ABSTRACT
Throughout this study, my conclusions have been almost exceedingly brief. I preferred to leave the bottom line to the reader, using the required conclusion only as a brief summary and lead-in for the following chapter. My conclusions took this form for two main reasons. First, this was in accordance with the Persian texts arranged and presented in two of the chapters. Motahhari takes great care in the introduction to Dastan-e Rastan to explain why he avoided simply presenting his readers with the lessons to be learned from his anecdotes. Shabestari flatly refuses to provide his interlocutor with the bottom line he seeks, the one bestowing full religious (that is, faith-based) legitimacy on the Islamic republic of Iran. He flusters his interlocutor’s attempts to settle on a single, acceptable definition of faith or religiosity. At first glance, he seems to be simplistically repeating his equation of faith with experience. However, as his interlocutor presents him with diverse historical contexts, Shabestari’s words take on new meaning each time. One of the prime motivations of this study is to take on the phenomenon of Shi’i clerical discourse as much as possible in its own terms. The second reason for the format of my conclusions is related to
Chapter 4-5, which focus on Khomeini. Khomeini refers constantly to a bottom line – the eschatological horizon. The end of time will come, the resurrection will take place, man will approach God to be judged and will be rewarded or punished according to his sins. However, this bottom line
remains inaccessible to human existence, at least in earthly form. Human meaning and human discourse, even with regard to God, are open ended and constantly negotiated. In fact, one could even say they are negotiations. This open-ended quality is drawn directly from the unambiguous clarity of creation and eschatology, and reinforces the latter in turn. Mediated truth exists only through and because of the divine bottom line, but it also plays a significant part in tracing the contours of this final line. My conclusions throughout the study attempted to preserve this quality within the study itself. While this blurs the distinction between the object studied and the sub-
jects reading the studies, I suggest that it is an important tool for conveying the experiential dynamic I have been pursuing. As dominant strains of scholarly language seem to be geared towards ignoring (if not rejecting) clerical notions of experience and the worldview based on them, providing my readers with a personal experience of engaging with the texts seemed as important as any detailed analysis I could offer. My examination of Shi’i discourse in this study has been a diverse
exercise in repetition. Many other attempts to engage with Shi’i discourse in twentieth-century Iran have applied various forms of recollection. This point requires some further explanation. Analytical treatments of clerical experience in the period discussed present a limited view of this experience. They may subject Shi’i discourse and clerical experience to a categorical scheme that is at odds with some of its prominent theological features. Vahdat’s emphasis of “negative freedom” in the case of Shabestari is a case in point. When examined with this category in mind, Shi’i discourse appears at best superficially ambiguous and at worst a conscious manipulation performed on exclusively political grounds. Some of the analyses we have encountered cleaved firmly to one or the other of these dichotomous poles. Alternatively, treatments of Shi’i discourse and experience may view Shi’i
discourse in the context of an excess of historical meaning. These scholarly examinations will reject attempts to speak of Shi’i discourse as exhibiting an intrinsic rationality. Rather, they will assemble an immense array of sociohistorical or intellectual variables and attempt to present Shi’i discourse as a function, a derivative of these forces meeting and/or colliding. Every aspect of Shi’i discourse can be ascribed, in this way, to different historical/social/ cultural elements without recognizing the existence of a system of meaning production which is uniquely Shi’i. This approach is often adopted for worthy reasons. As Hamid Dabashi describes in the introduction to his Iran – A People Disturbed, Iran is very often described in one-dimensional terms, as: “A land where crazed (clergy)men are abusing virgin houris who are impatiently reading ‘Lolita’ while waiting to be liberated by George W. Bush and his Christian crusaders.”1
