Paradoxes Of Secularisation And Islamisation In Post Revolutionary Iran

The Iranian Revolution of 1979 is often seen as powerful counterevidence against the Paradigm of Secularisation--the idea that the presence and significance of religion is being diminished by modernisation. My thesis examines the seemingly divergent paths taken in post-revolutionary Iran in different milieux over the past four decades: on the one hand, an encompassing Islamisation of the country in various realms including law, culture, and the public sphere, and on the other, a process of secularisation in other realms. I begin by discussing the early modern encounter of Muslim Modernists with the West and how this led to a fundamental transformation in revolutionary elites' social imaginaries, from an orientation toward death and the Hereafter to one toward this-worldly life, a process I call substantive secularity. I go on to show that substantive secularity paradoxically led to Islamic revivalist movements, not least the Iranian Revolution itself. However, unlike broadly Sharia- based and mainly Sunni Islamisation projects elsewhere, Ayatollah Khomeini made mysticism central to his mission by attempting to re-enchant the universe and bring martyrdom to the fore. This led to quite complex and often contradictory outcomes during the first decade of the Revolution. With Khomeini's death and the end of the Iran-Iraq war, the two main drivers of cosmological de-secularity faded away, and the new leaders of the Revolution initiated a broad project of “Islamic” secularisation of the country--in areas such as public morality, law, culture, and education--wherein modern and secular concepts were reinterpreted with an Islamic-Shia veneer. This aggressive substantive secularisation, however, provoked ultraconservatives to begin a new round of re-differentiation of religion and public space by establishing self- imposed religious ghettos, institutions, and financial centres. My examination of “Islamic secularity” concludes by showing how the state, despite its still powerful “Islamic” image, has substantively secularised cosmologically, teleologically, and epistemologically.