International Journal on Criminology Volume 7, Number 2, Spring 2020 | Page 43

International Journal on Criminology
emerging from the confrontation with the West: it embodied both the integration
of Western ideas (a constitutional political model inspired by the Belgian format,
the nature of the demand for rights, etc.), and their rejection through the opposition
to a power that allowed the West and its modernity to “plunder” the country.
This was how much of the population felt at the time.
It was also in the early days of the Constitutional Revolution that the voices
of religious figures began to be heard in politics. The first waves of modernity were
thus accompanied by a dual movement reflecting a significant paradox: through
the use of the tools of Western modernity in particular, Iran turned its back on
modernity; its rhetoric presented itself as the complete opposite to Westernism,
and yet it spoke through the integration of its structures. This unacknowledged
Western influence, so brilliantly and accurately depicted by Daryush Shayegan in
his Regard mutilé (English title: Cultural Schizophrenia), 6 was apparent up to the
time of the Pahlavis, with the important difference that, under the final dynasty of
the Iranian Empire, the population no longer saw Westernization as an external
enemy, but rather one that had been imported into the country. In other words,
the attitude of withdrawal from and rejection of the West was the result first of
the feeling of external alienation (concessions granted to Russia and Britain to allow
the Qajar court to enjoy its lavish lifestyle and the mismanagement of central
government) and then of an internal weariness entirely opposed to the Pahlavi
modernizing process, which was deliberately confused with Westernism: again,
in the view of the people, the empire was now dealing with a Trojan horse, as the
foreigner had been wheeled into the country. The Islamic Republic is therefore the
result of the Shah’s secularist policy twice over: first, because this policy and all
of its counterparts were rejected, and then because the tools imported “by force”
from the West (such as the critical human sciences) were used in the process of
turning against it. Modernization was accompanied by the importation of Western
educational models (which Saeed Paivandi named madreseh djadid, “the new
school” 7 ) and the human sciences, which helped develop critical faculties capable
6 “In short, a whole new, suspect jargon, inspired by Western social and political philosophies, invaded
the country. Such aggressive, previously unknown concepts could not fail to frighten defenders
of the divine order, all the more so as, compared to Egypt and the Ottoman Empire, Iran lagged far
behind on its modernizing path .... In fact, lay people took on the task of modernizing. The mullahs
only made an appearance much later. They tried to gather some ideas from it and adapt them
to their vision of the world. The mullahs of the period of the constitutional movement, probably
more flexible and perhaps even more open than those of today, showed themselves to be skilled
strategists.” Daryush Shayegan, Le regard mutilé: Schizophrénie culturelle: pays traditionnels face à
la modernité (Paris: Editions de L’aube, 1996), 221–2. Translator’s note: Unless otherwise stated, all
translations of cited foreign-language material in this article are our own.
7 See Saeed Paivandi, “La religion d’état à l’école: l’expérience de l’islamisation de l’école en Iran,” Journal
des anthropologues 100–101 (2005), URL: http://jda.revues.org/1582; and Religion et éducation
en Iran: L'échec de l'islamisation de l’école (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2006). Paivandi explains that the
Shah’s policy of modernization in Iran, particularly the modernization of the education system,
brought two teaching models into competition with each other in the country from the end of the
nineteenth century: the madreseh djadid (the new school based on the Western model) and the
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