The fireworks and jubilation in some quarters of Iran over President Ebrahim Raisi's death in a helicopter crash are an ocular reminder of the socio-cultural and political churning in the country. Raisi, the face of repression in the Islamic Republic of Iran, was one of the most hated public figures in the country before his death. It was his portraits that Iranian women demanding personal and political freedom flipped the middle finger to and pegged their headscarves on.
Raisi, however, was a symbol of something larger in Iran's domestic and international affairs. Dressed in black robes and headgear emulating the ayatollahs-the powerful Shiite clergymen-he presided over the crackdown on the Woman Life Freedom movement in 2022. Raisi's self-fashioning as not just a political but also a religious leader of his country was bolstered by gestures like kissing the Quran at the UN General Assembly last year.
Religion And Politics: A Timeless Pairing
While the Islamic Republic has been relentlessly bureaucratising the clerical establishment and theologising the bureaucracy and politics since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, it is naive to believe that the politicisation of religion started just then. Or just in Iran.
Raisi can be seen as an Everyman in the global political arena, representing all politicians seeking legitimacy and power through overt religiosity. Paradoxically, and funnily, they are often rejected and undermined by the 'truly' religious ones. Raisi, for example, was not considered an ayatollah by many clerics, including those in the Qom Seminary of Iran, the most prestigious religious institution and his alma mater. The title 'ayatollah' is earned by clerics only after completing the Darse Kharej, the most advanced level of seminary studies. Raisi was not even a high-ranking religious bureaucrat like his predecessor, Hassan Rouhani.
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Was Raisi, then, a proverbial empty vessel in matters of religion? He sure liked to make a lot of noise, like during his first presidential bid in 2017 when he declared that it was his "religious and revolutionary responsibility to run" for office. Sharing a good rapport with the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Raisi was a frontrunner in the succession race. His potential ascent could have completed the circle that started with his role as a judicial officer in the 1989 mass executions of political dissidents ordered by Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic.
The Crisis Within
Right now, Iran is in a state of crisis. The ongoing conflict with Israel is not helping its domestic politics. The retaliatory attack on Israel after the April 1 attack on the Iranian embassy in Damascus has signalled that Tehran has no appetite for a full-fledged war. Yet, as can be said for all authoritarian regimes, the principal threat to the Islamic Republic comes from within. There's also an ongoing succession battle for the position of the Supreme Leader. The battle between religious dogmatism and modernity is intensifying, despite brutal suppression.
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This is how great civilisations, once a beacon of enlightenment, reach their burial ground: when all sense of proportion is lost, when nativist navel-gazing reaches a point of no return. Iran has few friends left today, and those, too, are in the doghouse for the majority of the global superpowers. Raisi's death cannot be attributed, as yet, to any foul play, but murmurs continue to grow. Iranian political and military leaders have been eliminated in the past by hostile forces. General Qassem Soleimani's assassination in Iraq in 2020 has not yet been forgotten.
A Growing Disenchantment
Iran, one of the primary foes of the US, once hailed the latter's invasion of Iraq as a just act. It collaborated with the US against the Taliban in Afghanistan. It rallied Kurdish and Shia militias against ISIS in Iraq. Many of Iran's decisions are informed by sectarian interests in the region and have led to geopolitical realignments. But what does Iran need to keep its own house in order? The answer is clear as daylight.
The people of Iran are growing disenchanted with the Islamic Republic's heavy-handed ways. The promised ideal state at the time of the revolution, overthrowing the corrupt monarchy, is nowhere to be seen. Harking back to past glories of the Persian civilisation and using religion as opium is not helping the regime. It's not that religion is going anywhere, or that the Iranian society's traditional values have evaporated - people are beginning to see through the deceitful politicisation of religion. With Ayatollah Khamenei's incremental exclusion of people from participatory democracy, Iran's post-revolution political society is now resembling the monarchy it overthrew.
Iran holds a cautionary tale for all societies placing their trust in any dramatic transition. Especially transitions pegged on religion. Even though only 1.4% of Iranians identify themselves as atheists, they have been getting weary of its overbearing presence in public life. Raisi, an apparatchik of the Islamic Republic, forced performative religiosity down the Iranian people's throats. When gagged thus, people are likely to throw up eventually. Economic churning of the belly speeds up this process of disgorging.
(Nishtha Gautam is a Delhi-based author and academic.)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author
