natural and social, all curriculum and cultural orientations must reflect
this Islamization, which the Khomeinists claimed to be the bedrock of the
Revolution. This is not to suggest that there are qualitative differences
between Islamic and Western sciences, rather a desire to add a level of
political control through Islamization, again vaguely defined, to univer-
sity curricula. After the passing of the referendum for an Islamic Republic
(April 1, 1979) and the ratification of the Constitution that upheld the
principle of Velayat-e Faqih (December 3, 1979), Imam Khomeini and his
supporters initiated the Cultural Revolution in advancing their hegemonic
position over the Iranian university.
The Cultural Revolution

Khomeini initiated the Cultural Revolution in his Nowruz (Persian New
Year) message on March 21, 1980. He stressed the necessity for the cre-
ation of an “Islamic Revolution in all of Iran’s universities” for the pur-
pose of “cleansing Eastern and Western lecturers” and “the conversion
of the university into a healthy environment for the teaching of Islamic
sciences” (Khomeini quoted in Farasatkhah 2008: 527). He continued,
“My dear students, you must strive in saving yourself from Westoxication
and find what has been lost (within you). The ‘East’ (mashreq) has lost its
indigenous culture and you who want to be free and independent must
resist [Westoxication]” (Khomeini quoted in Farasatkhah 2008: 527).
Khomeini explicitly called for the Islamization of education: “Colonial
education must be uprooted; the Islamic university must be instituted”
(Khomeini quoted in Behdad 1995: 194).
The play on words, using floating signifiers, helped Khoemini in this
endeavor: the meaning of “free” and “independent” from the Imam’s per-
spective meant being independent from Westoxication or Western cultural
and political influences. This meaning is qualitatively different from the
meaning of “independent” as free from outside interference (as in inde-
pendence of university and academic freedom). Thus, an Islamic concept
of “independent” was superimposed on the University, interrupting and
reversing the students’ calls for a “free” and “independent” institution on
par with Euro-American universities.
The views of key figures in the regime supported this Islamic concep-
tion of university. Khomeini, as the leader of the Revolution, initiated
the criticism of Iranian universities: “This kind of university will make us
dependent on the foreigners … We want university lecturers to favour
neither the West nor the East, neither Ataturk, nor Taqizadeh” (Khomeini
quoted in Razavi 2009: 3). Ali-Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, then Chairman
of Majles, stated that he was not opposed to student engagement
in political activity; however, centers for education should have not been
converted into political headquarters: “Now that we have initiated the
138 A. REZAMAND
Cultural Revolution, the curriculum itself needs to be changed, students

need to be chosen based on new conditions, and lecturers must show
sufficient qualities for teaching” (Rafsanjani quoted in Farasatkhah 2008:
533). Ali Khamanei, Iran’s current Supreme Leader, stated, “the interests
of the United States are represented by loyal elements in Kurdistan, at the
universities, and in the Bazaar,” adding, “the enemies of this revolution
have taken refuge in the universities and [are] against the people of Iran
and are using sticks, rocks, and bullets to silence the people” (Khamenei
quoted in Farasatkhah 2008: 532).
Ironically, key figures in Iran’s current opposition also supported the
radical reorientation of Iranian universities in the Cultural Revolution,
effectively accepting gharbzadegi’s tenets and favoring the Islamization
of education. Abdolkarim Soroush describes his efforts in the Cultural
Revolution:
Branches of knowledge, which are considered false in nature, not real

knowledge, these we eliminated from the university. Those things [subjects]
that are not influential to the future needs of this Revolution, and were in
fact created through the ill will of certain degree-holders in Iran, who are
both satisfied with themselves and are expectant of the people of this nation,
we put those subjects aside, and based on our understanding of Islam, we
strived to promote its beneficial knowledge in the universities. (Soroush
quoted in Farasatkhah 2008: 563)
Similarly, Mir Hossein Mousavi, the 2009 presidential candidate who

is now under house arrest following the Green Movement, held similar
views on universities: “As a citizen of the Islamic Republic, I believe that
universities are not a place for motakhasses [specialist] but are a place for
a maktabi [religious student] person who at the same time is learning a
profession” (Mousavi quoted in Razavi 2009: 4).
In the spring of 1980, the universities were ordered closed, and the
Committee for the Cultural Revolution (later renamed Supreme Council
for Cultural Revolution [SCCR]) was formed on June 12, 1980 on
Imam’s orders. The SCCR was tasked to focus its activities on a number
of issues in dealing with the affairs of the universities: “Training professors
and selection of noble individuals for lecturing in universities; selection
of students; Islamization of the environment of universities and changing
the educational programs of universities aimed at rendering services to the
nation” (Supreme Council 2016).
The Impact of the Cultural Revolution

on the University
Following orders for the closure of universities in the spring of 1980,

many university students refused to leave and had to be forcibly removed
from the campus. Thirty-one days after Khomeini’s New Year’s call
for the Cultural Revolution, members of Revolutionary Guards and
Revolutionary Committees surrounded University of Tehran. The situa-
tion quickly deteriorated into protests and riots between the Islamic and
students bastioned at the University. According to Keyhan newspaper,
over 500 people were injured and five were killed (Farasatkhah 2008:
531). Following the riots, the university was ordered closed in less than a
week. This scenario was simultaneously repeated in universities and higher
education institutes across the country. A small number of clerics criti-
cized the manner in which force was used to instill culture. Mohammad
Mojtahed Shabestari stated, “the methods used in a cultural revolution
should not fall outside of the meaning of the word ‘culture’ using slogans
and protests” (Farasatkhah 2008: 532). The ordering of the university
closures and the appointment of the SCCR to implement changes at the
university was done without consultation with university directors. The
Board of Trustees (Heyàt-e Omana) at the University of Tehran resigned
in protest (Farasatkhah 2008: 520). The fate of the Iranian universities
now rested exclusively with the SCCR.
As mentioned, since the creation of University of Tehran, successive
Iranian governments have desired or achieved a more vocal role for them-
selves in the affairs of the University based on their ideological p
erspectives.
The Islamic Republic inherited this mentality and wasted little time in the
Islamization of education in Iran (Peyvandi 1999: 732). The transition to
a more Islamized education had to be abrupt in nature because the univer-
sity students actively participated in the Revolution, demanding ideologi-
cal freedom at the universities in their victory. The implementation of the
Cultural Revolution and the purging of students and faculty reflect this
abrupt transition. The Islamic Republic’s elite feared the existence of an
independent university and dictated the state ideology upon universities
through the Islamization of education. But what was Islamic education and
how could it be taught in subjects such as biology, mathematics, and so on?
One way to Islamize education at the university was to enforce religious
studies. The state hoped to absorb the new generation born in the 1970s
and after into its political and cultural system in this manner (Razavi 2009:
140 A. REZAMAND
8). The problem was, there were “not many religious studies lecturers …
available” (Razavi 2009: 6). The Cultural Revolution allowed the state to
depoliticize the university and overtly impose state ideology on students,
lecturers, and the curriculum (Behdad 1995: 211). Thus, the Cultural
Revolution was concerned with the elimination of those who did not share
the state ideology (digarandishan) and only superficially engaged with
the Islamization of education: University of Tehran continued as a site for
the promotion of state ideology and suppression of ideas of democracy
and social justice, a function it had fulfilled since its inception in 1935.
The Cultural Revolution was effective, however, in the closure of many
centers of higher education deemed un-Islamic, the purging of thousands
of students and faculty from universities, the reformulation of curriculum
in accordance to the state ideological positions, and the neutralizing of
political activity at universities between 1984 and 1997 (Razavi 2009: 1).
Iranian universities remained completely closed during the 1981–1982
and 1982–1983 academic years and partially closed during the 1983–1984
academic year. All universities were formally opened for the 1984–1985
academic year (Farasatkhah 2008: 535). When universities opened in
September 1984, they were significantly different in content and compo-
sition. One of the changes to the composition of postsecondary education
in Iran as a result of the Cultural Revolution was the complete closure of
98 postsecondary institutes whose curriculum consisted of Western Fine
Arts such as the ballet or classical music. In addition, 21 centers for the
training of technical instructors and polytechnic institutes were shut down
and their faculty purged. Quantitatively speaking, before the Cultural
Revolution, Iran had 26 universities and 218 institutes for higher educa-
tion, while 21 universities and 93 institutes for higher education remained
in operation after the Cultural Revolution. This is a decrease of 19 % in
universities and 57 % in higher education institutes. In addition, 100 % of
private colleges and centers of higher education were outlawed and closed
down by orders of the SCCR (Farasatkhah 2008: 536). The University of
Tehran purges at the time of the Cultural Revolution included the Faculty
of Humanities and Social Sciences as well as the Faculty of Medicine at the
University of Tehran (Farasatkhah 2008: 554).
At the time of the closures, 175 thousand students were enrolled in
Iranian universities; only 117 thousand were accepted when the universi-
ties reopened (Farasatkhah 2008: 536). This is a reduction of 33 % in total
attendance. However, once the number of new students reaching the age
of university is factored in and population growth taken into account, the
actual impact to higher education becomes greater. Even more devastating

is the fact that based on the last five-year Pahlavi economic plan regarding
the need for skilled labor, the class of 1984 was projected to be between
300,000 and 450,000 students, which is considerably higher than the
175,000 allowed to enroll (Farasatkhah 2008: 536).
In addition to forced retirement or expulsion of faculty deemed “non-
Islamic,” the SCCR made efforts at reorienting higher education. An
important example of this reorientation, however, can be observed in the
first regulation created regarding the goals and responsibilities of Iran’s
Department of Education since the 1979 Revolution. Article One of this
new regulation, approved by the SCCR in 1986, reads:
The role of education in the strengthening of beliefs and ethics of the stu-
dents by using the method of teaching the history, foundations, and mean-
ing of Islam based on the Twelver Shi‘i tenets, as well as, the growth of a
political vision based on the realities of Velayat-e Faqih and spiritual devel-
opment which fosters reliance on God. As well, requirement of loyalty to
Iranian Constitution and Velayat-e Faqih are prerequisites for employment
in the Department of Education. (SCCR statement quoted in Peyvandi
1999: 734)
After Khomeini’s death in 1989, the SCCR worked in conjunction with

Khamanei and other political conservatives to maintain their dominance
in the universities. Following the Iran–Iraq war, the SCCR approved
and implemented legislation passed by the Majles requiring 40 % of new
university students be children of martyrs of the wars, both with Iraq and
the conflict with the short-lived Republic of Kurdistan, as well as veter-
ans of these two conflicts and members of various religious organizations
(Behdad 1995: 211).
In 1992, the hard-line cleric Ayatollah Jannati stated that representa-
tives of the Supreme Leader must be directly involved in the affairs of the
university and student associations must be under the direction of the
clergy. The SCCR voted on changing regulations in selection of university
councils, which effectively barred students from participation in university
councils (Razavi 2009: 9). Four years later, the Fifth Majles (1996–2000)
reintroduced allotment of the Basiji militias for university entrance and
implemented it through the SCCR. The rationale was that the children
of war veteran Basijis observed more traditional Islamic values. Their
presence on university campuses added a more visible Islamic element,
from attire to ideology, helping Islamize the atmosphere at the university
142 A. REZAMAND
(Razavi 2009: 10). In short, through manipulation of curriculum, the

purging of nonconformist digharandishan, and structural challenges and
quotas, the university had become much more “dependent” (vabasteh) on
the state than any time before the Revolution. The goal of the Cultural
Revolution, as stated by its practitioners and political supporters, was the
creation of a “free” and “independent” university, a goal that is now fur-
ther than before from realization.
In a 2002 interview, Mohammad Maleki, the last President of University
of Tehran before the Cultural Revolution, contends that in the elections
of Showra-ye Hamahangi-ye Daneshgah (Council for the Coordination of
University), “all the candidates were from the radical-Muslim Mojahedin
and Marxist Fadaiyan, an unacceptable situation for the Islamic Republic
Party (IRP) that had [only] come into existence four days following the
Revolution…. The Khomeinists, led by IRP Secretariat Hassan Ayat,
decided to shut down the university (Maleki 2002:648).” According
to Maleki, “the primary motivation of the Cultural Revolution was the
expression of a desire towards [political] power, not a cultural act but a
political assault (Maleki 2002:651).”
Conclusions
The University of Tehran was created in close association with the Pahlavi
monarchy in supplementing its modernization program. The Pahlavis
envisioned an institution on par with the best European universities in
terms of educational quality, with a distinctly modern–secular Persian
quality. This vision of the university conflicted with Iran’s growing middle
class, many of whom were now university educated. The dissatisfaction
of students with this conflicting vision manifested in emerging student
organizations, beginning in the 1930s, that demanded academic freedom
and the voice of social justice in Iran’s authoritative development. In the
decades preceding the 1979 Iranian Revolution, university student orga-
nizations represented a sustained voice of opposition to the authoritar-
ian and oppressive Pahlavi politics. These organizations provided students
with the basic know-how of democratic procedures but under conditions
that denied their social justice orientation. The University was a major
player in the Revolution and students actively participated in strikes, pro-
tests, and even confrontation with the regime’s security forces.
Following the Revolution, which brought down the Pahlavi monar-

chy with the promise of a new era of social justice in Iran, the university
witnessed a period (about 15 months) of increased freedom and inde-
pendence, alongside increased politicization. Even in the most turbulent
days following the Revolution and against a plurality of ideological fac-
tionalism, university students democratically elected governing councils in
determining the future of the university and by extension having a greater
say in the future of Iran’s sociopolitical development. Unfortunately, this
arrangement was politically unacceptable to Khomeinist elements within
the new regime. Thus, on their hegemonic trajectory, the Khomeinists
purged Iranian institutions of higher education of ideas, persons, and
processes deemed unacceptable to the newly established epistemological
umbrella informed by Shi‘i principles, a ruse used in justifying a political
assault on the university. The methods employed by the Khomeinists and
followed through by the revolutionary state in co-opting the University,
through the guise of a Cultural Revolution, represent a miscarriage of
social justice. In the ensuing historic narrative, this purge was called the
Cultural Revolution and the “unacceptable” was called the Westoxicated
(gharbzadeh). The outcome, contrary to the promises of freedom and
independence, was greater dependence of the university on the state than
had existed during the Pahlavi monarchy.
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SCCR/SCCR-tasks
CHAPTER 9
Ethical–Political Praxis: Social Justice

and the Resistant Subject in Iran
Shokoufeh Sakhi
Justice well ordered begins with the other.

Emanuel Levinas, Collected Philosophical Papers, 56
Human plurality is the paradoxical plurality of unique beings.
Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 176.
The act of balancing two sides of a scale has been the universal depic-
tion of justice: justice as an equalizing act. To receive what one is due,
whether punishment or reward. A process of redeeming the wronged
past, or achieving an ideal state of equality in some future. The Universal
Declaration of Human Rights was one attempt at articulation of justice
and equality to strive for in the world left to us after the two World Wars.
Social justice, the subject essayed in the present book, derives from both
the concept of justice and that of rights, and that derivation affects the
development of the theory and practice of social justice itself.
Leaning on a conception of the human subject and its rights as natural
and inalienable, the ethos of human rights institutes a universalized con-
ception of the human subject as an in-itself rightful individual. The human
subject, hence, appears as a potentially rightful human being who is simul-
taneously a potential victim, one whose rights may be violated. Formally
S. Sakhi (*)

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-44227-3_9
146 S. SAKHI
protected and guaranteed by a network of international political and legal

treaties, those excluded from their national political and cultural space find
in the human rights paradigm an alternative ethos, logos, and language
through which to (re)assert themselves. But these others can only reenter
this public space as victim-subjects.
For the others-of-the-Islamic state in the post-1979 Iran, those who
were and those who are routinely excluded from the Iranian public sphere,
the human rights paradigm has offered a point of reference in their strug-
gle for justice. By adopting the logos of human rights and appealing to
the legal infrastructure of international institutions, the excluded Iranians
have created a detour that accesses their native public space in spite of the
state’s active denials and violent responses to their struggle.
With one failed Revolution in our recent past and with the persistence
of injustice within Iranian social and power relations, a palpable need (and
desire) for critically engaging notions of democratic relations, social justice,
and human subjectivity has emerged among Iranian thinkers. Responding
to this need, my task in this chapter is to essay a critical review of some
of the advantages and disadvantages of the human rights paradigm of the
Iranian struggle for social justice through an interrogation of the jonbesh-e
edalatkhahi, the justice-seeking movement, as one of its manifestations.
In the first part of the chapter, I intend to demonstrate the presence of
resistant subjectivity of the excluded other of the Islamic state of Iran and
discuss the significant role of the human rights paradigm in the advance-
ment of the struggles of the subaltern sections of the Iranians. I do this,
after a brief note on terminology, by first contextualizing the development
of the justice-seeking movement in Iran and in the Diaspora, within and in
response to the formation of the Islamic state as a totalizing state. I follow
this development from the activities of the family members of executed/
disappeared political prisoners during the 1980s through the event of the
International People’s Tribunal of Iran in 2012 at The Hague (the Iran
Tribunal) (Iran Tribunal 2014).
In the second part, through an interrogation of the Iran Tribunal wit-
nesses’ acts and speeches as rendered within the human rights paradigm, I
illustrate the reification of the struggling subject within his/her objective
experience of victimization. Finally, benefiting here and throughout from
construal of Hannah Arendt’s conception of human rights as a politi-
cal project and Emmanuel Levinas’s emphasis on subjectivity as social-
ity (Levinas 1998a; 1998b), I conclude with a claim for the necessity and
possibility of a praxis of social justice understood as a political project of
resistant subjects oriented through an “ethics of the other.”
ETHICAL–POLITICAL PRAXIS: SOCIAL JUSTICE AND THE RESISTANT SUBJECT... 147
A Note on Terminology
I make a distinction between a “total state” and “totalizing state.” A total
state would destroy all that is other than itself, a process I refer to as “sam-
ing.” The emphasis in the differentiation here is upon the fact that while
the complete closure of the total state is its systematic impetus, such states
are never (so far) completely successful, never total. There is a residue, of
greater or lesser extent, that successfully resists such saming. There are then
no total states but only states with a totalizing impetus. This process of
totalizing, of inclusion and exclusion, of absorption and destruction, is
born, in the case of modern Iran, with the Islamic Republic.
Part One: The Survival of the Totalizing State

and the Resistance of Its Excluded Other
Any hope of grasping the significance of the formation and development

of the Iranian jonbesh-e edalatkhahi, or the “justice-seeking movement,”
requires consideration of the historical context of the Islamic state and its
relation to its others during the 1980s, especially in the pivotal year of 1988.
1988: The Survival of a Totalizing State

Let me start with a brief review of the historical situation in 1988. In
line with Hannah Arendt’s rejection of the view that monstrous people
are a prerequisite to monstrosity against others, the massacre of political
prisoners in 1988 was neither a hateful nor a sadistic bloodthirsty move
on Khomeini’s part, the Committee he put in charge of the massacre,
or the executioners. Rather, the monstrosity was the response, not of an
evil but of a totalizing state to its others and for its own survival; it was a
response within the confines of the new state’s religious ideological logos.
There are three intertwined currents to which the stability of the new
regime of power was closely tied in its first decade: the unifying hegemony
of Khomeini’s presence, a controlled victorious continuation of the war
with Iraq, and exclusion of their revolutionary other, many of whom were
by then contained within prison walls.
By early 1988, the war with Iraq was going sour, Khomeini’s health was
declining, and, even after seven years of executions and forced conversions,
there were still thousands of resistant others—dissidents and social justice
activists—confined in prisons awaiting eventual release. Many were kept
148 S. SAKHI
captive years after serving their sentences, and their numbers were grow-
ing. The survival of resistant prisoners presented an increasing dilemma to
the regime: to release these prisoners as they were would infuse the society
with fresh blood, counteracting the regime’s decade long efforts to drain
it. With Khomeini’s death in sight, the survival of the Islamic regime of
Velayat-e Faqih (the Shi‘i Guardianship of the Supreme Jurist) was inter-
woven with its response to its two “enemies”: Iraq, the “other from with-
out,” and the opposition, the “other from within.”
The Two Survivalist Responses: Capitulation Without, Massacre

Within
With the new ruling power came new language. Nezam (system), estehaleh
(transformation), and paksazi (cleansing) were and are functional concepts
for two reasons. First, they illustrate the Islamic state’s self-articulation;
they signify the new state’s relation to itself and its others. Second, they
euphemize and sanction the survival needs of a totalizing state. The resis-
tant response of the excluded was formed and developed in the context of
such terminological innovations.
Capitulation to the Enemy from Without

On 18 July 1988, losing on the war front to its other from without, the
Iranian state signed the UN Resolution 598. Admitting the setback,
Khomeini famously announced on 20 July 1988: “I drink the hemlock
and accept the resolution” (Khomeini 2008). Though this is the most
remembered phrase from his two-hour live televised address, in it, he also
articulated the response of a religio-ideological totalizing system to its
others. He reiterated the objectives of the war as neither “geographical
nor of boundaries, but of ideas and conscience” (Khomeini 2008) and
attempted to convince the populace that this submission, giving up on
the principle of “victory or martyrdom,” was unequivocally necessary for
the survival of “the nezam (system), the country and the Revolution”
(Khomeini 2008). As he said:
… concerning the acceptance of the Resolution, which is indeed a bitter and

unpleasant matter for all, especially for me; until a few days ago I believed
our previous mode of defense and positions in the war were in the interest of
the system, the country, and the Revolution; however, owing to the recent
events and new factors, which I will presently refrain from mentioning with
the hope that God will make them clear in the future … I consider acceptance
of the resolution as a move in the interest of the revolution and the nezam.
(Khomeini 2008; emphasis added)
Nezam, the preferred self-identifying term used by Khomeini and the

Iranian ruling class when referring to the post-1979 state, signifies an imma-
nent intentionality of the Islamic state. Nezam in Persian is a polysomic
term denoting “the system,” “order,” and “discipline.” It is an apt signifier
of the totalizing trajectory of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Rather than a
totality, a closed and totalized state, the Islamic state as a nezam or a system
survives through actively redefining itself, its other, and their relationship.
Massacre of the Enemy Within

In that long address of 20 July 1988, Khomeini most of all attempted
to reinstate the survival of the system invested under his tutelage, as the
meaning of the Revolution, as the meaning for the continuation of the
war beyond regaining territories, and now as the meaning for ending it.
The end of war, he warned, meant open space—space for thinking, ques-
tioning, and growing expectations—and therefore constituted a “threat of
young minds to fall into the liberal, nationalist, leftist, and Mojahedin’s
traps” (Khomeini 2008). The survival of the system, he underscored,
required a deliberate and active exclusionary process. He warned against
the possibility of the entrance of the nezam’s others into the public space.
These others, he defined, were those who did not identify with and were
not samed within the state’s objectives and war: “those derelict from their
duty to the war, for any reasons, who withheld their lives, property, chil-
dren, and others from the flame of the events” (Khomeini 2008). Here
Khomeini expresses the necessities of a totalizing system, that is, a constant
dynamics of inclusion–exclusion, estehaleh (transformation, metamorpho-
sis, atrophy, or reduction), and paksazi (cleansing or purging), a process of
saming and purging its continuously and newly formed others. Note that
as a concept in Shi‘i jurisprudence, estehaleh is defined as transformation of
an entity’s being and identity through a process of absorption into some-
thing else (see Makarem Shirazi 2010; 2016). This usage corresponds to
the meaning of the concept of “saming” I use here. Khomeini stated:
I emphasize again, to all and the people in charge, to separate these people
[dissidents] from the God’s soldiers and the true believers; and do not allow
these shortsighted, useless claimants enter the public scene.
150 S. SAKHI
Whether I live or die, my testament to you is that I shall not allow the
Revolution to fall into the hands of the outsiders. (Khomeini 2008)
By then, after eight years of naked violent saming–purging of the pub-

lic space of any other-than-Khomeini’s branch of the 1979 revolutionary
population, the bulk of active and openly political opposition, the under-
ground notwithstanding, was either in exile or behind prison walls. Like
the nezam’s capitulation in the war, its saming–purging response to its
other from within had begun long before the summer of 1988.
On 7 January 1988, Speaker of the Judicial Supreme Council (Showra-ye
‘Ali-ye Qaza’i) Morteza Moqtada’i announced: “[N]o political prisoner
who still maintains his/her political views, whose time in prison has
effected no change in their attitude, will be released” (“Beh yari zendani-
yan” 1988: 9). He rebuked the families of the prisoners: “[I]nstead of
writing letters and statements, appealing to here and there, use your visit-
ing time to convince your children to truly convert and gain the trust of
prison officials” (“Be yari zendaniyan” 1988: 9).
In July, while the government was considering the ceasefire with Iraq,
Khomeini issued an undated order to purge prisons of prisoners who
refused to capitulate. In two letters, one dealing with leftist prisoners and
the other with the radical-Muslim Mojahedin-e Khalq prisoners, he gave
a final order to resolve the question of imprisoned political opposition.
By the end of July, all political prisoners’ visits were canceled indefinitely
and the prisoners’ television sets, radios, and newspapers were confiscated.
Prisoners lost access to health clinics, yard hours, and letters—anything
within the regime’s control with potential for contacting the world, be it
internal or external. During those few months and wrapped in complete
secrecy, special committees composed of representatives from the Ministry
of Intelligence (Vezarat-e Ettela‘at), the Prosecutor’s Office (Daftar-e
Dadsetani), and the Revolutionary Court (Dadgah-e Enqelab) were com-
missioned by Khomeini to review all prisoners’ files in every city (Mohajer
2001: 336–342).
Rather than a mad, violent, and spontaneous reaction, the prisoner
massacre of 1988 was a carefully timed, religiously sanctioned, and metic-
ulously implemented project—a full-fledged response for the survival of
the nezam, the totalizing Islamic state. Based on a religious dogma (sanc-
tioning: execution of moharebs, those suspected of taking arms against
the Islamic state; execution of male mortads, Muslim apostates; and the
“torturing to death” of female mortads) and corresponding to the order’s
totalizing logic, the committee was to determine whether a prisoner’s

mind and heart were enemies of God and the Islamic state, or if they
would truly convert and prove their loyalty-unto-death to the regime.
These procedures came to a halt by mid-October, leaving behind only a
couple of hundred resistant prisoners. By the end of this period, approxi-
mately 5000 political prisoners had been executed and many more thou-
sands were broken or neutralized, both inside and outside the prisons
(Montazeri 2000: 625–640; Abrahamian 1999: 209–228; IHRDC 2009).
The objective was the annihilation of the regime’s revolutionary other,
whether actual or potential, rendering them “true converts” or annihi-
lating them as completely as possible under the international conditions
afforded by the ceasefire (Montazeri 2000: 1217). The executions of
the internal other and capitulation to the external other were born as
fraternal twins.
Jonbesh-e Edalatkhahi: A Response to the 1988 Massacre

It was at this historical juncture, under the power of the imposed hege-
mony of the totalizing Islamic state, that the Iranian justice-seeking move-
ment was born in that summer of 1988 in response to the massacre of
political prisoners.
In October 1988, those who survived the massacre were allowed to
write a letter to their parents informing them of the date their visits could
be resumed. Parents of the executed received a call notifying them of the
day and the place they could pick up their dead children’s belongings.
Along with a few random pieces of clothes or a bag (sometimes not even
their son’s or daughter’s own), these parents received a stern warning not
to seek any information about the reasons for the retrial and execution of
their children, nor to look for their wills or ask for the location of their
burial sites. They were warned against organizing any mourning ceremo-
nies or making any public appeals (Justice for Iran 2015: 46). Many fami-
lies were so frightened or traumatized that they endured this experience
privately, but there were many others who did not abide this admoni-
tion (IHRDC 2009: 49–54). During this same period, family members
discovered fresh mass graves at Khavaran, a cemetery in Tehran’s east-
ern outskirts, designated for burying executed atheist men and women
(Mohajer 2008: 119). Since then, Khavaran has become reference site for
the grassroots movement for justice.
152 S. SAKHI
Family Members and the Right to Truth and Justice

Due to the juridico-political exclusion of the “counter-revolutionaries”—
those suspected of supporting the previous regime and all other members
of the revolutionary population who fell outside of Khomeini’s camp—
parents of political prisoners during the 1980s had always been left to their
own devices when it came to acting on behalf of their imprisoned children.
Act they did, and still do.
Up to the 1988 massacre, prisoners’ families, individually or collectively,
indefatigably appealed to different national and international authorities
and to other influential figures in order to ease their children’s living con-
ditions and to negotiate their sentences, their freedom, and other such
issues. The general lockdown in 1988 and the ensuing massacre, however,
qualitatively changed the language and the nature of their advocacy.
Like those they represented, the family members were and are one of
the nezam’s excluded-others with no civic or public rights. The politi-
cal–civil subaltern position forced upon them did not, however, represent
any lack of subjectivity on their part. Rather, they engaged their agency
by supporting their children through appealing to the officials, spread-
ing the news, for example, about the prison conditions and executions
among the exiled political opposition as well as the international institu-
tions (Galindo Pohl 1989: 7; Mohajer 2001: 342–345).
The letter of 26 December 1988, written by a group of the family
members and addressed to Minister of Justice Hassan Habibi (Behkish
2005), represents the birth of the justice-seeking movement. It is here
that, for the first time, they formally question the legality and legiti-
macy of the state’s judicial procedures, the verdict, and the method of
its implementation that entailed the execution and disappearance of their
children, even the Judiciary’s adherence to its own Constitution: “We ask:
if these were lawful acts why do the executions occur in secrecy? … We ask:
which article of the Constitution has permitted or permits now secret trials
with no chance for the prisoners to defend themselves? … We ask: which
law permits mass execution?” (cited in Behkish 2005).
This letter makes a series of demands: it emphasizes the right of fam-
ily members to truth and justice and calls for government accountabil-
ity; it demands that the state respect the rights of the disappeared and
their families; it inquires about the “the date, the length of time spent
reviewing each one of the victims’ files, the reasons for the retrial, and the
place of their re-trail” (cited in Behkish 2005). It also demands that the
Minister of Justice reveal the exact number, names, and burial places of
all of the executed. Further, the letter challenges the officials to allow an
international body to act as arbitrator. Finally, invoking both the Iranian
Constitution and the Universal Human Rights Declaration, the letter
calls for the indictment of the perpetrators: “Since this [massacre] is an
open violation of the Islamic Republic’s Constitution and the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights we accuse those responsible for commit-
ting crime[s against humanity] and demand their prosecution in a public
tribunal” (cited in Behkish 2005). A copy of the letter was sent to then
Secretary-General of the United Nations Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, other
national and international offices, as well as to human rights NGOs.
Since then, all the letters and statements of these families address-
ing different institutions and officials, ranging from Tehran’s Office of
the Mayor, to the Parliament (Majles), state news agencies, the Iranian
President, and international institutions, have reasserted the right of the
family members of the disappeared/executed prisoners to justice and truth
about the circumstances surrounding their loved ones’ retrial, execution,
and place of burial, as well as the families’ right to mourning and memo-
rialization (Mohajer 2009).
The Iranian Judicial Branch has yet to give an official response to any
of these demands or take responsibility for the lives and deaths of the
thousands of men and women who passed through the doors of the pris-
ons during the 1980s. Instead, the constant response of the nezam has
consisted of nothing more than state violence (see Iran Tribunal 2016).
Nonetheless, what is central here is not so much the consequences of these
efforts, which, it is true, bore little or no immediate practical effects. What
is of paramount importance is the very act of making such claims.
In fact, the central point of this chapter is to highlight the fact that, in
the absence of any civil or legal legitimacy, the persistent activities of these
family members evince their active rejection of the dismissal of their lived
experience, which itself is the expansion of the claims to humanity they
are representing. Regardless of the silence and violence they receive at the
hands of the authorities, the family members’ activities are the manifes-
tations of their subjective–objective existence, manifestations and claims
that transcend their victimization. Rather than voiceless victim-subjects,
their unanswered letters, calls for justice, and continuous public and pri-
vate illegal memorialization are but their agency in action: they address
the power from the stance of their right to exist and be recognized as fully
constituted objective and subjective beings.
154 S. SAKHI
Taking on the paradigm of human rights and its language, a grassroots

movement for justice, embodied in the families’ lived experience, came to life.
This new movement found its spatial dimension in Khavaran, the left-
ists’ cemetery in Tehran, a place to protect and a place that protects an
excluded history and ongoing (present) experience (Behkish 2014). Out
of this localized lived experience formed the Mothers of Khavaran: an
organic entity without formal organization, growing from the suffering of
the families, their resistance, and their desire for justice (Mohajer 2008).
Jonbesh-e edalatkhahi, the justice-seeking movement, is then the
response of the Islamic Republic’s revolutionary other to the nezam’s
brutal exclusion from the public space and from the body of Iranian his-
tory. No matter how marginal, it is a process of will formation of a forced
subaltern but resistant subjectivity by means other than what is possible
within the (Gramscian) hegemony of the Islamic state. Excluded from the
hegemonic order of the nezam, the movement articulates its resistance
and vocalizes its subjectivity through taking up the language of a global
alternative hegemony by adopting the human rights paradigm. The extra-
territorial characteristic of this movement, however, is not limited to its
logos within which it expresses its objective experience; the stubborn per-
sistence of the movement is nourished by the large exodus of the Iranian
Islamic state’s others around the world. Its development relies on both
the presence of a resistant other within the country and a resistant Iranian
body within the Diaspora.
A Movement for Justice: Diaspora

In the absence of internal institutional avenues of redress, the bulk of
the tasks of documentation and pursuance of truth and justice has fallen
on Iranians living in exile, especially the former political prisoners. Their
personal accounts of interrogation, torture, and life in prisons during the
1980s, and specifically the details of the 1988 massacre, buttressed the
claims of the family members in Iran as well as intellectuals, political dis-
sidents, and human rights activists in exile.
As with any grassroots movement, the Iranian justice-seeking move-
ment is not homogenous or unified. Having its roots in the lived experi-
ences of a large body of Iranians, one that transcends party lines, and
political, ideological, and even religious divisions, the movement for jus-
tice has been continuously growing within and in the Diaspora. Although
this encompassing character is mostly due to the nezam’s totalizing
trajectory and its nondiscriminatory application of torture and execution

rather than the solidarity among the opposition, the movement has been
growing sporadically, multidirectionally, controversially, and at times even
antagonistically.
The indictment of the Islamic Republic of Iran for committing Crimes
against Humanity during the 1980s has been one common objective
among all the incongruent rivulets of the justice-seeking movement.
Within the framework of international criminal laws and the human rights
conventions, finding a party guilty of committing crime against humanity
gives the highest vindication to the survivors of the crimes committed.
As an International People’s Tribunal, the Iran Tribunal of 2012–2013
achieved this objective in accordance with the international humanitar-
ian conventions and laws, even though its verdict has not been and will
not be officially adjudicated. Its procedures and outcomes offer an arena
within which to investigate the advantages and disadvantages of the human
rights paradigm and the notion of justice it entails with regard to human
subjectivity.
Part Two: The Resistant Subjectivity and the Praxis

of Justice
Even if the political prisoners of the 1980s were representatives of a variety

of the political, religious, and ethnic sections of Iranian society who were
forcefully excluded from the public space, even if they were pushed into a
political and legal subaltern position outside of the state-sanctioned logos
and language, they were neither voiceless nor did they lack subjectivity or
agency. In fact, as highlighted above, the active presence of the prisoners’
abiding subjective agency in the face of the violent saming and totalizing
force of the Islamic nezam was a central factor in the ruling power’s deci-
sion to commit the 1988 massacre. In turn, however, it was the massacre
that gave rise to a social justice response. Jonbesh-e Edalatkhahi was born
from the lived experience of an excluded layer of the Iranian “citizenry.”
The human rights paradigm, its logos and language, assisted the political
subaltern’s resistant subjectivity in legitimizing their cause and reinstating
their presence in the public domain through an international avenue.
As documented by a variety of human rights NGOs as well as the report
of the Iran Tribunal’s Truth Commission, the human rights discourse has
been essential to the process of illuminating the criminal agency inherent
to the Iranian nezam (Iran Tribunal 2013b: 14–26). However, when it
156 S. SAKHI
comes to the conceptualization of the human subject in the struggle for

social justice, this discourse fails to represent, actually tends to bracket out,
the lived experience of the active subjectivity of the human being. Instead
of conceiving an active receiving–responding subjectivity, an ethical social-
ity, a subjectivity indispensable to the praxis of justice, the human rights
paradigm as presently conceived thus reduces and reifies the subject to the
victim identity: it is defined from the perspective of and according to the
power exerted on the Self. Correspondingly, the sociality of the subject in
the human rights discourse is either mediated only through the Self’s own
abstract universal rights or the violation of these rights.
In the remainder of this chapter, I intend to show this inadvertent but
serious reifying effect of the victim–victimizer dichotomy at the core of
human rights praxis, its effects on the human subject struggling for social
justice as a subjective–objective being, and so on the struggle for social
justice itself.
The Praxis of Human Rights and a People’s Subjectivity

As a political prisoner between 1982 and 1990, I testified at the Iran
Tribunal, The Hague, on 26 October 2012. When Sir Geoffrey Nice QC
finished his cross-examination and I answered the questions from the
jurists, Judge Johann Kriegler, the Presiding Judge of the six-member
International Jury of the Iran Tribunal, asked me: “Does this kind of pro-
cess help you?” I suspect he wondered if I personally felt relief speaking
to an authoritative body, testifying to the pains and injuries we suffered in
the prisons of the Islamic state. In fact, I was not relieved from any past
suffering. Instead, I was ecstatic, witnessing the persistence of a people’s
resistance to and in the face of all the powerful forces of the nezam’s delib-
erate annihilation. That process of the Iran Tribunal, including its preced-
ing Truth Commission, the gathering of documents, the gaining of the
indispensable and heartfelt (forever appreciated), and the participation of
the international judges and lawyers, volunteers, and private donors, signi-
fied for me the long-enduring resistant subjectivity and manifestations of
the agency of a people in spite of the systematic attempt to remove it from
the Iranian public sphere and its historical memory. Creating our own
institution, practicing our subjectivity, and fulfilling our responsibility to
the executed and disappeared and for the generations after us: that was our
subjectivity in action, a process of hope and inspiration—and it was filled
with agony not relief. I responded.
The tangible outcome of this process, however, is contradictory on two

counts. On the one hand, working within the human rights paradigm in
accordance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
and the articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Iranian
justice-seeking movement acquired the language to articulate and com-
municate the criminal-victimizing subjectivity embodied in the Islamic
state (Iran Tribunal 2013a). On the other hand, the amassed documenta-
tion, personal narratives, and testimonies, which were processed to tes-
tify to the agency of the state, also had the effect of conceptualizing the
citizens’ subjectivity as victim-subjects, reifying them as objects of power.
Throughout the process of the tribunal, the witnesses acquired the
identity of the suffering carriers of the truth about the agency of a repres-
sive state. The truth of their own life experience was thus codified and nar-
rowed to the truth of the state’s practice of power over their psyches and
bodies: a victim-subject gained recognition, while subjectivity as sociality,
its resistances, and capitulations fell through the elisions of a notion of
justice based on human rights.
The Act of Witnessing and the Ambivalence of Being Subject

and Object
There is a difference between receiving injustice and being the injustice
recipient. Even when the active verb “to victimize” is used to qualify
unjust power relations, there still remains a difference between becoming
a “victimized subject” and being a “victim-subject.” If people are targeted
and persecuted for who they are and for their participation in the public/
political realm, “who” they are cannot be reduced to what is acted on
them. We are human subjects who are being targeted and “victimized.”
Being victimized defines the state or condition of “what” one experiences.
A human’s subjectivity always overflows his/her state of victimization.
To be presented and related to as a victim (whether by oneself, a society,
or a discourse) is to have one’s subjectivity mediated by the act of victim-
ization: one’s agency is displaced by one’s “whatness.” A human subject’s
life activity includes its subjectivity, which includes its potential agency,
its ability to respond to exteriority. One’s subjectivity is one’s ability to
respond, one’s respons-ability, an ability that is always already there—even
if one lives in a state of exclusion, alienation, and objectivization. There
is a difference between being voiceless and not being heard, or heard but
deliberately ignored. The severance of the objective–subjective existence
158 S. SAKHI
of the excluded people tends to identify them with what the dominant
power intends to make them: voiceless objects of power whose respons-
ability is confined to a survivalist response to their own suffering.
The Iran Tribunal witness Akram Beyramvand (2012), for instance,
who wanted not just to give the factual information about her executed
cellmate but to speak of how her cellmate related to being called for exe-
cution, was not heard at the Tribunal, but directed away toward giving
accounts of the atrocious treatment of the prison officials. The witnesses’
subjective praxis, the story of their agencies, their ability to respond, their
respons-ability to the power they received, all spill over and exceed the capac-
ity of the human rights discourse and praxis. What remains of the subject
under this paradigm is merely his or her victimization: once regarded in
the abstract as fundamentally a bearer of universal rights, the actual indi-
vidual is generally understood, presented, and related to as a victim of the
violation of those rights: a reobjectivization by different means, albeit to
different ends.
The testimony of Iran Tribunal witness Mehdi Memarpour, for example,
demonstrates subjective praxis as sociality within the context of victimiza-
tion. He tells the story of how his act of taking the path of pretending to be
a tavvab—a prisoner who has converted religiously and politically to Islam
and the Islamic state—had started him down the slippery slope of capitu-
lations and cooperation. His story was one of victimization, of the naked
violence of forced estehaleh, the process of saming a prisoner into an execu-
tioner. Yet at the same time, his story, as well as his act of telling the story,
were signifiers of his subjectivity as an ethical sociality. He recalls: “They
[the prison guards] asked if I repented. I said yes. [They asked] if I would
participate in the execution of someone who got a death sentence. I said
yes … I thought to myself they would not possibly give us a weapon, for
sure they were bluffing …” (Memarpour 2012). He describes for the jurists
how he experienced being driven along with almost one hundred other
tavvabs to the firing field and watching as hundreds of other prisoners were
delivered and lined up in front of them for execution. He continues:
[The guards] told us to come forward [to take part in the shooting of fel-
low prisoners]. Many fell on the ground, crying and said they couldn’t. The
rest of us went forward, when we reached the guard standing ahead they
told us to put our hand on the guard’s hand and our finger on his finger
on the trigger. Then shots were fired … I did something that wasn’t me; I
was a plaything … That night I prayed and cried … After that I raised a wall
around myself, a wall that is still there … What happened to me was rape,
was a psychological rape … I assisted a murder … and I have to carry this to
the end of my life. (Memarpour 2012)
One may ask: how else might we relate to ourselves when subjected
to such destructive violence except as victim? In fact, the Tribunal’s
Judgment confirms him as a victim by referring to him as “pressured into
collaborating” and quoting him describing “this pressure as ‘psychological
rape’” that made him into “a puppet” rather than himself; that it was not
him “who did this” (Iran Tribunal 2013a: 23). By the end of the para-
graph, Memarpour as a human subject has been removed and replaced by
a man as an object of power. What remains of his subjectivity, the voice
of a social–ethical subject whose respons-ability as well as receptivity is
reduced to the experience and language of his victimization. This linguis-
tic metamorphosis of the voice of a subjectivity-in-tension into the one-
dimensional language of a victim/victimizer is even more prevalent when,
a year later, Memarpour attempts to convey the criminality of the total-
izing state of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nation Human
Rights Council. There he introduces himself as such: “My name is Mehdi
Memarpour, one of the victims of this horrendous decade [1980s]. As
a political prisoner in detention I was forced to commit a murder. I was
forcefully taken to the firing squad, a prison guard ordered me to put my
finger on his, and then he pulled the trigger” (Memarpour 2013)
He makes reference to the massacre of the political prisoners in the
summer of 1988 and continues:
They were all victims of a system which did not and still does not accept any
belief other than its own. That is why, I, as the voice of all victims, urge that
these atrocities be recognized by the government of the Islamic Republic of
Iran and reparations be provided to those affected by them. (Memarpour 2013)
Again we may ask how Memarpour’s testimony could be an example of a

subjectivity beyond a victim-subject here.
In his original self-narration, Memarpour gave an account of how he
ended up participating in executions. He gave an account of how he became
“an assistant” to the murder of a human being, and how that destroyed
him, left him feeling psychologically raped. But more than that, he also
gave an account of how he related to what he was doing, how he related
to the ones being executed, how he was responding to his own actions
160 S. SAKHI
while he was taking part in their execution. Of the many thousands of

prisoners, almost a hundred tavvabs were taken to participate in the fir-
ing squad. Of those, some acted as Memarpour did and some refused at
the last minute. Some, he speculated, committed suicide later, and some
were samed within the nezam of the Islamic state. And Memarpour is the
only one who has ever stepped forward and spoken publicly. He received
the pressure—he was victimized—and he responded to that pressure—he
was a respons-able subject; he responded with a “yes” to the question as
to whether he took part in the execution to keep up with his scheme to
survive. He was self-conscious of his active survivalist participating pres-
ence, of his nonindifferent presence in the death of the other, and decades
later, he responded-for-the-other when he gained the courage, stepped
forward, and testified. This lived experience as a tavvab and as a witness
elucidates the sociality of Memarpour’s subjectivity, an event that always
already involves the self and the others and therefore is never outside of the
ethical space. The human rights victim–victimizer dichotomy prevalent in
the struggle for social justice in the context of the Iranian repressive state
lacks the space to recognize, or perhaps even the ability to conceive, this
subjective complexity of being engaged in the struggle for social justice.
Conclusion
Like other similar struggles in the world, the Iranian struggle for social
justice is in need of a renewed historical reflexivity, a renewed critical look
at the past and present imaginings and actions, a reconceptualization of
our subjectivity as ethical sociality, and a reconsideration of the notions of
justice and equality as at once both political and ethical praxis.
One of our tasks then is to envision ways of confronting the Iranian
state’s systematic, systemic, and widespread practice of injustice without
inflicting further injustice on the very people’s subjectivity we aim to pro-
tect, without reifying them within a victimized state of being. As much
as the human rights paradigm assists the Iranian opposition and activ-
ists in communicating the politics of totalizing and excluding ingrained
in the Islamic state, its conception of rights and the human subject, and
therefore its notion of justice and the pursuit of social justice, must be
subverted and superseded. Here Arendt’s notion of rights and humanity,
as well as Levinas’s ethics of the other and concept of subjectivity (Levinas
1998a; 1998b), can be indicative.
Arendt distills human rights to “the right to have rights,” which for
her is “the right of every individual to belong to humanity,” a right that
“should be guaranteed by humanity itself” (Arendt 1975: 298). Rather
than being a natural endowment and a legal contract, the right to have
rights may then be recognized as a social construct created, practiced,
transformed, and protected within social relations. In other words, both
human rights and human being become a political project, that is, created
by processes of the active participation of the citizens in the public space,
the very act that guarantees the right to have rights.
It is not possible, however, to question the justness of a social relation
without questioning its ethics, its human-to-human relations, nor to sug-
gest an alternative without an ethical dimension. Far from given, humanity
is always actively created within our mutual subjective–objective life expe-
rience by our nonindifferent (in)action as both singularity and sociality.
If, with Arendt, we see humanity as “the paradoxical plurality of unique
beings” (1958: 176) achieved through “constant establishment of new
relationships within a web of relations” (1958: 240), then our struggle for
social justice is also always-already an ethical project.
Maintaining these two aspects of the project of social justice, at once,
requires our creation and constant recreation of an active human subject
who relates to itself through its response to the others, conscious and
responsible for its respons-ability. Thus, rather than arising from a legally
and institutionally guaranteed primacy of the individual’s state of being
in-and-for-itself, the manifestations of the rights of social justice would
be delivered through active living relationality between “the I” and “the
other” as incommensurable singularities. In this way, justice, like human-
ity and human rights, becomes an ethical–political project, a praxis of con-
stantly receiving and responding to the others without saming, and so a
pursuit of social justice as a nontotalizing praxis.
References
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in Modern Iran. Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press.
Arendt, Hannah. 1958. The Human Condition. Chicago: The University of
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———. 1975. The Origins of Totalitarianism. Orlando: Harvest Books.
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Behkish, Ja‘far. 2005. Dar khalvat-e rowshan ba to geristeham beh khater-e zende-
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CHAPTER 10
Intergenerational Memory in Children

of the Jacaranda Tree
Nima Naghibi
Sahar Delijani’s fictional Children of the Jacaranda Tree (2013) is a

powerful example of testimonial literature. The story, while fictional,

is based on Delijani’s parents’ experiences as political prisoners in Iran
during the 1980s and shifts between two historical time periods: the
1980s and the post-2009 Presidential election protests. The novel focuses
on a particularly traumatic moment in Iranian history: the mass execution
of political prisoners in 1988, an horrific event that took place largely in
secret, and has only recently become public knowledge.
Told from the perspective of various political prisoners in the notori-
ous Evin prison, the story shifts to the point of view of their now-adult
children, some of whom live in the diaspora. Delijani’s narrative calls on
future generations to remember and retell the events of the past in order
This chapter emerged out of an inspiring conference organized by Dr. Peyman

Vahabzadeh at the University of Victoria in June 2015. My thanks to all the
participants at that conference for stimulating conversations and for their
thoughtful feedback on my chapter. I am especially grateful to Peyman for his
patience as I worked on this chapter and for all his hard work in seeing this project
to fruition.
N. Naghibi (*)
Department of English, Ryerson University, Toronto, ON, Canada

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-44227-3_10
166 N. NAGHIBI
to advance a claim for social justice and reparations. The importance of

intergenerational stories, on passing stories from one generation to the
next so that people remember the sacrifice of previous generations for the
ideals of democracy and equality, is the focus of this paper.
Diasporic Iranian writing in English has flourished since the late
1990s.1 The majority of this literature has been auto/biographical,2 the
writers focusing on the pain of exilic separation and the challenge of forg-
ing hybrid identities in a foreign land. The prison narrative, a growing
subgenre in the field of auto/biographical writing, has become an increas-
ingly popular form of expression for former political prisoners who, upon
their release and from their new homes in the diaspora, publish harrowing
accounts of their experiences behind bars. One of the casualties of the
mass imprisonment, torture, and killing of political prisoners and social
justice activists in Iran during the 1980s, the period that scholars have
come to refer to as the “period of terror,” was the relationship of children
to their parents. In many instances, children struggled with feelings of
guilt as they recoiled from the gaunt specters that emerged suddenly from
behind prison walls to claim them as their own and removed the children
from a family model to which they had become accustomed: grandparents
and/or aunts serving the role of caregivers.3
Over three-and-a-half decades after the Iranian Revolution, the moment
appears ripe for a new development in diasporic Iranian narratives: tes-
timonials by and about children of political prisoners whose narratives
stress the ethics of witnessing.4 These texts can be understood in terms of
what Ann Cubilié calls “a performative act of memory” (2005: 78). For
Cubilié, the testimonial narrative recounted by “the witness/survivor” is
narrated for the benefit of both the survivor and the witness: “the placing
of oneself inside historical narrative and the rebuilding of one’s voice and
identity as witness—does not construct a unified narrative of a historical
event but instead functions as the truth of witnessing experiences whose
truths can never be known” (Cubilié 2005: 78). The retelling and sharing
of a traumatic memory thus makes possible the rearticulation of the survi-
vor’s voice and identity. For the witness, despite not having been there, the
reconstruction of that moment through the survivor’s narrative allows for
the possibility of hearing her experiences. Hearing the suffering of another
creates space for empathic engagement and the opportunity—for those
who were not present—to bear witness to others’ experiences of suffering
and horror; the ability to hear and to feel another’s pain can be vital in
preventing the recurrence of similar atrocities.
INTERGENERATIONAL MEMORY IN CHILDREN OF THE JACARANDA TREE 167
Children of the Jacaranda Tree, published in 2013, is an example of tes-

timonial literature that can be understood as the type of “performative act
of memory,” Cubilié describes. Delijani’s novel is a moving account and
exploration of the emotional effects that imprisonment and torture have
on the children of political prisoners, as well as on their extended families.
The story, although fictional, is based on Delijani’s parents’ experiences
as political prisoners in Iran during the 1980s and shifts between two
historical time periods: the 1980s and the 2009 post-Presidential election
protests, popularly known as the Green Movement. The narrative focal-
izes through various political prisoners in the notorious Evin prison in the
1980s and then shifts to the point of view of their children, now young
adults, some of whom continue to live in Iran and some of whom live in
the diaspora. This challenging story, drawn from the events of Delijani’s
own life, illustrates the extent to which this generation bears the emo-
tional scars of their parents’ suffering and assumes the responsibility of
bearing witness to a dark period in postrevolutionary Iranian history.
Delijani’s novel underscores the importance of stories, and of storytell-
ing, in struggles for social justice: we learn about one another through the
stories that we tell, and it is through narrative that we come to humanize—
and sometimes demonize—the other. This chapter takes as its focus the
connection between narrative and memory, and the importance of remem-
brance through the circulation and the exchange of narratives. Through the
stories of various characters from the 1980s to the present time, Delijani
stresses the importance of intergenerational memory and the pursuit of
social justice. Children of the Jacaranda Tree gives full articulation to a ter-
rifying and bloody period in Iranian history: the clandestine mass execution
of political prisoners in 1988.5 The extent of horror and suffering at this
time in Iranian history has only recently reached general public awareness
and understanding. Delijani’s sensitive portrayal of this dark period places
responsibility on subsequent generations to remember in order to begin the
process of national healing. A secondary concern or theme in this novel is
a poignant articulation of diasporic–exilic guilt, the role of the diasporic
subject as witness, and her relationship to national memory.
The novel begins in the early 1980s in Evin Prison with the story of
Azar, a young political activist, in labor with her first child. She is trans-
ported, blindfolded, in an uncomfortable prison van from one hospital to
the next until she is finally permitted entry to give birth. Even while in
labor at the hospital, Azar is relentlessly interrogated about her political
activities until just moments before she gives birth to her daughter, Neda:
168 N. NAGHIBI
Where were the meetings? the man asked. How many of them attended
each meeting? As she gripped the chair against the fresh, all-encompassing
stabs of pain, Azar tried to remember the right answers. All the answers
she had given from one interrogation to the next. Not a date, not a name,
not a piece of information or lack of it should differ … She tried to answer
but the contractions seemed to be swallowing her, not giving her a chance
to speak. She lurched forward, grabbing the table in front of her. (Delijani
2013: 11–12)
The vividly detailed account of Azar’s suffering, her body wracked with
labor pains, her mind under assault by her interrogator, draws our atten-
tion to the intense corporeality of torture. Bearing witness to extreme suf-
fering, unrelenting psychological torture coupled with the physical pain
of labor, invites the reader as witness to open herself up to the pain of
Azar’s experience, compelling her to feel, empathically, the horrors of this
moment. This harrowing episode in the novel is drawn from the experi-
ence of Delijani’s own mother, who gave birth to Delijani under similar
circumstances, an example which illustrates some of the ways in which this
fictional story draws on the auto/biographical.
Azar’s torture continues as prison officials prevent her from holding
or even seeing her newborn. When she is eventually granted permission
to see her infant daughter, she waits impatiently in the hospital corridor
and watches as her prison warden, whom the prisoners are obliged to call
“Sister,” walks toward her with her newborn bundled in a prison blanket.
The image of the coarse Evin prison blanket wrapped around the delicate
new skin of a- hour-old baby is an unsettling one:
It was a rough prison blanket, and her child was naked. Azar winced at the
sight of her child unprotected against the coarseness that clamped its teeth
into her fragile, new-born skin. She stood with her arms outstretched but
could not speak. She knew if she opened her mouth, nothing would come
out but a shrill, twisted wail. (Delijani 2013: 29)
The symbolism of the harsh Evin blanket wrapped around her naked and
defenseless infant echoes throughout the novel as the stories that unfold
illustrate how traumatic prison memories of one generation surround and
entangle the next. Like the coarse prison blanket enveloping Azar’s baby
daughter, Neda, the memories of an earlier generation’s imprisonment,
torture, and, in some instances, death shroud the lives of the younger gen-
eration as they shoulder the burden of accountability and remembrance.
The specter of Evin, and the mass executions of 1988 as an oppressive and
traumatic memory, encompassing the lives of political prisoners and subse-
quent generations resonates powerfully throughout this story.
Children of the Jacaranda Tree thus begins with the birth of Neda
and an account of her first days in a prison cell with her mother and her
mother’s cellmates. The lives of the women and of their children men-
tioned in this first chapter remain intertwined even after their release from
prison. The novel emphasizes storytelling and intergenerational memory
as the narrative moves back and forth between accounts of the parents’
experiences in prison in the 1980s and those of their now-adult children,
some of whom remain in Iran and some of whom live in the diaspora.
At home or abroad, however, they all live with the memories of a trau-
matized nation. Sara (whose mother, Parisa, was Azar’s cellmate) lives in
an apartment with a clear view of Evin, a fact which her friend, Donya,
visiting from the United States, finds deeply disturbing: “Through the
mist rising, Donya can see the grubby wall of the Evin prison, running
adjacent to the dust-ridden slopes of the mountain” (Delijani 2013: 211).
Donya’s mother, Firoozeh, once shared a cell with Parisa and Azar. What
the reader knows but Sara and her brother, Omid, do not is that Firoozeh
was despised by the other prisoners because of her position as a tavvab,
an informant-recanter.6 In fact, it was Firoozeh’s maliciousness and her
cooperation with prison officials that prompted the premature separation
of the still-nursing Neda from her mother Azar:
When Donya tells her mother over the phone of the closeness between
the prison and the city, Firoozeh remained mostly silent. Donya knew she
was giving undesired information; her mother did not wish to know. Since
their immigration to America almost fifteen years ago, Firoozeh had never
returned to Iran, and she had made it clear that she had no intention of ever
doing so. There was a tint of hatred in Firoozeh’s refusal to return, which
at times made Donya wonder about what could have happened inside the
prison that had thus traumatized her. (Delijani 2013: 212)
Firoozeh’s desire to block out the past and her determination to forget
her role in perpetuating a climate of terror and suffering in Evin betrays
an inability to acknowledge her own complicity in an oppressive system.
Her unwillingness to come to terms with her conflicted role as both vic-
tim and perpetrator poses an impediment to her own ability to heal. In
jail, Firoozeh had declared: “Once released, she would take Donya away
with her and leave Iran. Leave and never look back” (Delijani 2013: 33).
170 N. NAGHIBI
The novel takes pains to emphasize that the refusal to look back on one’s
past and to reflect on one’s own role in historical events sanctions a con-
tinuing cycle of violence. In order for the process of healing to begin,
all participants must come to terms with their own varying degrees of
complicity within systems of oppression. Delijani’s novel proposes that
national healing and reconciliation can occur through the circulation of
narratives: the telling and the sharing of stories make way for admissions
of guilt and responsibility, creating space for empathy—and as in the case
of Neda and Reza at the end of this particular story—reconciliation.
The novel thus draws attention to the complexities of memory and
trauma, pain and healing, guilt and accountability. Early in the book, we
are introduced to Leila, whose sisters, Parisa and Simin, are both in prison
for their political activities and whose children, Forough, Sara, and Omid,
are being raised by Leila and her parents. In this early introduction in the
novel to Leila and her young charges, she takes the children to a profes-
sional photographer in order to send a portrait of the children to their
mothers in Evin; as he sets up his equipment, the photographer tells her:
“As you see, Leila Khanoom, I am not very busy these days. It seems like
no one wants to take pictures in wartime. Who knows? Maybe they prefer
not to keep records of themselves. To forget. Or maybe they are afraid of
remembering later” (Delijani 2013: 65).
This tension between the courage to remember and reflect upon one’s
past versus the more expedient position to forget—or to suppress—one’s
(role in) history is a continuous theme in this narrative, particularly through
the representations of Firoozeh and Donya. Firoozeh flees Iran immediately
upon her release from prison, and pointedly avoids reflecting upon her time
behind bars; her daughter, Donya, similarly avoids revisiting unpleasant and
difficult memories. Although Donya and Omid (Leila’s nephew) were once
romantically involved, Donya balks at a longer-term commitment:
It was the prospect of living in this country where life overwhelms you, sub-
merges you completely with its unflinching, unpredictable, ruthless reality.
Donya was not ready for that. She did not have Omid’s fortitude to live so
intimately with nightmares of youth and prison and blood. And huddling
shadows that carried so much pride and desolation and hurt. Donya could
not handle that. She just was not cut out for it. (Delijani 2013: 226)
Donya’s refusal to commit to a long-term relationship with Omid is con-

nected to her reluctance to confront the harsh realities of her mother’s
past. Conscious of her mother’s aversion to recollecting and reflecting
upon her time in prison, Donya shies away from learning the harsh truths
about the imprisonment and torture that the previous generation suffered.
Knowing that living in Iran would mean living with the reality of the past
always existing alongside the present, Donya chooses, like her mother, to
live abroad. Outside of Iran, her life can begin anew, without the “hud-
dling shadows” gnawing at the edges of her conscience.
The novel stresses the importance of intergenerational memory, for-
giveness and reconciliation, healing and progress, but it remains harsh in
its treatment and judgment of Firoozeh and Donya. Striking a fatalistic
tone, the narrative suggests that the daughter of an informant-recanter is
herself destined to become weak-willed and untrustworthy. She will not
find the fortitude to withstand suffering or to fight against oppression.
Like her mother, she will be unable and unwilling to bear the weight of his-
tory and the painful memories of the past. Here, as well in other instances,
the novel flounders aesthetically, adopting the unnuanced style of a politi-
cal tract as the narrative unequivocally condemns Firoozeh and Donya
for their perceived weaknesses. While these characters are condemned for
the choices they make in life, the larger point made in the novel through
its harsh judgment of these two characters is that the cycle of oppression
and terror can be—and indeed must be—broken through intervention
and remembrance. The act of remembering, Delijani’s novel emphasizes,
involves a political and social commitment to the future: by reflecting upon
past injustices, we hold ourselves accountable to a future that makes room
for everyone, a future committed to a more just and equitable world.
The fatalistic and condemnatory stance the novel takes in relation to
Firoozeh and Donya works against the overall narrative arc that moves
toward a position of compassion and empathy, reconciliation and healing.
Alongside this condemnatory narrative of Firoozeh is the story of another
family with a conflicted relationship to the past. Here, and throughout this
novel, the 1988 massacre emerges as both a wound and a spectral presence
in the national memory of postrevolutionary Iran. Delijani’s novel places
the traumatic memory of the 1988 massacres at the heart of the story with
the execution of Amir. Having spent her life under the illusion that her
father died of cancer, Amir’s daughter Sheida discovers the truth about the
circumstances of her father’s death over two decades after the fact.
Just before Sheida stumbles upon the discovery that her father was
among those executed in Iran’s prisons in 1988, she, like many other
diasporic Iranians, finds herself glued to the web during the summer of
2009, hungrily devouring the eyewitness reports rapidly coming out of
Iran, reports about the mass protests on the streets of Tehran in defiant
172 N. NAGHIBI
opposition to the outcome of the Presidential election. Simultaneously

exhilarated by the videos of protest and frustrated by her distance from
the events on the ground, Sheida spends the summer months scouring the
web for updates on the demonstrations:
Women and men, young and old, feeble and strong, chanting slogans against
the wrong done to them. Slogans for whatever memory of justice they can
fathom. Behind her computer, Sheida whispers their words, their slogans,
their cries of resistance … She can almost see herself standing on a rooftop,
her fist clenched in the air. (Delijani 2013: 170–171)
As she reads accounts of their political activism, Sheida feels the pull of
nostalgia and memory, wishing herself part of this movement for change,
a movement that recalls another time in Iranian history—the 1979
Revolution—when young people spilled out on the streets clamoring for
political change.
For Sheida, as for many other diasporic Iranians during that time, the
events of the present carry whispers of the past. As she scours over the
online videos and written reports emerging out of Iran, she feels the tug
of memory and recognizes that “[t]his is the second time in recent weeks
that she had seen an article about the postrevolution imprisonments and
executions. She does not know if it is a coincidence or that with so many
men and women twenty years later in prisons in Tehran and other cit-
ies, the past is once again resurfacing, almost as a premonition” (Delijani
2013: 171). As she reads online news stories about the 2009 protests,
she takes note of the number of references to and articles about the 1979
revolutionary period that appear alongside the more current news reports.
As she immerses herself in these stories, Sheida finds an article about the
mass executions of 1988 and is stunned to discover her father’s name on
the list of those executed.
Flying back to Iran from her home in Italy, Sheida appears on her
mother’s doorstep, declaring: “You have denied me my past. You have
denied me my father” (Delijani 2013: 192). Here, the novel once again
underscores the point about the remembering and the retelling of stories
as integral to the process of redressing social and political wrongs. The
narrative calls our attention to our obligations as witnesses to injustices
and human rights abuses; we have a responsibility to recall, to remember,
and to retell stories as a way of honoring the memory of those who have
been silenced, and to prevent the recurrence of similar atrocities. As the
story unfolds, the narrative makes clear that attempts to keep the past at
bay are futile as the past always resurfaces and makes room for itself—how-
ever uncomfortably—alongside the present.
The various stories that unfold in Children of the Jacaranda Tree illus-
trate Katharine Hodgkin and Susanna Radstone’s claim that “memory …
both underpins and undermines the national narrative … The question of
how people remember their own stories, then, is intimately entwined with
how they remember the national story (Delijani 2013: 170). Following
Hodgkin and Radstone’s argument, for Maryam, Sheida’s mother, to con-
ceal her husband’s execution from her daughter, or for Firoozeh, Donya’s
mother, to deny her own victimization as well as her complicity in Iran’s
punitive prison system would be to deny not only their own individual and
personal traumas but also the broader narrative of national trauma.
Delijani traces a connection between national and personal trauma
through the narrative’s focus on different characters in the novel. During
a conversation with his cellmate Behrouz, Sheida’s father, Amir, notices
an old scar on Behrouz’s ankle. Behrouz tells him that the scar is from a
bicycle accident from his childhood but that he played with the wound
to ensure it would scar so that he could have it engraved on his body as
a memory: “From underneath the blindfold, Amir saw Behrouz’s dirty
fingers creeping down to his memory. Wound. Pain. Memory” (Delijani
2013: 101). As theorists of trauma have claimed, trauma can be concep-
tualized as both a physical or psychological wound, a painful memory.7
Cathy Caruth has observed that in Freud’s writings, “the term trauma is
understood as a wound, inflicted not upon the body but upon the mind”
(1996: 3; emphasis in original). In Children of the Jacaranda Tree, trauma
as a wound is both physical and psychological as Amir notes that “soon he
would be so sick with memories that even taking the smallest step would be
an impossible task. Memories were like snake poison, encroaching on the
body, paralyzing one limb at a time” (Delijani 2013: 101). Throughout
her novel, Delijani intertwines the concepts of intergenerational memory,
trauma, wound, exilic guilt, and reconciliation. The retelling of stories of
trauma and suffering forces the reader-witness to take a stance, prodding
the reader into an empathic position; in the words of Ann Kaplan, “tell-
ing stories about trauma … may permit a kind of empathic ‘sharing’ that
moves us forward” (2005: 37). Narrating stories of suffering through the
point of view of the sufferer creates space for what Kaplan calls ethical
witnessing or “an ethical response that will perhaps transform the way
someone views the world, or thinks about justice” (Kaplan 2005: 123).
Alongside the imperative, articulated in this novel, for the reader to
bear witness to suffering and injustice is the complicated position of the
174 N. NAGHIBI
exilic subject. How does the exile, existing at a safe remove from the site
where such stories of suffering unfold, bear witness to atrocity and pain in
a responsible, and effective, way? How does she engage with these narra-
tives that recount and relate social injustices and cruelties without repro-
ducing tensions between the diasporic home and the native home, thereby
reinforcing existing stereotypes about a country such as Iran that is already
unfavorably represented in popular Western narratives? How might a
diasporic Iranian reader assume the position of a socially conscious and
engaged witness without appropriating through “vicarious trauma” (see
La Capra 2001; Kaplan 2005) the historically specific trauma of another?
Delijani treats the conflicted relationship of the exilic subject to her
home country, her childhood memories, and the tension between past
and present with care and sensitivity throughout her narrative. On the
one hand, the exile’s relationship to Iran is represented as fixed at the
moment of departure from the home country; this is illustrated in Dante’s
description of Forough’s letters home to her grandmother, Maman Zinat.
Dante, another child of political prisoners raised by Forough’s grand-
mother, recalls reading Forough’s letters to Maman Zinat and noting the
unchanged nature of Forough’s childish Farsi script: “A handwriting stand-
ing witness to the halt of time in that hidden corner of the mind where
memories lingered” (Delijani 2013: 131). Through Dante’s description
of Forough’s unsophisticated Farsi script, her handwriting marking the
young age at which she left Iran, the diasporic subject’s relationship to her
home country is represented as frozen in time. This is why the prospect
of return “home” for diasporics is often tinged with nostalgia not only for
their native home but also for the self they have left behind.
Although this novel represents the diasporic subject’s relationship to
“home” as fixed at a particular moment in time, she is seen as far from irrel-
evant to the political future of the country. The exilic relationship to political
unrest at home is portrayed with poignancy through the characters of Sheida
and Neda. Neda, now living in Turin, Italy, meets Reza, a new immigrant
and recent casualty of the 2009 protests, and longs to connect his “on-the-
ground” experiences with her own cyber experience of the protests:
She feels a shiver of envy at the thought of him having been there, hav-
ing partaken in that moment when history turned. He has run through
those streets, thrown stones, shouted slogans, been arrested, released, and
arrested again until his last escape … He has done what her own parents had
done thirty years earlier. (Delijani 2013: 258; emphasis in original)
In this instance, once again, the novel makes a connection between the
past—the 1979 revolutionary period—and the present time of the novel—
the 2009 postelection protests. For Neda, Reza is an echo of her own
past, of her parents, of their bravery and their activism, of their youth. At
this point, the novel underscores the ways in which Neda’s and Reza’s
life narratives intersect but also diverge dramatically. Neda listens to Reza
describe his shock at the brutality of the regime and his disillusionment
with the state’s violent reaction to the 2009 protestors; as she listens to
him speak, she feels herself getting angry at his willful blindness to the
country’s bloody history. Reza’s distress and disappointment with the vio-
lent response of the government toward its citizens is met with Neda’s
resentment. In her view, the regime’s unhesitating and unflinching turn to
bloodshed is simply a continuation of their past practice.
Reza, however, arrives in Italy emotionally scarred by the aftermath
of the 2009 protests. In particular, he is scarred by the memory of the
severe beating his sister endured which resulted in her miscarriage: “It was
like they had been able to not only hurt us, our generation, but also the
one that was coming after. And that was just too much to bear” (Delijani
2013: 246). Sharing with Neda his horror and disbelief that the regime
could turn against its young with such savagery, Reza’s story brings to the
forefront the repetition of state violence and the ways in which the past
enfolds into the present as well as into the future. While Neda and Reza
work to find common emotional ground, Neda’s willingness and ability
to hear his stories is put to the test when Reza confesses that his father
had been a revolutionary guard: “Neda feels slightly faint. She realizes she
has been holding her breath unconsciously. Her hands under the table
are cold. The violence of the regime has shocked Reza because he does
not know” (Delijani 2013: 264). Faced with the reality of his close ties to
the regime, Neda struggles with her conflicting feelings of revulsion and
attraction to Reza. In this instance, the novel, as a plausible story, breaks
down in its too tidy coincidences in order to make a larger political point:
when Neda asks Reza for his father’s name, he tells her: Meysam. The
reader will know that Meysam is the name of the young Revolutionary
Guard who escorted her mother to the hospital where she gives birth to
Neda, although neither Neda nor Reza are aware of this fact.
Although their relationship until now has consisted of the telling and
the sharing of stories, Neda comes to realize that Reza, with his political
background and past sympathies with the Islamic Republic, does not want
to hear her stories. He is a reluctant witness because Neda’s stories further
confirm what the violence of the summer of 2009 has made him begin to
176 N. NAGHIBI
suspect, that the regime was not as committed to social justice or to the
rights of “the downtrodden” as it had initially claimed to be:
Reza had not wanted to hear her mother’s story. His smile had been the
smile of a man who did not wish to know. She had forced her story on him.
He was its reluctant receiver … He did not want to look so far back. He
was afraid. He did not want to carry the blame. He was fighting against it.
(Delijani 2013: 268; emphasis in original)
Reza could not bear to imagine that the regime to which he and his father
had pledged loyalty had been, since its inception, meting out cruel and
harsh punishments to its critics. He needed to believe that the regime’s
brutal response to the post-2009 Presidential election results was an aber-
ration, a divergence from its revolutionary roots, and not the manifesta-
tion of its original philosophy and beliefs.
Despite its occasional heavy-handed symbolism and easy coincidences,
the novel’s humanist claim that the process of healing and reconciliation
relies on the recounting and the sharing of narratives with a willing audience
is a compelling one. In the aftermath of the 2009 protests, Neda assumes
the role of storyteller and the guardian of collective memory; she has heard
her parents’ stories and is mindful to remember what they endured:
Once when Neda shared her concern with her father about the prisoners
that were languishing in the regime’s prisons, their names, the pictures of
their young faces going around Facebook, Ismael said, at least now their
faces are known, their names are on everyone’s lips. We all died in silence.
(Delijani 2013: 272; emphasis in original)
Thus, although Neda once promised her mother that she would never
disclose her parents’ imprisonment to anyone, she comes to realize that
the stories of her parents and of others must indeed be told and heard.
Recounting stories of the country’s violent history allows Neda to bear
witness to the suffering and the wrongs committed in the past, but it also
signals a commitment to a better future as the retelling and the sharing of
stories of past brutalities help prevent the repetition of the past:
No more secrets, no more choking back. Now everyone has to know. To

know, to know, to know! … The spilled blood on the streets had made people
remember things they long thought had been forgotten. Reza has to know.
Above all Reza. For they cannot go anywhere if he does not. (Delijani 2013:
268, 270; emphasis in original)
Believing that the act of witnessing impels the witness to recognize injus-
tice, and to work toward social and political change, Neda forces a reluc-
tant Reza to listen to and to hear her parents’ story. This story then, of the
suffering of generations of Iran’s political activists since the revolution to
the present time, ends on a note of hope and reconciliation as the son of
a revolutionary guard and the exiled daughter of political prisoners begin
falling in love through the telling, the hearing, and the exchange of their
respective stories. This commitment to hearing each other’s narratives
with generosity and empathy is a crucial step in the process of individual
and national healing (Kaplan 2005: 122).
What Delijani’s novel emphasizes more than anything is the power
of narrative and storytelling in the nation’s trajectory toward healing.
Children of the Jacaranda Tree stresses the importance of remembering
and the passing and sharing of stories from one generation to the next to
ensure that the sacrifices of previous generations for the ideals of democ-
racy and equality are remembered. The children of the political prisoners
in this novel are represented as the branches and flowers of the jacaranda
tree that symbolize the flowering of their parents’ democratic ideals. The
jacaranda tree of the book’s title is thus a powerful symbol of memory, of
the desire for justice and equality, and of the remembrance of the prison-
ers who have died in Iran’s prisons. It is, perhaps somewhat incongru-
ously, this image of a tree not native to Iran that calls on us to participate,
through the telling and the circulating of stories, in the remembrance of
our past and our endeavors toward a just future8.
Notes
1. There is now a growing body of scholarship on diasporic Iranian narratives.
See, for example, Grassian (2013), Fotouhi (2015), Elahi and Karim (2011),
Karim and Rahimieh (2008), and Naghibi (2016).
2. Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson (2010) use the term “auto/biography” to
refer to “the interrelatedness of autobiographical narrative and biography”
(256).
3. In other cases, the children of political prisoners served time with their moth-
ers behind bars; these children suffered emotional traumas described in the
testimonial narratives in Agah et al. (2007). See also Shahla Talebi (2014) for
a discussion of the presence of children in political prisons and the state of
childhood in such conditions. In this article, Talebi describes the unique
model of kinship formed in prison between mothers (as well as other women
inmates who served as surrogate mothers) and their imprisoned children.
178 N. NAGHIBI
4. See, for example, Chowra Makaremi (2011). Makaremi transcribes her

grandfather’s journal in which he documents the imprisonment and execu-
tion of two of his daughters (Makaremi’s mother and aunt). Between the
testimony of her grandfather, Aziz, and a selection of family letters, Makaremi
inserts her own autobiographical voice, intertwining her grandfather’s testi-
monial narrative with her own childhood memories, and her decision as a
scholar to bear witness to the suffering, and eventual execution, of her
mother and her aunt. Another example of a narrative of a childhood shad-
owed by parents’ imprisonment is Golkhou Parhizgar’s documentary film,
Round-Trip. Her auto/biographical film begins with a reference to her par-
ents’ imprisonment and her birth in Evin in the early 1980s; she is careful,
however, to avoid details of her family’s experience. See my own discussion
of this film in Chap. 3 of Women Write Iran (2016). Given the belated articu-
lation and recurrence of the traumatic experience, I speculate that we will be
seeing an increase in narratives by a generation of children who either spent
time behind bars with their parents or who were raised by relatives while their
parents remained imprisoned—and in some cases killed—during the 1980s.
5. For further details about the mass execution of political prisoners in 1980s
Iran, see Robertson (2011), Abrahamian (1999), and Afshari (2011). For
information about the Iran Tribunal campaign, visit: www.irantribunal.com.
This was a campaign organized by the families of executed prisoners, surviv-
ing former political prisoners, lawyers, and children’s rights, women’s rights,
and human rights activists, with the aim of holding the Iranian government
accountable for the mass execution of prisoners in Iran during what they
describe as “the bloody decade.” In addition to legal and scholarly documents
and research, the website includes testimonials by former political prisoners.
6. See Ervand Abrahamian’s Tortured Confessions for a full exploration of the
tavvab phenomenon in the post-revolutionary Iranian prison system. As he
describes it, the informant-recanter, or tavvab, was a category created by the
prison system to maintain a system of fear and internal control:
Prisoners were closely watched by repenters ever eager to win privileges

and their freedom. Not surprisingly, prisoners detested these kapos and
antens (antennas) on the lookout for incriminating information… The
wardens set up a Repenters’ Society, a newspaper called Payam-e Tawabin
(Repenters’ Message), and special wards named Bandeh Jehad (Crusaders’
Wards). They offered them incentives—more generous rations, lighter
sentences, even amnesty, and access to the prison workshops, where
women could earn pocket money as garment workers and men could
earn pocket money as metal workers. (1999: 168)
7. See Caruth’s Unclaimed Experience for more on trauma as a wound. In her

work on trauma, Leigh Gilmore writes: “Trauma, from the Greek meaning
‘wound’ refers to the self-altering, even self-shattering experience of vio-

lence, injury, and harm” (1996: 6)
8. There is potential here for further analysis about the role of the diasporic-
exilic subject in the country’s future in light of the fact that the Jacaranda
Tree, which is not native to Iran, symbolizes hope in this novel.
References
Abrahamian, Ervand. 1999. Tortured Confessions: Prisons and Public Recantations
in Modern Iran. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Afshari, Reza. 2011. Human Rights in Iran: The Abuse of Cultural Relativism.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Agah, Azadeh, Sousan Mehr, and Shadi Parsi. 2007. We Lived To Tell: Political
Prison Memoirs of Iranian Women. Toronto, ON: McGilligan Books.
Caruth, Cathy. 1996. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History.
Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Cubilié, Ann. 2005. Women Witnessing Terror: Testimony and Cultural Politics of
Human Rights. New York, NY: Fordham University Press.
Delijani, Sahar. 2013. Children of the Jacaranda Tree. London: Weidenfeld &
Nicholson.
Elahi, Babak, and Persis Karim. 2011. Introduction: Iranian Diaspora. Comparative
Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 31(2): 381–387.
Fotouhi, Sanaz. 2015. The Literature of the Iranian Diaspora: Meaning and
Identity since the Islamic Revolution. London: I.B. Tauris.
Grassian, Daniel. 2013. Iranian and Diasporic Literature in the 21st Century: A
Critical Study. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company.
Kaplan, Ann E. 2005. Trauma Culture: The Politics of Terror and Loss in Media
and Literature. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Karim, Persis, and Nasrin Rahimieh. 2008. Writing Iranian Americans into the
American Literature Canon. MELUS 33(2): 7–16.
La Capra, Dominick. 2001. Writing History, Writing Trauma. Baltimore, MD:
The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Makaremi, Chowra. 2011. Aziz’s Notebook: At the Heart of the Iranian Revolution.
Translated by Renuka George. New Delhi: Yoda Press.
Naghibi, Nima. 2016. Women Write Iran: Nostalgia and Human Rights from the
Diaspora. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Robertson, Geoffrey. 2011. The Massacre of Political Prisoners in Iran, 1988:
Report of An Inquiry. Washington, DC: Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation.
Smith, Sidonie, and Julia Watson. 2010. Reading Autobiography: A Guide for
Interpreting Life Narratives. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Talebi, Shahla. 2014. Children as Protectors: The Conditions of Parenthood in a
Political Prison in Iran. Champ Penal/Penal Field 11: 1–22. Accessed May 20,
2016. https://champpenal.revues.org/8770
CHAPTER 11
Social Media as a Site of Transformative

Politics: Iranian Women’s Online
Contestations
Victoria Tahmasebi-Birgani
To draw out the connection between women’s mobilization efforts on

social networking sites (SNS) and Iranian social justice movements is a
challenging, if not extremely difficult, task. SNS are diffuse and lateral
online networks of individuals, perceived to be mainly geared toward
entertainment. In contrast, the hallmark of Iranian political organizing
has historically been shaped by offline, centralized, and hierarchical forms
of activism. It is through the latter that the radical impulses of generations
of Iranian political activists have traditionally been organized, channeled,
and expressed.
This chapter addresses some of the challenges, and some of the positive
outcomes, of women’s use of SNS in their struggles for social justice and
gender equality in Iran. It is not my intention here to establish a direct
causal link between Iranian women’s use of SNS and their ability to bring
about change on the ground; my aim, rather, is to show the transgressive
I wish to note my appreciation of my two research assistants, Saman Rejali and

Zeinab Farokhi, for their meticulous work in monitoring My Stealthy Freedom
(MSF) Facebook posts from March to June 2015.
V. Tahmasebi-Birgani (*)
Department of Historical Studies, University of Toronto-Mississauga,
Mississauga, ON, Canada

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-44227-3_11
182 V. TAHMASEBI-BIRGANI
possibilities, radical potentials, and spaces of dissent that such online plat-
forms open up for ordinary Iranian women and activists alike. Women’s
online platforms must be read and understood as spaces of cultural, social,
and political contestation, and as one of the arenas in which Iranian agents
of radical political change are emerging. Women use these sites to express
social forms of assertive female subjectivity and to actively participate in
ongoing assessments, evaluations, and rearticulations of concepts such as
politics, culture, gender identity, resistance, and activism. I will discuss this
through a case study of one such SNS, “My Stealthy Freedom” (Azadi-ye
Yavashaki-ye Zanan dar Iran), a Facebook campaign through which thou-
sands of Iranian women, and men, post their life stories and try to make
sense of and articulate their daily experiences of sexism and misogyny.
Context and Debate
Beginning in the early 2000s, researchers and scholars started to examine
the political mobilizing force of online networking (Ayers 2003; Langman
2005; Martinez-Torres 2001; McCaughey and Ayers 2003; Ting 2008;
Vegh 2003). The circulation of various narratives, information, and ideas
helps online activist communities do much more than just establish or
nurture users’ personal bonds with one another. In fact, online network-
ing allows political actors to articulate a collective identity around a “com-
mon direction”—that is, a platform for mobilization (Diani 2000; Kumar
2012; Raghavan 2009). Furthermore, political activists are increasingly
using digital tools to create massive, grassroots online campaigns for dif-
ferent social justice causes and for pushing for political change. These
online exchanges and online campaigns can develop and sustain what I
call an “ethos of mobilization”: they provide activists with the means to
mobilize for social and political change in their home countries, in ways
that can have significant consequences for offline (or “real”) politics.
In the last few decades, feminist media research has begun to study
the positive impact that SNS can have on expressions of political dis-
sent and on feminist political activism. Lotan et al. (2011) underscore
the significance of social media platforms for establishing networks of
solidarity among marginalized voices, including women; Castells views
Internet-based communication networks as enabling sites for people’s
“mass self-communication,” through which messages can be broadcast to
transnational networks and global audiences (2011: 782). Increasingly,
SOCIAL MEDIA AS A SITE OF TRANSFORMATIVE POLITICS: IRANIAN WOMEN’S... 183
feminist scholars challenge existing conceptual and methodological tools

in studying online social networking; conjunctural and intersectional
lenses are offered as interpretive tools for examining how gender, sexual-
ity, race, ability, class, and other identity markers influence and inform
one’s experience of a social media space (Schradie 2012).
According to a large number of studies, SNS—and in particular
Twitter—played a significant role during and after the 2009 Iranian
Green Movement (Alexanian 2011; Golkar 2011; Sohrabi-Haghighat and
Mansouri 2010). Still others studies have downplayed the role of social
media during the Iranian uprising, arguing that social justice movements
cannot be reduced to social media (Morozov 2009; Safshekan 2014;
Wojcieszak and Smith 2014). Yet the majority of scholars agree that, due
in part to the repressive nature of the Iranian regime, Iranian activists have
created vast online networks to connect, communicate, mobilize, and rally
around different social, cultural, and political causes, and to develop and
maintain transnational solidarity networks with other organizations. These
networks of transnational engagement continue to expand and link online
activism with offline protests (Bucar and Fazaeli 2008; Doostdar 2004;
Khosravi and Graham 2002; Van den Bos 2006).
In terms of Iranian women’s struggles for social justice, there is already
a substantive body of scholarship on Iranian women’s offline struggles
against gender oppression and for gender equality (Moghissi 1996, 2000,
2009; Mojab 2001b; Naghibi 2007; Shahidian 2002; Tohidi 1996,
2010a). However, few studies have focused on women’s activism online
Akhavan 2013; Mojab 2001a; Naghibi 2011). Research on the online
presence of Iranian women has mainly focused on the personal blog-
ging of individual activists. This scholarship demonstrates that Iranian
women, as well as ethnic and sexual minorities, use personal and politi-
cal blogging to explore and problematize gender identity, gender roles,
and gender conventions in Iranian political discourse and cultural prac-
tices (Alavi 2005; Alinejad 2011; Amir-Ebrahimi 2008; Doostdar 2004;
Nouraie-Simone 2005; Rahimi 2003; Shakhsari 2011, 2012; Sreberny
and Khiabany 2010). While studies of Iranian women bloggers have pro-
liferated over the last few decades, the majority of these have focused on
the ways in which the web enables personal self-expression, rather than
offering a platform for collective struggles for a common cause (Amir-
Ebrahimi 2008; Ghorashi and Boersma 2009; Sreberny 2007).
Iranian Women’s Activism on Social

Networking Sites
An emerging body of scholarship, however, points to the fact that SNS
have become one of the most important communication and mobilization
tools for Iranians, and in particular for Iranian women activists. A number
of studies suggest that Iranian women creatively use SNS to break down
the barriers of censorship, disseminate information about the everyday lives
of Iranian women, challenge mainstream understandings of gender rela-
tions, broaden conceptions of social justice to include women’s and sexual
minorities’ rights, develop virtual “public” spaces in which women can
communicate and connect with one another across a range of social net-
works, create online campaigns for women’s rights in Iran, and announce
and coordinate protests (Gheytanchi and Moghadam 2014; Moghadam
and Sadiqi 2006; Tohidi 2010b; Yahyanejad and Gheytanchi 2012).
Given the vast scope of Iranian women’s online activism, how have
Iranian feminist scholars begun to understand this body of work? Exactly
what do SNS mean for Iranian women’s activism? How do Iranian women
transform digital sites into feminist spaces? While there is now a substantial
body of scholarship on digital technology as a tool for political change
in general, and in Iran in particular, there are still significant theoretical
and methodological gaps in the existing literature on the specific contri-
butions that Iranian feminist activists make through their online work.
First, although SNS have become very effective subaltern sites of social
and political activism in Iran, more research is needed on Iranian women’s
online presence and on their leadership in using SNS as vital tools of polit-
ical dissent. For example, research on Iranian political websites focuses on
how the use of new technology facilitates activism, but often sidesteps the
specific work that feminists and women activists bring to these new sites
of struggle. Finally, the popularity of Big Data collection (Kelly and Etling
2008) has left a serious research gap in terms of micro-level qualitative and
critical feminist research on social networking platforms in general, and
on Iranian women’s use of SNS—as sites of social and political dissent—in
particular. Studies of online Iranian political activism that use Big Data
collection focus mainly on the larger context of online Iranian communi-
ties, and the instrumental role these communities have had in the reform
movement in Iran (Kelly and Etling 2008; Rogers et al. 2012). Questions
around women’s experiences and women’s work for gender justice have
not been integral to the majority of these studies.
In particular, Iranian women’s use of Facebook as a tool for raising

awareness about gender inequality, and as a space for social and political
mobilization, has so far been one of the least studied. In fact, among social
networking sites, Facebook gives women the ability to express themselves
relatively freely; it is one of the most widely used virtual interactive plat-
forms for ordinary Iranian women and activists alike. Since Facebook is
banned and its access is blocked in Iran, people use Virtual Proxy Networks
(VPNs) to access the website, and therefore we do not know the exact
number of Iranians who use this social network in the country. However,
according to a 2012 survey, three out of five Internet users in Iran were
on Facebook—around 58 % (Social Media in Iran 2012), while a 2016
survey suggests that the percentage of Facebook users in Iran is around
35 % of all online users (Bozorgzadeh 2016). We have a clearer picture of
the numbers of Facebook users, and the nature of Facebook usage, in the
wider MENA region. For example, according to the Arab Social Media
Report (Arab Social Media Influencers Summit 2015: 8), by May 2014,
67 % of people between the ages of 15 and 29 were using Facebook.
And between November 2010 and November 2011, the period corre-
sponding to the beginning of the Arab uprisings, the number of Facebook
users in the Arab world “almost doubled” (Dubai School of Government
2011: 12). The same report demonstrates that women in MENA coun-
tries use social media, and Facebook in particular, to create transnational
political campaigns to fight for the rights of women and other social jus-
tice causes. The report also cites the “Women2Drive” campaign, led by
women in Saudi Arabia, and Egyptian women’s “HarassMap” initiative,
as two examples of successful online campaigns (2011: 2–3). In light of
this regional information on women’s activism in the Middle East and
North Africa, and because Iran has by far the highest total number of
internet users in the region—around 47 % in November 2015 (Internet
World Stats 2015)—it is safe to assume that ordinary Iranian women’s use
of Facebook, including its use as a tool for social and political activism, is
widespread and extensive.
Iranian women activists utilize Facebook to create online communities,
or what some scholars call “networked public spheres” (Langman 2005),
in which women and men deliberate, debate, and converse about conten-
tious social and political issues. Interactive Facebook pages have become
enabling spaces in which ordinary Iranian women become active contribu-
tors, creators, commentators, sorters, and archivers of digital content. In
this way, Facebook pages become digital public squares for the carrying
out of feminist political work, and the organizing of popular campaigns.
My Stealthy Freedom (MFS) Facebook Campaign

My Stealthy Freedom (MSF), one notable example of an Iranian women’s
online campaign, has gained massive and unprecedented popularity and
international media coverage. MSF is run and organized by Masih Alinejad,
a passionate activist and grassroots journalist. The MSF Facebook cam-
paign began in May 2014 as a means to challenge the compulsory wearing
of the hijab in Iran. On her initial message posted on Facebook, Alinejad
invited and encouraged Iranian women, especially inside the country, to
post images of themselves outside, in public spaces, without the headscarf.
She writes:
This page does not belong to any political group and the initiative reflects
the concerns of Iranian women, who face legal and social restrictions. All
of the photos and captions posted have been sent by women from all over
Iran and this is a site dedicated to Iranian women inside the country who
want to share their “stealthily” taken photos without the veil. (My Stealthy
Freedom n.d.)
MSF immediately gained international visibility and support from people

around the world—grassroots movements, women’s activists, and western
corporate media. Currently, the MSF Facebook has more than 968,000
“likes” on its page. Although social networks are often called low-risk
social activism (partly as a result of the anonymous nature of the web),
this is not the case with MSF. Iranian women (and a large number of
men) post their life stories, and their unveiled pictures and videos from
inside Iran, under their real names and, most of the time, with their faces
revealed.
MSF has since become one of the main online spaces known for gener-
ating discourse on various social, cultural, and political issues in Iran, and,
in particular, for activism against compulsory veiling. Participants post
their pictures and videos and share artistic creations (in particular, poems,
and paintings); others share consciousness-raising texts, and many more
write their personal testimonies, often giving evidence of the systematic
harassment that ordinary Iranians experience at the hands of the regime’s
security apparatus.
The MSF Facebook page is an extremely active and lively space; each
month around 35–50 new pieces of content are posted on the page, and
these posts are then shared by hundreds of people. Every post receives
thousands (sometimes tens of thousands) of “likes,” and generates long

strings of comments and much conversation. Partly due to the sheer num-
ber of participants, MSF has gained unprecedented international hyper-
visibility; it is now considered to be one of the main voices of the online
Iranian women’s movement. However, in the context of the long history
of colonial hegemony in the Middle East, and the tradition of orientalist
representations of MENA women in Western media, hypervisibility can be
a double-edged sword. It is precisely this hypervisibility on which I wish to
focus on here, in discussing some of the challenges facing women’s online
activism, and some of the risks involved in such campaigns and initiatives.
To begin with, we must consider what it means when the condition of
women in one particular nation is singled out and becomes hypervisible—
this practice always entails the production of certain subjects rather than
the mere discovery of “them.” Who exactly becomes visible? And at whose
expense? The pitfalls of hypervisibility have been well-studied and well-
theorized (Amar 2011): the hypervisible subject is at risk of becoming a
fetishized figure, devoid of history and context, occupying public discourse
without the ability, autonomy, or agency to speak on its own terms. As
such, hypervisibility, especially in the context of unequal power relations,
often means becoming visible as a problem in need of a solution (or a sav-
ior—and, in many cases, in need of both). In this context, there is always
the inherent risk that the MSF campaign will be reduced to one woman,
and one cause—as Alinejad herself has become the poster woman for the
campaign in Western media. It is equally important to note that, since
the start of the MSF campaign, Alinejad has been subjected to numer-
ous attacks by the Iranian regime, as well as by online mobs of vigilantes.
She has endured organized and ongoing harassment, hate campaigns, and
misogynist cyberattacks.
Therefore, while women’s online activism can be emancipatory, it is
also vulnerable to being co-opted by neoliberal and neocolonial political
interests and agendas (Gajjala 2001; Gajjala et al. 2010; Reilly 2007). Calls
for Third World women’s emancipation (that fail to situate gender and
sexuality in the context of the history of colonial hegemony in the region)
have long been a primary method through which neocolonial projects
justify expansionist missions (Brophy 2010; Friedman 2005; Gorkemli
2012; Hesford and Schell 2008; Jacques 2008; Kuntsman 2009; Queen
2008; Shakhsari 2012; 2011; Walsh-Haines 2012; Witteborn 2011)—
and through which neoliberal capitalist economies expand their markets
through freeing women’s labor power (Gajjala 2011).
Another equally important challenge is how women’s liberation is

defined, addressed, and presented by the MSF organizer, Alinejad. By
presenting emancipation in and through a narrative of the liberalization
of the body and personalized risks (i.e., through the campaign’s exclusive
focus on the level of individual actions), online campaigns such as MSF
actively participate in the production of modern disciplinary subjectivity.
In other words, by exclusively focusing on a woman’s right to choose her
own mode of dress, and on the individual act of unveiling, women’s eman-
cipation is perceived as something to be achieved through the processes
of identitarian discourse within the liberal framework of individual rights.
In this kind of political activity, the popular association between Western
individual liberties and women’s struggle for social justice is assumed and
taken for granted, rather than opened up for feminist critical inquiry and
debate. Therefore, at several levels, the MSF campaign naturalizes and
sustains the binaries of East/West and Islam/secularism—thereby repro-
ducing the time-worn figure of the oppressed veiled Muslim woman
(understood in contrast to the non-Muslim, secular, unveiled, and there-
fore “free” woman).
As Western media continue to represent Alinejad as the champion of
Iranian women’s attempts to join the “free world,” it is very easy to read
the campaign, Alinejad’s mission, and her posts on the Facebook page, as
pigeonholing religion as a set of illiberal, retrograde practices that suppress
and victimize Iranian woman (who, in turn, urgently need to be saved
by Western liberalized ideas, if not by Western military intervention). In
other words, MSF and its agenda can easily appear to be aligned with the
colonial interests of the global North, and can be correspondingly dis-
missed as one more gendered production of colonial modernity, divorced
from Iranian women’s genuine, grassroots struggles for social justice.
But MSF operates at more than one level. The other aspect of the
MSF campaign is the ordinary women’s contributions: the posts and
comments, conversations, stories, testimonies, and verbal battles that have
become, for participants, enabling sites of self-expression, self-knowing,
and engagement with others—who may vehemently oppose and differ
from one another. It is evident in many comments that the campaign’s
Facebook page helps young Iranian women to be more visible and to
make their voices and their concerns heard; it helps to bring about new
forms of women’s leadership, agency, and empowerment. Further, the
page allows women to negotiate, publicly and in a dialogical manner,
their multiple and often contradictory identities; spread information that
is often sidelined and ignored in mainstream media; confront repressive

social and gender practices; challenge sexism and misogyny; and, finally,
imagine and articulate alternative forms of protest. It is here, in user-
generated content that one can see expressions of collective and assertive
female agency that are often overlooked in critiques of women’s online
activism (and, in particular, critiques of MSF and its organizer, Alinejad).
Women’s posts, comments, and conversations often challenge the
Iranian regime’s moral governance, institutions, and disciplinary surveil-
lance; many posts disrupt the unitary notion of femininity that has been
the hegemonic representation of Iranian women in postrevolutionary Iran.
The postrevolutionary Islamic government succeeded in shutting down
the first and only anti-veiling demonstration on March 8, International
Women’s Day, in 1979. The regime branded women demonstrators as
degenerate individuals who wanted to bring back disreputable expressions
of Western femininity. Women’s provocative selfies and videos, as well as
their posts and comments on the MSF page, often aim to reconceptualize
a wide range of marginalized genders as a political mobilizing force. By
blurring the lines between private and public, between tabooed represen-
tations of femininity and the regime’s “Islamic” codes of behavior, these
women are giving “disreputable” gender identities a political impetus,
often revealing unexpected forms of agency and resistance. The images of
women’s bodies and their uncovered hair, taken in public spaces delineated
by coercive social policies and gender norms, speak of alternative Iranian
female subjectivities—these emerge not in private and behind closed doors,
but in lived, public spaces. By making claims upon public spaces, and by
doing so, often, side by side with other bodies (those of boyfriends, broth-
ers, mothers, sisters, and friends), women’s self-representations take the
form of collective resistance, challenging mainstream understandings of
what it means to be political, and why it is important for women’s bodies
to inform discussions around what constitutes public and political spaces.
Similarly, women’s interventions, testimonies, and stories contribute
to the creation of public subjectivities that transcend and circumvent the
identitarian subject of Western imagery. For example, although Alinejad
self-identifies and represents herself as highly modernized and liberalized,
women often mix local Iranian symbols, imageries, and rituals with their
pictorial and video representations. In their personal testimonies, women
often speak about Iranian and Western gender relations not merely as
binary opposites; they freely juxtapose elements from each in order to
articulate their own understandings of gender. Far from reproducing a
fixed and choreographed subject position, these expressions often blur the
line between the dichotomies of liberal/Islamic, Western/Eastern, and
backward/progressive—and offer more ambiguous, hybrid subject posi-
tions, which do not privilege one cultural discourse or universe over the
other. In other words, although hegemonic codes of modernity are recog-
nized, some creative adaptations and interventions are made here as well.
In their posts and comments, Iranian women are moving away from one-
dimensional articulations of the “sociopolitical,” and are instead adopting
a conjunctural approach wherein different forms of inequality are read as
realities that emerge and evolve with one another. Participants fight and
debate over issues ranging from patriarchy, sexuality, beauty, misogyny,
morality, Islamo- and Arab-phobia, freedom of movement, everyday cul-
tural practices, public/private distinctions, environmental issues, women’s
health, sexual and gender identities, East/West dichotomy, Iranian wom-
en’s role models, geopolitics, nuclear negotiations, and, finally, political
activism and resistance. Significantly, these topics are debated in relation
to one another and their obvious, and not so obvious, connections are
explored. In other words, the Facebook page has become a site where dif-
ferent forms of social inequality and injustice are viewed and discussed as
intertwined and interlinked. Therefore, this space has become a transient
site for civil society, offering women participants the chance to identify,
highlight, and examine intersecting patterns of inequalities, as they form
virtual conversations around these issues.
For example, on March 2, 2015, Alinejad posted a documentary made
by the Iranian regime against the MSF campaign, in which the regime fab-
ricated several accusations against Alinejad, including a false report about
her being raped in the streets of London, England because she was not
covering her hair (My Stealthy Freedom 2015). In response, commen-
tators did not limit themselves in expressing their condemnation of the
regime’s actions. Discussions included the use of rape as an instrument of
state terror, the rape myth, marital rape, comparisons between rape laws in
Iran and other countries (in which some contributors currently live), and
even the link between rape and international relations. These layperson’s
conjunctural forms of analysis indicate a shift among Iranian women from
one-dimensional engagement with issues to more multifaceted forms of
analysis. Participants not only developed various strategies to fight vio-
lence against women, but were also able to connect these strategies to
other key social factors such as women’s roles in different institutional set-
tings. By the end of this long thread (totaling more than 300 comments),
the false report about Alinejad’s rape was located within the larger prac-
tices of systematic oppression and gender inequality in Iran. This led to a
discussion in which the political and cultural expressions of rape culture
and violence against women were charted, and solutions were explored.
In this way, the thread became both a space for education, and a site in
which the conditions for transformative politics and political change were
discussed.
Conclusion
Despite the Iranian regime’s excessive filtering of the Internet, and despite
its practice of censoring and arresting online activists and bloggers and
issuing harsh prison sentences for these individuals, Iranian women’s
online activism continues to target social, political, cultural, and economic
inequalities, as well as environmental crises. These activities have brought
the political mobilizing force of cyberspace, as well as the role of women
in these movements, sharply into focus. These activities have further
succeeded in mobilizing ordinary women around online campaigns for
women’s rights in Iran, as well as enabling interaction and negotiations
with other women in the region. Far from being unreflective interven-
tions, ordinary women’s engagements with online campaigns offer crucial
insights into understanding the gradual, often invisible, but potentially
titanic shifts in the political landscape of contemporary Iranian society—
ongoing movements toward more just and equitable social relations.
It is true that social media cannot and will not replace traditional forms
of protest such as rallies and demonstrations. However, in Iran, with its
oppressive regime, a brutally repressed civil society, and a mass media
which systematically censors any meaningful discussion around women’s
rights, social media is becoming increasingly useful for various kinds of
awareness-raising, social protest, and mass mobilization. As such, Iranian
women’s online activism makes several important interventions into the
ways in which social justice movements should be perceived, organized,
and executed. In other words, women’s use of SNS for political mobiliza-
tion contributes immensely to the structure and content of struggle for
social justice in Iran.
In terms of the structure of social movements and political organiz-
ing, women’s online activism disrupts the hegemony of top-down, elit-
ist, and often male-dominated activist politics and mass mobilizations in
Iran. It is true that access to online social networks is still limited to digi-
tally literate Iranian women and those who have the means to access the
Internet. It is also granted that women’s online networks continue to be
predominantly run and organized by a select few. However, virtual social
spaces, such as Facebook, offer women activists a far more diffuse, lateral,
and interactive organizational framework, allowing them, perhaps for the
first time, to forge alliances and coalitions across different movements,
national boundaries, and geographical distances. In contrast to traditional
social movements that have often been revolved around homogenous and
closely knit groups of activists, and bound to particular social locations,
the adoption of SNS has enabled Iranian women activists to create het-
erogeneous and increasingly democratic spaces that easily stretch beyond
Iran’s national borders. Iranian women activists are now able to engage
and mobilize political activists in a variety of national and transnational
social movements, and to participate in social justice causes that transcend
their national boundaries. In short, online networking allows Iranian fem-
inists and activists to organize, mobilize, produce knowledge, and develop
and share resources, both locally and globally.
With their informal network structure, SNS promote a framework of
openness and collaboration. As such, they inspire ordinary women to par-
ticipate in different social justice causes, and enable them to be engaged
in their own personal empowerment. This includes feminist knowledge
production as well as individual and collective growth as social and politi-
cal agents. Contrary to traditional activist politics, in which positions are
often expressed by spokesmen, online platforms and mobilizing campaigns
allow women to directly participate in feminist awareness building, and be
actively engaged in the collective production of knowledge around gen-
der justice and political change. This active engagement, in turn, equips
ordinary women with feminist tools to combat the gender discrimina-
tion that is so constitutive of, and ingrained in, the legal, social, cultural,
and political practices of the Iranian regime. Finally, SNS enable women’s
lively engagement in social and political debates, in real time, and with
other women, who bring with them a wealth of feminist knowledge about
gender equality, feminist struggles, and activist politics.
The utilization of SNS by Iranian women has also impacted the con-
tent, or the “subject,” of political activism. Women’s posts, comments,
and discussions are the embodiment of the feminist slogan “the personal,
the private, and the intimate are political”; these interventions challenge
that which has traditionally been considered not political, and excluded
from the quest for social justice in Iran. Emma Goldman, herself a feminist
anarchist activist, once famously declared that, “If I can’t dance, I don’t
want to be part of your revolution.” Now considered one of the classi-
cal feminist quotations, this statement’s relevance in the context of con-
temporary Iranian women’s online activism cannot be overemphasized.
Goldman’s proclamation at once points to the limitations of vanguard
political activism and makes the freedom of women’s bodies a central sub-
ject of revolution and change. Online campaigns such as MSF are enabling
sites in which Iranian women can publicly talk about their everyday acts of
defiance, even if this amounts to a simple image of unveiled hair, “inappro-
priate” laughter in a public place, or a picture of a palm with the gender
equality sign written on it. Iranian women’s active participation on online
platforms empowers them to connect the intimate stories of their private
lives, their excluded bodies, and their forbidden desires to the larger con-
text of Iran’s struggle for a more inclusive and gender-egalitarian future.
Therefore, in order to have a more comprehensive understanding of
the mobilizing power of Iranian women, we need to look beyond the tra-
ditional forms of political activism. Iranian women have reoriented their
mobilizing power to alternative arenas; they have chosen other political
targets, and they have developed different modes of political engagement.
This type of political activism tends to be more ad hoc, less centralized,
less formal, and less dependent on fixed political structures; it reflects
the diversity of women’s lives and works toward grassroots democracy
rather than unity at all costs. Iranian women are erasing the patriarchal
demarcation lines between politics, everyday cultural practices, identity
processes, and social and private bodies. Through posting their personal
testimonies, Iranian women, who are denied a voice, have found that
informal online networks, with their large geographical reach, offer the
possibility of transmitting messages, connecting with others, and reshap-
ing lives. Within this framework, political activism is not only about chal-
lenging the legitimacy of political rule, or changing the state. It also, and
perhaps more fundamentally, targets everyday oppressive gender prac-
tices and sets out to change the disciplinary measures that target those
who are kept at the margins of Iranian society. This kind of activism
calls into question the entire legal, social, cultural, gendered, and familial
apparatus on which the patriarchal Iranian regime proclaims its truth and
founds its legitimacy.
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CHAPTER 12
Performative Agency: A Realization

of an Objective Clash of “Social Justice”
Discourses or a Requiem for a Subjective
Silence
Sara Naderi
Since the 1979 Revolution, Iranian feminists have consistently criticized

government policies as discriminatory against women. The country’s law-
makers and leaders, conversely, have referred to their Islamic concepts of
justice and the dignity of women in rationalizing state policies regard-
ing women, concepts that are completely different from Western ideas of
gender equality and equal rights advocated largely through the feminist
discourse. It seems that this binary—Western versus Islamic narratives of
women’s rights and agency—has permeated, and been upheld by, most of
the academic, political, and public debates pertaining to Iranian women’s
situation to the extent that one can hardly find concepts of agency and
social justice that are not bound by this binary.
Employing “western feminist perspective” and western conception of
“rights,” a significant array of Iranian feminist scholars view government
policies to have “closed gate to women.” As such, in order to resist the
S. Naderi (*)

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-44227-3_12
200 S. NADERI
discriminatory laws and become an agent of change, women must either

“jump over the fences” or “crash through them” (Moghissi 2008: 553).
In this discourse, almost all state policies relating to women are consid-
ered as tools of the patriarchal tradition to oppress women (Afkhami
1994: 13). From this standpoint, the women’s agency reveals itself at the
moment when Iranian women either challenge the discriminatory laws
legally or through grassroots mobilization, or resist the imposed rules
or norms (of the Islamic laws and traditions) through civil disobedience.
The former can be observed in the Iranian women’s One-Million Signature
Campaign for the Repeal of Discriminatory Laws (2006–2009) (Ahmadi
Khorasani 2010), while the latter can be seen through perceive gradual
changes to veiling and lifestyle among young Iranian women as a symbol
of their rebellion against state ideology (Moaveni 2005). Therefore, in
this Western feminist discourse, which seems to enjoy popularity among
Iranian feminist scholars and activists, the agency of Iranian women
is defined solely in terms of their resistances and struggles against the dis-
criminatory laws and imposed norms of the Islamic Republic. The noble
intentions of advocates of these views aside, the normative expectation
of Iranian feminists has had a visible epistemological effect on studying
women’s subjectivity to the extent that Iranian women’s subjectivity and
agency are reduced to those moments and mode of actions that Western
feminist recognizes as resistance.
I acknowledge these resistances as clear and important signs of agency,
especially among urban, educated, middle- and upper-class women.
However, I cannot but wonder if these celebrated manifestations of
Iranian women’s resistances—insofar as the aforementioned practices are
inferred by feminist theories as signs of agency—are in fact the effect of the
theoretical expectations of Western-trained Iranian feminists, which in this
chapter I call “popular feminism.” In other words, I ask if women’s prac-
tices of resistance are conceptualized, theorized, and given scholarly space
because they fit Iranian feminism’s normative gaze that is borrowed from
Western feminism and its definitions of agency. I claim that the gaze of
popular feminism is so influenced by western feminist training that it leads
them to make selective observations of Iranian situation. Consequently,
needless to dig into specific lived experiences of Iranian women, popu-
lar feminist discourse only observes such social and public manifestations
of women’s lived experiences as they can be objectified in either forms
of resistance against or obedience to Islamic discourse. Therefore, what
PERFORMATIVE AGENCY: A REALIZATION OF AN OBJECTIVE CLASH... 201
remain sharply absent here are women’s lived experiences in their entirety,
which are unyielding to feminist binary of domination/resistance, as well
as Iranian women’s own unique interpretations of their action that do not
accord with feminist epistemologies. The reason behind my line of inquiry
stems from my field research on the lived, everyday experiences of women
in Tehran, a research that, as we will see, shows that women’s agency cov-
ers social and cultural territories vaster and more complicated than grasped
by popular feminism’s celebrated agency of women. I will argue that if we
simply let the actors on the ground define their agency according to their
experiences and worldviews, we will discover diverse and heterogeneous
modes of agency of Iranian women that are hidden from popular femi-
nism’s normative perspectives.
In this respect, alternative epistemological approaches are offered by
few scholars in their studies of the women’s conditions in Iran. Patricia
Higgins (1985) explores the reasons behind supporting ideological Islam
by the majority of Iranian women during the 1979 Revolution. Her study
can shed light on why, aside from a short-lived and limited women’s
protest movement in March–April 1979, Iranian women (especially in
small towns and in urban areas) by and large were silent or supported
the discriminatory laws like mandatory veiling and changes to the Family
Law (1967) when these measures were introduced after the Revolution.
Higgins attempts to discover the reason for this phenomenon from Iranian
women’s own interpretations of their situation. A similar concern could
be seen in the ethnographic study of Erica Friedle (1994) of mature, tra-
ditional women in southwestern of Iran. Likewise, Arzoo Osanloo (2009)
offers a participant observer’s account of women’s construction of the
concept of “women’s rights,” a shared understanding of rights that is very
different from the cut-and-dry Western concept of “rights.” The differ-
ences of these studies aside, they share a conscious attempt—regardless of
their success—to move beyond understanding Iranian women’s world-
views and practices through normative expectations of popular feminism
that only acknowledges Iranian women when their practices fit predefined,
feminist concepts of equality, freedom, and gender.
Based on my field research on Iranian women, I venture to offer an
alternative understanding of women’s agency in this chapter. I seek to
probe the influences of the two antagonistic discourses on women’s self-
consciousness in an attempt at offering a view of the Iranian women’s
202 S. NADERI
agency that—while caught in the discursive binaries such as East/West,

tradition/modernity, and Islamic ideology/Western feminism—goes
beyond binaries and carves out of everyday life an authentic and het-
erogeneous agency. It is the mutually permeating elements identifiable
with popular feminism as well as the Shi‘i values of the state—hybridized
by women through the pragmatics of everyday life—that makes Iranian
women’s agency authentic, complicated, and unique. Hence, while I agree
with Osanloo that we should refute the binary logic of Islamic oppres-
sion/Western liberation or “Islamic Resistance/western Imperialism”
when probing Iranian “women’s question” (2009: 205), I nonetheless
insist that the seesaw effect of the abovementioned antagonistic discourses
in postrevolutionary Iran permeates the women’s self-consciousness and
everyday life experiences, although these influences cannot be read as the
sum or deduction of two numeric values. To be clear, the fluctuating syn-
thesis of these two competing discourses in every moment of women’s
everyday life generates a unique and authentic agency independent from
the aforesaid antagonistic discourses. In what follows, I will show how
internalizing antagonistic discourses of gender (in-)justice among Tehrani
women’s minds and the construction of female identity through the pro-
cess of socialization paves the way for women’s performative agency in
public and private domains.
In doing so, after brief description of the methodology of my field
research, I will offer an explanation of disjointed and heterogenic Tehrani
women’s socialization process culminating in different types of identities
which have one thing in common: the inconsistent cohabitation of two
contradictory ideal types of identity, namely the “paternal model” and the
“maternal model” which lead to the “crisis of subjectivity” in women’s
identity. I will then elaborate the impact of the two rival discourses of
social justice (Islamic and western feminist) on the “crisis of subjectivity”
and agency of women of Tehran.
Sources of Women’s Power

In following pages, I will present partial results from my fieldwork, con-
ducted in 2011 in Tehran, on the dialectics of domination and subordina-
tion in everyday lives of women (Naderi 2013; Shahabi and Naderi 2012).
The study relied on qualitative methods and in particular the grounded
theory of Strauss and Corbin (1990). Data were collected through
in-
depth interviews and participant observation. The research sample
comprised Tehrani women between 20 and 60 years old. The rationale
in choosing the sample size was “theoretical saturation,” with sampling
continuing as long as no new theme emerged. On this basis, 30 people
were interviewed. The interview scheme mainly included such themes as
consumption, beauty, family life (relationship with the spouse and rela-
tives), workplace, house chores, and the meaning of conduct in each of
these areas for individuals.
According to the results of this qualitative field research, contradic-
tory lived experiences of women, from childhood to older ages, shape
different ideal models of subjectivity and identity. Digging into the
contents of deep interviews and women’s own narratives of these mod-
els enabled me to categorize the chaotic and contradictory definitions
of subjectivity in women’s narratives into two “ideal types.” By “ideal
type” I refer to the Max Weber: in the process of constructing the
ideal type, the sociologist should be able to “abstract himself from
reality” (Weber 1978: 23) and constrict a “pure type” which has a
clear and coherent unity of meaning (Weber 1978: 23). This degree
of coherence and unity of meaning leads the ideal type to be less likely
to be found in the real world (Weber 1978: 23). Ideal types should be
constructed sharply and clearly, and the more they have such charac-
teristics—or “the more unrealistic they are” (Weber 1978: 24)—the
better they accomplish their task. Thus, my proposed models below are
constructed ideal types, which contain logical consistencies not found
in reality. However, what we can see clearly in the everyday lives of
women is the contradictory and inconsistent definitions of the self and
subjectivity arising from different models of subjectivity internalized
by women.
My two proposed “ideal types” of subjectivity are called “paternal
model” and “maternal model.” This naming arises from the modern divi-
sion of labor within Iranian family in which the father is symbolized as
the “breadwinner” and the mother as the “housewife.” Consequently,
the identity and subjectivity of the mother is mainly defined in relation
to family and domestic life while the father’s identity and subjectivity is
largely defined in relation to public and social life (Naderi 2013: 104).
These models are abstracted from the experiences of interviewed women.
204 S. NADERI
The Paternal Model

Because of the lack of physical differentiation between girls and boys at
early ages (under 10 years old) and their equal status in society, the girl is
treated more or less equally to the boy. In Iranian public space, this “more
or less equality” shows itself through the fact that co-ed kindergarten is
allowed for young children and mandatory veiling applies to females at
the age of nine. This does not deny differential treatment of girls and
boys in Iranian families and culture. Nor does it deny that the hailing
(à la Althusser) of boys and girls by making references to their sexuality
starts from early childhood through having gender-specific toys, colors,
and apparel. I rather suggest that the gendered “hailing” of children in
their young age is incomparable with their adolescence when their second-
ary sexual characteristics emerge. The semi-free gender space in childhood
provides Iranian girls with the opportunity to experience a relatively non-
gendered freedom that they cannot normally experience in an older age.
These similarities make the girl feel the concept of “human,” in Sandra
Lee Bartky, the same concept whose most outstanding characteristic is
“culture making” (Bartky 1990). I call this the “human subjectivity” in
the paternal model here. The priority of “culture making” over other char-
acteristics of human beings in Bartky’s definition of “human” contains an
important implication: the priority of individual’s role in society and her
cognitive progress over other aspects of her life. This concept values the
mind over the body, individual over community, and individual progress
over any other value.
Formal education, in early elementary school, provides all girls and boys
with equal conditions. Even the little girl’s mandatory veiling in education
is used to hide her main distinction from boys—her long hair. Formal
elementally school outfit for girls (especially in 1980s and 1990s) and the
imposed ban on cosmetics for high school girls have been arisen from ide-
ological attempts to reduce the sexual differences between girls and boys
in the educational system, rationalized in terms or reducing distractions
so the students would concentrate on learning. Gender segregation in
schools is meant to limit contact with, and thus attraction to, the opposite
sex. While gender separation in high schools and the university has in fact
led to the opposite results of what the state had intended, it had worked
well at the elementary school level by erasing small, visible sexual differ-
ences between girls and boys. What formal education aims to attain is to
increase individual mental abilities. Body and physical differences are for-
mally taken to be nonfactors in formal education. Ministry of Education
imposes uniforms to minimize the physical–sexual differences.
But this state policy has produced an interesting outcome in terms of
the girls’ identificatory socialization. From very early years of education,
the girls are asked, “What career would you like to pursue?” This question
is continually asked throughout the school years. It consistently evokes
the one idea—that the most important issue for a girl outside of home is
her career and social status. Such stress on career evokes the image of the
father, the breadwinner. Even if the mother has a paid career, the children
are nonetheless socialized to associate mother primarily with the household.
Stated differently, the mother’s primary identity/role is associated with
the “inside,” while the father’s primary identity/role relates to the “out-
side” and his profession. Therefore, we observe, the little girl is social-
ized, in the process of education, to pursue a career in the future: this is
how the girl, growing into a young adult, internalizes the values identified
with her father and thus identifies with, and develops a subjectivity within,
the paternal model. This identificatory process clearly disrupts gender-
essentialist arguments.
The ultimate goal and identity of education is therefore to prepare the
individual for future careers. As soon as a profession is discussed with the
young girl, the mother’s profession and her household work are rendered
secondary. The mother is rendered the “Other,” the one to be distanced
from the girl’s developing subjectivity through the long, daily process of
schooling. The girl is taught not to be like her. Girls are urged to study
hard or else they would become “nobody,” in this case, the “housewife.”
In many cases, this term becomes a more fitting replacement for its original
connotation—that is, “if you do not study, you will end up with childrear-
ing!” It is interesting to note that the term “nobody” (hichkas)—referring
to lack of social status acquired through education—more than any other
word, reveals the masculine basis of education.
In the paternal model, the individual self-development stands as the
highest value. Therefore, whatever thwarts the pupils’ development in
this direction, especially in their social life, is regarded to be an obstacle.
The logical outcome of such drive for self-achievement is the diminish-
ing value of the mother’s role in that maternal sacrifices for raising chil-
dren is looked upon as an impediment to career-oriented self-fulfillment.
In this social–developmental model, the father symbolizes the mind and
206 S. NADERI
the mother, the body. The paternal model regards improving cognitive
abilities as the main objective of individual life. As Dorothy Smith (1987)
argues, we can witness this priority of cognitive abilities over other abili-
ties in high-ranking business and scientific professions which are mostly
occupied by men but ironically take advantage of women’s labor in lower
administrative positions (secretory, typist, etc.). The main requirement for
perfect fulfillment of the mostly scientific vocations is the doer’s abstrac-
tion from the environment and the body. In the paternal model, occupy-
ing these high-ranking professions becomes the main goal in life. Hence,
the more she nears this ideal, or the stronger the mind becomes, the more
she is abstracted from her body which implies she should pay less attention
to her body and appearance.
The Maternal Model

Although emulating the mother is in the girl’s mind from the outset, this
emulation stands out even more when the daughter is growing up and
her physical-sexual appearance becomes more conspicuous. Because of
her body, the daughter identifies with the mother, and by the advent of
puberty, she fully realizes her physical differences from boys and keeps
her distance from them. After puberty, the girl is gradually pushed into
a different world, and depending on the extent of identification with the
father, some girls perceive this push as being condemned to exile from
the “human” life, according to paternal model, while others have a more
moderate perception of it (Naderi 2013). It should be noted that, at this
moment, the paternal model has already devalued the mother’s image for
the girl. Through identification with the mother, the girl associates her
mother with the household, the “inside,” and her continuous labor to
maintain the household. Here, the notion of the “individual” present in
the paternal model negates prioritizing the family—that is, the mother’s
arch task. Furthermore, in contrast with the paternal–purposive logic, the
maternal model teaches the girl that the way out of life’s vicissitudes and
obstacles for a woman is not as simple as what she is taught at school
because she does not occupy the same status as men. Instead, she has cer-
tain “natural” attributes that men lack, and by mobilizing these attributes
she can achieve her goals.
These attributes include “feminine tricks” (makr-e zananeh): using or
abusing (according to paternal logic) the “feminine attraction” as a source
of power, or as Catherine Hakim (2011) calls it, utilizing her “erotic cap-
ital.” Therefore, in this maternal model, the feminine body occupies a
higher status than the mind, or at least holds the same status with it. In
legitimizing the use of the “erotic capital” as source of power for women,
one of my research participants, a sports champion, stated: “To me, femi-
ninity (beauty, etc.) comprises a series of instruments (abzar) controlled
by women. It would be quite stupid not to use the tools and weapons you
are armed with. Don’t men use theirs?” According to the maternal logic,
therefore, women possess completely different subjectivity than men, and
they should exercise different agency. Such difference does not denote
weakness, only different sources of power.
Hence, the maternal model emphasizes the priority of the household
(circular time, routine chores, family, feminine tricks) from which the
feminine identity stems, while the paternal model prioritizes the social
role (linear progress, absolute individuation, absolute ethical codes).
These two models are clearly in sharp contradiction. Another point to
be considered is the mutual humiliation of each model by its opposite,
the reason being their differential linguistic and reasoning tools. The two
models do not possess similar signification system and cannot therefore
coexist without denying one another within the girl’s identificatory pro-
cess. According to my research findings, attachment to pure unspoken,
incomprehensible drive is what distinguishes maternal language from
paternal language, the latter fully identified with symbolic discourse. In
other words, when explaining themselves women speak fluently with logi-
cal and linguistic coherence. The sentences follow a logical pattern, with
no or few pauses in explaining the final goal in mind. In contrast, in speak-
ing from maternal model, sentences are awkwardly unfinished and do not
possess a linear logic. In other words, the maternal model’s logic, attached
to the pure feminine drives like maternal emotions, is largely feeble in
employing symbolic language and presenting goals in logical and linear
propositions devoid of sentimental charges. The domination of paternal
model, which arises from men’s lived experience within public space and
linguistic system, makes signification system’s logic more similar to the
masculine drive, and thus, there remains little room for feminine drive in
shaping the linguistic logic. Even when women want to speak of the logic
behind their action according to the maternal model, they cannot, because
in doing so they have to use the linguistic structure that has already been
built according to logic of the paternal model. Thus, in using the domi-
208 S. NADERI
nant symbolic discourse, the maternal language is a mute language, lack-

ing any power to logically justify itself, and therefore performing mainly
through the negation and subversion of the dominant symbolic discourse.
To make my argument clear, let us reread and reinterpret this discrep-
ancy between linguistic tools of paternal and maternal models through
Julia Kristeva. She argues that when paying attention to language and its
implications, we have to focus on two functions: language as the articulate
and systematic expression of meaning, and language as the feeling moti-
vated or more clearly, as the venting of the subject’s drives and energy
(Kristeva 1980: 133).
To explain two different discourses in language, Kristeva employs
“symbolic” and “semiotic” categories respectively. According to Kristeva,
while symbolic discourse tends to “reduce as much as possible the semi-
otic component” (1980: 134), semiotic discourse as a negative force in
language “elided, attacked, or corrupted the symbolic function” (1980:
134). However, the semiotic cannot speak independently because it is
a mere negation of symbolic discourse, and according to Kristeva, such
“a multiple and sometimes even uncomprehensible signified is neverthe-
less communicated” (1980: 134). The rhythmic nonsymbolic character-
istic of poetry explains the negation in semiotic discourse in language.
Interestingly, through psychoanalysis, Kristeva attributes the semiotic dis-
course to the “desire to mother” and the symbolic discourse as the “cost
of repressing instinctual drive and continuous relation to the mother” by
the father’s law (1980: 136). While my research was not informed by psy-
choanalysis, Kristeva’s distinction was clearly observable through the dif-
ferential logics and languages employed by the participants in explaining
their bodily–emotional and mental–logical experiences.
Alongside the growth and development of symbolic language as the
language of modern science, the semiotic language is more than ever mar-
ginalized in the public domain, individuals’ interactions and intersubjectiv-
ities as a means of justification, except in few cases such as poetic language.
In my research, I encountered the semiotic, maternal discourse not only
in the interviews, through words and tangible utterances of individuals,
but also through their facial expressions, paralinguistic signs, meaningful
pauses, significant silences, inability to justify, and sometimes expressing
logical dissatisfactions and confrontation against deeds that are based on
the maternal model. In other words, maternal logic was achieved not just
through what was said but also through what could not be said directly
despite attempts by interviewees and interviewer. Maternal logic could

just be felt through nonlinguistic means and symbolic silence.
In order to attain the means of justification against the paternal model’s
reasoning, the maternal model turns to norms and nature. It is founded
upon a common belief in culture about the sexual–physiological differ-
ences that lead to the construction of two different modes of conscious-
ness in men and women (the same way the semiotic language owes its
being to the individual’s nature and unconscious). The most important
axis of these conventional cultural common beliefs is the family. Family-
centeredness in a woman’s life is justified in two ways: (a) based on her sup-
posedly “distinct nature” as opposed to men, and (b) based on accepting
customarily the “paternal model” as a mere masculine model and define
the feminine subjectivity as complementary to masculine subjectivity in
order to preserve the family. In other words, to preserve the family, men
should follow the paternal model, while achieving the same goal requires
women to follow the opposite, maternal model.
From the paternal model’s perspective, if a woman is supposed to be
looked upon as a thinking being, as a being that has a share in civiliza-
tion and human progress, she must overcome her feminine characteristics
and accept the paternal model’s concept of progress and self-achievement.
This logic dominates education, science, and philosophy. This logic is the
basis of the Cartesian logical reasoning that introduces humans as think-
ing beings abstracted from the body. Therefore, the paternal model is
equipped with the greatest means of communication, namely the domi-
nant language of science and philosophy. The paternal model speaks flu-
ently, lectures well, and questions all the previous customs by means of
critical reasoning. Even when the individual defends an act stemming from
the maternal model by means of symbolic language, the domination of
paternal model in symbolic language leads her to stutter in her speaking
and even invalidates her logic.
So let us now focus on the consequences of these two models.
Crisis of Subjectivity
The abovementioned could boil down to the fact that two alien modes
of identification—incomprehensible to each other as they each possesses
diverging means of communication (semiotic and symbolic languages)—
are set together in the Iranian woman’s consciousness and keep clashing.
210 S. NADERI
This clash stands out in the individual’s private and social life. These two
identificatory models mutilate and undermine one another in women’s
conduct and actions. When an individual is about to act based on the
maternal model, the value and significance of her action are questioned
by the paternal model which already dominates her mind. Likewise, when
she is about to act based on the paternal model, the value and importance
of her action are negated by the maternal model. This continued process of
negation leads women to always feel they are not in the right place. They often
feel lost, are never satisfied with themselves, and do not attribute any inner
meaning and mental integrity to themselves. The meaning–structure of
women’s actions is perpetually and agonizingly permeated by the conflict-
ing models. To a stay-at-home woman, house chores appear demanding,
useless, and repetitive duties, precisely because she has already internal-
ized, through years of schooling, values of the paternal model that negate
and belittle domestic life. Conversely, when the woman engages in profes-
sional career, the maternal model constantly beckons her to regard her
career as useless burden, driving her to seek meaning in domestic life.
At any given moment, Iranian women seek the meaningful life in predefined
categorical activities opposite to their current life activity. Therefore, she
never “seizes the day.” I call this the “crisis of subjectivity.” In a given situ-
ation, the higher the conflict between the paternal and maternal models,
the more they remove the meaning of every moment in women’s life.
This leads to an inner conflict that diminishes the woman’s individual self-
confidence. Reduced self-confidence and self-esteem decreases women’s
ability to make firm decisions regarding the enactment of their feminine
agency. The crisis of subjectivity renders Iranian women’s agency increas-
ingly dependent on the immediate situation.
The Impact of Antagonistic Rival Narratives

of Social Justice on the Crisis of Subjectivity
As discussed above, the gender justice narrative of popular feminism in

postrevolutionary Iran has emerged in opposition to the ideological–
Islamic notion of gender justice. However, we must ask, what is the impact
of each competing narrative of gender justice (feminist and Islamic) in the
crisis of subjectivity in Iranian women’s lived experiences? At first glance,
it seems that the Islamic narrative of gender justice can be fully identified
with, and included in, the maternal model, because in this discourse we
witness more emphasis on women’s familial and domestic roles than on

individual subjectivity. Thus, the values attributed to women and their
subjectivity stand in significant distance from those of men. In contrast,
popular feminist narrative of gender justice and gender equality pertains to
the paternal model, because it stresses the equal status of men and women
in public and private spheres, emphasizing individual achievement, since
the feminist discourse is informed by the concept of universal equal rights.
But, this is not the entire story.
On the one hand, the Islamic discourse of gender justice is not as con-
sistent as it seems. In fact it is paradoxical. In educational system, the
state attempts at destressing gender differences and future attraction to
the opposite sex by stressing learning as a means of achieving social sta-
tus through future career choices. Thus, in the early years of elementary
schools and through formal education, the paternal model is internalized
by little girls. Furthermore, the primary advantage of (imposed) veiling is
to conceal gender differences and provide women with safe spaces, which
lead to potentially equal opportunity in career. This is one of the formal
logic and philosophy of veiling promoted by the hegemonic Islamic dis-
course, although in practice veiling does not bring these advantages for
women. This narrative of veiling shares many aspects in common with
the narrative of body in paternal model. Veiling is supposed to contribute
to outweighing women’s sexuality by their individual achievements: the
Islamic discourse ignores and covers the bodily characteristics of women
in order to count women as human subjects in the public sphere. Erasing
the particularities of the female body in favor of defining the pure notion
of “human subjectivity” is precisely what the paternal model prescribes.
While in the modern narrative of paternal model we just ignore these dif-
ferences, in the Islamic narrative we conceal these differences. They both
follow the same logic by using different means.
On the other hand, popular feminism has been mainly defined in con-
tradiction with the Islamic narrative, rejecting the proposition of the
Islamic discourse. Thus, popular Iranian feminism cannot fully adhere to
one discourse of Western feminism (radical, socialist, or liberal feminisms).
Iranian popular feminism shifts ideologically depending on the specific
antagonist relations against the Islamic discourse. Iranian feminism
therefore emerges primarily as reactive to the Islamic gender discourse:
(a) regarding family matters and the role of women in family, popular fem-
inism advocates the paternal model due to its theoretical allegiance with
212 S. NADERI
socialist feminism; (b) regarding feminine body politics, popular feminism

emerges as a melange of postmodern and French feminisms that recog-
nize the feminine body as a means of resistance against patriarchal, Islamic
discourse. Therefore, Iranian feminism supports unveiling as means of
resistance against the dominant Islamic discourse and the state’s manda-
tory veiling (see Moaveni 2005). Indeed, this highlighting of the feminine
body and its power cannot be categorized in the paternal model’s defini-
tion of body.
Hence, not only are Iranian women burdened with split subjectivity as a
consequences of being exposed to diverging identity models (paternal and
maternal) through socialization and schooling, they also simultaneously
carry two identity models within their self-consciousness as represented by
two antagonistic discourses (feminism and ideological Islamic) in public and
political spheres. This is a “conflict inside the other conflict.” In popular
feminist discourse, subjectivity is defined according to the standards of pater-
nal model, while women’s body and body politics are defined according to
the standards and criteria of maternal model. None of the rival discourses
(Islamic and feminism) can perfectly attach themselves to a consistence and
hemogenous model and represent a consistence and hemogenous model—
whether maternal or paternal. Therefore, none of these external discourses
includes logical consistency in the women consciousness. Consequently,
each discourse losses its logical coherence and consistency in women’s self-
consciousness and becomes vulnerable to different and contradictory nar-
ratives depending on a women’s specific spatiotemporal situation. There
would be no longer the one discourse that fully governs over the subject;
rather, it is the female subject that borrows different components from rival
discourses according to the exigencies of the concrete situation she faces.
Such integration of two antagonistic logical models (paternal and maternal)
within two antagonistic political discourses (Islamic and feminist) causes
diminishment of the borderline between these rival discourses of gender
justice in the everyday lives of women.
The situation becomes more complicated when we remember that the
female individual is also trapped in the “crisis of subjectivity” which pre-
vents her from such agency to absorb and reshape the outside, fluctuating
discourses in her mind and build a new, coherent identity. Hand in hand
with the lack of logical consistency in both dominant discourses, the crisis
of subjectivity robs women’s actions of any rigid and strong subjective
and discursive meaning. In the absence of solid subjectivity and coherent
discourse(s), what remains is merely the judgment of “others” or “audi-
Fig. 12.1 Performative agency
ence.” The collective judgment of an audience with specific spatiotemporal

situations determines the meaning of agency and oppression in that situation.
This leads women’s agency to a fluid and contingent agency that acquires
its legitimacy from its present audience within a specific spatiotemporal
situation. I call this the performative agency (Fig. 12.1).
The Performative Agency

The crisis of subjectivity in Iranian women’s consciousness and everyday
experiences causes both maternal and paternal model in a given situation
to be void of significance for the individual. Consequently, the woman
loses her motivation, and eventually her inner power, to make a strong
214 S. NADERI
decision and enact agency. However, since humans can only live in a
meaningful world, under the condition of crisis of subjectivity she will seek
out the meaning of her actions in the outside. This is when the individual
in quest for meaning of her actions would rely on the immediately pres-
ent discourses in her environment and the judgments she receives from
her audience, and she consequently acts in a way according to the discur-
sive requirements for meaningful action. However, as discussed, popular
feminist and Islamic discourses, both dominant in the public sphere, lack
the logical consistency that fully attaches each to either paternal or mater-
nal model. Therefore, as we can see that the dependency of actor’s mean-
ing on the outside (audience) does not mean her dependency upon any
particular discourse (either feminist or Islamic discourse), because there is
no actual logically coherent discourse in public space. Rather, the meaning
of a woman’s action is largely dependent upon her present addressees. This
sort of agency confirms itself through acknowledgements and credits it
receives from the agent’s audience. Therefore, the individual’s feeling of
agency or lack of agency in every situation strictly depends on the audience
of her theater of agency and the position of actor in the hierarchical power
structures defined by dominant narrative of the majority of audiences and
their preferred discourse (feminist or Islamic). The difference of “domi-
nation of one specific discourse on women’s definition of agency” with
the “domination of audience’s narrative of one specific discourse” is that
while the former consists of logical coherence and less dependents on the
moment of performance and its audience, the latter is more fluid, flexible,
and dependent on audience’s interpretation of discourse in every spatio-
temporal situation. Therefore, going from one spatiotemporal situation to
another, the same women can perform completely contradictory actions
and in both of them feel to be exercising agency. I call this “performative
agency.” This agency defines itself by the admiration and credit it receives
from specific audience. Therefore, changing the audience—that is chang-
ing the interpretation of dominant discourses by the persons witnessing
a woman’s action—changes an actor’s definition of agency and power.
When there is no external coherent discourse and no consistent definition of
subjectivity upheld by an actor, every action has the potential to be simulta-
neously recognized as powerful exercise of resistance and agency as well as a
sign of subjugation and lack of agency. For example, not wearing cosmetics
can simultaneously be recognized as “political resistance” against capitalist
hegemony and as a sign of “oppression” and “subjugation” under Islamic
hegemony.
As a result, the actor becomes dependent on her “interpolation” by the

dominant discourse. However, in contrast to Althusser (2001), the inter-
action of two antagonistic dominant discourses in Iranian public space
deprives both of them of logical consistency and rigidity, and consequently
makes them vulnerable and open to different contradictory interpreta-
tions. Dependency on audience makes women’s actions extremely politi-
cal. By “political” I denote pursuing power or occupying higher ranks
in competition with others: to achieve credit and admiration from her
audience, the actor needs to be observable and for that she must occupy
the highest position among her peers. Thus, the only important criterion
here is occupying the highest position. This is what I mean by “extremely
political.” But each hierarchy mainly depends on the specific spatiotempo-
ral moment of performance and the present audience. Indeed, this public
sphere is extremely political, but this extremely political situation simul-
taneously depoliticizes itself by blocking emerging any kind of political
agency and actions, because performative logic always already deprives
action from any kind of rigid and logically coherent agency, which is
the minimum requirement for political action. As such, when every act
becomes political, no act would be political. When everything can be read
as discrimination or oppression there would be no dominant and consis-
tent meaning for discrimination and oppression. In the absence of any
logically consistent discourse in public sphere, performative logic trans-
forms every contradictory action into a symbol of agency and therefore
reduces the concept of agency to a void signifier. What remains of women’s
subjectivity, then, is mere performance within the theater of agency.
Conclusion
Having come to this point, I venture to say that performative agency—
arising as a result of crisis of subjectivity due to its contradictory exposure
to two logically inconsistent, dominant discourses (popular feminist and
Islamic)—ironically manifests both women’s agency and their political
silence simultaneously. Here, we end up having the classical case of the ori-
ental (Iranian) woman caught between an Islamic state’s and the liberal/
feminist notions of rights: the woman in question is thus silenced by the
competing discourses that try to represent her (see Spivak 1988). What I
want to add to Spivak’s important statement regarding the silence of sub-
altern women under the gaze of two antagonistic discourses is that Spivak
216 S. NADERI
still assumes there is a voice to be recovered. In other words, in Spivak’s

argument, the very claim about the subaltern woman’s silence under the
gaze of two discourses of representation implies assuming a “stable sub-
ject” that had something to say but has been silenced. However, I would
argue that the stable subject to be recovered from out of the rival dis-
courses is rather a fiction in the case of Iranian women. The deepest and
direst consequence of this war of representations between two rival discourses
is the subversion and undermining of the “subject” itself. What stands here is
the nihilistic moment of performative agency which destroys every coher-
ent meaning of agency in the actors’ mind. What remains is continued
competition for achieving credit in the eyes of the audience within the the-
ater of power: regardless of who the audience are and what end is pursued
in this theater of agency, standing at the top of each hierarchical discourse
becomes the main objective of women’s agency.
Back to our starting point, almost all of the existing discourses of social
justice deployed for explaining Iranian women’s demands for gender jus-
tice suffer from one shared, important weakness: they impose their own
definition of agency on Iranian women and try to interpret women’s
actions according to their own normative conception of agency, while,
results of my fieldwork shows that Iranian women’s performativity agency
is based on the contingency of the situation; consequently, such agency stands
at the farthest point from any normative and logically consistent notion of
agency. Thus, I conclude that to understand Iranian women’s struggles for
gender justice, a new epistemological framework is needed—one that sees
Iranian women as who they are and not as embodiments of ideologically
sanctioned notions of social or gender justice. This new epistemological
framework should take into account all dominant discursive definitions of
social justices and gender justice not as normative notions of agency but as
a factor—and indeed an important factor—in the complicated process of
forming agency in Iranian women’s consciousness.
References
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Ahmadi Khorasani, Noushin. 2010. Iranian Women’s One Million Signatures
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Philosophy and Other Essays, Translated by B. Brewster, 121–173. New York,
NY: Monthly Review Press.
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tajrobeh-ye enqiad\qodratmandi dar zendegi-ye ruzmareh-ye zanan-e Tehrani (A
Phenomenological Study of the Experience of Submissiveness/Power in
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Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
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Theory Procedures and Techniques. London/New York: Sage.
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Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press.
CHAPTER 13
The Voice of the Workers: Iran’s Labour

Movement and Reflections on the Project-
Seasonal Workers’ Union of Abadan,
1979–1980
Mohammad Safavi
This chapter offers the first researched account of workers’ mobilization

and unionization in the city of Abadan, Iran, under the Project-Seasonal
Workers Union of Abadan (PSWUA) in 1979–1980. Following a brief
history of the workers’ movements in the twentieth century Iran that will
contextualize PSWUA activism, this chapter draws on the author’s recol-
lections as a union activist, the scattered memoirs of other activists, and
other published reports on the subject to offer a comprehensive account of
this historic experience. The chapter shows how in the absence of institu-
tions to protect the workers’ rights, the Union assumed vast institutional
functions beyond its mandates, capacities, and resources. I will argue that
precisely because of its growing presence in Abadan, the PSWUA became
I thank Dr. Peyman Vahabzadeh who generously helped me write this piece of
labour history. This contribution to the pursuit of freedom and social justice for
workers would not have been possible if I did not have his support.
M. Safavi (*)
Coquitlam, BC, Canada

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-44227-3_13
220 M. SAFAVI
the target of repression. Sadly, this trend has been consistent with the his-
tory of labour movement in Iran.
Organized Labour Movement in Iran: A Hasty

Glance
The struggles of organized labour movement for socio-economic justice in
Iran emerged in the early twentieth century. Labour activist tradition was
introduced by Iranian migrant workers and political activists in Caucasus
and Russia as they returned to Iran during the Constitutional Revolution
of 1906–1911. “From 1891 to 1911, close to 200,000 Iranian workers
migrated to Caucasus and Central Asia in Tsarist Russia in search of job”
(Parsa Benab 2004: 36). The majority of migrant Iranian workers were
temporary workers (kargaran-e fasli).
Migrant Iranian workers were mainly employed in the Baku oil fields,
as well as in tobacco, construction, and mining industries. Female work-
ers comprised a subpopulation of Iranian workers in the north: accord-
ing to Touraj Atabaki, at the beginning of the twentieth century, 8.3
per cent of Iranian oil workers in Baku were women (2007: 43). In
1904, in the city of Baku, some Iranian migrant workers, political activ-
ists, and university students organized an affiliate of the Russian Social
Democratic Labour Party, named Hemmat (Persian for “effort”), which
promoted socialism, workers’ rights, women’s rights, and free public
education, in addition to opposing Tsarist tyranny in Russia. Hemmat
members were workers from diverse religious and ethnic backgrounds.
In the late nineteenth century, Iranian migrant workers in Caucasus were
involved in various job actions and workers’ strikes that were organized
by the Russian Social Democrats. Consequently, these workers gained
tremendous, first-hand experiences in trade union activism and organi-
zational aspects. These experiences proved invaluable as they were later
used by labour activists: from the 1906–1911 Constitutional Revolution
up to the 1979 Revolution that toppled the Shah, we witness four inter-
mittent periods and four interrupted organized labour movements, each
corresponding with periods of major political crises and the weakening
of the central authoritarian regime. Let us attend to these periods as they
will be useful for understanding my analysis of the PSWUA.
THE VOICE OF THE WORKERS: IRAN’S LABOUR MOVEMENT... 221
(a) 1906–1911: From Pre-constitutionalism to the Decline

of the Constitutional Revolution
Iran’s first organized workers’ strike took place in Anzali in the northern
province of Gilan in protest against the fishing industry controlled by the
Armenian–Russian merchant Lianozov, who, in 1873, had acquired exclu-
sive rights to “the entire fishing industry of the southern Caspian sea”
(Afary 1996: 156). The concession led to brewing anger among local fish-
ermen. “In November 1906, three-thousand workers occupied the city
[of Anzali’s] Telegraph Office and demanded the termination of Lianozov
contract and an end to abuse of local authorities” (Afary 1996: 156). In
1907, the first newly formed Printers’ Union organized a four-day job
action “in support of freedom of the press” (Parsa Benab 2004: 35). In
the following years, more workers from different small or larger industries
realized the importance of organizing and staged labour rallies in different
cities for improving their working and living conditions in coordination
with the national struggle of Constitutional Revolution:
Iran’s small working class also embraced the constitutional revolution

enthusiastically, engaging in a vast number of strike activities from 1906 to
1910 and organizing Iran’s first trade unions. Fishermen in Russian-owned
Caspian fisheries, dockers and boatmen at Anzali, Tehran’s printers and
telegraphers, and Tabriz tannery workers conducted vigorous strikes. The
first two groups were exposed to social-democratic ideas emanating from
Russian Caucasus, while the printers shared the radical intellectuals’ milieu
at the newspapers. (Foran 1993: 179–180)
(b) 1921–1926: From Rise of Reza Shah to His Full-fledge

Dictatorship
The first significant effort towards organizing labour movement during
this period was the establishment of the Central Council of Federation of
Trade Unions (CCFTU; Showra-ye Markezi-ye Ettehadiehha-ye Kargeri-ye
Iran). “It was not until 1921 that the first significant labour movement
appeared in Iran. In that year, the recently formed Communist and
Socialist parties brought together nine existing unions in Tehran to create
the Central Council of Federated Trade Unions. The nine, each with rep-
resentation on the C.C.F.T.U, were the Unions of printers, pharmacists,
shoemakers, bath attendants, bakery assistants, construction labourers,
municipal employees, tailors, and Textile workers in Tehran’s only modern
222 M. SAFAVI
mill” (Abrahamian 1981: 212). By mid-1920s, the CCFTU membership

grew to over 8000, and it organized Iran’s first May Day (International
Workers’ Day) rally in Tehran in 1921 (Abrahamian 2010). In 1921, as
workers in the major cities learned about the benefits of having a union,
they joined the unions in great numbers. “In the winter of 1921 in the city
of Tehran with 250,000 population there were about 10,000 union mem-
bers. In the city of Tabriz about 3,000, in Rasht approximately 3,000, and
in Anzali and its suburbs 3,000 Iranian and Russian workers were mem-
bers of unions” (Parsa Benab 2004: 182). An important job action was the
December 1921 teachers’ strike in Tehran that lasted for 22 days. They
demanded better working conditions and disbursement of six months of
unpaid salaries and benefits (Mahmoudi 2002: 78).
The growth of the labour movement was cut short by Reza Shah’s
ascent to power in April 1926 as the founder of the Pahlavi Dynasty. Intent
upon autocratic modernization, he dissolved the CCFTU, banned trade
unions, outlawed communist and socialist parties, and arrested 200 labour
activists. Five labour organizers, including the Secretary General of Print-
Shop Workers’ Union, died under questionable circumstances in prison
(Abrahamian 1981: 213). Despite the ban on labour activism, the first
and largest petroleum workers’ job action took place in 1929 against the
Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) in Abadan Oil Refinery. According
to labour leader Yusof Eftekhari, one of the main organizers of the 1929
oil workers strike in Abadan: “[O]n May 2, 1929, 14,000 workers par-
took in a strike demanding higher wages, eight-hour work day, paid vaca-
tion, company housing, freedom of labour leaders, clean drinking water,
transportation, a holiday pay per year equal to a month’s wages, health
and safety, workers’ compensation, seven-hour summer work-day, old-age
pension, free health care for workers and their families, ending verbal and
physical abuse at workplace, and an independent trade union” (Eftekhari
1991: 137–138).
Although labour activism was banned and the experience of workers
unions cut short by Reza Shah’s draconian laws, in the long run Reza
Shah unwittingly contributed to the re-emergence of labour movement
as he modernized the economy, thus creating an industrial working class:
from 1925 to 1941, the number of factories increased from twenty or so
to over 300 with 28 factories employing more than 500 workers (Foran
1993: 235). As such, “Iran’s (non-craft) working class grew considerably
in the 1930s, reaching … from 170,000 to 260,000 people in all” (Foran
1993: 237). This gave a boost to the employment of women but under
unimaginable conditions. “At the working-class end of the social struc-

ture, as many as 80,000 women worked in industry and unknown num-
bers of others in shops and offices. They were paid extremely poorly, worse
than male labor, and worked long hours in bad conditions, especially in
carpets and textiles [industries]” (Foran 1993: 240). The growing work-
ing class played significant roles in the continuing struggles for social and
economic justice in the decades to come.
(c) 1941–1953: From Reza Shah’s abdication to August 1953 Coup

During this period, except for the years of 1946–1949 when labour activ-
ism was banned and martial law was imposed, nationwide labour activism
regained momentum in the major industrial centres (in particular in the
Province of Khuzestan, home to the AIOC) and the highest peak of the
labour activism was at the time of the oil nationalization struggle led by
Dr. Mohammad Mosaddeq between 1951 and 1953. The Tudeh Party
affiliated Central Council of Workers Unions of Iran (CCWUI; Showra-ye
Markazi-ye Ettehadieh-ye Kargaran-e Iran) was founded in 1942. The
most notable event in this period is the foundation of the Central Council
of United Trade Unions (CCUTU; Showra-ye Mottahedeh-ye Markazi-ye
Ettehadieh-ye Kargaran Zahmatkeshan-e Iran) in 1944, as two former
national unions merged.
In 1946, the Shah and Premier Qavam imposed the martial law
and carried out mass arrests of labour and political activists. One rea-
son for this repressive measure was the rise of nationalist movements in
the Autonomous Province of Azerbaijan and the Republic of Mahabad
(Kurdistan) in 1945–1946 (see Foran 1993: 272). The second reason was
the rise of strong and vigorous labour movements in the oil industry, in
the Province of Khuzestan, for better working conditions. In May–July
1946, “one of the largest (if not the largest) industrial strikes in Middle
Eastern history” was staged by the oil workers. “On the May Day 1946,
80,000 workers paraded at Abadan” (Foran 1993: 280). Women activ-
ists and family members also took part in this parade, and the partici-
pants denounced the wrong treatment of workers and the abuse of Iranian
national interest by AIOC. Abrahamian notes that on May Day 1946, a
female orator speaking to a May Day rally demanded “a comprehensive
labor law with equal pay for equal work, but had also called for the total
nationalization of the oil industry” (2008: 113). Two months later, in
July 1946, the AIOC imposed a wage cut and the provincial authorities
224 M. SAFAVI
declared martial law. In response, 100,000 workers staged four-day gen-

eral strike (Foran 1993: 280).
This chapter cannot attend to the important details regarding the
workers’ gains during this period. Suffice it to state that organized labour
movements, especially that of industrial oil workers, made the most signifi-
cant gains in their now century-long struggle for improving their working
and living conditions. In 1953, however, the CIA-engineered coup against
the democratically elected Premier Dr. Mohammad Mosaddeq reinstated
Mohammad Reza Shah’s heavy-handed autocratic rule and turned union
movement’s dreams for social justice into a nightmare as it marked the
beginning of yet another era of repression of organized labour movement.
(d) 1977–1980: the Revolutionary Years

In the late 1970s, the Iranian regime, feeding off a rentier state, encoun-
tered a major economic crisis, resulting from global drop in the price of
oil, along with rising inflation rates. These processes contributed to the
people’s growing discontent with the current state of affairs in the coun-
try. State repression was relaxed, indicating a significant shift in domestic
policy that was imposed on the Shah by the US President Jimmy Carter
who pursued a policy of human rights for the US allies (Abrahamian 1982:
500; Foran 1993: 378). By 1977, these simultaneous socio-economic
and political processes eroded the Shah’s absolute power, which in turn
allowed the political opposition and labour activists—from both the leftist
and Islamist strands—to begin to (re-)organize workers in major industrial
cities. Before explaining the characteristics of labour organizations dur-
ing the revolutionary period of 1977–1980, it is important to recall the
conditions of labour activism between 1953 and 1977, as the limited and
controlled “shop floor” labour activism in this period of repression is con-
nected with the new nationwide emergence of labour movement in 1977
as prelude to the 1979 Revolution.
As expected, the 1953 coup led to widespread arrests of labour activists.
Later, following the release of some of labour activists, cautious attempts
at reorganizing workers from different guilds began to take shape, but
under one important condition: that labour activists would stay away from
political activities and focus on economic or “guild demands” (motalebat-
e senfi). By the early 1960s, unions of tailors and dressmaker, shoemak-
ers, bakers, and metal workers (navardkaran va khamkaran) managed
to re-establish their activities under the watchful gaze of SAVAK, the

Iranian security, and under very restricted frameworks. Also during this
time, a small underground, “red labour activism,” a tradition that went
back to the late 1940s and led mainly but not exclusively by Armenian
communist workers, took place (Vahabzadeh 2011). On the other hand,
in the 1965–1975 decade, under the Shah’s White Revolution charac-
terized by rapid industrialization and capital accumulation, demand for
labour grew enormously. “By 1978, the Iranian working class was no
longer an insignificant proportion of the population. Their number had
increased nearly fivefold between 1963 and 1978. While industrial work-
ers totalled approximately 880,000, that number increased to 1,272,000
if one included wage earners employed by urban services and small manu-
facturing plants, workshop employees, shop assistants, and wage earners
in banks, offices, and other agencies” (Ladjvardi 1985: 234). Meanwhile,
there was an influx of women employed in different industries increasing
the working-class women’s share of employment to 14.8 percent in 1976
(Moghissi and Rahnema 2001: 203). This decade of accelerated develop-
ment resulted in the unprecedented experience that in certain industrial
plants the workers could use the state-controlled unions for collective
bargaining (Bayat 1989: 199–200). Interestingly, Asef Bayat points out,
“I found out that in five out of 12 factories investigated, the ‘workers’
representatives’ had been officially employed by SAVAK” (1989: 204). We
can clearly see that the regime’s plans for organizing workers in “yellow
syndicates” went hand-in-hand with its grandiose developmental projects
as well as its strategic-security plans to control and assimilate “red” or
grassroots labour activism. But the outcome, according to Foran, was far
from perfect for the regime.
Strikes, which had declined from seventy-nine in 1953 to seven in 1954 and
three from 1955 to 1957, resumed in the 1960s and 1970s despite their
illegality. There were twenty from 1957 to 1961, some of which ended in
bloodshed. Other strike waves occurred in 1971 and 1974–1976, involving
textile, bus and pipeline workers, coal miners, chemical, auto, and utility
workers. Most were over economic issues, some ending with concessions,
many with arrests and police violence. These actions set the stage for the
political strikes in 1978–1979. (Foran 1993: 332–333)
In this fourth period of nationwide labour activism, which gradually leaned

towards the revolutionary wave of 1978–1979, labour activists in some
226 M. SAFAVI
of the state-controlled unions of different factories and industrial sectors

began organizing strike committees. In the first half of 1978, strike activi-
ties, mostly of economic natures, gained momentum nationwide. “By the
third week of October [1978], a rapid succession of strikes crippled almost
all the bazaars, universities, high schools, oil installations, banks, … [and]
large factories” (Abrahamian 1982: 518). During Revolutionary years of
1978–1979, new labour organizations emerged in the form of workers
or employee councils (showras) in many industries. The most powerful
council was that of the oil workers. A member of Council of Workers and
Employees (Showra-ye Kargaran va Karmandan) consisting of 110 fac-
tories across the country, Saeed Rahnema recalls, “The establishment of
united front organizations, such as the Workers and Employees Councils
(Showra-ye Kargaran va Karmandan), during and immediately after the
1979 revolution provided a unique experience in self-management and
democratic participation and had an enormous political and ideological
impact on workers and the left organizations. The councils, one of the
most fascinating outcomes of the revolutionary movement, were thought
at the time to be an instrument for consolidation of political democracy in
Iran” (Moghissi and Rahnema 2001: 200).
The Revolution led to the multiplication of union activism nation-
wide, and for the first time in Iranian history, unemployed workers in
several major cities organized their own union. In 1980, soon after the
Iran–Iraq War broke out, the regime unleashed its first wave of suppress-
ing opposition political parties and organized labour. The genuine work-
ers’ councils and unions that had emerged throughout the revolutionary
years of 1978–1979 were forcefully replaced by pro-government Islamic
Labour Council and Islamic Associations (Showra-ye Eslami-ye Kar and
Anjumanha-ye Eslami), which were “similar to Arbeitsfront in Nazi
Germany and the Sampo in Japan during wartime fascist rule” (Moghissi
and Rahnema 2001: 207).
This is where my story of the PSWUA emerges as dovetailing an inter-
esting and dynamic tradition of labour activism in Iran. In what follows,
I will offer, as an activist and member of the PSWUA, a historical and
participant-observer’s narrative of the PSWUA (see Safavi 2000; Abkashak
2001; Afshari 2002: 61). I will reflect on the formation of the PSWUA, its
key elements, and its success in organizing some 14,000 project-seasonal
workers during the revolutionary years of 1978 and 1979 in the southern
petro-port-city of Abadan.
The Project-Seasonal Workers’ Union of Abadan,

1979–1980
The PSWUA can be traced back to 1912 when the AIOC opened one of
the largest oil refineries in the port city of Abadan in south-western Iran.
According to Abrahamian, at the time the AIOC employed more than
63,000 domestic and foreign workers, of which 14,000 were contract and
seasonal workers. Also noteworthy is to know that, at this time, there
were 30,000 AIOC employees in the city of Abadan with a population
of 115,000 (Abrahamian 2013: 12). The term kargaran-e movaqat va
fasli or “project-seasonal workers,” therefore, refers to a class of tempo-
rary workers hired for a specific project at specific rates of pay without
being entitled to benefits or any other employment packages offered by
the employer. From the first workers’ strike in the AIOC oil refinery of
December 1920, organized by Indian and Palestinian workers, until the
1979 Revolution, the project-seasonal workers, alongside the oil refinery
workers, have been a part of the labour movement to improve their work-
ing conditions. During the 1960s and 1970s, a number of foreign com-
panies were commissioned to engage in oil projects in Iran. Hundreds of
skilled, semi-skilled, and unskilled workers were hired by these companies.
As expected, the expansion of oil extraction and refinery inadvertently
caused the oilers’ movement to grow.
In 1975, I was hired by Iran–Japan Petrochemical Company at one of
their construction sites in a remote area near Port Mahshahr in Khuzestan
Province. The company paid wages that were only slightly above the mini-
mum wage of the day and provided poor-quality food and unsanitary shel-
ters, and only for a portion of its employees. The working conditions were
horrendous and unsafe, and there were no fringe benefits. Last but not
least, the employees were banned from having any kind of trade union.
Over this period up to the 1979 Revolution, project-worker activists
managed to organize a number of job actions. The most significant of
these was the three-day strike of December 1977 at the oil refinery of
Isfahan, which was at the time under construction by an American com-
pany. The strike attracted the attention of SAVAK, and consequently a
number of labour organizers were arrested. On 19 August 1978, following
the torching of Cinema Rex in Abadan (in which about 400 people were
burned to death), the project- worker activists organized the first mass rally
against the Shah’s regime in Abadan. This registered the first and largest
demonstration held in Abadan after the 1953 CIA-backed coup d’état.
228 M. SAFAVI
Towards the Union (sandika)

Organizing the project-seasonal workers began a few months prior to the
February 1979 Revolution. Major economic crisis along with gradual ero-
sion of the Shah’s power led to labour organizing in most cities in Iran
including Abadan. With the intensification of anti-Shah demonstrations,
foreign companies left Iran, causing massive layoff of project-seasonal
workers. The workers’ leaders came from different experiences and politi-
cal backgrounds. Some of them had been previously arrested and served
time in prison for their political and labour activism.
The first steps for the formation of a project-seasonal workers’ union
took place through several meetings: in a casual gathering in a local
teahouse, and in front of the local office of the Ministry of Labour, where
a group of desperate unemployed workers were gathering to demand
employment in early 1978. These informal meetings were followed by a
large assembly of labour activists and workers in the Petroleum Collage of
Abadan (Daneshkadeh-ye Naft-e Abadan) where they formed an ad hoc
committee or showra-ye mo’assess (Constitutive Council). Members of the
Constitutive Council were Mustafa Abkashak, Akbar Zebardast, Yadollah
Yaghubi, Fakher Shajari, Khosrow Mollazahdeh, Issa Mardani, and Sayyed
Mohammad.
Within few weeks after the Revolution, the first priority of the Constitutive
Council was to obtain a permanent headquarters. Workers’ delegates met
with officials in the Abadan Governor’s Office (Farmandari). Following
intense negotiations with the officials and an incident involving a serious,
violent confrontation with a group of pro-regime, anti-worker vigilantes
and thugs known as Hezbollah in front of the Governor’s Office, finally the
state-owned property of the former Abadan Oil Refinery Workers’ Union
was given to the newly formed Sandika-ye Kargaran-e Prozhe’i Fasli-ye
Abadan or Project-Seasonal Workers’ Union of Abadan. The former union
(Abadan Oil Refinery Workers’ Union; Ettehadieh-ye Senfi-Eqtesadi) was
formed in the late 1960 when the oil workers were allowed by the authori-
ties to have a union in order to voice the economic demands of work-
ers. According to Article 29 of Labour Legislation under the Shah, the
unions and labour confederations not allowed pursuing political demands
or engaging in political affairs.
Soon, about 14,000 project-seasonal workers with various skills (pipe-
fitter, millwright, boilermaker, welder, electrician, timekeeper, crane oper-
ator, maintenance man, plumber, scaffolding worker, carpenter, mechanic,
and ironworker) signed up for union membership. Right after that, on 7

April 1979, approximately 400 members and labour activists started a sit-
in protest (tahasson) in the union building, demanding the recognition of
the Union by the authorities as the sole bargaining agent on behalf of the
seasonal workers in Abadan. Socialist organizations, teachers, students,
various communities, and the spiritual religious leader of Arab-Iranians
Ayatollah Sheikh Mohammad Taher al-Shobeyr Khaqani supported the
workers’ demands (“Edameh-ye tahasson-e kargarn-e fasli-ye Abadan”
1979: 4; “Hall-e rishe’i-ye mas’aleh-ye kargaran” 1979: 6). In the mean-
time, showra-ye mo’assess produced a set of bylaws based on the Iranian oil
workers’ union experiences during the 1940s as well as the labour laws of
post-independence Algeria and post-revolutionary Nicaragua. Every single
bylaw was put to vote and approved by workers in the General Assembly
held within almost three months after the February 1979 uprising and
the Revolution’s victory. Seven well-known labour activists were elected
as the new Steering Committee (SC). The elected leaders were: Abkashak,
Zebardast, Yaghubi, Mollazadeh, Bijan Khuzestani, Mohammad Ali
Abrandi, and Shatti. The first agenda was to send a delegation of workers
to Tehran in March 1979 to meet with Mr. Dariush Forouhar, Minister
of Labour (between February and November of 1979) of the Provisional
Government. The delegation tabled two demands: to secure unemploy-
ment benefits for unemployed members and to officially register the
Union with the Ministry of Labour. Negotiations with authorities were
fruitful. In May 1979, a fund was allocated by the Ministry of Labour for
distribution among the unemployed. Mr. Forouhar recognized the role of
the Union and the sandika was officially registered with the Ministry of
Labour, and consequently, the PSWUA was recognized as the bargaining
agent in Abadan Labour Office (“Ta’id-e sandika-ye kargari-ye prozhei-ye
Abadan” 1979: 6).
The PSWUA emerged under the undeniable influence of leftist and
trade unionist workers who played key roles in both the formation and
direction of the Union, although some younger members of the PSWUA
were sympathizers of Islamic political tendencies like the militant People’s
Mojahedin, the Shi‘i “liberation theology” intellectual Ali Shari‘ati, or even
Ayatollah Khomeini. Despite these ideological differences, the PSWUA
operated independently from any particular political organization.
Organizationally, the PSWUA’s SC was democratically elected through
the General Assembly. Once installed, the SC set up publishing and press
release, communications and public relations, financial, training, and
230 M. SAFAVI
job-finding subcommittees. The PSWUA’s principal demands throughout

its short life can be summarized as follows: (a) gaining unemployment
insurance for project-seasonal workers; (b) job creation; (c) 40-hour work
week, plus two days off work per week; and (d) hiring workers through
Union and recognition of other workers organizations. In addition, after
1979, many foreign companies left Iran, leaving behind incomplete indus-
trial projects within the oil industry. To complete these projects and create
employment for its members, the PSWUA asked authorities to hand over
these unfinished projects.
There are two important features of the PSWUA that need to be high-
lighted for the purpose of historical–comparative analysis. The first feature
pertains to women’s participation in the Union. In 1929, the first and larg-
est industrial job action in Iran was organized by the oil workers of Abadan.
Almost 14,000 oilers, unemployed workers, women, and family members
of the oil workers participated in the three-day strike (see Eftekhari 1991:
137–138). In the post-Reza Shah period until the 1953 coup, when the
labour movement was in its highest peak, women activists and family mem-
bers were involved in organizing the labour movement in Abadan. Unlike
these historic events, all the members of the PSWUA, including the SC,
were men in 1979. The union did not play an active role in creating space
for women labour activists and female seasonal workers. The PSWUA did
not make any attempt to find out how many women who worked as typists,
secretaries, and administrators lost their job after foreign companies had
left the country during the revolutionary movement.
The second feature of the PSWUA relates to the minority issues. A large
number of PSWUA members were Iranian Arab workers who were victims
of discrimination by both the state and the oil company, and the majority
of them were assigned unskilled jobs with the lowest wage and no benefits.
The union did recognize the distinct identity of its Arab members, and in
verbal communications, Arabic was also used alongside Persian. Speeches,
slogans, and poetry readings were delivered in both Persian and Arabic.
On important occasions like May Day of 1979, PSWUA members staged a
play titled “Workers in the Governor’s Office” based on the workers con-
frontation with Hezbollah at the Governor’s Office (“Ta’id-e sandika-ye
kargari-ye prozhei-ye Abadan” 1979: 6). Workers read revolutionary or
motivational poems in Arabic and Persian. Such poetry included the
works of revolutionary poets like communist Abolqasem Lahouti and folk
dance (yazleh) performed by Arab members. In addition, progressive Arab
leaders and the prominent spiritual leader of Arab-Iranians, Ayatollah
Khaqani, fully supported the PSWUA. Ayatollah Khaqani was against

the post-revolutionary trials and executions and the principle of Velayat-e
Faqih (Guardianship of Supreme Jurist). He was imprisoned in 1979 and
died under questionable circumstances in 1986 while under house arrest
in city of Qom. In a press release in April 1979, the PSWUA expressed
the appreciation of its 14,000-strong membership for Ayatollah Khaqani’s
support of the workers (“Kargaran-e prozhei-ye Abadan” 1979: 6).
The Union’s Accomplishments

Between February 1979 and September 1980, the PSWUA achieved sev-
eral of its goals and objectives. The PSWUA established a steady line of
communication with the Ministry of Labour in Tehran and the Ministry’s
Abadan Office. Union delegates met a few times with the officials of
Khuzestan Governer’s Office, asking the Province to recognize the Union
as the sole bargaining agent for project-seasonal workers of Abadan and
to approve unemployment insurance for the unemployed. The PSWUA
secured temporary unemployment insurance for members and success-
fully handled some of the grievances of its members who were unjustly
fired, and securing reasonable compensation for them. The PSWUA set
up training courses in a variety of trades and skills for unskilled workers,
and through negotiations with the Oil Company and contractors in the
region, the PSWUA found employment for many unemployed members.
Last, the PSWUA organized a successful and large May Day Parade in
Abadan in 1979, in which approximately 20,000 men, women, and young
people rallied. At the end of the demonstration, pro-regime thugs vio-
lently attacked the workers, causing 18 workers injured (“Ta’id-e sandika-
ye kargari-ye prozhei-ye Abadan” 1979: 6).
On several occasions and to publicize the demands of their constitu-
ency, members of the PSWUA SC were interviewed by publications such
as Ayandegan, Peygham-e Emrooz, and journals of political parties. The
PSWUA also engaged in a number of solidarity efforts. It sent several dele-
gations to Tehran, Tabriz, and Ahvaz in solidarity with labour movements
in these cities and supporting oil workers’ struggle. It organized a mass
rally in support of the families of victims of Cinema Rex, who had main-
tained a sit-in protest in the local government’s Revenue Office in Abadan
between Spring 1979 and Summer 1980. These families were seeking jus-
tice and truth about the torching of Cinema Rex (on 19 August 1978).
In addition, a group of PSWUA members were involved in building a
232 M. SAFAVI
monument for the victims. The Union also supported cultural activities
and democratic rights of oppressed nationalities. On Wednesday, 30 May
1979, when the Cultural Centre of the Arab People (Kanun-e Farhangi-ye
Khalq-e Arab) in the port city of Khoramshahr was under deadly attack by
the military, Revolutionary Guards, and the Hezbollah thugs, the PSWUA
strongly supported the democratic rights of the Arab people and the fami-
lies of victims. Moreover, during the heavy flood of 24 February 1980 in
the Khuzestan Province and the outskirts of Abadan, the PSWUA mobi-
lized significant support for the victims of the flood.
As evidenced by the quick summary above, in its short, one-and-half
years of activity under fragile political conditions and during the hard, post-
revolutionary economic times, the PSWUA made important achievements
consistent with the history of labour movement in Iran. More importantly,
the PSWUA created an elaborate secular civil structure that was linked and
relevant to the democratic struggles as well as social justice demands of the
most disadvantaged working peoples of Abadan. The PSWUA left a pro-
found democratic and progressive impact on community. So much so that
the PSWUA could not have been tolerated by the regime as the latter was
strengthening its grip on power.
In September 1980, the short life of the PSWUA came to an end in
a tragic way. The government used both the hostage crisis (following
US Embassy takeover in Tehran in November 1979) and the Iran–Iraq
War as a pretext to suppress the labour movement. Within days follow-
ing the war’s break out (22 September 1980), the PSWUA headquarters
was demolished by bulldozers on the authorities’ orders, and the regime
carried out mass arrests of union activists. Many labour leaders and activ-
ists were imprisoned for several years. PSWUA leader and spokesperson
Mohammad Ali Abrandi died under suspicious circumstances in Tehran’s
Evin Prison in summer of 1987. Several other Union members were also
executed. Ebrahim Gharibzadeh (welder) was executed in Adel Abad
Prison in Shiraz in 1982, as was Ali Chahar-Mahali in 1983, Karim Sa‘ei,
Gholam-Hossein Salim, and Hamid Shatzadeh (dates unknown). The
unionists who had escaped the arrests had no option but to leave Iran.
PSWUA SC member and well-known labour leader Mustafa Abkashak
died in 1989 in a car accident while living in exile in Los Angeles.
The suppression of the PSWUA signifies a sheer act of purging labour
movement activism without legal justification: the Union was legal and
engaged in labour rights negotiations and civil society activism within the
frame of law. What made the PSWUA stand out was its growing success in
mobilizing the workers and the unemployed for economic justice as well
as engaging in democratic building of civil society. The PSWUA brought
together social justice and democratic-participatory civil society activism
together.
Diminishing Workers’ Rights

Thirty-five years after the PSWUA experience, the socio-economic condi-
tions of project-seasonal workers south-western Iran have diminished sig-
nificantly. The project-seasonal workers, now concentrated in and work
long hours under horrendous and unsafe conditions in Port Assaluyeh,
in the South Pars Project in the Persian Gulf where the world’s largest
known gas field is extracted, as well as in Port Mahshahr. In October 2012,
project workers in Port Mahshahr created a temporary workers’ coun-
cil (Showra-ye Movaqat-e Kargeran-e Manteqeh-ye Vizheh-ye Eqtesadi-ye
Mahshahr Petrocimical) and organized a few successful job actions and
a few days of strikes to improve their working conditions, demand-
ing disbursement of their unpaid wages and ask the officials to expel
anti-worker contractors of petrochemical companies in Port Mahshahr
(see Maljoo 2012).
In the last three decades, economic liberalization, privatization, and
neoliberal policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran, beginning with the
Presidency of Hashemi-Rafsanjani and continued during the presidencies
of Mohammad Khatami and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have culminated
in current policies of President Hassan Rouhani. These policies have eco-
nomically and politically hurt the workers. The workers’ right to organize
independent trade unions and freedom of association is expressly denied
(see Maljoo in this volume). In his book, National Security and Economic
System of Iran, President Rouhani names labour unions as one of the great-
est challenges the employers face and argues that workers have to be more
compliant when dealing with the “job-creators” (Rouhani 2010: 336).
Today, Iranian workers are under siege by neoliberal policies, and
project-seasonal workers suffer the worst of conditions. Discriminatory
gender policies in workplaces serve to intensify the exploitation of female
workers to the extent that women workers in some work places are paid as
low as one-third of minimum wage. Like the previous administrations, the
present government is inclined to undermine independent labour unions,
reduce the wages of workers, and dismantle the existing labour laws.
234 M. SAFAVI
Conclusions
The PSWUA provides a case study in the century-long challenges, suc-
cesses, and tragedies of Iran’s workers’ unionist movement. The four peri-
ods of labour activism outlined in this chapter show how sadly consistent
the PSWUA experience has been in the context of interruptions imposed
on labour movement through repression, foreign interventions, coup, and
war. In the context of labour movement, the PSWUA experience once
again proved that it is absolutely crucial for the labour movement to be
independent of both political parties and the government. Past practice
clearly shows that when workers’ unions were created or controlled by
political parties or governments, they became fragile, as conflictual politi-
cal decisions adversely affected them.
The experience of the PSWUA also shows that the labour movement
flourishes in periods where society’s democratic tendencies act them-
selves out in the forms of political freedoms, freedom of association and
expression, and freedom of press. Since labour movement is structurally
organizationally frail, and its efforts are always disrupted, there cannot be
independent trade unions without democracy in Iran, just as it is equally
important to recognize that there cannot be democracy and social justice
without independent trade unions. This mutual co-dependence, I argue,
is an integral part of the democratic process. In this regard, the PSWUA’s
efforts resulted in the expansion of civil society in Abadan, and the PSWUA
experience teaches us the importance of the labour movement’s connec-
tion with Iranian social movements and international labour. Specifically,
the lateral and mutual support of the labour movement with the move-
ments of women, environmentalists, minorities, youth, anti-war, and sexual
orientations—possibly in the form of broad-based coalitions—is mutually
beneficial for democracy, freedom, equality, and social justice. These are
some of the most crucial factors for the success of a democratic and inde-
pendent future labour unionist movement and for the national–demo-
cratic movement in Iran. The PSWUA experience and activism stands out
as a microcosm of a dynamic social justice oriented civil society in Iran.
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CHAPTER 14
An Unfinished Odyssey: The Iranian

Student Movement’s Struggles for Social
Justice
Roozbeh Safshekan
In 1933, the Iranian government decided that in order to modernize the

country, a modern institution of higher education would be necessary.
The government called for the creation of a brand new university com-
plete with a modern curriculum, buildings, and qualified professors. In
1934, the University of Tehran (UT) opened its doors to its first class. Not
15 months had passed when the students of the Faculty of Engineering
went on strike to demand educational facilities and professors in higher
quality and quantities. The strike succeeded and the university administra-
tion relayed the students’ demands to the government and funding was set
aside to meet these demands (Rayatnazari and Safshekan 2002: 40). While
this early episode of student unrest ended without incident, the student
activism in Iran would have a bloodier history than those first students
could have imagined.
An earlier version of some sections of this chapter first appeared in my master’s

thesis at Columbia University. I am indebted to my thesis advisors, Professors
Hamid Dabashi and Lawrence G. Potter, for their invaluable comments and
insights. I am also grateful to Professor Peyman Vahabzadeh for his constructive
comments and suggestions on this chapter.
R. Safshekan (*)

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-44227-3_14
238 R. SAFSHEKAN
This chapter attempts to show the cycles of rise and fall of social jus-
tice activism in the history of the Iranian Student Movement (SM). To
maintain its focus within the spatial limitations, this chapter will solely
focus on SM within Iran and leaves out the SM abroad, in particular, the
Confederation of Iranian Students–National Union (CISNU), the subject
of a thorough study (Matin-asgari 2002). The first part presents a brief
history of the Iranian SM before the 1979 Revolution, highlighting the
centrality of social justice in the discourse and practice of the SM. This was
mainly the result of the Pahlavi regime’s “repressive development” model
characterized by top-down economic development projects at the expense
of social justice and political freedoms (Vahabzadeh 2010: 4). Under this
developmental model, almost all potentially oppositional spaces were
closed except for universities, which were necessary for training a skilled
force required for the realization of the very same model. The majority of
university students came from middle- and lower-class backgrounds and
had experienced how severely the Shah’s policies undermined justice and
freedom. The relatively open environment of universities allowed students
to get acquainted with and organized around alternative paths to the gov-
ernment’s repressive development model, thus turning them into a social
force that refused to be solely functionaries of the ruling elite and instead
struggled for social justice and political freedoms.
The second part examines how social justice agenda gradually became
marginalized in the postrevolution SM as a result of three main factors:
first, an unprecedented purge of the Iranian higher education system dur-
ing the Cultural Revolution that drained universities of nearly all students
and organizations that had championed social justice. Second, the Iran–
Iraq War, during which the war effort became the only channel for stu-
dent activism and the Islamists came to possess a near-complete monopoly
over student activism and student life on campus. Third, the triumph of
neoliberalism over the Iranian higher education system, which decreased
socioeconomic diversity in universities to the benefit of affluent students,
leading to an SM whose members have less direct life experience with
socioeconomic inequalities and arguably less sympathy for social justice
activism. The chapter then discusses the rise and fall of a new wave of
student struggles for social justice which manifested in a radical leftist
SM in the 2000s. By reflecting critically on the history of the Iranian
SM, the chapter concludes with proposing a set of recommendations that
might help a future social justice–driven SM advancing its agenda more
effectively than its predecessors.
AN UNFINISHED ODYSSEY: THE IRANIAN STUDENT MOVEMENT’S STRUGGLES... 239
The Centrality of Social Justice in Student

Activism before the 1979 Revolution
As explained in the introduction, the foundation of the UT marked the
beginning of modern higher education in Iran. The UT’s first seven years
were under the dictatorship of Reza Shah who tolerated no political oppo-
sition. As a result, there was no SM to speak of during this period, and the
only protests at UT were aimed at improving study and living conditions.
While the Reza Shah’s iron-fisted rule did not leave any room for stu-
dent activism on campus, students were deeply involved with social justice
activism outside the university. A case in point is the Group of Fifty-Three
(Goruh-e Panjah-o-seh Nafar), a prominent group of Marxist intellectuals
who were detained by the government’s security forces in May 1937 based
on the accusation of “forming a secret ishtiraki [communist] organiza-
tion, publishing a May Day Manifesto, organizing strikes in the Technical
College and in a textile factory in Isfahan, and translating such ‘atheistic
tracts’ as Marx’s Das Kapital and the Communist Manifesto” (Abrahamian
1982: 156). Among the 48 members of the group who were tried in
November 1938, 13 were university students, and most of them received
sentences varying from two up to ten years in prison.
The Tudeh Party and the Beginning of the Student Movement

In 1941, Reza Shah’s rule came to an end, and among the first results
of the greater political freedom in the new era was the creation of the
Tudeh Party of Iran (Hezb-e Tudeh Iran) by surviving members of the
Group of Fifty-Three who had recently released from the prison. Within
its Youth Organization (Sazeman-e Javanan), the Tudeh created a stu-
dent union to promote social justice activism on university campuses. By
1946, this student union had been so successful in organizing students
that the British ambassador in Tehran claimed in a report to his superiors
that the majority of the UT’s 4000 students were “strongly influenced by
the Tudeh” (Abrahamian 1982: 332). The Tudeh’s influence in the UT
was not limited to students; the Party also encompassed prominent faculty
members such as Reza Radmanesh and Hossein Jodat who were promi-
nent Tudeh figures. According to Mehdi Bazargan, the dean of the UT
Faculty of Engineering from 1945 to 1951:
240 R. SAFSHEKAN
In those days, the university administration’s worst headache was the Tudeh
Party. This organization had successfully intensified its student activities
after 1947 so that by the 1951 we were besieged from all sides-by students,
professors, clerical workers, and even campus cleaners. The communist stu-
dents had taken over the university clubs, held their meeting in classrooms,
incited employees to strike for higher wages, and, worse of all, continu-
ally interfered with curriculum. The communist influence was so pervasive
that the university administration had no say on its own campus. (Bazargan
quoted in Abrahamian 1982: 332)
As a result of the dominance of the Tudeh party on campuses, during the

late 1940s, any government attempt to roll back political freedoms and
social justice in universities was confronted by a strong student backlash.
For example, in 1948, when the UT Faculty of Engineering administration
ordered students to stay out of political activism and start paying tuition,
students responded with large demonstrations. They went as far as attack-
ing the administration and besieging university officials in their offices
until they reversed their decisions (Rayatnazari and Safshekan 2002).
The turning point came on 4 February 1949 when there was an
attempted assassination of Mohammad Reza Shah in front of the UT
Faculty of Law and Political Science. Although the gunman thought to
have Islamic leanings, the assassination attempt was used as a pretext to
attack and shut down the Tudeh. The Party would go underground and
remain there until the beginning of the oil nationalization movement. The
disappearance of the Tudeh from the national stage was a blow against its
powerful student union and consequently to the SM in general.
The Oil Nationalization Movement and the Post-16 Azar

Student Movement
The trigger for the next step of social justice-oriented student activism
came with Mohammad Mosaddeq’s rise to power as Premier in 1951. His
oil nationalization movement energized the SM, with university students
predominantly supporting the national liberation agenda of Mosaddeq’s
National Front and the social justice agenda of the Tudeh. Their support
was best illustrated in the consistent pattern of participation in demonstra-
tions and distributing publications en masse in support of Mosaddeq and
the Tudeh, among other actions. Not surprisingly, Mosaddeq’s undoing
as a result of the 1953 coup d’état provoked fiery outrage among students.
The explosive collision of student outrage against the coup erupted in the
tragic event of 7 December 1953, better known as 16 Azar.
Events in December 1953 paved the way for this tragedy. The Iranian
government strengthened ties with the two principal backers of the coup,
inviting US Vice President Richard Nixon to Iran in the first official for-
eign delegation since the coup d’état. This, along with the announcement
of the reestablishment of ties with Great Britain which had been the main
target of the oil nationalization movement, created the potential for dis-
turbances, particularly at the UT. On 7 December the area around the
UT campus was in a virtual state of martial law from fear of a student
uprising. At 11 AM, the military forces, under the pretext that they had
been taunted by a student, entered the Faculty of Engineering, forcing
professors to shut down classes and gathering all students in the main
entrance hall. As the students streamed into the hall, an antigovernment
slogan pierced the noise: “The coup government must keep its hands off
the university!” Without warning the soldiers opened fire (Rayatnazari
and Safshekan 2002).
One student, Mostafa Bozorgnia, died immediately from a bullet
straight to the heart, while two others, Mehdi Shar‘iat-Razavi and Ahmad
Ghandchi, died on the way to the hospital. Several students were arrested
and taken to military prison where they were tortured before massive stu-
dent strikes at the UT forced their release. Just days later Nixon would
receive an honorary doctorate from the UT Faculty of Law and Political
Science, just meters away from where the students had died. This is the
image of 16 Azar that has been imbued onto the collective memory of
Iranian students for nearly the last six decades. In fact, 16 Azar has become
the official Students’ Day after the Revolution in 1979.
The dark events of 16 Azar reflected the gray tone of politics in Iranian
society for the rest of the 1950s. In universities, as in the polity as a whole,
all opposition groups nearly ceased to exist as a result of the high level
of repression. Against this backdrop, the first major event to mark the
reemergence of the SM came in 1960 when the build-up to the Twentieth
Majlis (Parliament) elections, which was viewed by the public as a sham,
led to vocal student opposition and protests which culminated in their
arrest. Rallying to support their arrested schoolmates on 26 January 1961,
nearly 4000 students locked themselves in the UT, refusing to leave, a
move which was met by popular acclaim by the public in Tehran and other
major cities across the country. Three days later the university closed the
school’s doors. This only inflamed the situation, with students of universi-
ties of Mashhad and Tabriz joining the strike. Eventually the government
242 R. SAFSHEKAN
accepted the student’s demands, releasing imprisoned students and

reopening universities after nearly a month of closure (Nateq 2010: 108).
From this point forward, the SM would take on a national dimension
and the next 16 Azar commemoration in 1961 became a truly national
event, marked in Tehran, Tabriz, Isfahan, Ahvaz, and Abadan. At the same
time, the SM began linking itself to other social movements. In the same
year the worsening economic situation led to the rebirth and growth of
the labor movement in Iran which was soon linked with the SM, with
students taking up the vocabulary of the labor movement and its demands
(Nateq 2010: 110).
One month later, the excessive delay by the government in holding
the Twenty-First Majlis elections led to a fresh round of student protests.
University students who saw the delay as a blow against political freedoms
held large demonstrations and eventually went on strike on 21 January
1962. The government’s response was swift and merciless. Paratroopers
and commandos were sent into the UT, leading to dozens of injuries,
arrests, and the closure of the university. The sheer brutality of the response
forced even the typically conservative university administration to side with
students and react in protest, and in no time strikes in solidarity with UT
students were being staged in several universities across the country. The
UT would remain closed until early April of 1962, when the government
made concessions to students. It felt like after two months of struggle stu-
dents had finally won (Nateq 2010: 111–113). After this incident, universi-
ties stayed relatively quiet, mainly as a result of the gradual destruction of
all political opposition forces in the country following the harsh crackdown
of 5 June 1963 (15 Khordad 1342) public demonstrations.
The Guerrilla Movement and Radicalization of Students

The peace that followed this repression would prove to be short-lived,
the calm before the storm. Mehdi Bazargan, a founding member of the
Freedom Movement of Iran (Nehzat-e Azadi-e Iran), an Islamic offshoot
of the National Front, foreshadowed the coming radical shift in student
activism during his trial in 1964 when he declared: “We are the last to have
engaged in political struggle through constitutional means. We expect the
judge to convey this point to his superiors” (quoted in Nejati 1994: 373).
In the mid-1960s, former youth activists of the Tudeh and Nehzat-e
Azadi began forming, separately, underground guerrilla circles as a result
of their frustration with the failed reformism and legal political activism
of their elders. Two such circles advocating Marxist views of social justice
included one led by Bijan Jazani and Hassan Ziazarifi and another led
by Massoud Ahmadzadeh, Amir-Parviz Puyan, and Abbas Meftahi. Yet
another was the Islamist-leftist circle founded by Mohammad Hanifnejad,
Ali-Asqar Badi‘zadegan, and Saeed Mohsen who envisioned a combina-
tion of Marxism and revolutionary Shi‘i Islam as the ideal vehicle in the
struggle for social justice.
On 8 February 1971, a group of 13 guerrillas coming from a 1960s
SM background carried out an armed attack on a Gendarmerie outpost
in the town of Siahkal in Gilan Province. This marked the beginning of
the guerrilla war in Iran and the first operation of the Organization of the
Iranian People’s Fadai Guerrillas (OIPFG) which emerged through the
unification of the survivors of Jazani-Ziazarifi and Ahmadzadeh-Pouyan-
Meftahi circles. Very soon another guerrilla organization sprang into
action: Organization of the Iranian People’s Mojahedin (OIPM) was a
direct outgrowth of the Hanifnejad-Badizadegan-Mohsen circle.
Following the first wave of guerrilla operations, universities were elec-
trified and students looked for any excuse to support the guerrilla move-
ment. Students began protesting in large numbers against the Pahlavi
regime and in favor of the guerrilla movement. A number of students were
arrested, but this further inflamed the situation with protests spreading
across the country and leading to the arrest of over one hundred students
in April 1971 (Vahabzadeh 2010: 29). This, along with the peaking of
guerrilla activity that year, forced the government to shut down universi-
ties for the spring term of 1971 until the end of the Shah’s 2500 Years
Celebration of the Persian Empire.
The next five years would see bloody battles between the guerrillas and
the National Intelligence and Security Agency of Iran (SAVAK), which the
latter eventually won out because of its overwhelming resources and the
guerrillas’ considerable shortcomings. In what amounted to a war of attri-
tion, by 1976 the guerrillas were mere shells of their former selves. The
entire senior leadership of the guerrilla organizations had been wiped out
through execution, in street-battles or under torture while imprisoned. Of
the 341 guerrillas who lost their lives during the guerrilla war, 139 (40 %)
were university students (Abrahamian 1982: 481). Another factor in the
demise of the guerrilla movement was that while groups like OIPFG and
OIPM managed to garner large student support, they failed to build a
strong social base particularly among the working class and the poor on
whose behalf they purported to speak.
244 R. SAFSHEKAN
Although by the mid-1970s Shah was successful in taming the guerrilla

movement, the latter’s long-term effect on the SM could not be undone.
The guerrilla movement completely transformed the atmosphere of
Iranian universities. The collective memory of students was filled with the
images of their friends and fellow students who had been killed in battle,
were imprisoned and under torture, or on the run. This made any kind
of reconciliation between the Shah’s regime and SM all but impossible
and fueled the rage that fed the flames of revolution. The second major
impact of the guerrilla movement was to make the social justice agenda
hegemonic on university campuses, with no ideological rivals capable of
challenging its legitimacy. While the Tudeh and Mosaddeq’s national lib-
eration movement first pushed this agenda to the national stage, it was
the guerrilla movement that brought it to a climax. This too would have a
profound impact on the 1979 Revolution and only fade with the onset of
the Cultural Revolution.
Social Justice Activism in the Postrevolutionary

Student Movement
In the immediate aftermath of the 1979 Revolution, there was a period
of unprecedented freedom in Iran. Students who played a crucial role
in the Revolution were eager to return to universities and use this new
freedom to implement the ideals of the Revolution. In this new environ-
ment, Ayatollah Khomeini and his followers quickly realized that universi-
ties were predominantly in the hands of opposition students and faculty,
challenging the implementation of their Islamic vision of society. This situ-
ation could not be allowed to persist.
The Cultural Revolution

In his Nowruz (Persian New year) 1980 address, Ayatollah Khomeini
declared that the revolution must reach universities in order to “purge
the professors associated with the West and the East and make the uni-
versity descent place for teaching superior Islamic sciences” (Khomeini
1980). Following his address, on 15 April 1980, Ali-Akbar Hashemi-
Rafsanjani, while giving a lecture at the University of Tabriz was heck-
led by a student, an act taken as a pretext to crackdown on universities.
On 19 April 1980, President Abolhassan Banisadr issued an ultimatum
to the various political groups demanding they cease their activities on
campuses within three days. Before the ultimatum had expired, the oppo-
sition student groups were attacked by paramilitary forces, resulting in
at least 37 deaths and hundreds injured and arrested (Mashayekhi 2001:
292). In the next step, Ayatollah Khomeini issued an order designating
the members of the Headquarters of the Cultural Revolution (HCR;
Setad-e Enqelab-e Farhangi) on 13 June 1980, officially announcing the
Cultural Revolution which led to the closure of universities for three years.
The Cultural Revolution had two main objectives and two instruments to
implement them: (1) Islamizing the social sciences and humanities curricu-
lum by the HCR in close collaboration with the Center for Cooperation of
Seminaries and Universities (Daftar-e Hamkari-ye Howzeh va Daneshgah).
(2) Expelling students, faculty, and staff affiliated with the opposition
groups by the Purging Committees (Komitehha-ye Paksazi).
Over the course of the Cultural Revolution there was an unprecedented
purge in the Iranian higher education. From the 1979–1980 school year
when universities were closed and the purges began until the 1983–1984
school year when they reopened, only 117,148 students out of a total
of 174,217 were allowed to return (Maleki 2000). Thus, some 57,069
students were expelled and an unknown number never allowed to enter
university from high school. According to Abdul-Karim Soroush (1999),
former HCR member, at least 700 out of a total of 12,000 university
professors and lecturers were also dismissed by the Purging Committees.
Besides the profound damage to academia, the Cultural Revolution
drained universities of nearly all politically active students and organiza-
tions who had championed the struggle for social justice.
The Iran–Iraq War

Already reeling from the effects of the Cultural Revolution, Saddam’s
invasion of Iran in 1980 was another massive blow to the SM. During the
eight-year campaign that followed, the war effort became the only chan-
nel for student political activism, and the universities increasingly came
to resemble barracks. University buildings day by day were taking on the
names of the many student “martyrs” killed on the frontlines. One exam-
ple of such students was Seyed Hossein Alamolhoda, a History student at
the Ferdowsi University of Mashhad. On 6 January 1981 (16 Dey 1359),
22-year-old Alamolhoda was a commander of Howeizeh Revolutionary
Guards and Muslim Student Followers of Imam’s Line (Daneshjuyan-e
Mosalman-e Peyro-e Khat-e Imam), taking part in Operation Nasr
246 R. SAFSHEKAN
(Howeizeh) in preparation for operation Liberation of Khorramshahr. In

the absence of necessary operational coordination among Iranian units
and with little more than assault rifles against Iraqi mechanized infantry
and tanks units, Alamolhoda and his corp were killed en masse (Yazdanfam
2004). Commemorating Alamolhoda and 3500 university student who
lost their lives during the eight-year Iran–Iraq War, 16 Dey is now the
official Martyr Students Day (see: Jafari 2014).
As with social activism in general, student activism in particular also
radically transformed in comparison to before the Revolution. All extra-
curricular activities were banned, save sports which were allowed under
supervision. The student organizations associated with the govern-
ment such as Anjomanha-ye Eslami-ye Danshjuyan (Islamic Students’
Associations, or ISA) and Jihad-e Danshegahi (Academic Center for
Education, Culture and Research, or ACECR) came to possess a near
complete monopoly on political activities and life on campus, mobiliz-
ing students to join the ranks of soldiers at the war front. The National
Student Day or 16 Azar, historically a highly politically charged day for
universities, was not celebrated anymore except by official statements
from the ISA. During the war period, according to Mehrdad Mashayekhi
(2001: 292), the ISA was “the sole representative of the state in cam-
puses. Its major functions were limited to propaganda, political control,
and ideological challenge of any oppositional voice.” By the end of the war
the last tinge of color had disappeared from universities and the SM had
become “a watchdog of the state whose main task was to mobilize support
for, and suppress the opposition to, the state” (Mahdi 1999: 10).
The Rise of Neoliberalism

The final blow to the social justice–inspired SM came immediately after
the war when the welfare-state policies of the 1980s were cast aside.
Seeking a new direction for postwar Iran, President Ali-Akbar Hashemi-
Rafsanjani adopted neoliberal policies, discarding the social justice drive
that was at the heart of the Revolution. Based on Rafsanjani’s neoliberal
orthodoxy, Iran’s economic development plans mainly focused on priva-
tization, deregulation, fiscal discipline, and tariff reduction. Under these
ill-conceived policies, the country experienced an unprecedented rise in
socioeconomic inequality, with immediate implications for universities
and the SM.
Since the Rafsanjani administration, universities have come to repre-

sent the more affluent sectors in Iran. Greater competition for a limited
number of spots at elite universities has meant families have to spend more
money on private courses and tutors so their children make the cut in com-
petitive national university entrance exams. The Rafsanjani administration
also began to introduce market mechanisms into universities. For instance,
students who were not accepted to university through the competitive
national exams could now enter private universities by paying a sizable
tuition. In 1989, when Rafsanjani assumed Presidency, the number of
university students registered at private higher education institutions was
349,848, only 28.6 % of the total university student population. In 1997,
when he left office, this number had increased to 1,284,570, more than
52 % of the total university student population (Ale-Agha et al. 2008).
The introduction of market mechanism to the Iranian higher educa-
tion system was not merely limited to establishing the private higher edu-
cation institutions. The public universities also began to admit students
willing to pay high tuitions, a trend which has since accelerated on annual
basis. According to the official statistics, of the 712,367 students admit-
ted to public universities in 2013–2014 academic year, 593,698 (83.4 %)
enrolled to tuition fee programs (Mehr News 2013). This means that
only 16.6 % of the students were admitted to free programs at the public
universities that had been totally free just a decade ago. The rising costs
of entrance and the introduction of market mechanisms to universities
decreased socioeconomic diversity in Iranian higher education to the ben-
efit of affluent students. This resulted in a SM which had less direct life
experience with socioeconomic inequalities and arguably less sympathy for
social justice activism.
One of the major shifts in Iranian elite politics under Ayatollah
Khamenei’s leadership and Rafsanjani’s presidency since 1989 was the
decline of the Islamic Left and rise of the Islamic Right. In exile from
power, the Islamic Left reexamined the social circumstances and forsook
its old politics emphasizing social justice, state-centric economy, and anti-
imperialism, in order to once more regain power. The reconstituted Islamic
Left took on a much more liberal orientation and introduced an agenda of
reform, earning the factional title of the Reformists. In the 1997 presiden-
tial election, Reformist Mohammad Khatami won a landslide victory on
promises of social and political liberalization. University students played a
crucial role in Khatami’s victory as voters, campaign activists, and a reference
group shaping public opinion in favor of Khatami (Mashayekhi 2001: 297).
248 R. SAFSHEKAN
Recognizing this crucial role, the Reformists became very active on cam-
puses to shape a new SM to help advance their agenda. With the eradica-
tion of the social justice-driven SM by the Cultural Revolution, Iran–Iraq
War, and rise of neoliberalism, Khatami’s grand narrative of Reformism
trickled down to the new SM which began championing democracy and
human rights over social justice.
The turning point in the relationship between Reformism and the SM
came on 6 July 1999 over the closure of the reformist newspaper Salam by
the Judiciary. UT students quickly mobilized to peacefully protest against
the closure. The response by security forces was fast and furious. On 9
July 1999 (18 Tir 1378), security forces attacked the University Hill dor-
mitory, resulting in at least one death and dozens injured and arrested.
Responding to this ruthless attack, students rose up in universities and
then took to the streets, with tens of thousands of ordinary people join-
ing them. Besides the hundreds of injuries from fighting on the streets,
hundreds of students were arrested. Despite the depth of 18 Tir tragedy,
Khatami showed little support for the SM, damaging the trust between
students and Reformists. Whereas Reformists spoke of human rights, free-
dom, and democracy, it became clear during the course of 18 Tir events
that their factional interests superseded their stated goals. As a result of
the failure to deliver on the Reform agenda, the reformist popular base
in universities began to shrink, opening space for a new leftist discourse.
The Rise of the New Left

By the early 2000s, President Hashemi-Rafsanjani’s neoliberal economic
policies which increased socioeconomic inequality, President Khatami’s
relative opening of the social and political space, and reformist failures
to deliver on their promises allowed for the rise of a new social justice–
focused SM in Iranian universities. In this climate, students interested in
social justice could use the more open space on campus to form pub-
lic and legal student publications and affiliated study circles. This open
space gave these student publications and study circles access to a large
body of social justice–themed literature, including translations of English
and some Persian works on Marxism, social democracy, and the history of
the Iranian Left. Part and parcel of this was the increasingly widespread
availability of the Internet, where this literature proliferated on websites,
weblogs, and message boards. In some cases, university students had the
opportunity to speak with former Iranian leftists from the pre-1979 period
living in the diaspora who related their experiences.
This New Left had distinguishing features which allowed to gain sup-
port across university campuses. First, while the New Left accepted the
ideals of social and political liberalization, they made social justice the core
pillar of their platform, something which had been relatively unheard of
since the Cultural Revolution in 1980. Second, the New Left rejected
any foreign intervention, including military strikes or economic sanc-
tions, to resolve Iran’s domestic problems. Emblematic of the New Left
SM were student publications like University and People (Daneshgah va
Mardom), created by UT’s Faculty of Engineering students in 2001 with
a greater cultural–philosophical outlook, and Gavan (Astragalus), a joint
creation of the UT’s Faculty of Law and Political Science and Amir Kabir
University in 2002 with a greater political and economic outlook. These
publications converged on a number of common themes, including social
justice, championing of the welfare state, and a critique of neoliberalism
in Iran and abroad. Such publications saw themselves as building on the
Iranian leftist tradition, albeit with important updates to address the main
issues of the country in that period. Despite some radical tendencies, this
politically translated into supporting Iranian reformism with the aim of
realizing social justice in Iran.
Further political setbacks in elections for the reformists in the early-
to-mid 2000s gave impetus for the formation of a more radical tendency
within the New Left SM. The core publication of this Radical Left was
Khak (Soil), a joint venture of the UT’s Faculty of Economics and the
University of Art in 2003. Compared to University and People and Gavan,
Khak was much more harshly critical of reformism and sought a more radi-
cal alternative. Despite not having any formal ties with opposition political
groups abroad, Khak gradually showed itself to be under the influence of
Mansour Hekmat, a radical Iranian Marxist thinker active from the 1979
Revolution until his death in exile in 2002. Hekmat’s distinguishing char-
acteristic was an almost singular focus on the struggle between labor, or
the workers, and capital, or the bourgeoisie, and a near complete rejection
of Iran’s leftist tradition. Hekmat (1980) relentlessly attacked the “popu-
list socialism” of the traditional left because of its overemphasis on the
struggle between “the people” (Khalgh), an alliance of nationalist forces
including the national bourgeoisie, versus imperialism, including the com-
prador bourgeoisie and imperial states. Hekmat accused the traditional left
250 R. SAFSHEKAN
of being accomplices to the national bourgeoisie, which he saw as being

among the primary enemies of the workers.
The Radical Left thus distinguished itself within the New Left in at
least three important ways. First, it completely rejected Iran’s traditional
Left and its ideological beacons, including the Soviet Union and People’s
Republic of China. Second, the Radical Left rejected the reformist-oriented
SM and was unwilling to compromise with the Islamic Republic’s factions
altogether, which it saw as representing different factions of the national
bourgeoisie. Finally, it placed its main emphasis on the struggle between
labor and capital, meaning the working class and progressive allies such
as the women’s movement became the focus of its activism off campus
rather than cooperation with state factions. The Radical Left was success-
ful in spreading its ideas and influence across Iranian universities in major
urban areas, in some cases even infiltrating official university organizations
such as ISA. Moreover, it managed to create alliances outside universities,
including certain important labor unions such as the Tehran Bus Drivers
Union and some key NGOs active in the Women’s Movement. Over time,
Radical Left groups formed a nationwide network at a number of uni-
versities in 2006, calling itself Freedom and Equality Seeking Students
(Daneshjuyan-e Azadikhah va Barabaritalab, or DAB). This network not
only produced diverse leftist publications, but was also able to hold large
on-campus events and demonstrations, including commemorations of the
National Student Day (16 Azar), Labor Day (1 May), and International
Women’s Day (8 March).
By 2007, the DAB became dominant within the New Left, being
active and influential on university campuses nationwide. Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad’s administration, however, was determined to close the social
and political space and as a result took several measures to significantly
increase the pressure on university students. These measures included:
(a) introducing a “star-system” to target political students and impede
their academic advancement (see ICHRI 2010); (b) increasing gender
segregation, including proscribing separate study materials and subjects
for men and women; and (c) announcing what can be labeled a Second
Cultural Revolution for Islamizing the curriculum and purging dissident
students and professors. DAB, while successful in occupying increasingly
greater amounts of university space with its nationwide network consisting
of around 40 members, also found it hard to operate in the hostile new
environment. Its decisive defeat as an active movement came when more
than 30 of its members were arrested by security forces following a major

demonstration commemorating National Student Day on 4 December
2007, with around 500 students in attendance at the UT event alone.
This marked the DAB’s last public stand on a large scale. Most of the
arrested students were subject to solitary confinement and interrogations
for at least one month and released only after large bail payments, plac-
ing significant financial pressure on their families. Although a few of these
students were acquitted following their final trials, the majority were sen-
tenced to one to four years in prison or suspended sentences. In 2008,
struggles for recreating the New Left took place, the most significant of
which included Socialist Students of Iranian Universities (Daneshjuyan-e
Sosialist-e Daneshgahha-ye Iran). The project was ultimately unsuccessful
because of the Ahmadinejad administration’s repression as well as differ-
ences among leftist student activists who disagreed on both the reasons for
their defeat and the correct way forward.
In 2009, student political activism experienced something of a revival
when the campaign of Mir-Hossein Mousavi, with its relatively strong
social justice theme, gained traction on campuses. The reelection of
Ahmadinejad in the 2009 presidential elections came as a shock, and alle-
gations of electoral fraud were enough to mobilize millions of people in
the Green Movement. The latter movement was quite successful in break-
ing the securitized atmosphere of universities as well as keeping the goal of
social justice somewhat alive on the SM’s agenda. With the gradual decline
of the Green Movement following the repression by security forces, how-
ever, the social justice ideals championed by Mousavi never had a chance
to be fully absorbed and practiced by the SM. In the securitized post-
2009 atmosphere a new social justice-driven project emerged, named the
“Parallel Academy” (Academy-e Movazi) and largely based out of the UT’s
Faculty of Social Sciences, with a focus on translating, publishing, and
lecturing on the literature of critical theory in universities. The Parallel
Academy was more intellectual, focusing on academic and theoretical
issues, and less action oriented, largely setting aside the type of social and
political activism exhibited by the New Left. Although this appears to
continue existing in study groups off campus, the Parallel Academy ceased
official activities on campus in 2011. Student social justice activism has
been in near limbo ever since.
252 R. SAFSHEKAN
Conclusion
This chapter tried to show the cycles of rise and fall of social justice activ-
ism during the 80-year history of SM. During the Pahlavi era, the social
inequalities resulted from government’s exclusionary political and eco-
nomic policies alongside the then popular socialist ideas made the struggle
for social justice the SM’s top priority. After the 1979 revolution, however,
social justice gradually became marginalized in the SM’s agenda as a result
of the Cultural Revolution, Iran–Iraq War, and triumph of the neoliberal-
ism over Iranian higher education system. A new wave of struggle for social
justice was manifested in a new leftist SM in the early 2000s that ultimately
could not survive the Ahmadinejad administration’s hostile and suppressive
policies toward the universities. Arguably, this history has important theo-
retical and practical insights for a future Iranian SM with social justice as its
top priority. The last part highlights a set of these insights.
First, the history of SM in Iran shows that social justice activism on cam-
puses has largely been under the influence of different interpretations of
orthodox Marxism as represented by leftist organizations. Social democ-
racy, among the most powerful and coherent theoretical frameworks for
social justice activism, have rarely been utilized by the Iranian SM. Since
orthodox Marxist theories have often not been fully successful in advanc-
ing the SM’s agenda of social justice, the future SM would do well to turn
to a social democratic theoretical framework.
Second, the theoretical frameworks adopted by the SM have been bor-
rowed from abroad, often with little or no effort to adapt them to the local
context. The history of Iranian social movements show that ignoring the
unique aspects of the Iranian cultural and political traditions can impede
the progress of the social justice agenda. In this sense, a future social jus-
tice discourse must synthesize foreign theories with ideas emerging from
Iran’s domestic context and traditions.
Third, student activism has historically been linked to political currents
outside the university and followed their demands, ignoring the students
demands related to education and living conditions. Not surprisingly,
when students do not witness any improvements in their day-to-day life,
they are very likely to leave the ranks of the SM. Addressing issues related
to student life would help absorb larger number of students to the move-
ment, giving it a very strong backbone suitable for political struggle both
inside and outside of the university.
Fourth, the experiences of the Reformist and New Left SMs have
shown that either absolute dependence on or complete isolation from
state political factions can damage the successful pursuit of student causes.
In order to advance its social justice agenda, the SM needs to have a more
nuanced and balanced approach toward elite politics. While attempting
to mobilize its base at the university level, the SM would better advance
its agenda by making well thought-out alliances with the state’s more
progressive factions.
Fifth, while social justice activism of the SM has historically advocated
an alliance of social movements, in practice it has largely failed to establish
an organic relationship with other progressive social movements. In fact,
the SM has regrettably often moved in the opposite direction, putting
much energy and effort in bickering with other social movements over
theoretical and practical disagreements. The SM must realize that after its
own base inside universities, other social movements constitute its most
potent source of power. The destinies of progressive social movements are
deeply intertwined, and they will stand or fall together.
By reflecting critically on its history and incorporating the above insights
into its theory and practice, a social justice-driven SM of the future will
hopefully be more successful than its predecessors.
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Daneshgah-e Tehran (The University of Tehran’s Faculty of Engineering). Lowh
14: 30–52.
Soroush, Abdul-Karim. 1999. Goftogu-ye Mehrak Kamali ba Abdul-Karim
Soroush: Akharash ham Nadanestand Manzalgah-e Maqsud Kojast (Mehrak
Kamali’s Interview with Mohammad Maleki: Right to the End They Could
Not Find Where They Were Meant to Be Going.). Lowh 6: 34–44.
Vahabzadeh, Peyman. 2010. A Guerrilla Odyssey: Modernization, Secularism,
Democracy, and the Fadai Period of National Liberation in Iran, 1971–1979.
Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.
Yazdanfam, Mahmoud. 2004. Hamaseh-ye Howeizeh va Ta’sir an bar Ravand-e
Jang (The Epic of Howeizeh and Its Impact on the War Process). Negin-e Iran
1(3): 85–95.
CHAPTER 15
The Left’s Contribution to Social Justice

in Iran: A Brief Historical Overview
Afshin Matin-asgari
Applying a global social justice frame to modern Iranian history, this

chapter focuses on constitutionalism as a form of governmentality based
on social contract and responsive to social justice demands. More spe-
cifically, this chapter will argue that within modern Iran’s constitutional
tradition, the most expansive and effective social justice projects have
been proposed by leftist movements, that is, primarily socialists and com-
munists, whose agenda has been borrowed and partially implemented by
nationalist and Islamist movements and regimes.
Defining Social Justice

Despite its relative novelty, the concept of social justice has a contested
trajectory of meanings. Since the 1970s, a body of work by American
philosopher John Rawls has been central to English-language scholarly
debates on social justice. Broadly, Rawls places social justice within the
liberal tradition of political philosophy, basing it on social contract theo-
ries of government. He defines justice as “fairness” in the functioning of
an ideal-type political system called “property-owning democracy.” Such
a system could entail social and economic inequality, but, he argues, it
A. Matin-asgari (*)
Departement of History, California State University, Los Angeles, CA, USA

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-44227-3_15
256 A. MATIN-ASGARI
must allow for their “fair” regulation in favor of those in less-advantaged

social positions. In practice, Rawls’ model of social justice corresponds to
mid-twentieth-century forms of the liberal democratic or social demo-
cratic welfare state (Rawls 1993, 1999, 2001). Since the 1980s, neolib-
eral and libertarian ideologies have challenged the Rawlsian model, while
globally the gap between small property-owning minorities and large dis-
advantaged majorities has widened. Therefore, in a Rawlsian sense, the
aggregate magnitude of social “fairness,” or social justice, has significantly
diminished at both national and international levels. Meanwhile, by early
twenty-first century, social and/or socialist demands for justice once again
are gaining relevance in increasingly globalized conditions (Pogge 1989,
2004; Miller 1989). Contemporary global understandings of social jus-
tice are found in the discourse of the United Nations, for example, in
documents such as the publications of the International Forum for Social
Development. This document provides a succinct history of the concept
of social justice, noting its close linkage to nineteenth- and twentieth-
century socialist movements and ideologies:
The concept first surfaced in Western thought and political language in the
wake of the industrial revolution and the parallel development of the social-
ist doctrine … It was born as a revolutionary slogan embodying the ideals
of progress and fraternity. Following the revolutions that shook Europe in
the mid-1800, social justice became a rallying cry for progressive thinkers
and social activists … By the mid-twentieth century, the concept of social
justice had become central to the ideologies and programs of virtually all
the Leftist and centrist political parties around the world, and few dared to
oppose it directly. Social Justice represented the essence and the raison d’être
of the social democrat doctrine and Leftist mark in the decades following
the Second World War. (The International Forum for Social Development
2006: 11–12)
As noted above, modern notions of social justice are predicated upon uni-
versal understandings of the term “social.” Thus, while practical appli-
cations of social justice take place within nation-states, “there is clearly
a universal dimension to social justice, with humanity as the common
factor” (The International Forum for Social Development 2006: 12).
Put differently, the universality of social justice rests on “the idea that
all developments relating to justice occur in society, whether at the local,
national, or global level, and by the related desire to restore the com-
prehensive, overarching concept of the term ‘social’” (The International
THE LEFT’S CONTRIBUTION TO SOCIAL JUSTICE IN IRAN... 257
Forum for Social Development 2006: 3). Moreover, recognizing the uni-
versality of concepts such as “social” and “justice” is in line with recent
non-Eurocentric trends in world history and international relations. In
other words, as international relations theorist Kamran Matin argues, all
particular “social” and/or “national” formation are products of ongo-
ing historical interactions with their global environment (Matin 2013;
Hunt 2014). In this chapter, social justice refers to a constellation of
ideas and movements that challenge hierarchies of class, gender, ethnicity,
and race at both national and international levels. These universal social
justice norms are not fixed or given, but constantly reconstructed and
reconfigured on a global scale. Such norms include the discourse and
practices of government by consent and contract, socialism, anarchism,
feminism, environmentalism, labor rights, human rights, international law,
and transnational treaties and obligations (Bookchin 1982; Klein 2014).
Finally, the chapter’s focus on the Iranian Left conforms to world history
paradigms whereby socialists, social democrats, and communists have led
international social justice movements.
Premodern to Modern Notions of Society

and Justice: Constitutionalism and Social
Democracy
Within an Iranian historical context, it is clear that Persian language
equivalents of the terms “justice” and “society” are historical construc-
tions whose meaning have changed over time. The originally Arabic terms
adalat (justice) and ejetama‘ (society) can be found in medieval Persian
religious, political and philosophical tracts, used in varied and different
contexts, but never joined together in constructions such as adalat-e
ejtema‘i, or “social justice.” Older Persian meanings of ejtema‘ denote
“groups” or “associations” composed of similar individual members, a
meaning somewhat close to the term’s modern usage. However, adalat
is a more complex abstract noun, involving multiple layers of normative
meaning. For example, adl or adalat, meaning “justice,” is among God’s
defining attributes in Shi‘i theology, as well as the distinguishing quality of
proper kingship in pre-Islamic Iranian and Islamic traditions of monarchy.
In both cases, such premodern notions of justice presuppose metaphysical
and social hierarchy rather than equality. In other words, neither Allah nor
“just” shahs or sultans were expected to treat Muslims and nonbelievers,
258 A. MATIN-ASGARI
men and women, and slaves and their owners, equally (Skjaervo 2012;
Tusi 1964; Yavari 2014). Such nonegalitarian notions of justice of course
were not peculiar to Iran or Islam, but prevailed in premodern Christian
Europe and throughout the world (Crone 2002).
Modern Iran followed global patterns whereby the terms “social”
and “national” were linked together, just as “society” was equated with
the “nation.” Thus, the idea of Iran as a modern “society,” or “nation,”
was a modernist project, whose actualization began with the 1906–1911
Constitutional Revolution. As early twentieth-century nationalist histori-
ans and statesmen, such as Ahmad Kasravi and Mohammad-Ali Forughi,
had noted, a unitary Iranian “nation” (tudeh/mellat Iran) was an “imag-
ined community” that was to be created and actualized. And as the first
generation of Iranian nationalists agreed, the creation of a modern Iranian
nation or society could be accomplished only by a strong modernizing
state (Matin-asgari 2012a). The formation of the Iranian nation-state fol-
lowed a universal “template” that first had appeared in the French and
American, including Latin American, national revolutions. In the course
of the twentieth century, this nation-state model became truly global, hav-
ing spread to postcolonial Asia and Africa (Anderson 1991). However,
modern national cultures are not facsimiles of a single modernist universal
script, but exhibit varied features due to two main reasons. First, con-
ceptions of global modernity inevitably are conflicted and fraught with
internal tension and antinomies. Second, individual national cultures are
invariably “original” because they each blend distinct premodern histori-
cal and cultural traditions with equally shifting and incongruent global
influences (Matin 2013; Matin-asgari 2009).
Ultimately, while modern nations claim autonomous self-sustaining
historical trajectories, they are shaped and transformed through their
interactions with international political and economic structures. Thus,
as with its formation as a nation, Iran’s modern social justice project was
shaped largely by global and international patterns and agendas. This was
true of Iran’s constitutional movement, the broad political frame within
which modern notions of social justice were conceived and pursued. The
constitutional movement originated in the Qajar polity’s need for “self-
strengthening” in the wake of its defeats by British and Russian imperial
encroachments. But the question of social justice surfaced only when the
constitutional movement became revolutionary in 1910, following a civil
war that restored the new constitutional regime through popular mobi-
lization. At that point, the global agenda of social justice was introduced
into Iran by the Democrat Party, whose political program was directly
borrowed from European Social Democracy. The Democrat Party’s pro-
gram called for universal suffrage, equal citizenship rights regardless of
gender and religion, the separation of religion and politics, freedoms of
expression, the press and associations, universal conscription, income tax,
land reform, labor protection laws, compulsory public education, and
the nationalization of forests, pastures and mines (Bahar 1978: 8–10;
Ettehadieh 2001: 309–347). Often mislabeled “bourgeois” or “liberal”
democratic, this was in fact an agenda advanced globally by the Left,
consisting of socialists and anarchists, and most effectively by European
Marxist parties united in the Second International and led by Germany’s
Social Democratic Party (Eley 2002: 4–6).
A key intellectual innovation of Iran’s Democrat Party was its joining
together the notions of “social/society” to “democracy,” thus advocating
an ideal social order that was “just” because it was both democratic and
egalitarian. Groundbreaking in terms of both ideology and political orga-
nization, Democrats became the prototype of twentieth-century Iran’s
political parties, whether leftist or rightist, secular or Islamic (Taqizadeh
1959: 116–117). Thus, Iran’s first conservative political party copied the
Democrat Party’s name, organizational form, nomenclature, and even
parts of its program. Calling themselves Social Moderates (Ejtema‘iyun
E‘tedaliyun), the conservatives adopted the socialist label (ejtema‘iyun),
claiming to embrace a “moderate” version of the Democrats’ social jus-
tice agenda. Their Party’s stated objective was to contain the revolution’s
radicalization by “moderating” its social justice demands in accordance
with Islamic precepts on the sanctity of property, social rank, and gender
hierarchy (Ettehadieh 2001: 346–347).
As with its vision and political agenda, Iranian social democracy was
cosmopolitan and internationalist in terms of membership. In addition to
Iranians, the party included significant contingents of Armenians and Azeris
who had come from the Caucasus to fight Iranian counter-revolution.
Theses trans-Caucasian revolutionaries were exemplified by leaders like
Mohammad Amin Rasulzadeh, an Azeri intellectual from Baku, who was
the Constitutional era’s most advanced theorist. Rasulzadeh edited and
wrote for Iran-e no, organ of the Democrat Party and the country’s lead-
ing constitutionalist periodical (Afary 1996: 81–82). Yet, the revolution’s
potential for advancing a social justice agenda was resisted strongly by
conservative factions and soon thwarted when Russian armies invaded and
occupied northern Iran in 1911. This counter-revolutionary intervention,
260 A. MATIN-ASGARI
followed by British and Ottoman occupation of the rest of Iran during

WWI, suspended both Iranian sovereignty and constitutional government.
From Social Justice and Constitutionalism

to Authoritarian Nationalism: The 1920s
The 1911–1921 decade in Iran was defined by war, famine, foreign occu-
pation, and a suspended revolution. It was precisely during this chaotic
and destructive decade that Iranian nationalism, with its prioritization of
nation-building over constitutional government and social justice, took
shape. Nationalist historiography depicts 1911–1921 as a “catastrophic”
decade, when revolutionary ideals, as well as Iran’s very nationhood, were
lost, the latter to be restored by a centralizing Pahlavi state in the 1920s.
In fact, the idea of 1921 Iran being in “catastrophic” conditions origi-
nated with the British instigators of the military coup that launched Reza
Khan’s political career (Cronin 2010: 4–6; Malihi et al. 2016). This per-
spective was shared by intellectual statesmen, like Hassan Taqizadeh and
Mohammad-Ali Forughi, and even by an independent-minded historian
like Ahmad Kasravi, to justify their backing of Reza Khan’s rise to power.
But the rise of the Pahlavi state appears very different from a social justice,
rather than nationalist, perspective. To begin, the British-backed 1921
coup occurred when the catastrophic conditions of WWI had passed and
Iran’s independence was accepted by a tacit Anglo-Soviet agreement. The
British had given up their 1919 agenda for turning Iran into a “protector-
ate,” while the Soviets officially endorsed Iranian sovereignty in a treaty
signed in 1921 (Matin-asgari 2012). Thus, from a social justice perspec-
tive, the real challenge in 1920s Iran was not to secure national indepen-
dence but to maintain the constitutional revolution’s potential promise of
social justice.
It was precisely at this decisive conjuncture that the nationalist elite
gave up the pursuit of social justice and constitutional government, pri-
oritizing instead the project of authoritarian nation-state building by a
political regime that was essentially a military dictatorship. Reza Shah’s
dictatorship was the product of this authoritarian nationalist consensus,
not its cause. The intellectual elite’s retreat from constitutionalism and
social justice can be traced in the pages of the flagship nationalist journal
Kaveh. Published in Berlin between 1915 and 1922, Kaveh had begun as
a social democratic constitutionalist periodical but ended up advocating
“benevolent despotism.” By 1921, Kaveh no longer was concerned with
empowering ordinary citizens or upholding the interests of urban and

rural lower classes. Instead, it proposed a nationalist agenda to be pursued
by “the Iranian people themselves,” without recourse to constitutional
government, national legislation or parliament (Kaveh 1921a: 2–3; Matin-
asgari 2014). This new political vision was clearly stated in one of Kaveh’s
last issues:
We believe only three options exist for ruling Iran. First, benevolent despo-
tism, prompting progress and civilization, in other words what Europeans
call “enlightened despotism,” … Second, malevolent despotism, which most
despotic governments, with a few exceptions, actually are. Third, flawed and
imperfect constitutionalism. A fourth option, a benevolent perfect constitu-
tionalism, is undoubtedly preferable to all of the above. But that is possible
only in progressive countries and not in Iran, and hence irrelevant to our
discussion. (Kaveh 1921b: 3)
According to this article, the best option for Iran was “a patriotic, civi-
lized, and domineering despot,” a choice that soon presented itself in the
person of Reza Khan. As Kaveh had admitted, other options, involving
social justice and subaltern empowerment, were possible through com-
mitment to Iran’s “flawed and imperfect constitutionalism.” But Kaveh
and Iranian nationalist circles in Berlin and Tehran no longer prioritized
constitutionalism and social justice. The nationalist elite now preferred
a hyper-centralized government forcibly imposing top-down moderniza-
tion, cultural uniformity, and political unanimity. These demands were
explicitly stated in the 1921 program of Young Iran, an “association,” as
opposed to a political party, formed by European-educated intellectuals:
Establishing a secular government in Iran and fully secularizing the legal

system; Disenfranchising illiterate citizens; Ending capitulations and revising
foreign trade agreements; Progressive taxation; Adopting the better parts of
European civilization; Sending male and female students to Europe; Paying
special attention to education, including compulsory elementary education,
secondary and technical-industrial education, and changing the Persian
alphabet; Removing all barriers to women’s liberation; and constructing
railroads, museums, libraries and theatres. (Meskub 1994: 30)
The above program in fact reversed the social justice gains of the
Constitutional era by calling for lower class disenfranchisement, drop-
ping commitment to the freedom of political parties and the press, as
262 A. MATIN-ASGARI
well as to land reform and labor protection, and turning “women’s lib-
eration” into an empty slogan devoid of reference to equal rights. Soon
after the formation of Young Iran, its leaders met with war minister Reza
Khan who promised to implement their program (Meskub 1994: 37–38).
Consolidating power as the head of the new Pahlavi dynasty, Reza Shah by
the 1930s ruled in flagrant violation of modern norms in social, political,
or economic justice. The physical and cultural infrastructure of a modern
state were laid out via improvements in transportation and communica-
tion, while a rudimentary system of public education imposed linguistic
and ideological conformity. Constitutional government became a façade
for a modernizing dictatorship, with the Majles being dominated by a
landlord ruling class, whom Reza Shah had joined via massive expropria-
tion of landed estates. The utter lack of justice was manifest in Reza Shah’s
literally murderous treatment not only of political dissidents but also the
pillars of his own dictatorship including statesmen like Ali-Akbar Davar,
the architect of Iran’s modern justice system (Cronin 2010).
Mid-Century Marxist Hegemony in Constitutional

Government and Social Justice
Once again demonstrating the impact of global context, Iran’s modern
social justice agenda was revived during the Second World War, when
Allied occupation overthrew Reza Shah, allowing semi-democratic con-
stitutional government to function from 1941 to 1953. In these crucial
dozen years, the Marxist Left revived the social justice legacy of the con-
stitutional era by advancing a comprehensive reform program appealing
to urban and rural middle and lower classes. Thus, the Marxist Tudeh
(Masses) Party offered a roster of social reforms benefiting “workers, peas-
ants and women” as well as “middle class” intellectuals, artisans, small
landowners, and low-ranking government employees. It demanded the
eight-hour day, disability insurance, pensions, and subsidized housing for
workers; the redistribution of state and crown lands to peasants; the pur-
chase of large private estates by the government and their resale to landless
peasants on easy terms; establishing rural schools and health clinics; equal
political rights and equal pay for women; government support of poor
mothers and children; and job security, higher pay, and lower taxes for
salaried government employees (Abrahamian 1982: 284). A major con-
tribution to the cause of social justice was the Tudeh Party’s systematic
advocacy of women’s full and equal citizenship rights. This demand was
articulated through the party-affiliated Women’s Organization (Tashkilat-e
Zanan) and the Iranian Women’s Party (Hezb-e Zanan-e Iran), both of
which were launched in 1943. It also appeared in the Tudeh Party’s 1944
program, which asked for women’s equal rights to vote for and be elected
in legislature, as well as their equal rights in marriage laws (Matin and
Mohajer 2015: 188–191).
Moreover, Marxists virtually established the meaning of trade union
activism in Iran. Within a few years, the Tudeh-affiliated Central Council
of Federated Unions of Iranian Workers and Toilers was leading several
hundred thousand working men and women, from oil workers to car-
pet weavers, in countrywide strikes and political action aimed at the bet-
terment of their lives (Abrahamian 1982: 299–303). By the mid-1940s,
British and American diplomats saw the Tudeh Party as “the only coher-
ent political force” and “the only large, well organized, and functioning
political machine” in Iran (Abrahamian 1982: 300). The Party’s fol-
lowing and political impact continued to grow beyond the 1945–1946
Azerbaijan autonomy crisis, its subsequent 1948 internal party split, and
even under conditions of semi-legality after the party was implicated in the
1949 attempted assassination of the Shah (Abrahamian 1982: 303, 321).
The Left’s hegemony in setting mid-twentieth-century Iran’s social
justice agenda was predicated on its predominance in the field of cul-
tural production, with Tudeh Party members and sympathizers leading
among university professors and students, elementary and secondary
school teachers, journalists, writers, translators, artists, and lower rank-
ing government employees. The Left also dominated a translation move-
ment which, prior to the age of cinema and television, shaped both elite
and popular perceptions of a just social order on a global scale. Thus,
the worldview of mid-century educated Iranians was literally defined by
leftist or socially conscious writers such as Jack London, Anatole France,
Mark Twain, Gustav Flaubert, Charles Dickens, Romain Rolland, Ignazio
Silone, Pearl Buck, Nikos Kazantzakis, John Steinbeck, Maxim Gorky,
Berthold Brecht, Anthon Chekhov, Leo Tolstoy, Nikolay Chernyshevsky,
Mikhail Sholokhov, Émile Zola, Jean-Paul Sartre, André Gide, Maurice
Maeterlinck, Bernard Shaw, Ernest Hemingway, and William Faulkner
(Abedini 1987: 117–124; Qazi 1994). Marxist hegemony in defining a
just national and international order is recorded in numerous contem-
porary testimonies such as the following by essayist and literary critic
Shahrokh Mesukb:
264 A. MATIN-ASGARI
In those years, the Tudeh Party was a fertile ground of aspirations to intel-
lectuals and toilers of our long-suffering country, who, aghast with social
oppression, dedicated their lives to defeating destiny and remaking the
world and its people … On this path, we to found our place in the universal
progressive movement of the Left … a new self-chosen identity, empower-
ing the oppressed and making the subjugated stronger than their rulers.
(Meskub 1992: 23–24)
Meskub notes how Marxism responded even to its followers’ metaphysi-

cal and religious yearnings by providing a “powerful promise of worldly
resurrection and earthly paradise, becoming a panacea to social ills …”
(Meskub 1992: 24). Such messianic aspects of Marxism, in addition
to its secular political appeal, gave impetus to the emergence of Iran’s
Marxist-inflected Islamic social justice project. Thus, the Islamic Left
of the 1960s–1970s built on foundations laid by the God-worshipping
Socialists (Nehzat-e Khodaparastan-e Sosiyalist) who originated Iran’s
version of “Islamic socialism” during the early 1950s in response to the
Tudeh Party’s powerful ideological challenge. Rejecting traditional and
clerical Shi‘ism, God-worshipping Socialists redefined Islam as a perfect
ethical, political and socioeconomic system, a genuine “scientific social-
ism” first proposed by the Prophet Mohammad. Possibly influenced by
Khalil Maleki’s anti-Stalinist Marxism, God-worshipping Socialists pro-
jected the above schema globally, advocating a “median bloc” of countries
standing between capitalist and communist blocs. Their vision of Islam,
as a “third path” between communism and capitalism, then reappeared in
the 1960s–1970s intellectual production of thinkers like Ali Shari‘ati and
the Organization of the Iranian Peoples Mojahedin. Shari‘ati was 1970s
Iran’s most influential dissident Muslim intellectual, whose anticlerical
Marxist-inflected interpretation of Shi‘ism overlapped with the Mojahedin
Organization’s advocacy and practice of guerrilla armed struggle as the
proper path toward establishing social justice in an Islamic classless society
(Rahnama 1998: 31–32; Nekuruh 1997).
This leads to the ironic conclusion that a communist organization was
mid-twentieth-century Iran’s foremost proponents of social justice, as well
the most successful political party in a semi-democratic constitutional system.
Though Stalinist, the Tudeh Party quickly became adept at spreading its
political impact via parliamentary methods, with little preparation for alter-
native revolutionary or insurrectionary paths to power. In fact, the party’s
strict adherence to legal and peaceful struggle became a fatal weakness when
it failed to respond to the US-sponsored 1953 military coup. Nevertheless,

the Tudeh Party’s social justice agenda survived to resonate in the Pahlavi
era’s most important social and economic reform project, the 1960s Shah-
People White Revolution, whose main planks, that is, land reform, women’s
franchise, and attention to labor, were borrowed directly from the Marxist
Left. Moreover, during the 1960s–1970s, leftist intellectual hegemony con-
tinued within the radical opposition, being manifest also in the fact that the
regime’s key political personnel included a large number of renegade com-
munists and leftists (Matin-asgari 2007).
The above narration is not meant as uncritical endorsement of the
Iranian Left’s social justice agenda, particularly when it comes to actual
subaltern empowerment. The Left’s dominant Stalinist ideology was
indeed elitist and antidemocratic, but not all leftist were Stalinists, while
during the 1960s–1970s, even the Tudeh Party had aligned itself with
the liberal opposition’s call for the restoration of constitutional govern-
ment (Matin-asgari 2002: 67; Behrooz 1999: 77–82). On the other hand,
it is debatable whether leftist campaigns, such as the 1970s Marxist and
Islamist guerrilla armed struggle, advanced the cause of social justice or
democratization (Vahabzadeh 2010). Ultimately, and like most of its
global cohorts, Iran’s radical Left failed to see that popular revolutions
might not advance the cause of social justice. This particular lack of fore-
sight of course cost the Iranian Left dearly, leading to the destruction of
an entire generation of secular and Muslim leftists by the Islamic Republic.
Concluding Remarks and Notes on the Future

of Social Justice in Iran
To conclude, it seems appropriate to pick up the broken thread of Iran’s

social justice project by returning to the Left’s historic moment of defeat
in the early 1980s. Despite its exaggerated self-image, the postrevolution-
ary Left had a small social base. For example, in the Left’s only instance
of participation in national elections, Fadai candidates received about ten
percent of the vote in the parliamentary elections of 1980 (Vahabzadeh
2010: 67). Given the postrevolutionary Left’s limited social base, as
well as the Islamic Republic’s determined enmity, the prospect of the
Left coming to power, or even power-sharing, was unrealistic. A more
pragmatic course was for the Left to become the voice of social justice,
peacefully upholding and defending the nation’s democratic rights and
266 A. MATIN-ASGARI
freedoms. It is often forgotten that a faction of the Left actually pursued

this path, until it too was destroyed by the Islamic Republic. In retro-
spect, this particular faction arguably represents the Left’s most significant
postrevolutionary contribution, while also pointing to a possible path for
the Left’s future. Here, I have in mind the experience of the Democratic
National Front (Jebheh-ye Demokratik-e Melli), a political coalition led
by former Marxist political prisoner Shokrollah Paknezhad and the small
group of Left Unity (Ettehad-e Chap), composed mostly of the leaders of
the 1960s–1970s student opposition abroad. The Democratic National
Front proposed a grand coalition joining together the entire Left with the
National Front and all other liberal secular and religious groups and orga-
nizations. Significantly, this grand coalition included Kurdish and Azeri
(Azerbaijani) political parties that wielded considerable popular support
among Iran’s repressed ethnic or national minorities. The 1979 collapse of
central state authority had allowed autonomy-seeking ethnic and religious
tendencies (particularly in Kurdistan and Azerbaijan) to practice a de facto
form of federalist governmentality. Together these movements embodied
a fundamental social justice challenge, posing the question of whether
a revolutionary Iranian nation-state could hold together democratically.
A positive response meant postrevolutionary power-sharing in autono-
mous regions and throughout the country with multiple political parties,
including leftist and autonomous Kurdish and Azeri parties. Rejecting this
option, the revised draft constitution of the Islamic Republic, based on
Velayat-e Faqih (Guardianship of the Jurist) invested ultimate state power
in the hands of a nonelected clerical elite. But there was widespread oppo-
sition to this proposed constitution, with parts of Iran, like Kurdistan,
in armed rebellion against it. In fact, the new constitution may not have
passed in a free referendum. However, the Islamic Republic managed to
impose its Constitution in the midst of extraordinary conditions caused by
its hostage-taking at the U.S. embassy. The hostage crisis then led to a real
threat to the regime’s existence as it precipitated a catastrophic war with
Iraq. These partially self-imposed “existential crises” defined the charac-
ter of the postrevolutionary regime, which soon crushed all opposition
in a bloody reign of terror. Meanwhile, as was done under the Shah, the
Islamic Republic borrowed and implemented some of the Left’s social and
populist agenda, while totally crushing the Left’s democratizing and social
empowerment project.
Close to four decades later, the Islamic Republic is a statist crony capital-
ist regime, whose young and restless population is burdened by widening
social inequality, while suffering political, cultural, and gender repression.

Internationally, the regime is negotiating terms of behavior dictated by
global powers, abandoning decades of enormously costly “anti-imperi-
alist” posturing. But this is also a crucial moment of potential systemic
change domestically for a regime whose self-definition, including its ratio-
nalization of political repression and economic failure, hinges on a sup-
posed defiance of the international order. In such conditions, social justice
agendas are likely to once again find urgency and relevance. Such agendas
might reconnect selectively to leftist traditions of intellectual and political
flexibility, defining social justice as democratization via challenging hier-
archies of class, ethnicity, and gender, and through the empowerment of
multiple social agents (Vahabzadeh 2010: 226–243). An existing model
for this political orientation is the People’s Democratic Party (Halkların
Demokratik Partisi, HDP), a leftist political organization active in Turkey
since 2012. Similar to Greece’s SYRIZA and Spain’s Podemos parties, the
HDP proposes a democratic socialist alternative, while opposing religious,
gender, racial, and ethnic inequality. It also is strongly environmentalist
and opposed to nuclear power. While participating in parliamentary poli-
tics, the HDP does not seek to form a government but to transform soci-
ety through grassroots empowerment.
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CHAPTER 16
Iran: Multiple Sources of a Grassroots Social

Democracy?
Mojtaba Mahdavi
Alternative discourses to the (neo)liberal agenda, above all the social jus-
tice alternative, are often marginalized and demoralized; we are told to tai-
lor our imagination to what is available/possible and to think of change in
the realm of the hegemonic discourse or within the margins of the status
quo. The politico-intellectual crises in orthodox Marxism and the preva-
lence of the neoliberal discourse have dashed some hopes for the rise and
realization of social democracy in Iran. This chapter is an attempt to chal-
lenge this ahistorical position. It suggests that the quest for social justice
and social democracy is neither new nor restricted to a particular socio-
intellectual trend in modern Iran. It is as old as the 1906 Constitutional
Revolution, and as broad as secular and religious socialists of Muslim,
Marxist, and nationalist origins. The idea of a grassroots social democracy
in Iran holds deep and diverse socio-intellectual roots.
More specifically, in this chapter, I will first problematize the limits of
liberal paradigm and highlight the merits of the twin pillars of a grass-
roots social democracy: social justice and societal empowerment. In the
second part, I will shed light on Iran’s deep and diverse local tradition
of social democracy. The chapter briefly demonstrates the contribution
of intellectual discourses of Mohammad Nakhshab (1923–1970), Khalil
M. Mahdavi (*)

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-44227-3_16
272 M. MAHDAVI
Maleki (1903–1969), and Ali Shari‘ati (1933–1977) to a social approach

to democracy. The conclusion suggests that contemporary Iran can learn
from the global and local experience/tradition of egalitarian/social
democracy. It also sheds light on the possibility of a discourse building
toward a grassroots social democracy in Iran.
Limits of Liberal Paradigm and Merits of Twin

Pillars of Social Democracy
The limits of liberal paradigm of democracy have been extensively exam-
ined in the literature. This include Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s
alternative discourse of radical democracy (1985), Jacques Derrida’s pow-
erful concept of democracy-to-come (2010, 2005) and Jürgen Habermas’s
theory of deliberative democracy (1996), among others. In this section,
I will examine the major limitation of liberal paradigm of democracy/
democratization: the liberal discourse ignores the substance and social
character of democracy. It overlooks the twin pillars of social elements
of democracy, namely social justice and societal empowerment. Social jus-
tice and societal empowerment give substance and a tangible meaning to
the abstract, ahistorical, and often elitist concepts of rights, liberty, and
democracy. They liberate demos from an elitist, state-centric, and, more
importantly, a market-driven democracy. The social pillars of democracy
facilitate a bottom-up, grassroots approach to democratization, help
empower the ordinary people, let the “subaltern speak,” and disarm and
defeat right-wing populist demagogues whose rhetoric of social justice
often misleads the masses.
There is a negative correlation between democratic aspiration and
social inequality. “Poverty can trap societies in its grip” and most often
“breeds dictatorships” (Przeworski et al. 2000: 270–277). Social equality
gives meaning and substance to political democracy; it makes the value
of democratic ideas tangible to the public. By contrast, social inequal-
ity leads to a gradual decline of democratic aspirations in civil society; it
gives rise to populist–authoritarian trends and pushes democratic ideas
and institutions at bay. The “middle class poor” (Bayat 2009) is often the
main victim of neoliberal market economy. However, the abstract liberal
discourse of rights and freedom is not attractive to this class, and they
sometimes turn into the foot soldiers of right-wing populist demagogues
who use social justice in their political platforms. A critical social approach
to democracy/democratization challenges the orthodox class analysis; it
IRAN: MULTIPLE SOURCES OF A GRASSROOTS SOCIAL DEMOCRACY? 273
contest the liberal idea of the myth of the middle class, in which middle
class is perceived as the only major driving force for democracy. Instead,
it highlights the significance of middle-class and the poor for the rise and
realization of democracy.
Furthermore, a meaningful social democracy requires not only an open
and inclusive political society, but also an open and inclusive economic
society (Walzer 1990: 160). Social injustice and (neo)liberal market funda-
mentalism undo democracy. In Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth
Revolution, Wendy Brown argues that “neoliberalism, is a particular form
of reason that configures all aspects of existence in economic terms and
is quietly undoing basic elements of democracy. These elements include
vocabularies and principles of justice, political cultures, habits of citizen-
ship, practices of rule, and above all, democratic imaginaries” (2015a: 17).
More specifically, the catastrophe is simply beyond “degrading democ-
racy” into “plutocracy”; it is “normative economization of political life”
(2015a: 201). The (neo)liberal “reason” produces extreme social inequal-
ity, reduces human agent into a “market actor,” and empowers capital, not
the citizens (Brown 2015b). The liberal reason is asocial. It is extremely
fragile in politics of social justice and is negligent of societal empowerment.
Societal empowerment is about strengthening civil society and establish-
ing democratic procedures based on engagement, dialogue, and delibera-
tion of civil society. In “Three Normative Models of Democracy,” Jürgen
Habermas (1996: 23) introduces a “deliberative” concept of democracy
where politics is about deliberation of civil society and democracy aims
at the “institutionalization of a public use of reason jointly exercised by
autonomous citizens.” In the liberal paradigm, argues Habermas, society
is perceived as a “market-structured network of interactions among pri-
vate persons.” Politics is the function of “pushing private interests against
a government apparatus” (Habermas 1996: 21; emphasis added). Civil
society is subordinated to the state because the state is the “guardian of a
market-society” (Habermas 1996: 26). In deliberative democracy, how-
ever, civil dialogue and deliberation in the public sphere provide a societal
network and a fair and inclusive process of “democratic will formation”
(Habermas 1996: 26).
The liberal paradigm, Habermas (1996: 27) argues, “hinges not on
the democratic self-determination of deliberating citizens but on the legal
institutionalization of an economic society that is supposed to guarantee
an essentially nonpolitical common good by the satisfaction of private pref-
erences.” In the liberal model, “the rule of law is applied to many isolated
private subjects.” In deliberative democracy, however, the “normative
274 M. MAHDAVI
content arises from the very structure of communicative action” (Habermas

1996: 28). It challenges the liberal notion of apolitical private citizen.
In the deliberative model of democracy, “the boundaries between
‘state’ and ‘society’ are respected”; however, “civil society provides the social
basis of autonomous public spheres that remain as distinct from the economic
system as from the [political] administration.” This implies that civil society
“should gain the strength to hold its own against the two other mecha-
nisms of social integration—money and administrative power” (Habermas
1996: 28; emphasis added). Deliberative democracy enables a “de-
centered society” where power “springs from the interactions between
legally institutionalized will-formation and culturally mobilized public”
(Habermas 1996: 28;). Deliberative democracy provides a medium for
a “conscious integration of the legal community” (Habermas 1996: 30;
emphasis added). It works with “the higher-level inter-subjectivity of com-
munication processes that flow through both parliamentary bodies and
the informal networks of the public sphere” (Habermas 1996: 28).
Habermas’s concept of deliberative democracy, in sum, aims “to bring
universalistic principles of justice into the horizon of the specific form of
life of a particular community” (Habermas 1996: 25). In other words,
“the content of political decisions that can be enforced by the state must
be formulated in a language that is accessible to all citizens and it must
be possible to justify them in this language” (Habermas 2006: 9; empha-
sis added). To this end, we need to place civil society in the center by
keeping distance from (neo)liberal elitism and empowering social forces
in their quest for socio-political changes. The elitist conception of politics
has resulted in the institutional weakness of democratic social forces. The
repressive nature of the state has certainly reduced the opportunity for
intellectuals to mobilize the social forces. Equally important, however, is
the formulation of progressive ideas in a language accessible to ordinary
people. This brings us to the significance and relevance of culture, tradi-
tion, and history in quest for social democracy.
If the social approach is central to the success of a sustainable and mean-
ingful democracy, the same approach should be applied to the question
of tradition, culture, and religion. The social approach implies that tradi-
tion/culture is a living phenomenon. Social agents/actors give meaning
to the abstract ideas. Hence, as Asef Bayat (2007) argues, rather than ask-
ing abstract, essentialist, and cliché question of whether the local culture
and/or religion is compatible with democracy, we would need to ask how
ordinary people can make their traditional, cultural, and/or religious values
compatible with democracy? In other words, under what social conditions
can they accomplish such a significant task? How can they participate in
this process? How would they transcend the theological categories of the
religious and the secular into a larger sociological context of daily life? This
social approach acknowledges the power of social agents in Iran’s quest for
a social democracy from within.
Moreover, as Jürgen Habermas (1987) has famously argued, moder-
nity is an “unfinished project.” Some social theories suggest “‘tradition’ is
likewise a perpetually unfinished project—that is how people understand
their traditions and apply them to practical situation” (Anderson et al.
1998; Monshipouri 2003). The notion of an unfinished project of tradi-
tion implies that tradition and change are not mutually exclusive concepts,
and there is a constant and critical dialogue between the local tradition
and a global quest for social justice. A discursive dialogue with culture,
and mining the tradition could show that modern concepts of social jus-
tice and democracy are universal and have native roots in the intellectual
soil of every society. Habermas (2006) even suggests that under certain
conditions “the secular citizens must open their minds,” in order to learn
from “the normative truth content of a religious expression” and enter
into “dialogue” with their fellow religious citizens. Such a dialogue serves
societal empowerment, and thus the success and stability of a grassroots
democracy. A dialogue with people’s traditions and cultures, in sum,
empowers civil society, facilitates active and deliberative engagement, and
provides the most effective path to challenge the status quo. It brings
change from within.
Iran: Multiple Sources of a Grassroots Social

Democracy
Like many other nations, Iranians “are the inheritors and the carries of
three cultures at once.” These triple cultural heritages “are of national,
religious, and Western origins. While steeped in an ancient national cul-
ture, we are also immersed in our religious culture, and we are at the
same time awash in successive waves coming from the Western shores.
Whatever solutions that we decide for our problems must come from
this mixed heritage” (Soroush 2000: 156). In socio-political terms, three
major social forces in modern Iran—nationalists, socialists, and Islamic
276 M. MAHDAVI
forces—represent such a mixed and complex cultural/intellectual heri-

tage. Despite their different origins, these social forces/trends are neither
monolithic nor hold a pure identity. There are elements of Islamic culture
and Western ideas of socialism and liberalism among the Iranian national-
ists; socialists have been exposed to nationalism and Islamic culture; and
Islamic forces have adopted elements of nationalism and Western ideas of
socialism and liberalism. With such a complex and crosscutting identity,
these trends need to have a critical dialogue with each other.
Each of the three socio-intellectual trends in Iran is represented by a
number of thinkers and public intellectuals. In each trend, however, there
is only a handful of original, authentic, and independent thinkers whose
legacy/tradition could still contribute to Iran’s grassroots social democ-
racy: Khalil Maleki (1903–1969) from a nationalist discourse, Mostafa
Sho‘a‘ian (1936–1975) and Bijan Jazani (1937–1975) from a Marxist
tradition, and Mohammad Nakhshab (1923–1970) and Ali Shari‘ati
(1933–1977) from a progressive Islam. In this chapter, however, I will
briefly examine the discourses of Mohammad Nakhshab, Khalil Maleki,
and Ali Shari‘ati.
“To find one’s own way one cannot depend on the words of the mas-
ter,” argues Walter Mignolo, “one has to delink and disobey” (2015:
xxiv). Mohammad Nakhshab, Khalil Maleki, and Ali Shari‘ati disobeyed
and delinked from the dominant discourses of their time: Soviet Marxism,
Pahlavi’s autocratic Western modernism, and orthodox/traditional Islam.
They were original thinkers and exercised an “epistemic disobedience”
(Mignolo 2015). They began to think independently about Iran and the
world. They dared to discover and experienced failure and success in their
intellectual journeys. They challenged the “gatekeepers and regulators of
thought,” those who claimed the monopoly over the “word of God” or
the “word of Reason” (Mignolo 2015: xv). They “delinked” from the
establishment and that is why we may dare to (re-)discover their approach.
Mohammad Nakhshab (1923–1970): A Socialist Theist

In the 1940s, socialism made a profound impact on young Muslim activ-
ists. Mohammad Mekanik (known as Mohammad Nakhshab) and Jalal
ed-Din Ashtiyani were founding fathers of the Socialist Theists Movement
(Nehzat-e Khodaparastan-e Sosiyalist) in 1944 (Hunter 2014: 72; Taghavi
2005: 13–15). The Socialist Theists synthesized “Islamic spirituality and
socialist ideas and thus developed what they called a ‘middle school of
thought’ between idealism and materialism; they characterized this as

‘positive socialism’” (Hunter 2014: 72). According to Mohammad
Nakhshab, the leading ideologue of the Socialist Theists Movement, free-
dom and social justice are the core values of both Islam and socialism.
Islamic discourse, he argued, is a mediated worldview (maktab-e vaseteh);
it stands between idealism and materialism, and between communism
and capitalism. More specifically, there is more affinity between Islam and
socialism than between materialism/Marxism and socialism. There is an
inherent contradiction, he argued, between socialism as a humanist/ethi-
cal ideal and materialist philosophy of Marxism. Socialism, it was argued,
is a sacred struggle of selfless individuals whose ethical responsibility and
political ideals are not correlated with their socio-economic base. For the
Socialist Theists, the spiritual element of Islam provides strong incentive
for people to fight for freedom and social justice. It is much easier to dis-
seminate socialist ideals in Iran, he argued, through the Islamic concepts
(Nakhshab 2002; Nekuruh 1997). The Socialist Theists boldly and con-
fidently believed that “in terms of advocating justice and progress, Islam
does not lag behind Marxism. On the contrary, because of its emphasis on
freedom and democracy it is superior to it.” Nonetheless, “socialism or
the public ownership of means of production,” they argued, remains “the
shortest way of overcoming injustice, poverty, ignorance, self-alienation,
misery, and exploitation” (Hunter 2014: 72; Taghavi 2005: 27).
The Socialist Theists challenged the hegemony of any privileged class
over others and fought simultaneously at least in three fronts: first and
foremost, they were anticlerical in the context of Islamic tradition. There
is no clerical class in Islam, they argued. “The clergy, instead of empha-
sizing Islam’s progressive social and economic messages, had focused on
metaphysics and has imbued Islam with bizarre mysteries, miracles, and in
general, superstition” (Hunter 2014: 72). Socialism, they argued, was the
essence of Islam; they interpreted the Quranic concept of showra (consul-
tation) as a form of democratic socialism and reinterpreted the Quran in
light of humanist (not Soviet) socialism (Rahnama 2000: 25). It is worth
noting that their idea of the affinity between Islam and socialism inspired
many young Muslims in the 1960s and 1970s. Ali Shari‘ati (1933–1977),
Ayatollah Mahmoud Taleqani (1911–1979), and others were influ-
enced by such a novel and revolutionary discourse. The impact of the
Socialist Theists in Taleqani’s book, Islam and Ownership (1953), is evi-
dent (Shahibzadeh 2015). The Socialist Theists, known as the intellectual
278 M. MAHDAVI
father of the Islamic Left, contributed immensely to the cause of social

democratic interpretation of Islam.
Second, the Socialist Theists were critical of Western liberal democracy.
Jalal ed-Din Ashtiyani, one of the two founders of the Movement, offers a
very interesting critique of Western liberal democracy:
Western societies, which form a small part of the family of nations, enjoy
the state of affluence at the expense of poverty and suffering of many oth-
ers. Nevertheless, the signs of decline and self-alienation can also be seen
in the West. The role of capitalism and misguided democracy have turned
people into machine-parts and into talking ballot-papers, which can be sold
and bought … Political parties are turning into election shops. (Ashtiyani
quoted in Hunter 2014: 73; Taghavi 2005: 32–33; original emphasis)
As Hunter points out, “the Socialist Theists were essentially against the
domination of a particular class over others, but they had no clear idea of
how to reconcile the requirements of safeguarding individual freedom and
the running of a society” (Hunter 2014: 73).
Third, the Socialist Theists challenged the state-centered Soviet-style
socialism and instead offered a humanist and social-based socialism. They
clearly opposed Iran’s pro-Soviet Marxist political party, the Tudeh Party,
both for its materialist philosophy as well as for its Soviet-style socialism.
Equally important, they contested the Tudeh Party’s political dependency
on the Soviet Unions policy. The Tudeh Party’s support to the Soviet’s
demand for oil concession in Iran’s northern provinces (the proposed
Caspian oil concession) contributed to the split within the Tudeh Party
in 1944. The emergence of the Socialist Theists coincided with the rise of
anti-Soviet socialist trends among other social forces in Iran.
Khalil Maleki (1903–1969): A Pioneer of Indigenous Socialism?

The Soviet Union adapted an interventionist and neocolonial policy
toward Iran in 1942 and 1943. The Soviets were instrumental in creat-
ing two secessionist/separatist governments of the Democratic Republic
of Azerbaijan and the Kurdish Republic of Mahabad. The Tudeh Party
blindly supported Moscow’s policy. For the Tudeh party, “a socialist gov-
ernment by nature could not have colonial or neocolonial tendencies”
(Hunter 2014: 67). The Tudeh Party’s blind submission to the Soviets
was challenged from within. A number of prominent members of the
Tudeh Party such as Khalil Maleki (1903–1969) and Jalal Al-e Ahmad
(1923–1969) left the party and supported the government’s national-
ist policy as an expression of Iran’s national sovereignty. Maleki left the
Tudeh Party and joined the Hezb-e Zahmatkeshan (Toilers’ Party) in 1947
where he published his newspaper Niru-ye Sevvom (The Third Force). He
became interested in the Toilers’ Party since the party program was against
“all forms of imperialism including Russian imperialism.” Soon, however,
he left the Toilers’ Party as the Party began opposing Mosaddeq’s oil
nationalization policy. Maleki founded his own party.
Khalil Maleki developed a novel theory and created a new political party
to pursue his authentic social justice and indigenous socialism. Maleki’s
theory of “Separate Roads to Socialism” was materialized in the forma-
tion of a new party called The Third Force (Niru-ye Sevvom). The Third
Force Party distanced itself from a pro-Soviet Leninist Marxism/socialism
and a right-wing/centrist nationalism. For Khalil Maleki, Soviet socialism
was nothing short of a state capitalism (kapitalism-e dowlati). It is quite
remarkable that Maleki opposed antidemocratic nature of Stalinism as
early as 1940s, and opposed, in the same manner, Maoism, which became
the new Marxist fashion in the late 1960s. In a letter written in 1967,
he criticized the Maoist tendencies among Iranian intellectuals in Europe:
“The gentlemen do not retreat one step from their scientific socialism of
Marx in its Leninist interpretation. Unfortunately, they are incapable of
understanding the significant events that have taken place since Marx and
Lenin. We fought against Stalin once, and we came out victorious” (Maleki
quoted in Pishdad and Katouzian 2002: 9; Shahibzadeh 2016: 24).
The Third Force did not become a major political party, but its dem-
ocratic socialism with an anti-imperialist/anti-American character had a
profound impact on the struggle for democracy in Iran after the 1953
coup. The Socialist Theists and the Third Force made a considerable
impact on the rise of the secular and Islamic left/social democrats in the
1970s. Maleki’s Third Force turned into a symbol of support for an indig-
enous democratic socialism vis-à-vis Soviet socialism; it successfully syn-
thesized the idea of socialism with respect for national sovereignty and
dignity of indigenous culture. It is worth noting that it was Khalil Maleki
who for the first time proposed and promoted the discourse of “Return to
the Self” (bazgasht beh khish) in Iran (Vahdat 2002: 110). His indigenous
approach contributed to the prominence of the discourse of “Return to
the Self” in Iran in 1970s. What makes Khalil Maleki relevant today, in
short, is nothing but a core of his argument: Socialism would be the result
280 M. MAHDAVI
of every society’s indigenous experiences (Burhan 1997; Katouzian 2004:

165–188; Katouzian 2003: 24–52; emphasis added.).
It is crucial to acknowledge here the impact of Maleki’s indigenous
or “nonalignment” socialism on young and enthusiastic Iranian Marxist
Mostafa Sho‘a‘iyan (1936–1975). As Peyman Vahabzadeh (2007a,b)
argues, “in a situation parallel to Maleki’s split from, and criticism of, the
Tudeh Party, Sho‘a‘iyan’s iconoclastic engagement with Fada‘i-ye Khalq”
demonstrates “his principled originality as well as his lone reassertion of
the role of dissident intellectuals” (2007a: 406).
In his work, Revolution (Enqelab), Sho‘a‘iyan problematized the ideo-
logical roots of the Soviets’ betrayal of the Jangali Movement in the Caspian
region (1920–1921). “What is significant about Revolution,” argues
Vahabzadeh (2007a: 409), “is that it stems from a particular experience
and then emerges as a universal theory that refuses canonical Marxism.” It
is probably safe to argue that Sho‘a‘iyan’s grassroots approach for change
is best encapsulated in his own words of “relying on the Iranian nation”
(Sho‘a‘iyan 1976: 15; Vahabzadeh 2007a: 416). He was a radical critique
of “tradition of killing thinking” (Sho‘a‘iyan 1976: 22; Vahabzadeh 2007a:
419), that is, a blind imitation of the foreign agendas/platforms, turning
the intellectual Left into the “idle consumers” of “any nicely-packaged
imported theory” (Vahabzadeh 2007a: 418–419). Sho‘a‘iyan identified
“democratic openness as the Achilles’s heel of dogmatic and Stalinist rule
of ideologically blinded individuals at the helms of leftist groups” and thus
boldly broke away with this tradition (Vahabzadeh 2007a: 413). The con-
ventional Left of the time penalized Sho‘a‘iyan. He was accused of being
“American Marxist” by the Fadai Guerrillas who deployed the term in
order to intimidate him and undermine his indigenous and independent
thinking (Vahabzadeh 2007a: 409). His original, bold, and independent
thinking—though it certainly suffers from its limitations—cost him to live
in a harsh and isolated life until his death in 1976. As Peyman Vahabzadeh
(2007a: 405) argues, Mostafa Sho‘a‘iyan’s “maverick and uncompromis-
ing thinking and singular leftism” and his unconventional and “uncanoni-
cal” leftism, which “challenged all doctrinal versions of Marxism,” makes
him relevant in today’s context.
Ali Shari‘ati (1933–1977): Toward a Spiritual Social Democracy?

Ali Shari‘ati (1933–1977) is probably the most sophisticated and influ-
ential socialist Muslim in modern Iran. For Shari‘ati, “social objectivity
creates religious subjectivity,” not the other way around (1981: 30; origi-
nal emphasis). This is how the socio-political hierarchy creates polythe-
ism. The struggle between monotheism (towhid) and polytheism (shirk)
is a social, not a theological, conflict between two social forces in his-
tory. Polytheism is a religion of polytheistic social formation such as
class, race, or other forms of domination; it aims to justify the status
quo. Monotheism, in its socio-historical terms, is the struggle for human
emancipation; it aims at self- and social awareness and responsibility. For
Shari‘ati, institutionalized religion has always undermined the emanci-
patory aspect of religion. Religion is “human awareness,” a “source of
existential responsibility,” which would lead to social responsibility. In
Religion against Religion, Shari‘ati argues, “if I speak of religion, it is not
the religion which has prevailed in human history, but a religion whose
prophets rose for the elimination of social polytheism. I speak of a religion,
which is not realized yet. Thus our reliance on religion is not a return
to the past, but a continuation of history” (Shari‘ati quoted in Mahdavi
2011: 102–106; original emphasis).
Shari‘ati (1998a) made a clear distinction between his indigenous and
authentic idea of “Return to the Self” (bazgasht beh khish) and a regressive
and nostalgic return to the past. The first approach, he argued, involves a
critical reexamination of our tradition/historical legacy in order to liberate
the nations’ tradition from all kinds of hegemonic discourses—institution-
alize religion of the clerical class as well as the autocratic/colonial mod-
ernization. The second approach, however, is best represented by “Return
to the Plough” (bazgasht beh khish)! The two homophones khish (self) and
khish (plough) in Persian were used to conceptualize and characterize the
discourse of Return to the Self.
Structures of domination, Shari‘ati argues, have constantly hindered
self- and social-awareness of human beings in history. In his Gramscian
approach/formulation, structures of domination rested upon a triangle
of economic power, political oppression, and inner ideological/cultural
justification. He provides a critique of the three pillars of “trinity of
oppression,” zar-zur-tazvir (gold-coercion-deception) or tala-tigh-tasbih
(gold-sword-rosary), meaning material injustice (estesmar), political dic-
tatorship (estebdad), and religious and other forms of cultural alienation
(estehmar). Shari‘ati offers a three-dimensional ideal type—“a trinity of
freedom, social justice, and spirituality” (azadi, barabari,va ‘erfan)—in
opposition to the “trinity of oppression” and in recognition of self- and
social-awareness (Mahdavi 2011: 102–106).
282 M. MAHDAVI
The problem, argued Shari‘ati (1982: 37), was that freedom without
social justice degenerated into a freedom of market, not a freedom of
human beings. Social justice without freedom undermined human dig-
nity, and spirituality without freedom and social justice ignored the core/
essence of our humanity. These ideals turned into regressive forces, new
means of domination, and served the status quo. The solution to this
problem, Shari‘ati argued, is to synthesize the three ideals, making a three-
dimensional self and society/polity. In other words, the unity and har-
mony of three ideals of freedom, social justice, and spirituality bring about
self- and social awareness, human emancipation, and harmonizes the rela-
tionship between nature, man, and God. The unity of three ideals would
free human being from the bond of divine and materialistic determinism.
It “frees mankind from the captivity of heaven and earth alike and arrives
at true humanism” (Shari‘ati 1982: 85–90: Manoochehri 2003; Mahdavi
2011: 102–106; emphasis added).
More specifically, the core of Shari‘ati’s discourse is threefold: freedom
and democracy without capitalism and neoliberal market fundamental-
ism, social justice and socialism without authoritarianism and material-
ism, and spirituality and ethics without organized religion and clericalism.
For Shari‘ati, the existing democracies offer only a minimum requirement
of an ideal radical democracy. Shari‘ati tends to agree with demokrasi-ye
showra‘i (consultative democracy), which relies on active and effective
participation of citizens in the public sphere. Shari‘ati’s strong egalitarian
leaning and constant critique of all forms of social injustice/inequality
makes him a socialist thinker. For Shari‘ati (1982: 107), however, social-
ism is not merely a mode of production; rather, it is a way of life. He is
critical of state socialism, and worshipping personality, party, and state;
he advocates humanist socialism. For Shari‘ati, freedom and social justice
must be complemented with modern spirituality. Nonetheless, he makes
it crystal clear that freedom and social justice remain the top priorities for
the ordinary people, and spirituality is futile without freedom and social
justice. Shari‘ati (1995: 1266) uses the symbolic story of the Adam and
the Forbidden Fruit in the Garden of Eden to highlight the significance of
civil rights and social justice, and to demonstrate how mysticism may turn
into a false conciseness and religious deception: “In the Garden of Eden,”
argues Shari‘ati (1995: 1266), “Adam was blessed with every gift from
God. Every fruit in this bountiful garden was permitted, with the excep-
tion of one fruit, [the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil],
which had been forbidden” (1995: 1266). Yet in our world, continues
Shari‘ati, “the ordinary people are denied access to most every fruit. The
permitted fruits have become forbidden for us.” He then asks, “How are
we to go after the forbidden fruit when our basic human rights (hoquq-e
adamiyat) has not been recognized, when we have been denied the God
given gifts of this garden, when we have not tasted even its permitted
fruits?” (1995: 1266; emphasis added) Then he forcefully makes his point:
To preach about love to those who do not have bread is nothing but a nasty
deception dressed as piety and asceticism. And to tell those with no drink-
ing water the story of Alexander’s search for the fountain of eternal life is
nothing but a bad joke! Intellectuals must remember that in our context,
our mission is to help people find the permitted fruits, not to send them after
the forbidden one.
Moreover, Shari‘ati (1982: 52) is well aware of the shortcomings of

official mysticism: the established/institutionalized religion and mysti-
cism “became a shackle on the foot of the spiritual and material evolu-
tion of mankind.” It “actually separates man from his own humanity. It
makes him into an importunate beggar, a slave of unseen forces beyond
his power; it deposes him and alienates him from his own will. It is this
established religion that today we are familiar with” (Shari‘ati 1982: 60).
Nonetheless, modern critical ‘erfan and spirituality, he argues, provide a
modern spiritual vision; ontology and epistemology sharply differ from
religious formalism and passive, apolitical mysticism. It provides us a syn-
thetic spirituality in a critical dialogue with other religious traditions and
modern concepts. It is, in fact, a post-religious spirituality (Mahdavi 2011:
102–106).
For Shari‘ati, the trinity of freedom, social justice, and spirituality
(azadi, barabari, va ‘erfan) is not a mechanical marriage of three distinct
concepts. Rather, it is a dialectical approach toward self- and social eman-
cipation; it puts together three inseparable dimensions of man and society.
In sum, Shari‘ati’s trinity of azadi, barabari, and ‘erfan, the most relevant
core of his discourse, translates into a new polity of spiritual social democ-
racy. This ideal type clearly needs theorizing the role of spirituality in the
public sphere so the theory could translates into a workable synthetic
political model of spiritual social democracy (Mahdavi 2011: 102–106).
Nonetheless, Shari‘ati’s original approach to the self- and social emancipa-
tion could contribute to the idea of a grassroots social democracy in Iran.
284 M. MAHDAVI
The “iron cage” of modernity, Max Weber (2001: 124; Dabashi 2015:
20) argued, might well produce “specialists without spirit, sensualists
without heart.” Ali Shari‘ati’s three-dimensional alternative discourse of
freedom, social justice, and spirituality was an attempt to overcome the
dark side of modernity and to liberate/emancipate modern humanity
from modernity’s “iron cage.” Equally significant, yet, was his radical cri-
tique of resilient fence of tradition. In his own words, two equally destruc-
tive and deceptive forces/discourses captivate us, and each produces a
different form of false consciousness, cultural alienation, and deception:
“Estehmar” and again “Estehmar”! The first refers to colonial moder-
nity, market fundamentalism, and alienation by the hegemonic/colonial
western modernity. The second refers to religious deception and dogma
(Shari‘ati 1998a). Shari‘ati invites us to exercise an act of “epistemic dis-
obedience,” “delinking” from the establishment—“the gatekeepers” of
“word of reason” and “word of God.” His approach is an invitation to
think through a solution from within.
Conclusion: Toward Discourse Building

and Decolonial Knowledge Production
Western liberal/capitalist democracy does not represent, contrary to the

views of its advocates, “the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution”
(Fukuyama 1989: 271). The liberal paradigm remains in a profound cri-
sis. The liberal discourse undermines the twin pillars of socio elements
of democracy: social justice and societal empowerment. Social justice gives
meaning and substance to democracy; it makes the value of democratic
ideas tangible to the public. Social inequality results in a gradual decline of
democratic aspirations in civil society; it gives rise to populist-authoritarian
trends and pushes democratic ideas and institutions at bay. Social justice
brings the abstract value of democracy into the daily life of the people.
Societal empowerment strengthens and promotes dialogue and delibera-
tion of civil society. In this chapter, I examined Habermas’s concept of
deliberative democracy as one among several alternative egalitarian/social
approaches to liberal democracy, and I argued how it may contribute to
the rise of a grassroots social democracy in Iran. A deliberative model of
democratic will-formation can empower civil society, guarantee an equal
and inclusive participation, and generate a democratic ethics of citizenship.
Democratic ideas are ineffective if ordinary people do not reach them.As
Max Weber (1998: 61–63) reminds us, ideas are powerless unless fused
with material forces. Democratic ideas can last longer if strong, active, and
engaged social forces participate in the public sphere.
The popular quest for edalat-e ejtema‘i (social justice) has a long
history in modern Iran. Adalat (Justice) was the first socialist party
in Iran around the turn of the twentieth century. Popular demands
for Edalatkhaneh (House of Justice) during the 1906 Constitutional
Revolution, the significance of Ferqeh-ye Ejtema‘iyun-e ‘Ammiyun
(Social Democratic Party) in the first Parliament (Majles) and the
Ferqeh-ye Demokrat (Democratic Party) in the second Majles are well
known. The contribution of Taghi Errani’s Group of 53 to the growth
of socialist discourse in Iran is a fact. Other secular and religious pub-
lic intellectuals and socio-political forces/movements in the 1950s,
1960s, and 1970s advanced the discourse of social democracy in Iran:
Nakhshab’s Socialist Theists, Maleki’s Third Force, Shari‘ati’s discourse
of spiritual social democracy are indicative of deep and diverse roots of
a quest for social justice and social democracy in Iran. Moreover, the
idea of social justice was one of the central slogans of the 1979 Iranian
revolution. The quest for social justice continues to surface in a number
of social movements in postrevolutionary Iran: women, students, work-
ers, and middle-class poor remain the focal point of social movements
for social justice in postrevolutionary Iran.
Multiple sources of social democracy from the global experiences and
the local traditions can contribute to a birth of Iran’s genuine and bot-
tom-up social democracy. In this chapter, I examined how intellectual dis-
courses of Mohammad Nakhshab, Khalil Maleki, and Ali Shari‘ati could
contribute to the rise and realization of a grassroots social democracy in
Iran. Nakhshab, Maleki, and Shari‘ati disobeyed and delinked from the
dominant discourse of their time. Their “epistemic disobedience,” inde-
pendent thinking, authenticity, and indigenous approach toward a grass-
roots social democracy remain relevant for today’s Iran. We certainly must
problematize their legacy, acknowledge their achievements and failures,
and learn from their limitations. These public intellectuals did dare to
discover new ways, indigenous approaches, and alternative modernities
that are attentive to local and global experiences. They dared to discover a
third way—a glocal approach. They delinked from the omnipotent of the
local Tradition and the juggernaut of the Universal West. Their “deco-
lonial horizons,” to use Mingolo’s words, made them to aim at “epis-
temic pluriversality.” They were pioneers of the Iranian version of what
286 M. MAHDAVI
Argentinian philosopher Enrique Dussel (2012: 28–58) would describe

as “transmodernity.”
Argentinian scholar Rodolfo Kusch (1922–1979) in his work Indigenous
and Popular Thinking in America asked “what could be the meaning of
[Heidegger’s] Dasein in America, given that it was a concept nourished
and propelled by a certain ethos of the concept of the German middle class
between the two wars” (Mignolo 2015: xxiii). He then used an indig-
enous word “utcatha,” which “has certain parallels with Dasein, a word
that Heidegger picked up from popular German” (Mignolo 2015: xxiii).
The lesson to learn, argues Walter Mignolo (2015: xxiii), is that an “indig-
enous ways of thinking” requires a “simultaneous process” of engagement
and “delinking.” In this process, the point is “not to reject” or dismiss
the West “but, on the contrary, to know it in order to delink from it.” In
other words, as Hamid Dabashi (2015: 2) argues, we need “a declaration
of independence,” from local and global “exhausted epistemics” in order
to think and act boldly and independently.
“Historical conditions are the bedrock of ideas,” writes Dabashi (2015: 6);
the Muslim world, Iran included, “is changing; these changes are the conditio
sine qua non of new ideas that are yet to be articulated” (Dabashi 2015: 6).
There is much unthought in the original thought of these scholars. What is
needed today is to expand their original ideas beyond their intension in order to
materialize Iran’s century-old quest for a grassroots social democracy.
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CHAPTER 17
Social Justice and Democracy in Iran:

In Search of the Missing Link
Peyman Vahabzadeh
The modern concept of social justice in Iran was crystallized in its nascent
manifestations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, dur-
ing the complex processes that led to the Constitutional Revolution
(1906–1911). Due to the particular geohistorical and intellectual influ-
ences that informed the Constitutional Revolution, the idea of social
justice was represented by the emerging social democracy containing the
labor movement as well as the early women’s associations. This analytical
chapter draws on an interpretive history of Iran’s particular (but not exclu-
sive) entry into political modernity with the Constitutional Revolution in
order to theoretically account for the missing conceptual link between the
unfinished project of social justice and the ongoing struggles for democracy
in Iran. Specifically, I first ascertain that social democracy has been an
essential component of Iranian political modernity along with constitu-
tionalism and the rule of law. From this historical observation, I extract
theoretical arguments in favor of reestablishing conceptual links between
democratization and constitutionalism, on the one hand, and social jus-
tice, on the other. I will conclude by arguing that a lived and living concept
of social justice in the continuing struggles for democratization allows for
participatory self-assertion.
P. Vahabzadeh (*)

P. Vahabzadeh (ed.), Iran’s Struggles for Social Justice
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-44227-3_17
290 P. VAHABZADEH
Return of an Incomplete Project

The events that have been unfolding in Iran in the past few years leading up
to the momentous and historic nationwide protest movement in 2009 con-
tain certain implications for the potential transformations in the country.
After the experience of the Reformist government of Mohammad Khatami
(1997–2005), which has been unsuccessful in introducing reforms to the
existing political constellation, social movements—women’s, student,
workers’, and youth movements, as well as pro-Reform individuals and
parties—persisted to varying degrees at different times. Despite continued
and surgically repressive policies of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s
government (2005–2013), these movements have been steadfast in try-
ing to challenge the unjust and discriminatory laws of the country, as well
as the unfair and disempowering treatment of the working people due to
the growing neoliberalization of economy. Each movement embarks on
this inevitable but perilous journey according to its specific demographic
constituencies, organizational potentials, and capacities for mobilization
(see Vahabzadeh 2016).
There is a general agreement among scholars that the protest move-
ment of 2009–2010, called the Green Movement, is reminiscent
not of the 1979 Revolution, but of the Constitutional Revolution of
1906–1911, the historic turning point that epitomizes Iran’s entry into
political modernity a century earlier (see Dabashi 2012; Hashemi and
Postel 2010; Jahanbegloo 2012). This conceptual–historical connection
is not accidental: the spirit dominating the post-Reformism movements
(including the Green Movement) has been consistently a democratic one
as these movements, against the backdrop of continued political repres-
sion, social restrictions, and discriminatory laws, have been aiming at not
only influencing policy and having greater popular input within the exist-
ing political apparatus through a redefined concept of citizenship (which
the state consistently ignores) but also pushing for democratizing social
life, through increasing participation of growing numbers of diverse social
actors. Even within the Reform movement—which is not really a “move-
ment” but more of an elite circle of actors within or close to the rul-
ing establishment (although they have now been largely excluded from
the ruling elite)—there had been intellectual and theoretical streaks of
democratic, participatory readings of the origins of Islamic community in
Medina (est. 622 CE) and the problems of governance within an Islamic
state, as I have shown elsewhere (Vahabzadeh 2004; see Soroush 1992;
SOCIAL JUSTICE AND DEMOCRACY IN IRAN: IN SEARCH OF THE MISSING LINK 291
Kadivar 2001; Khatami 2001; Mir-Hosseini and Tapper 2006). The pres-
ence of this intellectual stream within Shi‘i political thought and clerical
debates over the nature of the Islamic government reveals that although
a tendency toward “strong state” has indeed informed the principles of
the Islamic Republic—which surprisingly brings the postrevolutionary
state in line with the prerevolutionary state, as Vanessa Martin (2000:
10) has shown—Shi‘i political thought is not necessarily reducible to such
a principle. The issues dominating the growing public discourse, which
takes place outside of the state’s limited and imposed space, are those of
human rights, civil society, citizenship, government accountability, and
of course, the rule of law, and by law I mean just laws (or nondiscrimina-
tory laws), which implies that the sources of law must be sought in mod-
ern egalitarian principles (however formal) instead of traditional sources
(Shari‘a) based on differential treatment of different societal groups.
The women’s movement epitomizes the tendency toward the former
(see Hoodfar and Sadeghi 2009; Ahmadi Khorasani 2009). In short, the
last vivid public manifestation of Iranian people’s collective vision for their
future unambiguously reveals a tendency toward a “civil rights” move-
ment. If we agree that the Constitutional Revolution marks Iran’s entry
into political modernity, then in my reading, the recent movements, and
the Green Movement above all, stand out as Iran’s point of reentry into
the original project of political modernity in a country in which the process of
democratic development has been interrupted and delayed by the autocratic
tendencies that are tied to economic interests of the ruling elite under the
country’s rentier state.
Writing this chapter at the time when social movements in Iran are
under tremendous pressure and when the horizons for meaningful change
seem bleak (Vahabzadeh 2016), I must nevertheless acknowledge that the
recent movements indicate the return of an interrupted national impulse
to the living and breathing but deteriorating Iranian social and political
scene. This observation is the gift of an interpretive approach to history.
Rethinking the Original Moment

The parallel between the two historic moments across a century—
the Constitutional Revolution and the Green Movement—affords
me another comparison. Historians of the Constitutional Revolution
agree (albeit to varying degrees due to their differing analytical frame-
works) that social democracy in its various manifestations has played a
292 P. VAHABZADEH
vital role in the movement that brought Iran its first Constitution and
elected Parliament, generating both visions and activists (see Abrahamian
1982, 2008; Afary 1996; Chaqueri 2001, 2010; Cronin 2004). Let us
be clear about the defining aspect of constitutionalism: given the con-
text of disintegrating Iran due to imperialist encroachments and subse-
quent ill-perceived and poorly managed conflicts with Russian and British
imperialisms that resulted in significant territorial losses in the nineteenth
century (Abrahamian 2008: 36), and given also the rampant corruption
and selling the country’s resources through concessions by a stagnating
ruling elite, the Constitutional movement was without a doubt a collec-
tive attempt at garnering institutionally enabled self-rule, responsible gov-
ernance, and national self-assertion. This is nowhere better shown than
through the rapid emergence of the anjomans or grassroots associations,
the very (nonviolent) democratic–institutive origins of a new body politic,
as Hannah Arendt holds (1963: 262, 266–267), an experiment lost to
turmoil in the aftermath of the constitutional movement and to the subse-
quent rise of Reza Shah. Indeed, the constitutional-era scholarship cannot
succeed without in-depth analyses of anjomans as grassroots democracy
(Afary 1996; Chaqueri 2001). The ephemeral appearance of the showra
(or “council,” in particular workers’ councils) in the revolutionary years of
1978–1979 also attests to the importance of grassroots self-organization
as the principal form of democracy. Since I am enumerating historic paral-
lels here, let me quote Cosroe Chaqueri who, in observing the comparison
between the Constitutional Revolution and the Islamic Revolution, states,
“there was no single charismatic leader in the Constitutional Revolution …
On the whole, the anjomans, collective leadership, and cooperation were
the hallmark of this period” (2001: 111). Stated differently, “The leaders
[were] unknown” (Spring-Rice 1907 letter as quoted in Afary 1996: 63).
This is yet another striking parallel between the Green Movement and the
constitutional movement.
The democratic aspect of the Constitutional Revolution should be
understood in the context of the Russian and British imperialisms forcing
Iran into the world capitalist economy that structurally shifted age-old
Iranian political and economic systems, thus producing the socioeco-
nomic conditions for constitutionalism (Chaqueri 2001: 2). The primary
trajectory of constitutionalism was to reduce the harm of the (unrespon-
sive and corrupt) state, that inorganically dangled above the people,
through constitutional checks and balances (Vahabzadeh 2010b). Only by
way of this did grassroots participation, advocacy of freedom of press and
associations, or imposing restrictions of clerical influence in politics and

everyday life (in particular by women and social democrats) become the
defining characteristics of constitutionalism. No wonder, then, that with
the increasing diminishment of associations and marginalization of the
original revolutionary leaders, the road was paved for Reza Shah’s “repres-
sive development” through a strong state that committed the constitu-
tionalist spirit to melancholic memory.
It is true that social justice and social democracy have been among the
constitutive discourses of many early twentieth-century movements for
political modernity, both through the formation of new nation-states out
of the old empires in Europe (e.g., Germany and Russia) and with the
process of decolonization in Africa and Asia (such as African socialism)
(see Emre 2014: 1–27; Claudin 1975; Anderson 2010). In the Iranian
case, we notice the social democratic element within constitutional-
ism holding together the two essential components of the movement:
the struggles for social justice through upholding the collective rights of the
workers and the marginalized (women and certain minorities) were in fact
thoroughly and inseparably intertwined with the anjoman-style democratic
experiments and advocacy of rights-based citizenship.
The mass migration of Iranians to Transcaucasia resulted from the dis-
integration of traditional economy—a process that detached multitudes of
peasants from the land and to a changing economy unable to absorb them
(Chaqueri 2001: 77; Afary 1996: 17–19). Naturally, with the growing
association of Iranian migrant workers with Transcaucasia labor move-
ment and the influence of Russian social democracy, this phenomenon
had an impact on the nascent labor movement in Iran, with possibly the
first recorded Iranian labor action having taken place in the Caspian port
of Anzali between November and December 1906 (Chaqueri 2001: 90).
The year in which this action took place is important. The Constitutional
Revolution provided an opportunity for a new form of popular sover-
eignty to emerge with the first anjomans in Tehran and Rasht as early as
1907 (Chaqueri 2001: 100–101), but the secret societies that immensely
contributed to the intellectual debates and political organizations, as well
as guild self-organizations, best manifested during the sanctuary at British
legation in Tehran in August 1906, preceded and sewed the seeds for later
anjomans (Afary 1996: 53, 57, 73–78). The first political public rally of
women in Iranian history also took place at this time (Afary 1996: 54).
It is hard to conceive the popular, armed uprising against Mohammad Ali
Shah’s Cossack-aided coup in June 1908 (after his first attempt was defeated
294 P. VAHABZADEH
by Tehran’s anjomans), an uprising pioneered by Tabriz revolutionaries

led by Sattar Khan in July 1908, without grassroots self-organizations. It
is equally hard to conceive the victory of revolutionaries without the sig-
nificant mobilization of Iranian social democrats (aided by their Caucasian
comrades) (Chaqueri 2001: 102) and minorities, Armenians, and Azali
Babis (Affary 1996: 39). The anjomans, many of which formed along
guild lines, provided a significant means of mass mobilization, and as
the movement progressed, the anjomans provided popular foundations
for the formal bodies of government. The origins of social democratic
organizations go back to the foundation of Hemmat in late 1904, which
led to the foundation of Ferqeh-ye Ejtema‘iyun ‘Ammiyun (Mojahed) in
1905. In their program as well as in their politics, the Social Democrats
advocated rights and freedoms, and they proposed a bill of rights to the
Majlis, containing not only freedom of press, speech, and organization,
but also the rights of workers (Afary 1996: 86). Also important is the key
role of Armenian social democracy in the constitutional movement. In
addition to the social democratic element, there emerged also Ferqeh-ye
Demokrat-e Iran (Democratic Party of Iran), around 1909, that empha-
sized constitutional rights, liberties, and equality among citizens regard-
less of race, religion, or nationality (Chaqueri 2010: 26–27). Women’s
anjomans played a key role in the movement, radicalizing its social demo-
cratic tendency. Women’s contributions ranged from demanding women’s
suffrage to creating schools for female education and participating in the
Revolution as militiawomen (Afary 1996: 177–208). In fact women’s
anjomans contributed to the social democratic aspect of the movement
(Afary 1996: 208). In short, the “Constitutional Revolution of 1906 was
truly a turning point in the history of Iranian women. Muslim, Armenian,
Zoroastrian, Azail Babi, Baha’i, and Jewish advocates of women’s rights
joined their voices, took back the segregated streets, claimed a new space
for women in the newspapers, created safe educational and political orga-
nizations where women’s ideas, resources, and creative energies were gal-
vanized and channeled into new projects” (Afary 1996: 208). The early
women’s movement, as Cosroe Chaqueri argues, should not be attributed
to western influence; rather, its roots must be sought in the Iranian his-
tory (2006). Thus, the Constitutional Revolution brought out the unique
composition of social democratic and liberal elements. The advocacy of
the rights of working people, as the original manifestation of today’s vast
array of struggles for social, economic, gender, national, religious, and lin-
guistic justice, grew simultaneously with the nation’s struggle for demo-
cratic citizenship through the turbulent years of constitutional movement.
The above facts, although hastily presented here, are important because
they indicate an arché—a founding gesture and an institutive moment that
inform the entire subsequent history to our day: Iran’s road to democratic
citizenship has contained an undeniable social justice component. In light
of this observation, we can now clearly see how the social justice element
reappears in every historic period following the Constitutional Revolution
most vividly when dictatorship has been slackened but also under impos-
sible conditions.
The Parallel Discourses

Constitutionalism provides an opportunity for founding the rule of law,
creation of civil society, and emergence of rights-bearing citizens, but it
also bears the potential for allowing, through the discourse of citizenship,
the means for struggles for recognition by oppressed classes and subaltern
(demographic) groups, their effective and meaningful inclusion not as indi-
viduals but as groups with shared socioeconomic interests, in the emerging
body politic. This dual origin of Iranian political modernity has been the
subject of selective and active amnesia in much of the contemporary debates by
the advocates of free-market capitalism that, in today’s Iran, translates into
removing “barriers to competitiveness” (see Nili 2004; Sariolqalam 2013;
Tabibiyan 2013), which translates into suspending the collective rights of
Iranian working class (Rouhani 2012; see also Hosseinzadeh 2014).
Iranian history since constitutionalism has been marked by a contin-
ued struggle of democracy and social justice against “repressive devel-
opment” represented by the state: in the precarious semi-democratic
intervals between autocratic rules—1906–1925, 1940–1953, 1960–1963,
1979–1981—as well as during, and in spite of, periods of repression—
1960s–1970s, 1997–2005, 2009–2010, 2012–present—social demo-
cratic, leftist, or left-leaning parties, or myriad associations, labor unions,
women’s networks, advocacy groups, and/or other citizen initiatives have
emerged, flourished, persisted, and deepened democratic citizenship,
often at dear human costs. Waves of repression following intervals of rela-
tive freedom (notably post-1953 coup and in 1981–1988) have unleashed
unimaginable purges. Under the brutal conditions of autocracy, advocates
of social justice were always the sacrificial lamb. We need to note that every
time the social justice element came to the fore in the periods of interval,
despite their ideological visors and the strategic political errors of left-
ist parties, advocates of social justice—political and cultural leftists, labor
296 P. VAHABZADEH
unionists, women’s associations, and the student movement—contributed

immensely to collective organization, enhancement of rights, expansion of
public discourse and public debate, introduction of new ideas, and last but
not least, participatory democracy.
Since the Constitutional Revolution and up to the late 1980s, social jus-
tice has been represented and/or embodied, and thus preserved, primarily
by the Left and labor movement, as well as, to varying degrees and depend-
ing on the historical moments, women’s movements, and the nationalist
minorities’ movements. From this observation, two consequences follow:
first, the Left, in its myriad manifestations, has indeed preserved the idea
of social justice. Thus, for our hermeneutics of history, despite its ebbs and
flows, the Left has continually linked Iran’s socioeconomic and political
development to the Constitutional Revolution. Second, due to the clinical
and brutal purges of thousands of leftist activists—secular and Muslim—in
the 1980s and the subsequent outmigration of tens of thousands of left-
leaning dissidents and other activists in the 1980s and 1990s, the Left in
general has been eliminated from Iranian social and political scene, and its
presence has been reduced, only after the rise of Reformist government,
to intellectual circles and journals, as well as the short-lived Red student
union, Students for Freedom and Equality. The Left’s visible absence in
today’s Iran has led to the near erasure of the discourse social justice from
public life and political debates, to the extent that Iran’s turn to neoliberal
policies since the 1990s has been met with no socially formidable con-
tender. Despite the grave human cost paid by the leftist, labor, women,
student, and nationalist activists, these activists showed an undying appeal
for advocating the rights of the most marginalized.
The credit due to the Iranian Left for its role in perpetuating a public
discourse of social justice and defense of the poor and needy does not vin-
dicate its problems. Historically, and exceptions aside, leftist groups have
generally been doctrinal and dogmatic in their self-declared versions of
Marxism, and many of leftist groups have shown symptoms of Stalinism
and hubristic violence (see Behrooz 2000; Chaqueri 2011a; 2011b;
Vahabzadeh 2010a). Nonetheless, when the Left generally has had the
opportunity to express itself in open conditions, it has advocated the rights
of the working people, the poor, ethnic or national minorities, and also to
some extent women—albeit mostly from an ideological standpoint. The
Left cannot exclusively refer to socialists or Marxists: by “Left,” I denote
social democratic intellectuals, significant parts of every social move-
ment advocacy group (women’s, student, workers’, and minority rights
movements), social justice–oriented Muslims, and even certain individual

clerics (see Mahdavi 2013; 2014).
The Iranian state has resolutely been authoritarian and repressive at
political and social levels in the past 37 years. The changing demographics
of the country has resulted in the rising of women and youth as formidable
demographic forces that proved their potency in bringing the Reformist
government of Mohammad Khatami to power in 1997 and mobilizing
and manning the Green Movement of 2009. Since the early 1990s, wom-
en’s, youth, and student movements, as well as critical journalism and legal
advocacy, have been at the forefront of the movement for challenging
state repression and legally sanctioned discriminations. Consequently, a
growing discourse of rights and citizenship has dominated the social and
political discourse outside of the state orbit. For one thing, the democratic-
rights tendency has grown into an organic public discourse among Iranian
women (see Osanloo 2009).
Given the background of elimination of the voices of social justice and
in the context of rising neoliberal socioeconomic policies since the late
1980s, reference to social justice has also been rendered absent within the
rising rights-oriented discourses in the country. It seems that in a country
with massive poverty and economic injustices the issue of social justice—
the basic issue of subsistence and survival—has been overdetermined by
the existing identity politics whose intellectual origins go back to their
activists’ daily experiences in confronting the state’s repressive and dis-
criminatory measures through legal and semiological challenges. From the
roaring discourse of human and individual rights, which gained visible
public currency with the rise of the Reform movement and election of
Khatami in 1997, until recent workers’ and teachers’ protests (Vahabzadeh
2016), concepts of economic and social rights have been surprisingly
absent. Daily newspaper E‘temad reported in April 2014 that even after
the promised wage increase and subsidy reallocation program, the wages
of unskilled workers in Iranian cities stand at one-third of the poverty line
(Baba’i 2014). An international source also indicates that between 2004
and 2011, “the minimum real wages of workers in Iran [has fallen] by 36
%” (FIDH 2013: 52). Political economy scholar Mohammad Maljoo has
dedicated several studies to the declining conditions of the working class
in Iran (2006, 2007). I do not intend to offer statistics, but these obvi-
ous indicators highlight an alarming trend: when raising the issue that
in a country rich with resources—with the fourth largest oil reserves in
the world—and yet staggering and increasing poverty, Reformists and
298 P. VAHABZADEH
secular republicans (many of whom having made great personal sacrifices

to defend the rights of Iranian people) sadly turn into free-trade apologists
for global capitalism. Moreover, advocates of human and citizen rights by
and large ignore the issues of subsistence, poverty, and indignation. The
absence of social justice discourse cannot be felt more intensely.
Key Clarifications: Articulatory Practices

These observations necessitate two clarifications. The first clarification:
these historical lessons indicate that the democratic project in Iran—as
a developing country—is tied to the project of social justice, creation of
fair and equitable conditions, recognition and institutionalization of col-
lective rights, and fighting poverty as a means of ensuring the meaningful
participation and defending the irreducible dignity of the citizens. This
is not a statement of values (which renders these arguments relative to
the author’s views); on the contrary, it points out the structural neces-
sity for the country’s socioeconomic development: since “development” liter-
ally involves increasing access to service and commodity outputs through
infrastructure building and manufactured or agricultural production, it
necessitates diverse and specialized workforce, a social and demographic
dimension. Neoliberal–capitalist policies in peripheral countries aim at
advancing economic growth for short-term profit at the expense of work-
ing class and without the proper development of the workforce. These
policies also subsume the people’s needs under profit-oriented export–
import economy that benefits foreign economic powers. Hence social jus-
tice literally entails the socialized aspect of economic vitality, which cannot
be addressed outside of the relations set-up to bring just conditions to the
workforce. The principle of social development, of course, is applicable in
intersectional relations and to socially or culturally disadvantaged groups
such as women, minorities, and marginalized. Any social project involving
the aforementioned objectives, regardless of our choice of lexicon, is a
project of a Left. This Left not only is future oriented but also pursues
the social projects that would benefit the most vulnerable peoples within
society, while it develops policy platforms for the proper and participatory
growth of the workforce.
This brings us to the inevitable question of representation that involves
any social project such as this. Compared to identity politics and identity-
based movements, which are at the heart of democratic movements
today, the Left’s advocacy of the working class and the poor and vulner-
able indicates a key difference: the relationship between, say, the women’s
movement and its constituents is organic, which reminds us of Antonio
Gramsci’s concept of “organic intellectuals” (Gramsci 1971: 5–23).
Women’s rights activists dwell in the lived experience of discriminatory
laws against women in advocating gender justice. This “organic” repre-
sentation also applies to the advocates of social justice for the national,
linguistic, or religious minorities. But it does not always apply to the
Left. The relationship between leftist intellectuals and the vulnerable they
defend is often historical. Or to state it differently, following Ernesto
Laclau and Chantal Mouffe (1985), the Left’s representation and defense
of the rights of the working class and socially vulnerable depends on the
articulation of the constituents’ demands within the existing political and
public discourse. At the same time, the workers’ and teachers’ unions’ lead-
ers and activists build organic relations with their constituents. Awareness
of this facet will prevent the advocates of social justice from falling into
the naïve concept of representation (assuming, like Iranian old Left, that
they somehow naturally represent the working class) and instead aim at
mobilizing the working men and women through the construction of a
public discourse and converging articulatory practices. Between the lived
experience of imposed poverty and unfair and unlivable working condi-
tions, on the one hand, and the movement for social and economic jus-
tice, on the other, there is a long road to travel. But the same problem,
and thus critique, of representation also applies to the women’s move-
ment: the organic connection of women’s movement to the lived experi-
ence of women does not automatically allow the former to represent the
latter. The key factor in all representational politics remains one thing
alone: articulation.
This brings me to the second clarification: this vision of renewed Left
as a social project must be nondoctrinal; or in other words, it should not
be extracted from age-old seemingly unshakable theoretical truisms. This
is because this project is driven by a plurality of demands for equality,
equity, and justice—these essential components of social justice. In fact,
in our postcommunist era, we need to liberate the Left from ideological
truisms and its self-acclaimed representation of the underprivileged. In
this model, social justice has irreducible connections with human and civil
rights, although projects pertaining to social justice cannot be reduced
to free-market, liberal defenders of rights. Social groups that collectively
experience the adverse effects of inequalities and discriminations need
300 P. VAHABZADEH
organizations, mandates, platforms, and political alliances to succeed. The

movements of workers, women, students, youth, and national or religious
minorities’ rights need to enter into alliances to effect changes. No single
movement can be dubbed a social justice movement in and by itself. As
such, the creative movements of the poor such as the current-day demand-
oriented workers’ and teachers’ protests and unionist movements need
more effective means of connecting with the overall strategy for a change
that will effect measurable improvements in their everyday life conditions.
In short, the return of social democracy, both as a public discourse
and as an umbrella movement, is an outcome of the co-articulation of
plurality of demands and attempts at transforming the laws and the future
of the country. The project that I advocate involves championing citizen-
ship, but not in terms of rights of abstract individuals. Moreover, this
social democratic project has a certain disregard for political power as the
privileged keyholder to solutions. As a bottom-up project of social democ-
racy, it primarily invests in creating grassroots movements, self-help and
empowering networks, and municipal democracies that would effect con-
crete changes in the everyday lives of the citizens. And yet, what I perceive
as social democracy is not naïve about the policy-making power of the
state. In conceptual terms, and following Ernesto Laclau again, this proj-
ect involves the construction of a potentially vast alliance of social move-
ments through a hegemonic front that advocate the changing nodal points
of struggles for social justice. This hegemony functions as an “absent
totality” in that its (Gramscian) “war of position” involves the rearrange-
ment of the political and policy trenches according to the available and
effective social powers of which a movement can avail itself. This is not a
social imaginary fathomed in isolation and abstraction: despite the existing
repressive conditions and despite the state security’s continued attempts at
influencing and manipulating collective action, today’s social movements
have already sewn the seeds of tomorrow’s hegemonic front for citizen
and collective rights as well as social justice.
The Conceptual Missing Link

Iran’s struggle for democracy has always contained the element of social
justice—a component largely lacking at the current historical moment.
We do know that history can go every which way and that it has no inter-
nal logic: the historical return of social democracy will therefore depend on
the presence and articulation of current activists. This does not mean the
return to social democracy as we know it, a return to used-up ideas that

no longer work, but to reinvent it entirely according to the historic agents
of our time. That said, I have yet to show the missing link conceptually.
Those of us who lived through the historic days of 1979 recall that the
clerical leadership of the Revolution drew heavily on the notion of the
“downtrodden” to legitimize itself and unite the people through a timid
and inconsistent, but always present, allusion to social justice. In reflect-
ing on a “revolution of the downtrodden” (enqelab-e kukhneshinan, as
Ayatollah Khomeini famously declared) that has resulted in the ruling class
of plunder capitalists I am always reminded of Hannah Arendt’s observa-
tion: “No revolution has ever solved the ‘social question’ and liberated
men from the predicament of want, but all revolutions, with the excep-
tion of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, have followed the example of
the French Revolution and used and misused the mighty forces of misery
and destitution in their struggle against tyranny and oppression” (Arendt
1963: 112). Abject social conditions are to be considered as a social force,
one that, in the hands of the politicians, can liberate peoples or subjugate
them. The missing link is to be sought in the dominant discourse of rights
with its emphasis on citizenship and individual rights.
My argument here is that the concept of human rights—in its dominant
configuration and in its various current institutional implementations—
significantly lacks the element of social justice. This lack stems from the
origins of the concept of rights with the propertied middle class in Europe
around the seventeenth century. I refer the interested reader to Domenico
Losurdo’s compelling substantiation of this affinity (2011). He reveals the
historic connection between the philosophical principles of liberalism, on
the one hand, and property ownership, slavery, and colonialism, on the
other. As the concept expanded by the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
it still had its object in categorical rights—rights of the individual as well
as rights bestowed upon groups that had shared interests. Since it is only
the state that has the institutional ability to bestow rights upon citizens,
the entire movement of expansion of rights has remained state-centric
and, in the international political body, institutionalized by powerful orga-
nizations. I have already dedicated a theoretical study to the oppressive
aspect of this conception of rights (Vahabzadeh 2003: 103–140). The
Iranian advocates of various discourses of rights have generally uncriti-
cally accepted state centrism. They forget that poverty and indignation
represent the anonymous stream of violence against the deliberate and free
action of people (Arendt 1963: 113). The concept of economic and social
302 P. VAHABZADEH
rights, which connects the discourse of rights to social justice, has been
consistently ignored, or at best given a lip service.
The discourse of rights needs to be expanded to include not only the
basic human rights but also economic and social rights, without which the
full dignity of humans cannot be restored. What we have witnessed is that
the working poor, the vulnerable (the elderly and disabled), and victims
of economic discrimination (above all children, women, minorities) have
been largely anonymized by the discourse of rights and political parties
that, seemingly, try to represent their interests. Obviously, political par-
ties are the crucial nodal points for affecting a country’s future and for
political decision-making through an electoral process. But parties run
on generic platforms because they primarily seek political power. Besides,
Iranian security at present surgically prevents and prosecutes all genuine,
demand-oriented grassroots collective action (and instead it mobilizes
its own “movements” to threaten and overwhelm protesting publics).
The vulnerable sectors of the population, however, can play a significant
role in expanding civil society and thus nourishing democracy. They can
achieve this through self-organization, by creating and promoting workers’
unions, teachers’ unions, neighborhood advocacy groups, interest-based
social networks, real consumer cooperatives, citizen-initiative natural-
disaster relief networks, animal rights and environmentalist organizations,
and other forms of grassroots self-organizations: these collective actions
constitute present-day anjomans that persevere on demanding collective
and individual rights regardless of the state and its policies. This indicates
that given the unresponsive nature of the Iranian state, the source of
human rights is not the state or the abstract citizen represented through
casting ballot upon being summoned; rather the source of human and citi-
zens’ rights and the extent to which these rights can be advocated and deep-
ened depend on the grassroots collective action of disenfranchised peoples. In
short, social movements are the sources of politics, not the states. The extent
to which the interest-based grassroots organizations will organize them-
selves will determine the contribution of the country’s most deprived to
building a future democracy. Thus, the conceptual missing link between
social justice and democracy rests in the participation of grassroots orga-
nizations of Iran’s most vulnerable, a collective project which, under cur-
rent controlled politics and repressive conditions, can proceed from one
of the most fundamental forms of participatory democracy: the councils
in their various manifestations, and by extension, municipal participatory
democracy. This is how the hegemonic front to which I alluded can begin
its formation. It has been true that under democratic conditions struggles for
social justice thrive, but here we are missing the crucial point that struggles
for social justice have always brought to the public discourse grassroots efforts
for democracy.
Iranians enjoy a history rich with social and political experiments.
Institutive moments are often sedimented under layers of oblivion caused
by future actions, policies, and discourses. This chapter offers a reacti-
vation of the foundational moment of participatory democracy oriented
toward advocacy of social justice as well as the legal–formal registration of
citizens’ rights. The lesson is unavoidable: the conceptual congruity between
social justice and democratization in Iran not only has historical precedence,
but also has one hundred years of lived, collective experience attached to it.
To reactivate the visions of a new Iran that were originally enacted through
the Constitutional Revolution and to complete the unfinished project of
political modernity, we need to turn away from a state-centric to a social
movement-oriented indicator of modernity. We need not negate politi-
cal institutions and socioeconomic development. Quite the contrary, my
proposed conceptual–epistemological shift recognizes that rights and citi-
zenship are the outcome of visions and forces of collective actors from all
walks of life as people grapple, time and again but always with new vigor
and vision, with the “social question.”
Through the revolutionary years of 1905–1906, as mobilization
toward the future Constitutional Revolution shaped up, with the grow-
ing demands of increasingly disillusioned and disenchanted participants,
Iranian people as Shi‘i Muslim nation were transformed into the “nation
of Iran” (Afary 1996: 53–54). Indeed, the Constitutional Revolution
marked the birth of a new nation. Only the future will tell if the new gen-
eration in Iran (60 % of Iranian population is under 30 years of age) is des-
tined to bring about the reemergence of Iranians as a new nation bound
by the principles of dignity, social justice, and participatory democracy.
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Afterword: Social Justice in Iran:
Further Research
This book offers possibly the first collection dedicated to social justice
studies in Iran. It is hoped that the multi- and interdisciplinary contribu-
tions in this book, written by scholars and activists from wide-ranging aca-
demic and nonacademic backgrounds, set the stage for the much-needed,
future research on the subject. Understandably, this volume cannot possi-
bly address the complexities of the multiple issues pertaining to social jus-
tice, including gender justice, justice for workers, vulnerable, the socially
and economically disenfranchised, ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities,
as well as ecological justice. This project therefore invites further research
on the topic of the Iranians’ struggles for social justice since Iran’s entry
into political modernity around the turn of the nineteenth to the twen-
tieth century. As such, future research can be accommodated within four
tentative and nonexclusive thematic–conceptual categories.
Political Economy and Economic Justice

Understanding the economic, policy, and legal factors that enable or deny
social and economic justice is key to understanding this phenomenon. It is
through the implementation of state policies that ideology and power are
exercised, negotiated, or forced, causing measurable impact on the peo-
ple’s lives. Iran’s reliance on oil revenue is of particular interest in that such
a national resource tends to yield an unresponsive state and ties a country
to the world market. The resource revenue can either be monopolized by
the ruling class or be distributed in the form of social programs among the

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-44227-3
308 AFTERWORD: SOCIAL JUSTICE IN IRAN: FURTHER RESEARCH
population, just as it can be utilized for either the developmental projects

that benefit a capitalist class or a development that increases the human
development index and collective growth of a nation.
History and Politics
Struggles for social justice have been constant in modern Iranian history,
despite serious, often belligerent, setbacks and repressions imposed on
Iranians. For over a century, social justice and social democracy have been
integral components of political modernity and the process of democ-
ratization. Notwithstanding its errors, failures, and dogmas, the Iranian
Left—in its diverse shades, tendencies, organizational shapes, and ideolog-
ical inclinations (Marxist-oriented, social democratic, or Shi‘i)—has cham-
pioned the cause of the working class, the poor, the vulnerable, and ethnic
minorities. Both history and politics of social justice and social democracy
constitute key research areas, in particular because such research reveals
the present and anticipates the future tendencies in the people’s struggles
for a better future. The connection between democratic struggles and
social justice rests with these unfolding tendencies and in relation to the
repressive policies of the Iranian state.
Subjectivity, Agency, Justice

The construction of subjectivity lies at the heart of any struggle. In our
context, subjectivity is always split between hegemonic and counter-
hegemonic constructs. Social justice agency arises from subjectivity and
stands between the culturally, socially, and politically constructed sub-
jectivities, on the one hand, and the issues, exigencies, and movements
that challenge the status quo and thus contest such constructed subjec-
tivities, on the other. The multiplicity of subject positions allows for the
emergence of new agents: women, workers, students, religious, ethnic,
sexual, or linguistic minorities, as well as the advocates for the poor, dis-
abled, ecology, and animals. These movements are deployed by shared,
and changing, concept(s) of justice. Individual and collective initiatives
and creative responses bring together subjectivity, agency, and justice. It
is the shared and growing concept of justice—advocated by agents and
propagated through collective action and advocacy literature—that turns
commonly shared and received social, cultural, or political practices into
sites of antagonism and contestation.
AFTERWORD: SOCIAL JUSTICE IN IRAN: FURTHER RESEARCH 309
Social Movements and Collective Action

The arch manifestation of struggles for social justice and participatory
democracy is collective actions of those who emerge in the public sphere
as agents of change and justice. Collective action represents the embodied
notions of justice posed against the perceived injustices as these are articu-
lated by agents of a cause and social movement activists. The study of
social movements is therefore important in that social movements reveal
the sites of present and future antagonisms, changing values and sensibili-
ties, and common conception of the good.
These four categories are by no means exclusive. They are meant to
provide guidelines for future study. As Iran rapidly moves toward neolib-
eral economic policies that impede socialized human growth for the pur-
pose of privatized production of goods and capital; as the country imperils
its working people, abandons its vulnerable, and pushes its ecology into
irrecoverable destruction; and as state policies undermine the dignity of
women, workers, minorities, and defenders of social justice and human
rights, attending to the issues of social justice and opening a new scholarly
and public discourse to study it prove to be imperative.
Index
NUMBERS & SYMBOLS Abrandi, Mohammad-Ali, 229, 232

16 Azar (Iranian National Student Achaemenidan dynasty, 111, 114
Day), 246, 250 activists, 2, 3, 5, 6, 10, 20–2, 24, 25,
18 Tir (student uprising), 248 40, 41, 56, 67, 76, 93, 147, 154,
1953 coup d’état, 240 160, 166, 167, 177, 178n5,
1980s, 5, 10, 19, 30, 36, 60, 65, 72, 181–6, 191–3, 200, 219, 220,
75, 76, 77n1, 92, 111, 146, 147, 222–30, 232, 242, 247, 251,
152–5, 159, 165–167, 169, 256, 276, 292, 296, 297, 299,
178n4, 204, 246, 256, 265, 296, 300, 307, 309. See also social
297 movements
1988, 4, 9, 20, 48, 86, 97n2, 147–55, victims, 5, 230, 232
159, 165, 167, 169, 171, 172, adalat-e ejtema’i (social justice), 257
215, 295. See also Iran-Iraq war; ‘adl (justice), 14, 128
political prisoners agency, 3, 5, 6, 16, 18, 22, 35, 37, 68,
117, 152, 153, 155–7, 187–9,
199–216, 243, 308
A women, 200–2, 210, 213, 215, 216
Abadan, 6, 52, 56, 57, 219–34, 242 Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud, 15, 32, 73,
Abadan Oil Refinery Company, 52, 56 74, 233, 250–2, 290
Abbasid Caliphate, 109 Ahmadzadeh, Massoud, 243
Abi and Rabi (film), viii Alamolhoda, Seyed Hossein, 245, 246
Abkashak, Mustafa, 226, 228, 229, 232 Alexander the Great, 117
Abrahamian, Ervand, 70, 71, 128, Alinejad, Masih, 183, 186–91
151, 178n5, 178n6, 222–4, Amuzegar, Jahangir, 13–15, 36, 73
226, 227, 239, 240, 243, 262, Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC),
263, 292 222, 223, 227

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-44227-3
312 INDEX
Angus, Ian, 10, 17, 20 Baku, 220, 259

anjomans (grassroots councils), Ballantyne, Tony, 115
292–4, 302 Banisadr, Abolhassan, 244
anti-hegemonic, 100, 122 barbarism, 101, 116
anti-imperialism, 5, 99–122, 267, 279 Bayat, Asef, 71, 72, 89, 225, 272, 274
Anzali, 221, 222, 293 Bazargan, Mehdi, 239, 240, 242
Arab, 20, 30, 106–12, 116–21, 229, Behdad, Sohrab, 13–15, 18, 54, 72,
230, 232 73, 134, 137, 140, 141
Arendt, Hannah, 146, 147, 160, 161, Beheshti, Seyyed Mohammad, 71, 90
292, 301 believer/non-believer (ba-iman/
Armenians, 259, 294 bi-iman), 101
Article 44 of Iranian Constitution, 13, Beyramvand, Akram, 158
14, 36 blue-collar workers, 49, 50
articulation, 24, 145, 148, 166, 167, body politic, 24, 212, 292, 295
178n4, 182, 190, 299, 300 bonyads (foundations), 14, 38, 72, 76
articulatory practices, 298–300 Bozorgnia, Mostafa, 341
Aryan Burke, Edmund, 122
Aryan migration, 101, 105, 106, business, 67, 82–5, 93, 206
116, 119
Aryan thesis, 105, 111, 113, 115
Aryo Barzan, 111, 117 C
‘ashayir (nomadic tribes), 101 Carter, Jimmy, 224
Asia, 113–15, 118, 121, 220, 258, 293 Caruth, Cathy, 173, 178n7
Asians, 113, 115 Center for Cooperation of Seminaries
Aspirations of the Oppressed and Universities, 245
(Arman-e Mostaz’afin), 70–1 Central Cooperative Organization
Atabaki, Touraj, 220 (CCO), 88
authoritarian, 2–4, 13, 24, 29–33, 35, Central Council of Federated Unions of
37, 38, 42, 43, 76, 120, 128, Iranian Workers and Toilers, 263
131, 133, 142, 220, 260–2, 272, Central Council of United Trade
282, 284, 297 Unions (CCUTU; Showra-ye
authoritarianism, 2, 13, 24, 29–33, Mottahedeh-ye Markazi-ye
42, 43, 76, 282 Ettehadieh-ye Kargaran
authoritative, 41, 127, 142, 156 Zahmatkeshan-e Iran), 223
auto/biographical, 166, 168, 178n4 Central Council of Workers Unions of
Azali Babis, 294 Iran (CCWUI; Showra-ye
Azerbaijan, 20, 223, 263, 266, 278 Markazi-ye Ettehadieh-ye
Kargaran-e Iran), 223
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA),
B 224, 227
Babis. See Azali Babis Central Rural Cooperative
Badi’zadegan, Ali-Asqar, 243 Organization (CRCO), 88
Baha’i, 109, 116, 120, 294 Chahar-Mahali, Ali, 232
INDEX 313
Chaqueri, Cosroe, 292–4, 296 Council of Guardians, 73

charity, 5, 14, 16, 65–77 Council of Muslim Socialists
children (Showra-ye Mosalmanan-e
in education, 141 Sosiyalist), 71
of political prisoners, 166, 167, Council of Nationalist-Religious
177n3 Activists (Showra-ye Fa’alan-e
Children of the Jacaranda Tree (novel), Melli Mazhabi), 76
5, 165–79 councils, 20, 39, 51, 52, 54, 57–60,
Christianity, 11, 113–15, 258 65, 71–3, 76, 77, 128, 134–6,
Cinema Rex (Abadan), 227, 231 138, 141–3, 150, 159, 221, 223,
civilization, 101, 102, 105, 106, 109, 226, 228, 233, 263, 292, 302
111, 114, 116, 209, 261 crisis of subjectivity, 202, 209–15
civil rights, 39, 42, 282, 291, 299 critical consciousness, 122
civil society, 4, 21, 29–43, 74, 190, Cubilié, Ann, 166, 167
191, 232–4, 272–5, 284, 291, cultural capital, 106–8, 112, 114
295, 302 Cultural Revolution in Iran, 5, 20,
clearance, 10, 19–22, 25 128, 135–43, 238, 244–5,
collective bargaining power, 48, 57–60 248–50, 252
colonialism, 70, 101, 115, 116, curriculum, 95, 107, 119, 122, 136,
121, 301 138, 140, 142, 237, 240, 245, 250
colour of Skin, 103, 104, 107, 113, 115
Confederation of Iranian Students-
National Union (CISNU), D
133, 238 DAB (Freedom and Equality Seeking
Constitutional Revolution of Iran Students), 250
(1906–1911), 3, 24, 220, 221, Davar, Ali-Akbar, 129, 262
258, 289, 290 Delijani, Sahar, 5, 165, 167–77
Constitution of Islamic Republic of democracy
Iran, 34, 90, 155, 159, 233 parallel with social justice, 251, 256
contract firms, 52–6 participatory, 1, 10, 15, 19, 21,
cooperatives 296, 302, 303, 309
economy, 82–5, 88, 90–2, 94, 96 as socialized process, 24
endogenous development, 5, 87, and social justice, 1, 4, 6, 10, 13,
89, 91, 93 15, 21, 25, 140, 234, 295
exogenous development, 86 Democratic National Front, 266
in Iran, 81–97 democratization, 18, 29, 30, 33, 41,
Law of, 90, 91 265, 267, 272, 289, 303, 308
Ministry of, 92, 95 Democrat Party (Hezb-e Demokrat),
movement, 5, 81–97 259
organization, 84, 86–9, 91, 92, 95, 96 desire to mother, 208
Council for the Coordination of development (modernization), 101–4
University (Showra-ye repressive, 133
Hamahangi-ye Daneshgah), diasporic, 166, 167, 171, 172, 174,
135, 142 177n1, 179n8
314 INDEX
digarandishan, 140 internal, 121

digital activism, 6, 183, 184, 187, outsider, 122
189, 191, 193 English language, 255
dignity, 22, 24, 25, 39, 66, 199, 279, ensaf (fairness), 14
282, 298, 302, 303, 309 epistemic disobedience, 276, 284, 285
discourse ‘erfan, 281, 283
discursive formations, 100, 101, erotic capital, 207
104, 122 estehaleh (transformation), 148, 149.
human rights, 5, 21, 22, 25, 155, See also Saming
156, 158 E’temad (newspaper), 297
kargar-karafarin, 17, 18 ethnicity, 25, 99, 103, 257, 267
neoliberal, 3, 16, 25, 271 ethnicism, 100, 122
social justice, 3, 17, 25, 61, Eurocentric, 111, 113, 122, 257
199–216, 252, 298 Evin Prison, 165, 167–9, 232
discursive shift, 15, 76 exilic, exile, 10, 20, 150, 152, 154, 166,
disunity, 109 167, 173–4, 206, 232, 247, 249
Djilas, Milovan, 12
downsizing government, 50
downtrodden. See mostaz’afin F
(downtrodden) Fa‘alan-e Melli Mazhabi. See Council
Dravidian, 113–15 of Nationalist-Religious Activists
Facebook, 6, 176, 182, 185–92
Iranian women’s use of, 185
E facial characteristics, 103
Ebrahimnejad, Ezatollah, 67 faith-based initiatives (FBIs), 67
ecology, 2, 25, 308, 309 faith-based organizations (FBOs), 67
economic justice. See social justice Family Law, 201
economic (neo)liberalization, 2, 4, 11, Farjadi, Gholamali, 16
15, 17, 18, 36, 65, 66, 72–6, father’s law, 208
233, 290. See also privatization feminine attraction, 206
education, 3, 20, 23, 67, 77n1, 85, feminine tricks (makr-e zananeh), 206
87, 88, 93, 95, 107, 127, 129, feminist activism
130, 132, 134, 135, 137–41, Iranian feminism(s), 6, 184, 192,
143, 191, 204, 205, 209, 211, 199, 200, 211, 212
220, 237–9, 245–7, 252, 259, popular feminism, 200–2, 210–12
261, 262, 294 Ferdowsi, Hakim Abolqasem, 107,
Eftekhari, Yusof, 222, 230 119, 245
elite, 4, 11–15, 18, 29–43, 60, 61, 74, floating signifier, 22–4, 137
100, 107, 120, 139, 238, 247, Foran, John, 221–5
253, 260, 261, 263, 266, 290–2 Forouhar, Dariush, 229
enemy Forughi, Mohammad-Ali, 129, 131,
external, 103, 109, 120–2 258, 260
insider, 107 Fourth Truman Principle, 88
INDEX 315
Freedom and Equality Seeking Hashemi-Rafsanjani, Ali-Akbar, 11,

Students. See DAB 36, 39, 49, 73, 137, 233, 244,
Freedom Movement of Iran, 242 246, 248
Friedle, Erica, 201 Hayek, Friedrich, 16, 245–7
friendly HDP. See People’s Democratic Party
insider, 100, 116, 117 (Turkey)
outsider, 100, 116, 117 hegemony
hegemonic, 100, 103, 104, 106–8,
114, 122, 135, 137, 143, 154,
G 189, 190, 211, 244, 271, 281,
Galtung, Johan, 23 284, 300, 302, 308
gender, 6, 7, 10, 22, 25, 85, 104, hegemonic front, 300, 302
181–5, 187–93, 199, 201, 202, Hekmat, Mansour, 249
204, 205, 210–12, 216, 233, 250, Hemmat (group), 220, 294
257, 259, 267, 294, 299, 307 Higgins, Patricia, 201
gender justice, 7, 22, 184, 192, High Labour Council, 52
210–212, 216. See also social Hodgkin, Katharine, 173
justice hooks, bell, 122
Genealogy of Morals, The (book), 11 human resources contract firms, 53
Ghandchi, Ahmad, 241 human rights paradigm
Ghaninezhad, Moussa, 16 criminal-victimizing subjectivity, 157
Gharbzadegi. See Westoxication praxis, 146, 156
(gharbzadegi) subjectivity, 146, 154–6
Gharibzadeh, Ebrahim, 232 victim-subject, 146, 157
Giroux, Henry, 120, 122
God-worshipping Socialists, 264. See
also Socialist Theists, the I
(Khodaparastan-e Sosiyalist) ideal citizen, 99–122
Gramsci, Antonio, 122, 154, 281, ideal type, 202, 203, 255, 281, 283
299, 300 ideological code, 100–5, 107–9, 111,
Green Movement of Iran, the, 20, 112, 114, 117, 118
22, 30, 138, 167, 183, 251, Imam Ali Popular Students Relief
290–2, 297 Society (Jam’iyyat-e Emdad-e
grounded theory, 202 Daneshjuì-Mardomi-ye Emam
Group of Fifty-Three, 239 Ali), 75
guild society, 57, 59 imperialism, 100, 104, 106, 109, 115,
118, 121, 127, 202, 247, 249,
279, 292
H in-depth interviews, 203
Hafez, 107 India, 86, 94, 113, 114
hailing, 204 Indians, 113–15, 227
Hanifnejad, Mohammad, 243 individual bargaining power, 48–57, 59
316 INDEX
Indo-European, 113–15 Islamic Students’ Associations (ISA),

informant-recanter. See tavvab 246, 250
intellectuals Islamism, Islamists, 18, 40, 68–73,
historical, 21, 70, 296 76, 128, 132–5, 224, 238, 243,
organic, 299 255, 265
intergenerational memory, 165–79 Israel, 67, 113, 118–20
internal enemies, 121 Ithna ‘Ashari (Twelver Shi’ism), 136
International Monetary Fund (IMF),
13, 67, 92
interpolation, 215 J
Iran dusti. See loving Iran Jazani, Bijan, 243, 276
Iran-e no, 259 Jewish Iranians, 119, 294
Iranian Left. See Left, Iranian Jihad-e Sazandagi. See development
Iranian Revolution job security, 48, 49, 54, 77, 262
ideals of, 1, 15, 136 Jodat, Hossein, 239
“slave revolt”, 12 Jonbesh Edalatkhahi (justice-seeking
Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps movement). See justice
(IRGC), 14, 15 justice
Iranian Women’s Party, 263 diaspora, 154–5
Iran-Iraq war, 52, 73, 92, 102, 111, Iran Tribunal, 146, 153, 155–9,
118, 119, 121, 141, 226, 232, 178n5
238, 245–6, 248, 252 justice-seeking movement (jonbesh
Iran-Japan Petrochemical Company, 227 edalatkhahi), 146, 147, 151, 154
Iran’s Cooperative Movement, 81–97. as a response, 155
See also cooperatives social justice, 1, 9–25, 29, 61, 68,
Iran Tribunal, 146, 153, 155–9, 178n5 81, 99–122, 127, 145–61, 166,
Islamic 181, 199–216, 224, 237–53,
economics, 69, 70 255–67, 271, 289–303
liberalism, 68 Justice Shares, 15, 74, 96
populism, 72, 73
Islamic jurisprudence
and qest, 70 K
and taslit, 68, 69 karafarin (job-creator), 17, 18. See
and zarar, 68, 69 also discourse
Islamic Labour Council (ILC), 57–60, kargar (worker), 17, 18. See also
77, 226 discourse
Islamic Labour Council and Islamic Kasravi, Ahmad, 258, 260
Associations, 226 Kaveh (journal), 260, 261
Islamic Republic of Iran, 34, 36, 51, Khamenei, Seyyed Ali, 14, 36, 138, 247
52, 149, 155, 159, 233 Khaqani, Ayatollah Sheikh
Islamic Revolution (1979). See Iranian Mohammad Taher al-Shobeyr,
Revolution 229–31
INDEX 317
Khatam al-Anbia (IRGC liberal paradigm, 7, 271–5, 284

reconstruction base), 14 liberation, 5, 10, 11, 68–72, 74–7,
Khatami, Mohammad, 29, 32, 35, 119, 132, 188, 202, 229, 240,
38–42, 73, 233, 247, 248, 290, 244, 246, 261, 262
291, 297 liberation theology
Khavaran Cemetery, 151, 154 black, 68
Mothers of Khavaran, 154 Catholic, 68, 75
Khomeini, Ayatollah Ruhollah Shi‘i, 5, 68–72, 74–7
and Iran-Iraq war, 141 Losurdo, Domenico, 301
and massacre of political loving Iran, 101–7, 111–13, 118–21
prisoners, 147 Lur, 114
Khomeinism/Khomeinist(s), 128,
134–6, 142, 143
Khuzestani, Bijan 13, 229 M
Khuzestan Province, 227, 232 Macpherson, C. B., 66
Kristeva, Julia, 208 Mahmoudi, Jalil, 22
Kurd, 114 Mahshahr Port, 227, 233
Kurdistan Province, 20, 121, 138, Malekian, Mostafa, 76
141, 223, 266 Maleki, Khalil, 7, 264, 271–2, 276,
civil war, 20 278–80, 285
Maleki, Mohammad, 134, 142, 245
Maljoo, Mohammad, 4, 18, 47–61,
L 73, 74, 233, 297
labour casualization, 4, 48–52, 58 Mardani, Issa, 228
Labour Code (Law) of 1990, 48, 52 mardom (people), 71, 106, 107, 249
labour market, 47–9, 54–6 Martin, Vanessa, 75, 291
labour movement. See workers, martyrdom, 11, 101, 102, 111, 112,
movement 116–21, 148
La Capra, Dominick, 174 Marxism, 134, 243, 248, 252, 264,
Ladjvardi, Habib, 225 271, 276, 277, 279, 280, 296
Lahouti, Abolqasem, 230 Marx, Karl, 66, 279
language, 11, 20, 102, 104, 107–13, massacre of political prisoners. See
115, 122, 146, 148, 152, 154, political prisoners
155, 157, 159, 207–9, 255–7, 274 mass mobilization, 5, 65–77, 191, 294
Law of Cooperation, 90, 91 maternal model, 6, 202, 203, 206–10,
Left, Iranian, 24, 248, 257, 265, 212, 214
296, 308 Matin, Kamran, 257, 258
legal rights, 104 Medes, 105, 114
personal, 104 Meftahi, Abbas, 243
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Memarpour, Mehdi, 158–60
Queer (LGBTQ), 22 memory, 1, 11, 156, 165–79, 241,
Levinas, Emmanuel, 146, 160 244, 293
318 INDEX
Mesukb, Shahrokh, 263 N

Middle East, the, 30, 31, 37, 40, 75, Nahj ul-Balagheh, 107
185, 187 Nakhshab, Mohammad, 7, 66, 68–71,
militarization, 101, 102, 118–21 271, 276–8, 285
Ministry of Cooperative, Labour, and Nasr, Seyyed Hussein, 131, 132, 245
Social Welfare, 48, 95. See also National Iranian Drilling Company, 51
cooperatives National Iranian Oil Company, 51
Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, nationality, 103, 109, 115, 294
49, 58 neo-liberalism, 16, 25, 77, 92, 238,
modernity, 3, 7, 114, 127, 130, 131, 246–9, 252, 273. See also
188, 190, 202, 258, 275, 284, discourse
286, 289–91, 293, 295, 303, New Left of Iran. See DAB
307, 308 nezam (system), 148, 149
political, 3, 7, 289–91, 293, 295, NGOization
303, 307, 308 of development, 67
modernization, 12, 40, 101–4, 120, of social services, 74
121, 129–33, 142, 222, 261, 281 NGOs. See nongovernmental
Mohammad Ali Shah Qajar, 293 organizations (NGOs)
mohareb (armed rebels), 150 Nili, Massoud, 16, 17, 295
Mohsen, Saeed, 70, 243 nomadic tribes. See ‘Ashayir
Mojahedin-e Khalq, 66, 121, 135, 150 Nomani, Farhad, 13, 14, 18, 54
Mojtahed Shabestari, Mohammad, nomenklatura, 12
76, 139 nongovernmental organizations
Mollazahdeh, Khosrow, 228 (NGOs), 67, 68, 74, 75, 153,
mortad (apostate), 150 155, 250
Mosaddeq, Mohammad, 132, 223, non-human, 120
224, 240, 244, 279 non-Persian, 102, 104, 106, 108, 110,
mostaz’afin (downtrodden), 5, 10, 113
69–70 non-present discourse, 99, 105, 113,
Mousavi, Mir-Hossein, 73, 138, 251 115, 122
Movement of Combatant Muslims non-presently, 103, 108–17, 119, 120
(Jonbesh-e Mosalmanan-e Nussbaum, Martha, 66
Mobarez), 71
Movement of God-Worshiping
Socialists (Nehzat-e O
Khodaparastan-e Sosiyalist), 71 Office of Housing for the
Muslim Student Followers of Imam’s Downtrodden (Daftar-e Khanesazi
Line, 245 Baray-e Mostaz’afin), 72
My Stealthy Freedom, 6, 182, oil, 4, 29–43, 49–52, 55, 56, 58, 132,
186–91 220, 222–4, 226–31, 240–2, 263,
myth, 18, 104, 113–16, 190, 273 278, 279, 297, 307
INDEX 319
oil nationalization movement, 240–2 Petroleum Collage of Abadan, 228

Organization of the Iranian People’s Peyman, Habibollah, 71
Fadai Guerrillas (OIPFG), 243 pluralism, 30, 76
Organization of the Iranian People’s Podemos (Spain), 267
Mojahedin (OIPM). See political prisoners. See also tavvab
Mojahedin-e Khalq clearance of, 10
Orientalism, 113 family members, 146, 151, 154
Osanloo, Arzoo, 201, 202, 297 massacre of, 147, 151
Other, 31, 38, 67, 100, 107–20, 122, resistance, 214
147–55, 205, 225, 285 politicized pedagogies, 122
otherness, 100, 107, 112–15, poor, the, 2, 5, 13, 14, 18, 21, 22, 24,
121, 122 67, 69–72, 74–7, 106, 116, 243,
overdetermination, 297 273, 296, 299, 300, 308
ownership, 14–16, 68, 70, 82, 83, religious, 5, 21, 22, 67, 70
277, 301 popular feminism, 200–2, 210–12
post-presidential protests (2009), 165,
167, 176, 251. See also Green
P Movement of Iran, the
pagan, 116 praxis
paganism, 101, 116 human rights, 156
Pahlavi, Mohammad-Reza (Shah), social justice, 145–61
131–5, 142, 143 private enterprise, 82, 84, 95
Pahlavi, Reza (Shah), 72, 127–30, privatization, 2, 4, 5, 11, 13–18, 36,
262, 265 37, 73, 93, 94, 233, 246
paksazi, 132, 148, 149, 245. See also progress, 89, 94, 99, 103, 104, 109,
Purging Committees; totalizing 110, 120, 171, 204, 207, 209,
state 252, 256, 261, 277
Palestine, 118, 119 project
Palestinian, 118–20, 227 ethical-political, 161
Pars-Aryan, 101 political, 57, 146, 161
participant observation, 203 Project-Seasonal Workers Union of
Partido Revolucionario Institucional Abadan (PSWUA), 6, 219–34
(Mexico), 15 Prophet Mohammad, 40, 104,
paternal model, 202–7, 209–13 117, 264
patriarchy, 99, 190 public religion, 65–77
People’s Democratic Party public sphere, 40, 41, 146, 156, 185,
(Turkey), 267 211, 214, 215, 273, 274, 282,
People’s Mojahedin. See Mojahedin-e 283, 285, 309
Khalq Purging Committees (Komitehha-ye
performative agency, 6, 199–216 Paksazi), 245. See also Supreme
Persian-centric, 99–122 Council for Cultural Revolution
Persian language (Farsi), 102, 108, (SCCR)
109, 111, 257 Puyan, Amir-Parviz, 243
320 INDEX
Q Rouhani, Hassan, 13, 16, 18, 66, 76,

Qavam, Ahmad, 223 94, 233, 295
qest (share), 14, 128 Rudaki, 111
Qorb (IRGC reconstruction base), 14 Russian Social Democratic Labour
Quran, The, 69, 70, 107, 277 Party, 220
R S
race Sa‘di, 107
racialization, 100 Sa‘ei, Karim, 232
racism, 109, 122 Salam (newspaper), 248
Radmanesh, Reza, 239 Salim, Gholam-Hossein 18, 232
Radstone, Susanna, 173 Sāmāniyān Dynasty, 110
Rahnema, Saeed, 225, 226 Sami, Kazem, 71
Rasht, 222, 293 Saming, 147, 149, 150, 155, 158, 161
Rasulzadeh, Mohammad Amin, 259 estehaleh, 149, 158
Rawls, John, 255, 256 sandika. See workers, unions
reconstruction sarmayehdar (capitalist,
base(s) (qarargah-e sazandegi), 14 entrepreneur), 17
commander, 11 Sassanid Empire, 116
period (dowran-e sazandegi)/effort, 9 Sattar Khan, 294
Reform Movement in Iran, 21, 39, SAVAK (Sazman-e Ettela’at va
184, 290, 297 Aminyyat-e Keshvar; National
religious entities (REs), 67, 77n1 Intelligence and Security Agency
rentier economy, 9, 42, 72 of Iran), 243
rentierism, 30–3, 41–3 Sayyed Mohammad, 228
rentier state, 4, 13–15, 24, 29–35, 37, Sazman-e Melli-ye Daneshgahiyan-e
38, 41, 42, 224, 291 Iran (National Organization for
repressive development, 238, 293, 295 University Professors), 135
respons-ability, 5, 157–9, 161. See also School curricula. See curriculum
subjectivity scientific progress, 109, 110
ressentiment, 11–13 sedentarization, 121
Revolutionary Monotheists self, 5, 10, 100, 103, 107, 110–22,
(Movaheddin-e Enqelabi), 71 156, 160, 174, 203, 279, 281, 282
Revolutionary Movement of the semiotic discourse, 208
Muslim People of Iran (Jonbesh-e semiotic language, 208, 209
Enqelabi-ye Mardom-e Mosalman-e Sen, Amartya, 66
Iran; JAMA), 71 Shah. See Pahlavi, Mohammad-Reza
Revolution of 1979. See Iranian (Shah)
Revolution Shahnameh, 107, 108, 111, 112
Reza Khan. See Pahlavi, Reza Shajari, Fakher, 228
right of organization, 57–9 Shari’a, 291
INDEX 321
Shari‘ati, Ali, 66, 69, 70, 229, 264, social movements

272, 276, 277, 280–5 cooperative, 81–97
Shar’iat-Razavi, Mehdi, 241 reform, 262
Shatti, 229 student, 4
Shatzadeh, Hamid, 232 women’s, 2, 20, 187, 250, 291,
Shi‘i 294, 296, 299
Shi‘i-centric, 99–122 workers/labour, 219–34
Shi‘i Imams, 106, 109, 117 social networking sites (SNS), 181–5,
Siyahatnameh Ibrahim Beig 191, 192
(book), viii societal empowerment, 271–3, 275, 284
Smith, Dorothy, 206 Society for National Heritage
social biography, 99–122 (Anjoman-e Asar-e Melli;
social democracy SNH), 129
in Constitutional Revolution, 271 socioeconomic development, 31, 81,
in Europe, 256, 279, 293 85, 94, 298, 303
grassroots social democracy, 271–86 Soroush, Abdolkarim, 76, 138, 245,
in Iran, 289–303 275, 290
social imaginary, 3, 300 spiritual social democracy, 280–5
socialism, 21, 22, 68, 70, 94, 134, Stalinism, 21, 279, 296
220, 249, 257, 264, 276–80, structural adjustment programs, 67
282, 293 student movement. See also social
indigenous socialism, 278–80 movements
Socialist Students of Iranian 16 Azar, 240–2, 246, 250
Universities, 251 18 Tir, 248
Socialist Theists, the (Khodaparastan-e subaltern, 21, 100, 115, 122, 146,
Sosiyalist), 276 152, 154, 155, 184, 215, 216,
social justice 261, 265, 272, 295
activists of, 5, 25, 147, 166 excluded-other, 152
concept of, 4, 16, 255, 256, 289 subject
and Constitutional Revolution, 24, objectivization (reification), 157, 158
260, 271 resistant, 145–61
and cooperatives, 85, 90 subjective-objective experience, 146
definition of, 255–7 victim-subject, 146, 153, 157, 159
and dignity, 22, 24 subjectivity
economic justice, 220 respons-ability, 5, 157–9, 161
education of, 3, 5 social-ethical, 159
as floating signifier, 22–4 sociality, 146, 156–8, 160, 161
gender justice, 7, 210 subsidies, 15, 38, 72–4
and Iranian Left, 24, 248, 249, 265 Sunni, 101, 106, 108, 109
parallel with democracy, 6, 251, 256 Supreme Council for Cultural
research, 307–9 Revolution (SCCR), 138–41. See
rights, 2, 22–4, 104, 297, 302 also Purging Committees
and violence, 23, 117 (Komitehha-ye Paksazi)
social media, 6, 181–93 survivalist, 148, 158, 160
322 INDEX
symbolic discourse, 207, 208 University of Tehran, 127–37, 139,

symbolic language, 207–9 140, 142, 237
SYRIZA (Greece), 267 Urbanization, 121
T V
Tabibiyan, Mohammad, 16, 295 Vaziri, Mostafa, 114
Tabriz, 221, 222, 231, 241, 242, 244, veil (mandatory veiling), 186
294 Velayat-e Faqih (Guardianship of
Taleqani, Seyyed Mahmood, 66, 70, Supreme Jurist), 128, 148,
71, 277 231, 266
Taqizadeh, Hasan, 137, 259, 260 victim-victimizer dichotomy, 156, 160
tavvab (informant-recanter), 169, 178n6 violence, 23, 101, 103, 105,
Tehran, 6, 40, 75, 127–36, 140, 142, 108, 117–21, 153, 158, 159,
151, 153, 154, 171, 172, 201–3, 170, 175, 179n7, 190, 191,
221, 222, 229, 231, 232, 237, 225, 296, 301
239, 241, 242, 250, 261, 293, 294 and social justice, 23, 117
Tehran Bus Drivers Union, 250
temporary contract, 19, 48, 49, 52,
54–6, 77 W
textbooks (Iranian schools), 5, 99–122 war of position (Gramsci), 300
Third Force, the (Niru-ye Sevvom), 279 welfare state (dowlat-e refah), 16
totalizing state Western feminism, 200, 202, 211
estehaleh, 148, 149 Westoxication (gharbzadegi), 138
inclusion/exclusion, 149 West, the, 15, 23, 128, 132, 137, 143,
nezam, 148, 149 244, 275, 278, 286
paksazi, 148, 149 white-collar employees, 50
Survivalist response, 148 whiteness, 113–15
trace. See non-present discourse witnessing, 156–60, 166, 173, 177, 214
trauma, 170, 173, 174, 178n7 women
Tudeh Party of Iran (Hezb Tudeh agency, 200–2, 210, 213, 215, 216
Iran), 239 and feminism, 6, 200–2
Turkmen, Plains of, 20 movement, 2, 20, 187, 250, 291,
294, 296, 299
online networking, 182, 192
U organization of, 263
Umayyad Caliphate, 69, 109, 117 subjectivity of, 6, 200, 215 (see also
Ummat-e Islami (Islamic Nation/ crisis of subjectivity)
Community), 101 workers
United Nation International Forum of Abadan, 227
for Social Development, 256 minimum wage, 18, 19, 227, 233
unity, 37, 69, 120, 193, 203, 266, 282 movement, 219
university, 5, 75, 95, 127–43, 204, unions, 19, 222, 223, 234, 302
220, 237, 263 women, 25, 223, 233, 308, 309
INDEX 323
working people, 2, 7, 11, 22, 82, Y

84, 94, 96, 232, 290, 294, Yaghoubian, David, 122
296, 309 (see also discourse; Yaghubi, Yaddollah, 228, 229
kargar)
Workers and Employees Councils
(Showra-ye Kargaran va Z
Karmandan), 226 Zebardast, Akbar, 228, 229
workforce insecurity, 77 Ziazarifi, Hassan, 243
working condition, 3, 4, 48, 53, 61, Zibakalam, Sadeq, 21
222, 223, 227, 233, 299 Zionism, 109, 120, 121
World Bank (WB), 67, 68, 92 Zoroastrians, 294

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IRAN’S STRUGGLES

FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE

Edited by Peyman Vahabzadeh

Iran’s Struggles for

ISBN 978-3-319-44226-6 ISBN 978-3-319-44227-3 (eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016961360

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017

Cover image © huseyintuncer, iStock / Getty Images Plus

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

What does it mean when a group of young and middle-aged a­ cademics

the very foundation of social sciences and categorically ­appropriated the

of the most widely circulated and read periodicals of the Constitutional

New York, NY Hamid Dabashi

This book represents the collective endeavor of academics and activists

of Muslim Societies and Cultures and Institute for the Humanities at

1 Introduction: How to Approach This Book1

2 Historical and Conceptual Preparations for a

3 Gazing Upon the Land of Oil Through the Prism

4 The Unmaking of the Iranian Working Class since

5 Charity or Mass Mobilization? Public Religion

6 Iran’s Cooperative Movement: Agony of Development 81

7 Social Justice; Anti-imperialist, Racist, Persian-centric,

8 Justice Interrupted: The University and the Imam 127

9 Ethical–Political Praxis: Social Justice and

10 Intergenerational Memory in Children of

11 Social Media as a Site of Transformative Politics:

12 Performative Agency: A Realization of an Objective

13 The Voice of the Workers: Iran’s Labour Movement

14 An Unfinished Odyssey: The Iranian Student

15 The Left’s Contribution to Social Justice in Iran:

16 Iran: Multiple Sources of a Grassroots

17 Social Justice and Democracy in Iran: In Search

Afterword: Social Justice in Iran: Further Research307

Hajar Amidian is a PhD candidate in Political Science, University of

antiracism education, curriculum studies, critical pedagogy, citizenship

2012. His MA thesis traced the influence of academic philosophy in

Tehran. His research interests include cyberpolitics, international relations

continental and transnational contexts, critical theories of women’s move-

Fig. 12.1 Performative agency 213

Introduction: How to Approach This Book

© The Author(s) 2017 1

Therefore, the book attends to political analyses, historical observations,

democracy, in both their current liberal and social democratic discourses.

The Road from Here

Chapter 5 attends to the increasing role of charity organizations in

importance of remembrance in the intergenerational approach to tragic

Historical and Conceptual Preparations

In the summer of 1988, two significant events marked a historic turning

© The Author(s) 2017 9

1979 “revolution of the downtrodden” (enqelab-e mostaz‘afin) in which

The War’s “Blessing”

self-defense, but in the context of a popular revolution, self-defense soon

Iran’s (Hidden) Nietzschean Revolution

humble backgrounds, to borrow Nietzsche’s term, literally “exhorted”

Privatization of Iranian Economy

tries, transportation, and communication. About 80 % of Iranian economy

and became economic powerhouses that initiated privatization through

Rise of the New Public Discourse

What does it mean when a group of young and middle-aged a cademics

the very foundation of social sciences and categorically appropriated the

New York, NY Hamid Dabashi

1 Introduction: How to Approach This Book1

6 Iran’s Cooperative Movement: Agony of Development 81

8 Justice Interrupted: The University and the Imam 127

Afterword: Social Justice in Iran: Further Research307

Fig. 12.1 Performative agency 213

ontracting Out State Employment Umbrella

traceable within the economic and developmental paths adopted by the

a ctivities undertaken by religiously inspired groups. I end the chapter by

e lectricity, safe drinking water, health services, and schools to millions of

anifestation of Iran’s neoliberal turn is to be found neither in poverty nor