International Journal on Criminology Volume 7, Number 2, Spring 2020 | Page 46

Secularization Versus Secularization: Understanding the System in the Islamic Republic of Iran
to defend the nation (with such holy terminology was the language of war articulated),
conflating the “protection of Islam” with the “image of the Iranian nation.” 14
The mobilized personnel were thus encouraged to sacrifice themselves
for the holy nation on the basis of an appropriated religious belief: one based on
the secular incarnation of a redesigned purity. Another keystone of Shiism was
also immanentized here: that of the martyr. While the martyr had already been
humanized during the period of revolutionary Shiism, before the theocracy was
established, the new martyr followed in perfect continuity, illustrated by the sacrificial
spirit of Fahmideh, 15 an icon for the Islamic Republic. Hossein Fahmideh
was a very young soldier who, armed with a grenade belt with the pins removed,
threw himself under the wheels of an Iraqi tank, in the hope of tipping the balance,
however slightly, in the armed conflict. The unnerving effect this had on the
Iraqi troops, faced with a hitherto unknown phenomenon, boosted the Islamic
Republic’s policy of promoting martyrdom, under the guise of religion, to serve
the interests of the nation.
Humanization of the martyr thus became embedded in the geostrategic realities
of the Islamic Republic, but its long story began earlier, in the period of revolutionary
Shiism in the 1970s. The Imam Husayn 16 in particular is given human
characteristics through the pen of one of the most influential theorists of revolutionary
Shiism, Ali Shariati. 17 Traditionally, Husayn, in his capacity as Imam, is
The number of deaths recorded varies according to the source (between 10,000 and 40,000, with
2,000 quoted by an official Defense Intelligence Agency report. See http://www.foreignpolicy.com/
files/fp_uploaded_documents/DIA-Syria-MuslimBrotherhoodPressureIntensifies.pdf). The Hama
uprising was distinctive by its isolation: not only was it so savagely repressed as to stifle all revolutionary
desires, but it also received no support from outside.
14 See the speech by Khomeini on March 22, 1982, in Khorramshahr, reported by Yann Richard: “May
your lives be made holy, brave fighters and soldiers in the way of God, you who have protected the
honor of Islam, exemplified the Iranian nation, and lifted up the heads of those who are committed
to the way of God. The great nation of Iran (mellat-e bozorg-e Iran) and the children of Islam are
proud of you who have placed your fatherland on the wings of angels and lifted it above all the
nations of the world.” L’islam shi’ite (Paris: Fayard, 1991), 265.
15 Born in 1968 into a religious family in Qom, Mohammad Hossein Fahmideh was quickly won over
to the causes championed by Khomeinism and the Islamic Republic. He joined the Basij organization,
which was responsible for sending volunteers to the front of the Holy Defense. In 1980, then
aged thirteen, he fought at Khorramshahr, though not on the front lines as he was so young. On
October 30, he saw five Iraqi tanks advancing toward Kout Sheikh, to the despair of the Iranian
armed forces. He took the decision to throw himself at the tanks, armed with a grenade belt, thus
dying as a martyr while destroying the tanks and unnerving the Iraqi armed forces, who were faced
with an unprecedented phenomenon.
16 “Those who became martyrs took Hossein as their model; those left behind must pass on their message
and take Zeyneb as their model; if not, they are like Yazid (the Umayyad Caliph)”. Ali Shariati,
Complete Works, n° 19, 200. Translated into French by Amir Nikpey, Politique et religion en Iran
contemporain: Naissance d’une institution (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2001), 124.
17 Ali Shariati (1933–1977) is considered the ideologue of the Iranian Revolution, and, according to
some Iranologists, such as Yann Richard, he had “at least as much influence as Khomeini on the
Islamization of the political ideology and the politicization of Islam before the Revolution. He also
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