Politics and religion mix uneasily in Qom which set the stage for the 1979 Islamic Revolution, write Roula Khalafand Najmeh Bozorgmehr
IN MANY western minds, Qom conjures up images of fanatical, power-hungry clerics. It was, after all, in this Shia holy city that some of the first protests erupted against the Shah’s regime, a year before Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini seized power in the 1979 Islamic revolution.
For some Iranians, the spark of the revolution was the January 1978 denunciation of the clergy as “black reactionaries” by Savak, the Shah’s intelligence service, a move which provoked a strike by the Qom seminary and led to clashes with the police.
The subsequent establishment of the Islamic republic, which gave rule to the clerics, was a golden time for Qom, boosting its status and attracting tens of thousands of students to study in its seminary, the biggest in the Shia world.
Except for the spectacular shrine of Masoumeh, sister of the eighth Shia imam, Qom today is a grey, unattractive city. But it holds a fascination for the visitor unaccustomed to the sight of turbaned men walking down the streets, books under their arms, and the near absolute observance of the strict black chador by its women .
Primarily a college town – most young people here study religion – students flood the streets in the evening, filling the fast food outlets and internet cafes, before or after praying at the shrine.
Qom has its fair share of extremists, some of whom provide inspiration to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president, but its clerics offer a diverse and often controversial range of opinion that feeds into different political debates in Tehran.
The cleric most feared by rulers in Tehran is Hossein-Ali Montazeri, who holds the top clerical rank of grand ayatollah and has challenged the regime’s policies, including Khomeini’s orders to hang thousands of dissidents. He has been virtually under house arrest for years.
Although Qom still carries significant weight, however, and politicians often seek support from clerics, the religious establishment’s authority is not what it was in the post-revolution days.
Some Iranians, now more educated, are less inclined to
turn to their favourite grand ayatollahs for social and political guidance.
As one professor who has taught in Qom puts it, the men of God came down to earth when they started to rule, making them, as much as the lay politicians, subject to criticism.
Meanwhile, the dominant political trends among Qom’s clerics themselves shift over time.
One Qom expert who has studied in the city for years says that radical clerics opposed to reform of the Islamic Republic were on the rise in the first part of this decade.
But since Ahmadinejad’s government took over in 2005, moderate conservatives appear to be gaining the upper hand.
Indeed, in last year’s legislative elections, the candidates closer to the president lost out to more moderate conservatives.
Qom, however, remains the centre of vibrant religious debate over such sensitive issues as how clerics should rule and how the religious rights of women should be interpreted.
Each of the more than a dozen grand ayatollahs run their own schools, and some do not agree with velayat-e-faqih, the system established by the late Khomeini that gives a supreme religious leader power to rule over Iran.
In the office of Grand Ayatollah Yusef Sanei, a maverick cleric who was once denounced by radical students as “an American source of emulation”, aides hand out booklets relating his life and views. Ayatollah Sanei, a 72-year-old religious scholar who speaks in a strong, preaching tone, says that conservative clerics still dominate in Qom.
But the chief obstacle to the more liberal social and religious ideas he promotes comes from Tehran, where the regime is bent on ignoring his views, he says.
The problem for the regime is that Ayatollah Sanei is outspoken, accusing those in power of having a questionable level of understanding, and holding that velayat-e-faqih has been exploited since Khomeini’s death, and wrongly interpreted to reduce the value of people’s votes.
Not surprisingly, Ayatollah Sanei is seen by many reformist politicians, who accept the system but want it to be more democratic, as a source of guidance.
“The clergy who play politics are getting stronger and the clergy who are seeking freedom, their power is receding,” the ayatollah says. – (Financial Times service)