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Division and Discord among the Shia ʿUlamāʾ: New Lights on the Failure of the 1927 Anti-Conscription Movement in Iran

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Najm al-Din Yousefi
Najm al-Din Yousefi*
Affiliation:
California State University, Chico
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Abstract

This essay delves into the 1927 anti-conscription movement and the causes of its failure. It argues that the Shia ʿulamāʾ of Iran and Iraq suffered from endemic divisions within their ranks, which in turn kept them from agreeing on a unified position against the extensive socioeconomic and military reforms under Reza Shah. The essay sheds light on the government’s use of religious justification that facilitated modern reforms. It also demonstrates how certain elements within the clerical establishment helped the Reza Shah government to win the senior clerics over or at least neutralize their opposition. This allows us to discern the fluid boundaries of tradition and modernity as modernizing reforms checked the Shia ʿulamāʾ’s long-standing authority in Iranian society.

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 50 , Issue 5 , September 2017 , pp. 705 - 733
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 2017

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Footnotes

Yousefi would like to thank Sayyed Mohammad Hossein Manzur al-Ajdad for his immense help in unraveling numerous complexities of the Persian documents pertaining to the five Grand Ayatollahs that he had previously collected and published (Tehran: Shirazeh, 1385/2006) as well as for providing a copy of the deed of waqf for the Golestān Palace. Yousefi is also grateful to Mohammad Nafissi, William Ochsenwald, Rodney Thomson, and the anonymous reviewers of Iranian Studies for their useful comments and suggestions for improvement. He is solely responsible for any errors or shortcomings that remain. Unless otherwise stated, all translations are by the author.

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