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Minority-State Relations in Contemporary Iran

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Patricia J. Higgins
Patricia J. Higgins*
Affiliation:
The State University of New York, Plattsburgh
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Extract

By all accounts the departure of the shah from Iran in January 1979 was met by most Iranians with the expectation of greater freedom for both the individual and the group. For a number of minority groups, this included the expectation of greater cultural and political autonomy. Initially, the new regime appeared to be sympathetic to such expectations, but by the summer of 1979 violent conflicts were erupting between the central government and members of several tribal, regional, and ethnic minority groups. While the central government appears to have contained the ethnic and regional autonomy movements, officials and analysts have continued to express concern over the possible fragmentation of Iran, and autonomy movements are viewed by many as a significant obstacle to the consolidation of the new regime and/or a threat to its stability.

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , Winter 1984 , pp. 37 - 71
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1984

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References

Notes

1. The research on which this paper is based was carried out as part of a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar (1981) on Muslim Ethnic Minorities in the Middle East and the U.S.S.R. Seminar directors Richard Frye and Eden Naby have made helpful comments on previous drafts of this paper. An abbreviated version was presented at the sixteenth annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association, November 1982.

2. Parsons, Talcott, “Some Theoretical Considerations on the Nature and Trends of Change in Ethnicity,” in Glazer, Nathan and Moynihan, Daniel P., eds., Ethnicity: Theory and Experience (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975), pp. 53–83.Google Scholar This definition shares with most the notion that an ethnic group is a (self-) ascriptive biosocial group which exists within a larger sociocultural system and which is united by a sense of shared and distinctive customs. Though Parsons, like many social scientists, ignores the question of common descent in discussing ethnicity, a belief in common descent, bolstered by a tendency to marry within the group, does set apart those groups usually considered ethnic groups from other groups with a common history. For a good introduction to the conceptual parameters of ethnicity see Dorman, James H., “Ethnic Groups and ‘Ethnicity’: Some Theoretical Considerations,” The Journal of Ethnic Studies, VII, 4 (1980), pp. 23–36.Google Scholar

3. Barth, Fredrik, “Introduction,” in Ethnic Groups and Boundaries (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1969), pp. 9–38.Google Scholar

4. For a recent theoretical discussion of ethnicity which parallels the approach taken here see Alexander, Jeffrey C., “Core Solidarity, Ethnic Outgroups, and Social Differentiation: A Multidimensional Model of Inclusion in Modern Societies,” in Dofny, Jacques and Akiwowo, Akinsola, eds., National and Ethnic Movements (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1980), pp. 5–28.Google Scholar

5. The former is the terminology of Enloe, Cynthia H., Ethnic Soldiers: State Security in Divided Societies (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1980)Google Scholar; the latter is the phrase used by Crawford Young, The Politics of Cultural Pluralism (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1976).Google Scholar

6. For examples of the active use of ethnicity by the state in Iran see Ervand Abrahamian's discussion of Qajar manipulation of communal conflicts in Iran between Two Revolutions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), pp. 42–49.Google Scholar Pahlavi development policies also resulted in significant changes in the relationship between ethnic groups, whether or not this was intentional. See Aghajanian, Akbar, “Ethnic Inequality in Iran: An Overview,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 15 (1983), pp. 211–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7. Young, Cultural Pluralism, p. 70.

8. For discussions of collective incorporation in contemporary states see van den Berghe, Pierre, L., The Ethnic Phenomenon (New York:. Elsevier, 1981)Google Scholar, and Milton M. Gordon, “Toward a General Theory of Racial and Ethnic Group Relations,” in Glazer and Moynihan, eds., Ethnicity, pp. 84-110.

9. Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan, “Introduction,” in Glazer and Moynihan, eds., Ethnicity, pp. 1-24.

10. For recent accounts of this transition see Abrahamian, Iran, and Helfgott, Leonard M., “The Structural Foundations of the National Minority Problem in Revolutionary Iran,” Iranian Studies XIII (1980), pp. 195–204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11. Constitution of 1906, Supplement, Art. 26 and Art. 35; Constitution of 1979, Art. 6 and Art. 56. The copy of the 1906 constitution used is the translation by Ali Pasha Saleh in Constitution of Nations (Revised Third Edition), Vol. II (The Hague: Martinus Nijoff, 1966), pp. 452-70. Quotations from the 1979 constitution are from the translation by Algar, Hamid, Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran (Berkeley: Mizan Press, 1980).Google Scholar See also the copy edited by Ramazani, Rouhollah K., The Middle East Journal 34 (1980), pp. 181–204.Google Scholar

12. Reconciling the notion that sovereignty derives from God with the principle that sovereignty resides with the people is a problem faced by religious scholars since the first constitutional movement and one which has received renewed attention since the establishment of the Islamic Republic. See Arjomand, Said Amir, “The State and Khomeini's Islamic Order,” Iranian Studies XIII (1980), pp. 147–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Akhavi, Shahrough, “Clerical Politics in Iran since 1979,” in Keddie, Nikki and Hooglund, Eric, eds., The Iranian Revolution and the Islamic Republic (Washington: The Middle East Institute, 1982), pp. 17–28.Google Scholar

13. Constitution of 1906, Art. 2, Art. 3, and Supplment, Art. 8; Constitution of 1979, Art. 19, Art. 20, and Art. 62.

14. See, for example, Ashraf, Ahmad, “The Roots of Emerging Dual Class Structure in Nineteenth-Century Iran,” Iranian Studies XIV (1981), pp. 5–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bonine, Michael E., “Shops and Shopkeepers: Dynamics of an Iranian Provincial Bazaar,” in Bonine, Michael E. and Keddie, Nikki, eds., Continuity and Change in Modern Iran (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1981), pp. 203–28Google Scholar; and Gene R. Garthwaite, “Khans and Kings: The Dialectics of Power in Bakhtiari History,” in Bonine and Keddie, eds., Continuity, pp. 129-42.

15. Constitution of 1979, Art. 13, Art. 14, and Art. 64.

16. Nyrop, Richard F., ed., Iran: A Country Study (Washington: American University, 1978), p. 189Google Scholar; Naqavi, Sayyid Ali Reza, Family Laws of Iran (Islamabad: Islamic Research Institute, 1971).Google Scholar

17. Constitution of 1906, Supplement, Art. 58; Constitution of 1979, Art. 115.

18. Constitution of 1906, Supplement, Art. 91; Constitution of 1979, Art. 100.

19. On the centralization policies and practices of the Pahlavis, see Banani, Amin, The Modernization of Iran, 1921-1941 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1961)Google Scholar; Cottam, Richard W., Nationalism in Iran. Updated through 1978 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1979)Google Scholar; Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good, “The Changing Status and Composition of an Iranian Provincial Elite,” in Bonine and Keddie, eds., Continuity, pp. 229-48; and Nyrop, ed., Iran.

20. Falk, Richard, “Balance Sheet on a Revolution,” The Nation 232 (January 17, 1981), pp. 39–42Google Scholar; Fred Halliday, “Iran's Revolution: The First Year,” MERIP Reports, No. 88, 10 (June 1980), pp. 3-5; and Helfgott, “The Structural Foundations,” p. 212.

21. Lois Beck, “Revolutionary Iran and Its Tribal Peoples,” MERIP Reports, No. 87, 10 (May 1980), pp. 14-20; Good, “The Changing Status.”

22. On the economic policies of the Islamic Republic see Katouzian, Homa, The Political Economy of Modern Iran (London: Macmillan, 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Patrick Clawson, “Iran's Economy: Between Crisis and Collapse,” MERIP Reports, No. 98, 11 (July-August 1981), pp. 11-15; and the Constitution of 1979, Art. 43.

23. Beck, “Revolutionary Iran”; Cottam, Nationalism; Helfgott, “The Structural Foundations”; and Richard N. Frye, Persia (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1968).

24. Hamid Nacify, “Cinema as a Political Instrument,” in Bonine and Keddie, eds., Continuity, pp. 265-83; Tehranian, Majid, “Communication and Revolution in Iran: The Passing of a Paradigm,” Iranian Studies, XIII (1980), pp. 5–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25. This is discussed as a widespread characteristic of modernizing societies in Tonu Parming and L. Mu-Yan Cheung, “Modernization and Ethnicity,” in Dofny and Akiwowo, eds., National, pp. 131-41.

26. See Falk, Richard, “Iran Revisited: The Sidetracking of a Revolution,” The Nation 234 (January 30, 1982), pp. 102–08Google Scholar; Fischer, Michael M. J., “Becoming Mollah: Reflections on Iranian Clerics in a Revolutionary Age,” Iranian studies, XIII (1980), pp. 83–117CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Ramazani, Rouhollah K., “Iran: The ‘Islamic Cultural Revolution,’” in Stoddard, P. H., Cuthell, P. C., and Sullivan, M. W., eds., Change and the Muslim World (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1981), pp. 40–48.Google Scholar

27. Parsa, Mohamad, “A Qualitative Study of Public and Guidance Cycle Education in Iran,” International Education IX (1979), pp. 7–11.Google Scholar

28. Hossein Keyvan, “Domestic Media in Iran: Radio and Television,” Frontier I, 29 (September 15, 1982), pp. 7-8; and Hossein Keyvan, “Domestic Media in Iran: Newspapers,” Frontier I, 31 (October 13, 1982), pp. 8-9.

29. Zonis, Marvin, The Political Elite of Iran (Princeton: University Press, 1971), pp. 179–80.Google Scholar

30. Farhang Mehr, personal communication, 1982.

31. Mehr, personal communication.

32. On the economic status of linguistic minorities under the Pahlavis, see Abrahamian, Iran, p. 449; Aghajanian, “Ethnic Inequality”; Beck, “Revolutionary Iran,” p. 15; Ghassemlou, A. R., “Kurdistan in Iran,” in Chaliand, Gerald, ed., People without a Country: The Kurds and Kurdistan (London: Zed Press, 1980), pp. 107–34Google Scholar; Helfgott, “The Structural Foundation,” p. 209; and Martin Short and Anthony McDermott, The Kurds (Fourth Revised Edition) (London: Minority Rights Group Ltd., Report No. 23, 1981). On the economic status of religious minorities under the Pahlavis, see Binder, Leonard, Iran: Political Development in a Changing Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962), pp. 162–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33. Constitution of 1979, Art. 91, Art. 96, Art. 107, and Art. 110.

34. Bill, James A., “Power and Religion in Revolutionary Iran,” The Middle East Journal XXXVI (1982), pp. 22–47.Google Scholar See also Arjomand, “The State”; Eric Hooglund, “Social Origins of the Revolutionary Clergy,” in Keddie and Hooglund, ed., The Iranian Revolution, pp. 29-37; and Ramazani, “Iran.”

35. Constitution of 1979, Art. 15.

36. Constitution of 1979, Art. 48.

37. For a recent study of rural-development projects actually implemented see Reinhold Loeffler, “Economic Changes in a Rural Area since 1979,” in Keddie and Hooglund, eds., The Iranian Revolution, pp. 59-66. See also Beck, “Revolutionary Iran”; and Lois Beck, “Economic Transformations among the Qashqai Nomads, 1962-1978,” in Bonine and Keddie, eds., Continuity, pp. 85-108.

38. See Akhavi, “Clerical Politics,” p. 18; and William Green Miller, “The Possibility for a New United States-Iranian Relationship,” in Keddie and Hooglund, eds., The Iranian Revolution, pp. 132-139.

39. For the purposes of this study, and by the definition used here, Iranian Baha'is can be considered an ethnic group. They have a distinct identity, marked primarily by their religion, and though Baha'is have existed for less than 150 years, they do have a sense of common history. Because conversions often follow family lines and because, like many ethnic groups, they tend to marry endogamously, there are bonds of common descent as well. While Baha'is see their religion as a universal one, their very minority status within Iran fosters intragroup cohesiveness.

40. The information included here is derived primarily from Cooper, Roger, The Baha'is of Iran (London: Minority Rights Group Ltd., Report No. 51, 1982).Google Scholar See also the series of articles by Firuz Kazemzadeh: “For Baha'is in Iran--A Threat of Extinction,” The New York Times, August 6, 1981, p. A23; “The Terror Facing the Baha'is,” The New York Review of Books XXIX, 8 (May 13, 1982), pp. 43–44Google Scholar; and “The Persecution of the ‘Infidels'--Attack on the Bahais,” New Republic 186 (June 16, 1982), pp. 16-18.

41. Akhavi, Shahrough, Religion and Politics in Contemporary Iran: Clergy-State Relations in the Pahlavi Period (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1980), pp. xvii and 77-78Google Scholar; Fischer, Michael M. J., Iran: From Religious Dispute to Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), p. 187.Google Scholar

42. Mehr, personal communication.

43. Cooper, The Baha'is, p. 14.

44. Among Kayhan classifieds one finds ads placed by “ordinary people who either announce that they do not belong to the Baha'i faith, or that they have been enlightened and abandoned faith in Baha'ism and have converted to Islam.” See Keyvan, “Domestic Media in Iran: Newspapers,” p. 8.

45. For population estimates see Harris, G. S., “Ethnic Conflict and the Kurds,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 433 (1977), pp. 112–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Kurds on the Move,” The Middle East 55 (May 1979), pp. 47–52Google Scholar; Nagel, Joane, “The Conditions of Ethnic Separatism: The Kurds in Turkey, Iran, and Iraq,” Ethnicity VII (1980), pp. 279–97Google Scholar; Short and McDermott, The Kurds; Van Bruinessen, Martin, Agha, Sheik and State: On the Social and Political Organization of Kurdistan (Utrecht: Rijksuniversiteit, 1978)Google Scholar; and Feili, Omran Yahya and Fromchuck, Arlene R., “The Kurdish Struggle for Independence,” Middle East Review IX (1976), pp. 47–59.Google Scholar

46. Naby, Eden, “The Iranian Frontier Nationalities: The Kurds, the Assyrians, the Baluchis, and the Turkmens,” in McCagg, William O. Jr., and Silver, Brian, eds., Soviet Asian Ethnic Frontiers (New York: Pergamon Press, 1979), pp. 83–114.Google Scholar During World War II Kurdish nationalists established semi-independent regimes, culminating with the Mahabad Republic. See Arfa, Hassan, The Kurds: An Historical and Political Study (London: Oxford University Press, 1966)Google Scholar; Eagleton, William Jr., The Kurdish Republic of 1946 (London: Oxford University Press, 1963)Google Scholar; and Archie Roosevelt, Jr., “The Kurdish Republic of Mahabad,” in Chaliand, ed., People, pp. 135-52.

47. Van Bruinessen, Agha, pp. 22-28; Aghajanian, “Ethnic Inequality.”

48. Data on Kurdish involvement in the revolution and on the relationship between the Kurds and the postrevolutionary central government has been obtained primarily from The New York Times. For a summary of these events see Gerard Chaliand, “Postscript, 1979,” in People, pp. 229-32.

49. Short and McDermott, The Kurds, p. 8; Shirin Tehrani, “Eyewitness from Iran: ‘Signs of Civil War,’” MERIP Reports, No. 98, 11 (July-August 1981), pp. 8-11.

50. Arfa, The Kurds, p. 1; Short and McDermott, The Kurds, p. 5.

51. Van Bruinessen, Agha, pp. 357-59.

52. Abrahamian, Iran, p. 428.

53. Van Bruinessen, Agha, p. 374.

54. Arfa, The Kurds, p. 5; Cottam, Nationalism, p. 67; Short and McDermott, The Kurds, p. 5; and Van Bruinessen, Agha, p. 134.

55. “Kurds on the Move,” p. 50; and Abdul Rahman Qassemlu, “The Clergy Have Confiscated the Revolution,” MERIP Reports, No. 98, 11 (July-August 1981), pp. 17-19; accounts of earlier eras indicate, however, that the prominence of Kurdish religious leaders in autonomy efforts is not entirely new. See Eagleton, The Kurdish Republic, p. 29; Ghassemlou, “Kurdistan,” p. 110; and Van Bruinessen, Agha, pp. 251; 357-58.

56. Qassemlu, “The Clergy,” p. 18; Ghassemlou, “Kurdistan,” p. 110.

57. Compare Ghassemlou, “Kurdistan,” p. 132, with Eagleton, The Kurdish Republic, p. 57, and Roosevelt, “The Kurdish Republic,” pp. 140-41.

58. Qassemlu, “The Clergy,” p. 18; Ghassemlou, “Kurdistan,” p. 132.

59. Qassemlu, “The Clergy,” p. 18; see also “Interview,” MERIP Reports, No. 88, 10 (June 1980), pp. 10-14.

60. Short and McDermott, The Kurds, p. 8.

61. Akhavi, Religion, p. 168; Binder, Iran, p. 160; and Helfgott, “The Structural Foundations,” pp. 205-06.

62. Helfgott, “The Structural Foundations,” p. 205.

63. S. Enders Wimbush, “Divided Azerbaijan: Nation Building, Assimilation, and Mobilization between Three States,” in McCagg and Silver, eds., Soviet, pp. 61-81.

64. Binder, Iran, pp. 160-61; Cottam, Nationalism; Katouzian, The Political Economy, p. 149; and Wimbush, “Divided Azerbaijan.”

65. Binder, Iran, p. 160; Cottam, Nationalism, p. 128; and Rossow, Robert Jr., “The Battle of Azerbaijan, 1946,” The Middle East Journal X (1956), pp. 17–32.Google Scholar

66. Cottam, Nationalism, pp. 123, 130.

67. Ibid., p. 125.

68. Abrahamian, Iran, p. 163; Cottam, Nationalism, p. 131; and Helfgott, “The Structural Foundations,” pp. 206-07.

69. Abrahamian, Iran, pp. 87, 97; and Cottam, Nationalism, pp. 119-29.

70. Information on this period is derived primarily from U.S. newspapers and periodicals.

71. Circumstances surrounding the establishment of the Islamic People's Republican Party are discussed by Akhavi, Religion, p. 175.

72. For a discussion of the ideological differences between Ayatollah Khomeini and Ayatollah Shari'atmadari see Menashri, David, “Shi'ite Leadership: In the Shadow of Conflicting Ideologies,” Iranian Studies XIII (1980), pp. 119–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar