God and Man in Tehran: Contending Visions of the Divine from the Qajars to the Islamic Republic

255 Pages·2018·2.701 MB·English

by  Hossein Kamaly

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T E H R A N
CCOONNTENDING VISIONS
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God and Man in Tehran

GOD and MAN
in TEHRAN
Contending Visions of the Divine from
the Qajars to the Islamic Republic
HOSSEIN KAMALY
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW YORK
Columbia University Press
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
cup .columbia .edu
Copyright © 2018 Columbia University Press
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Kamaly, Hossein, author.
Title: God and man in Tehran : contending visions of the divine from the Qajars
to the Islamic Republic / Hossein Kamaly.
Description: New York : Columbia University Press, 2018. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017031095 | ISBN 9780231176828 (hardcover : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9780231541084 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: God (Islam) | Tehran (Iran)—History.
Classification: LCC BP166.2 .K225 2017 | DDC 202/.11095525—dc23
LC record available at https: //lccn .loc. gov /2017031095
Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper.
Printed in the United States of America
Cover design: Jordan Wannemacher
Cover image: © Kamyar Adl / Alamy Stock Photo
For my family
Mojdeh, Mohammad, Mitra, and Reza
With love

Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xv
On Transliteration and Dates xvii
ONE O God, O Heaven, O Nature 1
TWO Mediatory Theology and Its Discontents 29
THREE God with Us 64
FOUR The Law: God’s and Man’s 86
FIVE Falsafeh and the Madraseh 110
SIX Sufism Returns, and with a Vengeance 145
SEVEN Varieties of Skeptical Expression 176
Appendix 191
[ vii ]
CONTENTS
Notes 193
References 197
Index 221
[ viii ]
Preface
God, a word everyone knows, but one that carries different meanings for
different people. For believers, it defines the ultimate concern. Nonbelievers,
skeptics, agnostics, atheists, and others also employ the word, sometimes far
less reverently, in exclamations of surprise or cries of despair. Sometimes
this term refers to the object of faith, the fount of values, or even the very
ground of being. The present book surveys the terrain of the discourse on
God as it has emerged and continues to evolve in Tehran, the capital of
Iran, from the 1800s until now.
For generations, God-related ideas and practices have intersected in
expressions of shared faiths, forms of worship, charity, and service, bring-
ing disparate peoples eye to eye and side by side. At the same time, conflict-
ing perceptions of God and religion have split the people across fissures of
creed, belief, class, gender, and other presumed hierarchies. Exploring these
ideas provides a fresh perspective on social and intellectual history.
Iran’s 1979 revolution rendered trite any proclamations that you cannot
understand that country, and in fact the region, if you do not take religion
into account. Four decades later the challenging question lingers: How and
why did a rapidly Westernizing, outwardly secular nation take such a sudden
reversal in the name of Islam? Many observers have commented on the roots
and results of that seemingly unlikely, even unthinkable, turn from the
king’s crown to the Imam’s turban, an untimely act of claiming the mantle
of divine authority in the modern age (Amir-Arjomand 1988; Keddie 1983,
[ ix ]