The Ḥujjatiyyah Factor and the Iranian Regime Todayby Mikhayah ben David



בשם יהוה הרחמן הרחם/بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

In the Asia Times article “Shi’ite supremacists emerge from Iran’s shadows” we read that former Iranian president Muḥammad Khatamī railed against a “powerful organization” which currently runs the nation with “shallow-thinking traditionalists” and their “Stone-Age backwardness.”[1] Aḥmad Ashraf writes, “It’s often said that the main rightwing element within the regime is a group called the Hojjatieh.”[2] This group is the subject of much conjecture, often with very little citation or with editorials simply quoting other editorials, with no real understanding of the group’s theological positions. Even basic facts, such as who founded the group and when, cannot be ascertained with consistency in many articles. The purpose here is to sketch the views of this secret society with the aim of ascertaining their foreign policy implications. It is not a comprehensive history of the group. The interest here is not to debate particulars, but to present the facts gathered, and to analyze these facts with a scholastic understanding of Shī`ī millenarian theology. This understanding is what reports on the movement generally lack, thus often causing them to draw incorrect conclusions about Ḥujjatiyyah beliefs, or political orientation.

The group is often claimed by Khomeinists to be “pro-Western” due to opposing a monopolization of the government by a single Marja`. In 2004, Radio Farda even preposterously claimed the Ḥujjatiyyah to be followers of the Najāf-based ‘Ayatollāh `Alī al-Sīstānī![3] Bill Samii thus notes, in the 2004 Iran Report “Is the Hojjatieh Society Making a Comeback,” that the group appears to be “scapegoats” for the Qūm power-base.[4] Historians have of course seen this before with Turkey’s Donmeh boogieman. Due to the inconsistent, often propagandistic misinformation emanating from the Iranian state, documenting the group becomes a difficult task for those who do not understand the intricacies of Iranian and Shī`ī politics.

As suggested by the title of the aforementioned 2004 report, the Ḥujjatiyyah has reemerged since their banning in 1983 by ‘Ayatollāh Khomeinī.[5] On August 27, 2002, a Toseh report cited a press conference with Minister of Intelligence and Security, `Alī Yunesī who said that “a group of people in Qūm was arrested on charges of supporting the society and trying to fuel religious discord.”[6] In spite of the group’s official dissolution on the same day as Khomeini’s July 12 speech, “the formal end of the Hojjatieh Society did not necessarily mean the end to its role in politics.”[7] As one might assume, such a dissolution was undertaken simply to relieve government pressure, thus only forcing it to operate in more secrecy than previously deemed necessary.

“Policy formed part of the conflict growing within the regime between the two factions loosely known as the Hojjatieh and the Imam’s Line.”[8] Khomeinī’s opposition to the group was hardly due to fundamental theological variance, however. Instead, the state’s discomfort was with the group’s official rejection of the principle of Wilayat al-Faqīḥ. As a minority faction, the Ḥujjatiyyah were against the consolidation of power in a particular marja`s hands. They believed that the power should be equally distributed amongst the `ulemā’. The difference between this and Khomeinism is thus political, not religious.

Contrasted also with the grafting of Wilayat onto the Iranian state was the group’s “conviction that chaos must be created to hasten the coming of the Mahdi, the 12th Shi`ite imam. Only then, they argue, can a genuine Islamic republic be established.”[9] That is, almost in the vein that Marx opposed Socialism as delaying the inevitability of a Communist, proletariat revolution, the Ḥujjatiyyah opposed the Wilayat state as distracting or even derailing the setting of the stage for the raja`[10] of the Twelfth Imām al-Mahdī.

In the article “Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: The nuclear prophet” from The Independent, we read that the Ḥujjatiyyah’s view is “a clear parallel with Jewish and Christian visions of Armageddon.” The view is certainly fair, to say the least. Indeed, all traditional “Shias believe the imam zaman will return at a time of great turmoil to defeat the forces of evil.”[11] The juxtaposition of the Ḥujjatiyyah’s view is that they believe “total chaos should be created to hasten the coming of the Mahdi.”[12] That is, the Mahdī was foretold to return at a pivotal time when the Shī`ah were in such dire straits that no one else could possible save them but this virtually immortal, supernatural hero. Thus, if that scenario could be created, then his return would be hastened, and even catalyzed.

An editorial in the September 1, 2002 issue of the conservative newspaper Kayhan claimed that both secularists and the Ḥujjatiyyah “accept all sorts of sin and social corruption,” echoing Khomeini’s choice of words in his July 12, 1983 speech: “Those who believe we should allow sins to increase until the Twelfth Imam reappears should modify and reconsider their position.... If you believe in your country [then] get rid of this factionalism and join the wave that is carrying the nation forward, otherwise it will break you.”[13]

The Kayhan editorial continues that “the only difference is that association members say we should not fight vice so that it spreads, and [so that] the Mahdi will emerge, while certain reformers say that the democratic principle demands that the people be left alone to do as they please, even if it means loose morals and social corruption.”[14] Thus, allegations against the group are hardly rooted in a pro-Western, or even secular stance they maintain, but instead of their cult-like apocalyptic vision. For the Ḥujjatiyyah, the sooner society can be pulled apart at the seams, the sooner Al-Qa’im returns to reconstruct it.

The article “Letters From Tehran: Iran’s New Hard-Liners: Who Is In Control of the Islamic Republic?”, published by Foreign Affairs explains that Aḥmadīnejād’s mentor[15] and spiritual advisor ‘Ayatullāh Moḥammad Mesbah Yazdī, “is affiliated with an underground messianic sect called the Hojjatieh Society, which hopes to quicken the coming of the apocalypse.”[16] In fact, Yazdī is today regarded as the de facto leader of the group.

Yazdī’s influence on Ahmadinejad became pronounced in the early days of the president’s first term, when Ahmadinejad declared that the return of the apocalyptic 12th imam would come within two years… Ahmadinejad promised to Islamize the country’s educational and cultural systems, declaring that Iranians had not yet witnessed “true Islam.”[17]

The Ḥujjatiyyah began with the “theological ideas” of Mirza Mehdī Iṣfāhanī, in 1953 at the Meshad Theological Center. A “fanatical and anti-philosophical” ideology – “against any type of logical reasoning” – the society was “very superstitious” from the start. It emerged in a more public da`wah capacity as a reaction to a large number of conversions to Bahá'ísm at the Qūm Theological Seminary in the early 1970s.[18] The entire Hawza was humiliated and thus the group’s original activity was primarily as right-wing counter-missionaries. The more radical elements naturally gravitated to the budding group of Shaykh Mahmūd Ḥalabī. Sectarian conflicts between Shī`ah and Sunnis reemerged in the spring of 2004, with some sources linking the activity to the Ḥujjatiyyah. Rasūl Montajabnia wrote in a commentary for Nasim-i Saba on May 4 that “members or supporters of the society have stopped their fight against the Bahá'í faith and have turned their attention to creating divisions between Shi’a and Sunni Muslims.” This concern was repeated by Montajabnia in the May 12 edition of Hambastegi.[19]  

In their earlier years, the group did not actively oppose the Shah’s regime, but were nonetheless still never a public group. In the end, they did support Khomeini’s overthrow of the Shah.[20] Their lack of open defiance to the Shah was likely rooted in the fact that “they had connections with many old elements of the establishment.” Well-connected from the start, even the notorious SAVAK tolerated them.[21] These connections did not disintegrate with their banning in 1983. Though the group maintained “opposition to direct clerical participation in government,”[22] we find that “many people who have key positions in the new regime used to be affiliated in one way or another. Two such figures are the president and the prime minister.”[23]

As well, “Bani-Sadr’s Minister of Labor, Mohammed Mir Sadeghi… was replaced by Tavakūlī, a follower of the hard-line Hojjatieh faction.” In line with the group, Tavakūli rejected even the vaguest concept of a democratic shūrā, saying: “Islam does not recognize the shūrā system; in Islam the government belongs to Allāh, the prophets and a’immah, and in their absence, to the nā`ib of the Imām.”[24]

The disturbing aspect of this claim is not merely the rejection of popular representation, as much as the claim that the nā`ib of the hidden Imām is within the purview of his understanding. That is, Tavakūlī is saying that the nā`ib of the Imām is known to him and thus, following that nā`ib, or depute becomes incumbent (wājib) upon the believer. The nā`ib of the Imām carries more authority than one could reasonably imagine. This view, that the Imām was being acted on the behalf of, was a central feature of the taqlīd system of the Safavid era`Usūlī take-over. With the Khomeinist revolution, it became almost commonplace for Shī`ah to imagine that Khomeini was somehow acting on the behalf of the hidden Imām.

The Ḥujjatiyyah’s original position was unconcerned with attaining political power. However, their connections have kept one foot in the palatial Greco-Roman headquarters of the Islāmic Revolutionary Guards Corps, in the suburbs of Tehran.[25] After the revolution, they were “originally supportive of the new constitutional arrangements,” which Khomeini had put in place. However Ḥalabī and his followers “became increasingly concerned after 1980 as the number of clerics in high policy-making positions expanded.” Their publically stated position remained that “in the absence of the Shi’i Twelfth Imam, the exercise of political rule was usurpation,” a view that paradoxically resonated with both liberal and conservative implications, more extreme than the Wilayat faction. It seemed that the underlying dispute lied in Khomeini being seen as representing the hidden Imām, rivaling the self-image of the Ḥujjatiyyah.[26]

The group “contended that the clergy must confine its role to that of providing religious guidance to the community of believers, and leave politics to laymen whose ignorance of religious doctrine made them more suitable to usurp the legitimate rights of the Hidden Imam.” Their criticisms of “clerical politicians” happened to coincide “with the development of opposition, primarily from business interests, to Islāmic Republican Party (IRP) efforts to assert greater government control of the economy.” Thus, in 1983 “in order to forestall the emergence of the Hojjatieh as a catalyzing opposition force,” a campaign was launched by the IRP against the group’s “deviant” views. “Subsequently the Hojjatieh decided to suspend its activities, presumably in order to avoid confrontations with IRP-organized street gangs.”[27] Accordingly, Behrooz writes in “Factionalism in Iran under Khomeini,” that discrepant ideologies nevertheless had “some common characteristics” in refusing “to declare their existence openly and preferred to organize and exist ‘covertly’” and in having “showed themselves submissive to Ayatollah Khomeini’s authority and retreated when faced with it.”[28]

On October 7, 2003, however, Aftab-i Yazd criticized an unnamed `alim for having “claimed that Ayatollah Khomeini was deceived into criticizing the Hojjatieh Society.”[29] The `alim must have struck a nerve as `Abdullāh Ramezanzadeh, a spokesman for Tehran had affirmed, only months before, on January 8, that “Hojjatieh Society members who infiltrate the government would be dealt with in the same way as other citizens.” The very next day, Iran Daily reported that “Hojatoleslam” Hashem Hashemzadeh-Harisī, member of the Assembly of Experts said that this government infiltration by these “radicals” undermines and even “threatens the Islamic system.”

Taking their defense, Tehran representative `Alī Shakurī-Rad is reported as saying that the Hojjatieh Society should be licensed as a political party. In the aftermath of the recent elections and popular Green Revolution, “the IGRC and other extreme hard-liners have sidelined fellow conservatives in the Iranian government.” Previously more conservative players have polarized to an emerging center as Mahmūd Aḥmadīnejād and his patron, Supreme Leader ‘Ayatullāh `Alī Khameneī, have pitted themselves against the thwarted presidential candidates Mir Hossein Mūsavī and Mehdī Karrūbī, as well as Muḥammad Khatamī, the former president and `Alī Akbar Hashemī Rafsanjanī, a former president and “seasoned kingmaker.”[30] In his Foreign Affairs article, Jerry Guo writes:

The real struggle, however, is the conflict among the hard-liners themselves, many of whom operate behind the headlines in unseen corners of the state machinery. Although Iran’s opposition movement has witnessed an unprecedented surge in public support, the election and its aftermath mark a radicalization of the system not seen since the early days of the Islamic revolution.[31]

The country’s “conservative theocrats and technocrats,” such as Alī Larijanī, the speaker of the parliament, and Ghūlam-Hussein Mohsenī-Ejei – ousted from his position as intelligence minister for criticizing the state’s use of forced confessions – had held much of the power over the executive and legislative branches, pragmatically believing in a “dual nature of the Islamic Republic’s statehood” with both “religious and political legitimacy.”[32]

Such figures are losing their influence to a new breed of second-generation revolutionaries from Iran’s security apparatus known as “the New Right.” They are joined in the emerging power structure by ultraconservative clerics and organizations such as the Alliance of Builders of Islamic Iran… This coalition includes Hassan Taeb, the commander of the Basij, the paramilitary branch of the IRGC; Saeed Jalili, the secretary of Iran’s National Security Council and the country’s chief nuclear negotiator; and Mojtaba Khamenei, the supreme leader’s second son, a man so feared that his name is not often uttered in public. Hard-line figures such as the younger Khamenei and the IRGC leadership are granted religious legitimacy through the support of the most radical mullahs in the theocratic establishment: Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, the head of the Guardian Council, the committee that certified the election tallies, and Ayatollah Mohammad Mesbah Yazdī, Ahmadinejad’s spiritual adviser.[33]

As noted, “Yazdī is affiliated with an underground messianic sect called the Hojjatieh Society,” to which “Democratic reforms, the Majlis (parliament), and elections are mere annoyances” under this radical worldview.[34]Accordingly, Guo notes, “Yazdī issued a fatwa shortly before June 12 that gave authorities tacit approval to fudge the vote.” In the aftermath of the elections, “a number of employees at Iran’s Interior Ministry released an open letter” which explained that “the election supervisors, who had become happy and energetic for having obtained the religious fatwa to use any trick for changing the votes, began immediately to develop plans for it.” Thus, “the clerics seem to have gotten the intended result” from the fatwah.[35]

Understanding the nature of this organization, and the relationship of Aḥmadīnejād to it, is essential in deciphering the intentions behind the regime’s nuclear ambitions. It has seemed almost perplexing to many in the West that Iran seems undeterred by the threat of sanctions or even Israeli strikes. When we consider the similar attitude of Saddam Hussein during the first Gulf War, the concept becomes somewhat clearer. When he rocketed Tel Aviv, Hussein was not merely attempting to reassert his desire to be the new Nasser, some sort of post-modern Arab Nationalist leader, he was also provoking Israel to strike, so that the Arab world might rally against an Israeli-Western coalition.

Just as the secular Hussein sought relief from the Arab nations, the faraj which Aḥmadīnejād seeks is from an enigmatic figure who disappeared 1,200 years ago. The reality that this figure will never come to his aid does not convince nor deter him, and the Ḥujjatiyyah element within the regime, from dragging the world into nuclear war. Thus, the solution to the potential of a nuclear Iran is not as simple as going to war with the regime, nor is it solved by simply ignoring them and hoping the youthful masses are able to successfully dismantle the machine on their own.

Works Cited

Ansari, Nazenin. "Divide and empower." Prospect Magazine, June 2006.

Ashraf, Ahmad, and Ervand Abrahamian. "Bazaar and Mosque in Iran's Revolution Author(s)." MERIP Reports: Iran Since the Revolution (Middle East Research and Information Project), no. 113 (March - April 1983): 16-18.

Bayat, Assef. "Workers' Control after the Revolution." Iran Since the Revolution, March-April 1983: 19-34.

Behrooz, Maziar. "Factionalism in Iran under Khomeini." Middle Eastern Studies (Taylor & Francis, Ltd.) 27, no. 4 (October 1991): 597-614.

Correspondent, Special. "Shi'ite supremacists emerge from Iran's shadows." Asia Times. September 9, 2005. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GI09Ak01.html (accessed 04 2010, 24).

Guo, Jerry. "Letters From Tehran: Iran's New Hard-Liners: Who Is In Control of the Islamic Republic?" Foreign Affairs (Council on Foreign Relations), September 2009.

Halliday, Fred. "Year IV of the Islamic Republic Author(s)." Iran Since the Revolution (Middle East Research and Information Project Reports), no. 113 (1983): 3-8.

Hooglund, Eric. "The Strange War in the Gulf." Middle East Research and Information Project: MERIP Reports, no. 125/126 (July - September 1984): 31- 37.

Samii, Bill. "Is the Hojjatieh Society Making a Comeback?" Iran Report. September 13, 2004. http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1342699.html.

Whitaker, Raymond. "Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: The nuclear prophet." The Independent UK. January 15, 2006. http://news.independent.co.uk/people/profiles/article338625.ece (accessed April 24, 2010).

Endnotes

[1] Special Correspondent, “Shi’ite supremacists emerge from Iran’s shadows.” Asia Times. September 9, 2005. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GI09Ak01.html (accessed 04 2010, 24).

[2] Ahmad Ashraf, and Ervand Abrahamian. “Bazaar and Mosque in Iran’s Revolution Author(s).” MERIP Reports: Iran Since the Revolution (Middle East Research and Information Project), no. 113 (March - April 1983): 16-18.

[3] Radio Farda. July 11, 2004. http://www.radiofarda.com/en_news.aspx?mm=7&dd=11&yy=2004#top

[4] Samii, Bill. “Is the Hojjatieh Society Making a Comeback?” Iran Report. September 13, 2004. http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1342699.html.

[5] Asia Times

[6] Samii

[7] Ibid

[8] Fred Halliday, “Year IV of the Islamic Republic Author(s).” Iran Since the Revolution (Middle East Research and Information Project Reports), no. 113 (1983): 6

[9] Asia Times

[10] Literally the “return,” but in sources of ḥadīth, this term leaves some ambiguity in how that return is to be achieved

[11] Raymond Whitaker, “Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: The nuclear prophet.” The Independent UK. January 15, 2006. http://news.independent.co.uk/people/profiles/article338625.ece (accessed April 24, 2010).

[12] Ibid

[13] The Ḥujjatiyyah Society announced its dissolution on the same day, according to Moin. Samii

[14] Ibid

[15] Nazenin Ansari, “Divide and empower.” Prospect Magazine, June 2006.

[16] Guo, Jerry. “Letters From Tehran: Iran’s New Hard-Liners: Who Is In Control of the Islamic Republic?” Foreign Affairs (Council on Foreign Relations), September 2009.

[17] Ibid

[18] Ashraf 16-18

[19] Samii

[20] Amir Taheri, The Spirit of Allah : Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution. (Adler and Adler: 1985) 189-90

[21] Ashraf 16-18

[22] Eric Hooglund, “The Strange War in the Gulf.” Middle East Research and Information Project: MERIP Reports, no. 125/126 (July - September 1984): 33

[23] Ibid

[24] Bayat, Assef. “Workers’ Control after the Revolution.” Iran Since the Revolution, March-April 1983: 20

[25] Guo

[26] Hooglund 33

[27] Ibid

[28] Behrooz, Maziar. “Factionalism in Iran under Khomeini.” Middle Eastern Studies (Taylor & Francis, Ltd.) 27, no. 4 (October 1991): 598-600)

[29] Samii

[30] Guo

[31] Ibid

[32] Ibid

[33] Ibid

[34] Guo

[35] Guo