Comrade Akbar: Islam, Marxism, and Modernity

After the shah’s regime was overthrown by the Iranian revolution of 1979, activists representing Islamic fundamentalism, led by Ayatollah Khomeini, formed an Islamic government, which over the past few decades has endured much internal and international turmoil. Many leading figures have appeared on the revolutionary stage and many have left. One of the survivors of these upheavals is the politician and Muslim cleric Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (b. 1934), who still plays a powerful role in Iranian politics. Once speaker of the Parliament (1980–89), acting commander-in-chief of the armed forces (1988), and president for two terms (1989–97), Rafsanjani currently chairs the Expediency Council and serves as the deputy chairman of the Assembly of Experts.¹ He also cofounded the Islamic Republican Party, which played a central role in Iranian politics until 1987, when it was dismantled. Rafsanjani’s prerevolutionary anti-shah activities helped him earn a powerful position among the revolutionary elite who gained power in 1979. He also became famous for his ability to maneuver between opposing factions. His career, consisting of an amalgamation of opposition, maneuvers, compromises, and political flirtations, has enabled him to stay in the limelight since the revolution by being responsive but still vague enough to remain an object for interpretation. In the early 1980s, when political parties could still openly discuss the newly established regime, members of the Tudeh Party, a pro-Soviet and Marxist group, had a favorable view of him. This group directly or indirectly supported Rafsanjani and his approach over that of Mehdi Bazargan, the more liberal-minded first prime minister after the revolution. Indeed, the pro-Soviet Marxist groups revered Rafsanjani by calling him Comrade Akbar and Bazargan “liberal”—a political insult meaning the person advocated capitalism and was ready to “compromise with U.S. imperialism” once the opportunity arose.² They believed that Rafsanjani, in contrast, had anti-imperialist qualities and that he could lead the country on a path of “noncapitalist growth.”

The Marxist groups that promoted these views are no longer present in Iran. The absence of these parties, however, does not prevent us from pondering a few questions. First, why was Rafsanjani, a significant player in the 1979 Islamic revolution and one of the longest-lasting public figures of the new regime, referred to as comrade (refiq), a term reserved in Persian for members of Marxist groups? Why did some Marxist factions portray a fundamentalist Muslim as an advocate of anti-imperialism and progressive social change? Why would certain forces in postrevolutionary politics, including the Soviet-backed Tudeh Party and the Organization of Iranian People’s Fedai Guerillas (OIPFG), believe that Rafsanjani could lead the country toward independence and economic growth? We could ignore these questions and speculate that Rafsanjani received the title as a joke. However, the answers to these questions may explain not only Rafsanjani’s political fortunes but also the roots and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East.

An Analytical Model for Understanding the Emergence of Islamic Fundamentalism

I contend that when the Islamic “paradigm” (an admittedly problematic concept I explore below) comes into contact with other ideological or political paradigms, it responds by producing an ideology similar to the one it has come into contact with—similar in terms of sociopolitical agendas, rituals, and figurative language. In modern times, these responses have included Islamic modernism (also referred to by some scholars as “Islamic liberalism” or “liberal Islam”) as a response to Western influence and Islamic fundamentalism (otherwise known as “militant Islam,” “Islamism,” or “radical Islam”) as a response to Soviet-Marxist influence. To prove this contention, I first make a distinction between Islamic modernism and Islamic fundamentalism. I then review the existing explanations of the ideological roots of the two tendencies, and, from there, I present my own possible explanation of the...