Neither Dowlati nor Khosusi: Islam, Education and Civil Society in Contemporary Iran

Abstract

Private universities are a rapidly expanding form of education in Iran, and increasingly include Islam and the social sciences alongside the hard sciences too. What implications does the privatization of religious and social scientific knowledge have for the Islamic Republic? Scholarship has so far responded by looking at the ways in which the Iranian authoritarian state has monopolized religion, repressed the social sciences and hollowed out student activism. Complicating these arguments, this article provides a historical and institutional comparison of higher education in Iran in order to look at the evolving degree of autonomy of academic institutions and the ability of actors that operate within them to contribute to critical debate, social activism and novel discourse. The article proposes that while state universities and Islamic Azad suffer from politicization and control, a small set of privately owned “Islamic” universities is using its elite connections, financial independence and socio-pedagogical ties to the seminary and modern academia to secure enhanced levels of free debate and independent thinking.

Notes

1. Khalaji, “Iran's Regime of Religion”; Boroujerdi, Iranian Intellectuals; Malekzadeh, “Education as Public Good”; Matin-Asgari, Iranian Student Opposition; Habibi, “Iran's Overeducation Crisis.” For the wider Middle East, see also Eickelman, “Mass Higher Education and Religious Imagination.”

2. Arjomand, The Turban for the Crown; Corboz, Guardians of Shi’ism; Eickelman, Knowledge and Power; Fischer, Iran; Mottahedeh, Mantle of the Prophet; Mallat, Renewal of Islamic Law; Walbridge, Most Learned of the Shi’a.

3. Overseas Consultants, Report on Seven-Year Development Plan; Ṭayyeb, Arzyābi-ye Gostāresh-e Āmuzesh-e, 11–14.

4. Motahhari, Dah Goftar, 283‒94; Shariati, Mā va Eqbāl, 19.

5. Boroujerdi, Iranian Intellectuals.

6. Fischer, Iran, 61.

7. Arjomand, After Khomeini, 209.

8. Khalaji, “Iran's Regime of Religion,” 131–47; Arjomand, After Khomeini, 209; Roy, Failure of Political Islam, 89–106.

9. Khalaji, “Iran's Regime of Religion,” 141.

10. Khosrokhavar and Nikpey, Avoir Vingt Ans.

11. Zeghal, “Religion and Politics.”

12. Bano and Sakurai, Global Islamic Discourses, 41–72.

13. The training of foreign students falls under a different institutional directory and has a separate curriculum. Ibid., 47; Khalaji, “Iran's Regime of Religion,” 27.

14. Roy, Failure of Political Islam, 104–6.

15. Paivandi, Islam et éducation. Also see Mohsenpour, “Philosophy of Education.”

16. Malekzadeh, “Education as Public Good,” 102–4.

17. In the Islamic Republic, students have partly become demobilized through factional state politics (ibid.). In Pahlavi Iran, the student movement was largely based in the West. See Matin-Asgari, Iranian Student Opposition.

18. Arjomand, “Law, Agency, and Policy,” 263–93; Walbridge, The Most Learned of the Shia, 230‒47.

19. Or from 6,000 to 20,000. See Fischer, Iran, xixx; Khalaji, “Iran's Regime of Religion,” 136. Population data from the World Bank.

20. Personal communication with Mofid professors and staff.

21. “150,000 Talabeh dar Keshvar Mashghul beh Tahsil Mishavad” [Iran enrolls 150,000 seminary students], Basij News, Shahrivar 16, 1394/September 7, 2015. Accessed February 2, 2017. https://www.basijnews.ir/fa/print/8565441

22. The exact endowments of seminaries are hard to trace as they rely on non-public charitable donations, their own investment bodies and government support. One official body that manages and funds seminaries, the Supreme Council of the Seminaries, received about $82 million in the Iranian year 2016/17, according to the most recent 1396 budget bill (accessed 23 January 2016).

23. “ʾAdam-e Tanāsob-e Āmar-e Tolāb bā Jam’iyat-e Keshvar” [The gap between the number of seminary students and Iran's population], Hawzah News, Farvardin 30, 1393/April 19, 2014. Accessed February 1, 2017.http://hawzahnews.com/detail/News/329671

24. Western literature on the role of seminaries in the 1979 Revolution is extensive. See Mottahedeh, The Mantle of the Prophet; Momen, Introduction to Shi’i Islam; Akhavi, Religion and Politics. For detailed treatises on the seminary in the Islamic Republic see Shirkhani and Zari’, Tahavvolāt-e Howzeh-ye ʿElmiyyeh-ye Qom; Ghiyasi, Taʾlim va Tarbiyat.

25. Only a negligible percentage of the ‘official’ howzeh curriculum has changed since 1979. The addition of a book by hardline Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi in philosophy classes is one notable example. See the Qom Hawzih's official website. Accessed March 4, 2016. http://www.hawzah.net/fa/Article/View/6340

26. See Mir-Hosseini and Tapper, Islam and Democracy.

27. Abrahamian, History of Modern Iran, 8–33.

28. Al-i Aqa, Kishavarz, and Rahimi, “Ravand Rushd Kami-i Āmuzesh,” 93; Menashri, “Education XVII: Higher Education.”

29. A useful article on education, comparing the 1355 (1976/77) and 1390 (2011/12) censuses can be found here: http://dana.ir/224173. Also Abrahamian, “Why the Islamic Republic has Survived.”

30. Halliday, Iran: Dictatorship and Development; Menashri, “Education XVII: Higher Education.”

31. Boroujerdi, Iranian Intellectuals, 38.

32. Curtis, Encyclopaedia of Muslim-American History, 278.

33. Matin-Asgari, Iranian Student Opposition.

34. Peivandi, “Education in the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

35. A personal anecdote relating to this is the relatively large number of professors who have secretly but proudly shown me a cherished picture of Mir Hossein Mousavi or Khatami, tucked away under the files in their desk cabinet, telling me that “this is who we support.”

36. “Asāsnāmeh.” http://www.modares.ac.ir/index.jsp?fkeyid=&siteid=1&pageid=4988

37. Ibid.

38. It should be noted that in pre-1979 Iran, the Islamic opposition was not the only group to carve out niches of autonomy in the educational system. The liberal opposition managed to do this too, even in what neo-Weberians have called Iran's “sultanistic” years of the late 1960s to early 1970s. See Chehabi and Juan, Sultanistic Regimes, chapter 1.

39. Malekzadeh, “Education as Public Good.”

40. Arjomand, Constitutionalism and Political Reconstruction, 37. While almost all movements have adhered to party politics, one exception is the small demonstration by the radical left that took place in front of the University of Tehran Engineering Faculty on 12 December 2005—the first real public expression of the secular left since the executions of the late 1980s. There have not really been similar cases since, and the ability of the secular left to protest then had to do in particular with the collapse of the Khatami reformist coalition at the tail-end of a long period of democratization and civil society growth.

41. For a discussion of politics and ideology in social science, see Burawoy, The Extended Case Method. In my own experience, the heavy reliance of Iranian students and professors on technical aspects and theory, often leading to “overtheorization,” is one prominent example of de-politicization.

42. Banani, The Modernization of Iran, 100.

43. Birask “Education XI: Private Schools.”

44. Ibid.

45. Rahnema, An Islamic Utopian.

46. Rafsanjani, Khāterāt-e Sāl-e 1360, 464.

47. The Islamic Republic has defined multiple welfare categories under the umbrella term of isārgar (somebody who sacrificed for the sake of the “holy” Iran‒Iraq War), including families of martyrs (shohadāʾ), combatants (razmandegān), disabled veterans (janbāzān—subdivided according to the degree of disability), prisoners of war (āzādegān) and others.

48. Rafsanjani, Khāterāt-e Sāl-e 1361, 108.

49. Including at first: Mousavi Ardebili; Rafsanjani; Dr. Abdollah Jassbi; Ali Akbar Velayati; Hassan Habibi; Hassan Khomeini.

50. Jassbi did most of the planning and became the chancellor of this institution. Rafsanjani recalls the difficulty of organizing a private university in this period of state ownership. See Rafsanjani, Khāterāt-e Sāl-e 1361, 106.

51. Al-i Aqa, Kishavarz, and Rahimi, “Ravand Rushd Kami-i Āmuzish,” 92‒4

52. IAU's website. Accessed March 3, 2016. http://www.iau.ac.ir/Pages/history/142/3

53. See founding document. Accessed January 26, 2017. http://www.sccr.ir/pages/printView.aspx?provID=1678

54. Their age, history and political connections has made the Mofid education chain one of the most highly regarded private schools in the country.

55. “Hazineh-hā-ye Imām Sādeq Cheguneh Taʾmin Mishavad?,” Khabar Online, Khordād 18, 1393/June 8, 2014. Accessed May 10, 2015. http://www.khabaronline.ir/detail/359008/Economy/political-economy

56. Including with Mohammad Beheshti, Mohammad-Javad Bahonar and Motahhari.

57. “Ayatollah Mahdavi Kani dar Dāneshgāh-e Imām Sādeq barāye Enqelāb Kādersāzi Kardand,” Fars News Agency, Khordād 17, 1393/June 7. 2014. Accessed January 12, 2016. http://www.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=13930317001208

58. Personal communication with Imam Sadeq students and professors.

59. For an overview see Pesaran, Iran's Struggle for Economic Independence.

60. Habibi, “Iran's Overeducation Crisis,” 3.

61. Arjomand, Constitutionalism and Political Reconstruction, 37, also see Keshavarzian, “Contestation without Democracy,” 66.

62. Khalaji, “Iran's Regime of Religion.” Having attended several classes at this university and talked to professors, I would disagree. The university was established during the Khatami administration with a clear mandate to improve cross-religion dialogue, not indoctrination.

63. I attended classes during the second semester of the academic year 2015‒16 and conducted interviews with students and professors.

64. Hooglund, “Islamic Republic,” 12.

65. Hovsepian-Bearce, Political Ideology of Ayatollah Khamenei, 105. See also Mousavi-Ardebili, “Zendegi Nameh.”

66. “Aʿzā-ye Jadid-e Heʾyat Omanā-ye Dāneshgāh-e Mofid,” Alef, July 14, 2008. Accessed March 5, 2016. http://alef.ir/vdchmxni.23nwwdftt2.html?29495. This composition has almost certainly changed after the 2009 elections.

67. For an attack from a conservative news agency on the absence of the basij in Mofid, see “Hazf-e Basij-e Dāneshjuyi dar Daneshgāh-e Mofid,” Jahān News, October 2, 2010. Accessed March 5, 2016. http://www.jahannews.com/fa/doc/news/136981

68. Fischer, Iran; Mottahedeh, Mantle of the Prophet; Mallat, Renewal of Islamic Law.

69. Fischer, Iran, 61.

70. Drs Feyrahi; Haghighat; Shafiei and Mir Mousavi had all previous research experience in this area. Dr. Haghighat and Feyrahi in particular have published extensively on the topic of political Shiism and the place of figh (jurisprudence) in modern societies.