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Religious and Political Discourse in Iran
Winter/Spring 2003 – Volume IX, Issue 2 243
FOROUGH JAHANBAKHSH
Assistant Professor, Islamic Studies
Queen’s University, Canada
Religious and Political
Discourse in Iran:
Moving Toward
Post-Fundamentalism
Since the landslide victory of Mohammad Khatami and his reformist government
in Iran’s 1997 presidential election, Iran has justifiably garnered
much attention once again. If successful, the new reform movement will
constitute a political experience as significant as the 1979 Revolution. Today’s
is a unique religio-political experience unfolding from within a fundamentalist
theocracy two decades old. Although this reform movement is still evolving, its
points of departure from the ruling theocratic regime are evident. Political change
is driven by a variety of factors—social, economic, cultural, international influences,
etc.—and the recent political reform movement in Iran is no exception.
Social problems associated with the rise of a new generation, economic crisis
and uncertainty regarding nationalization or privatization, political factionalism
and power struggles, Iran’s relative isolation internationally and the pressure of
globalization all set parameters for the emergence of this reform movement and
have been rather extensively discussed. Nevertheless, these studies view the
reform movement as an exclusively political phenomenon and do not explain
how a dogmatic, ideological, religious milieu has produced from within such a
popular democratic language and outlook that cries for nothing less than “pluralism,”
“human rights,” “civil society,” and “rule of law.” Addressing this question,
this paper examines this recent shift in Iranian political discourse from the
vantage point of a shift in religious discourse.
From the mid-nineteenth century onward, five major patterns of political
behavior and political discourse are traceable in the modern history of Iran: