The Mantle of the Prophet PDF

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The Mantle of the Prophet, by Roy Mottahedeh, attempts to raise from the dust a gentler time in Iran, a time of individualism and a time of poetry. By guiding the reader through two thousand years of history, he retains that Persian culture has always managed to survive. He succeeds in his attempt to cast doubt in the minds of the readers, with regard to myths, by opening up an unknown world, that of the mullah, while at the same time, expressing his concern for the future of Iran. He cannot dispel the myths completely, as even he confirms some of the horrors, but he is successful at telling the other side of the story. A story that clearly should be heard. In fact, Persian poetry came to be the emotional home in which ambiguity that was at the heart of Iranian culture lived most openly and freely. 164 This is where Mottahedeh develops his theme. He contrasts this firmly rooted Persian culture, with the changing times of the last century, in which a resurgence of traditional religious values crossed the line, interfering and indeed merging with political values, and therein, slowly squeezing two millennia of Persian culture so tightly, that today, six years after the 1979 Revolution, it is in jeopardy of being lost forever.

The Mantle of the Prophet is written on three levels: an individual level, through the life story of Ali Hashemi; a religious and educational level, through interactions, observations and dialogue of the mullahs; and, a national level, through the politics and growth of Iran. These three levels are cleverly interwoven to discuss events and beliefs leading to the fall of Iran.

The protagonist, Ali Hashemi, born in 1943, is a Shi'a mullah and a sayyed, "a man entitled to wear the prophet's color green."16 It is through Ali's eyes that the reader is introduced to Iran. Ali is from Qom, a well known city in Iran for its mullahs, and the reader endeavors with Ali along

his path of becoming a Shi'a mullah. Through his formative years, Ali shares his anger, elation, doubts, and despair and faith. A turning point in Ali's life is marked by a newspaper article in which Algerian freedom fighters were trapped in a cave and burned alive by French troops. Ali cannot find consolation in God, and he "finds if amazing that such an important change in his thinking should have taken place in a few minutes."115 Ali also studied Sufi mysticism in which he "saw the light"140, acquiring a knowledge that has been guarded in secrecy, since the beginning of time. While in prison, Ali had come "close to despair, and he thanked God... that he had found himself before he came out."265 After the revolution, Ali was overwhelmed at seeing the green banner secured to the top of the mosque, declaring Islam's victory yet, he "felt surprisingly uneasy about what this banner might bring for the future..."16

Ali Hashemi was also caught in this gray area. He referred to Qom as "something very alien and very familiar."24 Ali enjoyed music and was not against it as was mullah tradition. He was a product of two worlds, the traditional madrassah, and the new secular system. He belonged to two 'dowrehs', groups, one with "both pious businessmen and mullahs"337 and one with "secularized professors."337 Even though Ali's life was a dichotomy, he was still a respected mullah. One event where we see a great struggle was when Ali failed to stand up for his Bahá'í professor, when he agreed with him, but instead had a friend tell him that he had"...departed for the common good."361 In Arabic, the literal translation of mullah means "client" and "master",232 as these religious privileged had always served the people. However, during the course of the twentieth century, the role of the mullah began to change. Just as they had taken a leading role in the Tobacco

Protests of 1891, and during the Constitutional Revolution of 1906, mullahs were taking centre stage once again. Harnessing this growing nationalism, they were becoming political activists, especially the young 'talebehs', students. Previously, the mullah, while respected was laughed at as a man "overwhelmingly preoccupied with two subjects: his income and narrow-minded rulings of the law."352 With growing nationalism, people now had more in common with their mullah. They had mutual problems, a common enemy, if you will. Religion and politics were now meshing as a single force. As Mottahedeh astutely points out, "...the more you (the people) identified with the concerns of the local religious activists, the more the gulf between you (the people) and the government widened."353 Mottahedeh argues that the fall of Iran was a natural progression of the rise of the Shi'a clerics through social, political and economic change and the inner struggle with external Imperial powers and colonial influence. Throughout history, Iran has constantly battled with Imperial influences. Mottahedeh discusses Mossadegh's attempts to court the Americans for support against the British, and then while striving for nationalism by reclaiming Iran's oil industry and ousting the British, that he still wavered with regard to external pressures, by allowing himself to be influenced by the Persian Communist Party, which was backed by Russia, and eventually brought about his downfall. This pattern was evident in all Iranian politics, and was readily exploitable. No mullah took advantage of this 'Imperial' opportunity, and the widening gulf between the people and their government, more that Ruhollah Khomeini. Khomeini was a respected mullah, and a talented erfan mystic, not unlike our protagonist, Ali Hashemi. However, although Ali respects Khomeini, and attended his lectures in Najaf during Khomeini's exile, their philosophies differed. Where Ali is our liberal moderate mullah, Khomeini believed in the "guardianship of the jurist"247, a state run by Islamic politics. Mottahedeh brings two incidents,

to light: a talabeh, who was killed during a 1963 government raid in the Faiziyeh madrassah in Qom, and a blanket bill passed in 1964, in which all Americans were given diplomatic immunity. "Even to the relatively obedient parliament it smacked of the old regime of capitulations."245 Here, the reader can appreciate Khomeini as being the defender of the common man, and of Iran, against an oppressive dictatorship, willing to kill its own people and sell the country's soul. Now, certainly, The Mantle of the Prophet is not a book designed to defend Khomeini, but to enlighten the reader as to how he came to be.

As Saadi had written, "Either choose not to make friends with elephant drivers, or build a house fit for an elephant."337 Clearly, Reza and Mohammed Shah were constructing a very different house. Iran's vast montazh was tied together by "the presence of the central government and the shah."272 The fall of the Shah, in 1979, created a vacuum, and Iranians were now forced to step from the shadows of ambiguity, and to take a stand. Among every category of Iranian there seem to be large numbers who see the love of ambiguity that gave Iranian culture a flexible exterior and a private interior as something no longer tenable, a freedom that history no longer permits.379 This 'love of ambiguity' was part of what gave rise to the inner struggle in Iran, and now Iranians were forced to choose. To choose between fundamentalism and modernism - liberalism, between traditional values and western values, between Islam and persecution, between Iran and exile.

Unfortunately, in striving for nationalism, Iran went one step too far and attempted to solve the "enigma that was unsolvable",164 and has sacrificed its pluralistic society. Ali, speaking in regard to the brutality of the new breed of mullah, said,

But I know for a fact that years ago, they (mullahs) would walk out of their way to avoid stepping on an ant.389

The Mantle of the Prophet appears to be a series of short essays uniquely tied together with the life of Ali Hashemi. This enhances the read, as the reader can ease through the pages of the heavier historical accounts of religion and politics, sifting through two thousand years of names, knowing that the entertaining life of Ali will soon resume, and give a more personal view.

Ali's character is delightfully refreshing from a western point of view, lending great insight into the life of the mullah, and giving a new understanding to the rise of Khomeini. Ali Hashemi is a pseudonym for a man Mottahedeh admires and deeply respects, but I am sure that some part of Ali is Mottahedeh himself, or perhaps one of his other fictitious and entertaining characters.

My only criticism would be that at times, Ali appeared to be conspicuously absent from the book, and I query whether he is typical of Iranian mullahs or the very rare exception. As my real question would be, how long until we can witness, as many Persians say, 'the Iran of tomorrow'? Ali is the device, and the voice, for all those Iranians in despair, not of the downfall of an autocratic regime, but by the rise of a theocratic regime, of possible greater consequences, the extinction of the Persian culture.

As in the story of Noah's Ark, the earth of tomorrow's Iran is safely stored in the minds of those like Ali, a mind "that would not purchase the deluge for a drop of water."267. Ali prays that "the intellectual tradition he has so painstakingly mastered should not be lost in the storm."390

Ali did not flee Iran, with his family, but chose to stay and finish planting his seeds. As his gardener tells him, "they won't survive long in the flat."17 I certainly hope that these seeds survive long enough to find fertile ground, as they are surely, figurative seeds, the seeds of knowledge....