Hijab: Three Modern Iranian Seminarian Perspectives

By Lloyd Ridgeon

This book provides an overview of the range of seminarian thinking in Iran on the controversial topic of the hijab. During the modern period, Iran has suffered a great deal of conflict and confusion caused by the impact of Western views on the hijab in the 19th century, Riza Shah Pahlavi’s 1936 decree banning Islamic head coverings, and the imposition of the veil in the wake of the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

Ḥijāb addresses the differences of opinion among seminarians on the hijab in the Islamic Republic of Iran, focusing on three representative thinkers: Murtaza Mutahhari who held veiling to be compulsory, Ahmad Qabil who argued for the desirability of the hijab, and Muhsin Kadivar who considers it neither necessary nor desirable. In the first chapter, the views of these three scholars are contextualized within the framework known as ‘new religious thinking’ among the seminarians. Comprehending the hermeneutics of this new religious thinking is key to appreciating how and why the younger generation of scholars have offered divergent judgements about the hijab. Following the first chapter, the book is divided into three parallel sections, each devoted to one of the three seminarians. These present a chronological approach, and each scholar’s position on the hijab is assessed with reference to historical specificity and their own general jurisprudential perspective. Extensive examples of the writings of the three scholars on the hijab are also provided.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gingko
• Release date: Sep 3, 2021
• ISBN: 9781909942578

Book preview

Introduction

Let me be as blunt and direct as I can be. Western civilization is in a war. We should frankly test every person here who is of a Muslim background, and if they believe in Sharia, they should be deported. Sharia is incompatible with Western civilization.

So claimed Newt Gingrich in 2016, former Speaker of the House of Representatives in the US (1995–99), who also ran a presidential campaign in 2012. Gingrich’s comments in an interview with Fox News came in the wake of a terrorist attack in Nice which left 84 people dead. The act had been perpetrated by Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel who hailed from Tunisia but lived in France, and responsibility for his act was taken by ISIS. Gingrich’s reaction to the atrocity needs to be seen in the context of populist politics which had been making inroads in many parts of the West, resulting in electoral successes in Europe and North America for candidates who were unsympathetic to either Islam, or Muslims or states where Islam is entwined with the constitution. The list of leading political figures who have espoused such ideas includes the following: Viktor Orbán in Hungary (prime minister since 2010), who referred to refugees as ‘Muslim invaders’ who were not welcome in his country;¹ Donald Trump (elected president of the United States in 2016), who famously instituted a ‘Muslim ban’ on nationals from seven predominantly Muslim states from entering the US;² Marine le Pen in France, ‘campaigning under the threat of two totalitarianisms – economic globalisation and Islamic fundamentalism’,³ who was narrowly defeated in the first round of the presidential elections in 2017, scoring 21.53% compared with Emmanuel Macron’s 23.75%.⁴ To this list we may also add fringe parties and individuals, such as the leading figures of the British National Party which wants to ‘ban shariah law’.⁵ Populist politics and increasing nationalist sentiment have been concomitant with anti-Islamic and anti-sharia views in recent times, especially since the events associated with 9/11. Sharia in the Western popular imagination is arguably associated with the amputation of limbs, stoning of homosexuals, flogging for adultery, etc., and in the words of one British political journalist, ‘most non-Muslims in the West seem united with hardline Islamists in the misguided belief that there is one monolithic, unchanging sharia.’⁶ Such a view of the ‘misguided’ interpretation of sharia is echoed in Islamic lands too, typified by the comments of the reformist Iranian theologian Muhammad Mujtahid-Shabistari, who observed,

Europeans tend to regard the sharia as a solid edifice. But the sharia is not a solid edifice. It is dependent upon the fuqahā, Islamic legal scholars, who are allowed to issue a fatwa, i.e. an Islamic legal pronouncement. When these legal scholars are free-thinking individuals, then they can interpret Islamic law in such a way to present no hurdles to the establishment of democracy. Those who venture even further could say, ‘We can find passages in the Koran, the Sunna and the sharia that encourage us to adapt a democratic system.’⁷

This book expands upon the idea promulgated by Shabistari through assessing the claim of an interpretation of sharia that is ‘liberal, progressive and broad-minded’.⁸ The sharia is a complex subject, indeed the argument should more specifically be one about fiqh, or jurisprudence, and this will be examined herein through the prism of a contemporary and controversial case study: how modern Iranian seminarians (the jurists, or fuqahā) have arrived at very different opinions about the necessity of women wearing a head-covering or hijab since the Iranian state demands that women’s head hair should be concealed. Understandings of the ‘clerics’ have been chosen because the opinions emanating from the seminary (typically the establishments in Qum or Mashhad) frequently carry significant weight.⁹ Of course, this is not to say that all seminarian views are the same or hold equal significance, and this study clearly shows there is great diversity.

Sharia is often understood as the pristine divine law that has been set out by God, traditionally interpreted by the religious authorities, or the seminarians. This human appreciation is known as fiqh (jurisprudence) and it has been considered an accumulation of opinions of individual scholars in the hawzas (seminaries). Following the success of the Islamic Revolution in 1978–79, there emerged a new configuration of interpreters and organisations (overseen to a large extent by the Leader (rahbar)), and composed of members of parliament (majlis), supervised by certain bodies (dominated by seminarians) appointment to which was restricted to those with the appropriate Islamic credentials. These bodies included the Guardian Council, the Expediency Council, and the Society of Seminary Teachers of Qum. In other words, fiqh is now contested within the Iranian Parliament and its political structures, which are informed by the reasoning and declarations made by specific factions of senior figures in the seminaries.¹⁰

So it is here that the dilemma facing the Islamic Republic of Iran becomes apparent: on the one hand, the governmental machinery of the state and certain factions within the seminaries are the ultimate arbiters of Islam and fiqh, but traditionally jurists from the seminaries have remained independent from governmental structures, and therefore have enjoyed the freedom to express autonomous views on the religious legality of specific issues. The institutionalisation of Islam in Iran through executive, legislative and judicial organisations has in practice reduced this independence, but nevertheless some within the ulama have fiercely guarded and demanded the right to express views that have sometimes been contrary to that of the state (such as the necessity for women to wear the hijab). A contemporary group from the seminaries known as the ‘New Religious Thinkers’ have rejected the univocality of fiqh interpretation and implementation. They have set out diverse methods which promote a pluralist approach, as set out in chapter one of this book, which serves as the key to subsequent chapters.

As such the research and primary significance of this book is the demonstration of ‘fiqh plasticity’, and its responsiveness to the needs of the time. The book also informs the debate of ‘religious secularity’ (here indicating the separation of religion and state – not necessarily the decrease of religious sentiment) and shows how the imposition of state sponsored religiosity and piety has been challenged. Juristic hermeneutics are guided by the interplay between traditional ways that sacred scripture has been understood and the demands and customs of a society which in the 20th–21st centuries has witnessed change at an unprecedented speed. This book also shows how the jurists of the modern period have been influenced by the ‘ethical turn’ (in addition to the ‘linguistic turn’)¹¹ in which the ‘literal’ understanding of sacred texts, the practice of reading verses in isolation from the overall message of the Qurʾan, and the foregrounding of rights and duties over ethics have been challenged.¹² In practice this has resulted in arguments over how to define piety and the nature of an ‘Islamic’ way of life.¹³ The ‘ethical turn’ has resulted in interpretations that are diverse and contradictory, ranging from an understanding of piety and ethics that witnesses minute observance of every act being grounded in law to that which regards sacred texts and law as providing general guidance, allowing believers more freedom to choose from a range of ‘pious’ options. However, the relationship between law and ethics is not a simple binary one, and as Katz has astutely observed the dynamic between them is very complicated and defies simplistic categorisation. This being so, it is best just to ‘complicate the received narrative about Islamic law and ethics and draw attention to the wide range of relationships between these two fields before and after the advent of modernity’.¹⁴

The degree of fiqh plasticity and the influence of the ‘ethical turn’ among some modern Iranian seminarians are demonstrated in this book with reference to a case study of the hijab in Iran. In recent years the opinions about the hijab made by the ulama cover a range of possibilities for women, from the necessity to wear a head-covering, to the desirability to don the hijab, and finally to permitting women freedom of choice. And anyone who has been to Iran, or who has seen images of modern Iranian women, will know that the hijab is worn in different ways and that the law to cover all the hair is often flouted. Thus, the case study of the hijab offers an excellent illustration of fiqh in practice, and it is a good example of the dilemmas facing a people who hold a variety of perspectives, ranging from the ‘traditionalists’ who favour the hijab, to ‘modernists’ who do not feel any contradiction about adopting ‘Western’ fashions and norms. The analysis in this book does not focus on the motivations of women for wearing or not wearing the hijab, as these are notoriously problematic to identify. Religious, cultural, and political factors are all relevant considerations, which are not necessarily mutually exclusive, especially as definitions of these terms inevitably melt into one another.

The hijab represents a major point of discussion with regard to fiqh because the Iranian state’s policy of mandatory hijab and the imposition of punishments for non-observance typifies an approach that has been censured by Muslims and non-Muslims in contemporary times.¹⁵ As indicated at the very start of this introduction, sharia has been the focus of attention in the West, where not only does it provoke emotions such as fear, outrage and disgust, but it has in recent times been the subject of constructive criticism from Muslims living in the West. That is to say, the criticism by reforming Western Muslims is levelled at specific interpretations of fiqh, rather than censure of sharia as God’s ideal law, referring to ‘the universal, innate, and natural laws of goodness’.¹⁶ Khaled Abou El Fadl, Professor of Islamic Law at UCLA in the US, has referred to the implementation of ḥudūd punishments (corporal punishment, stoning, the death penalty, etc.) and has made associations with Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Nigeria and Afghanistan, remarking that these countries ‘have at different times and circumstances committed injustices that could only be described as thoroughly ugly’.¹⁷ In a similar fashion Tariq Ramadan, who was Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies at the University of Oxford, declared publicly that ‘the application of the sharia today is used by repressive powers to abuse women, the poor and political opponents with a quasi-legal vacuum. Muslim conscience cannot accept this injustice.’¹⁸ Although both of these Muslim scholars follow Sunni Islam, it is just as easy to discover Muslim academics in the West who critique certain interpretations of fiqh and who adhere to Shiʿi Islam (making their evaluations more relevant to the Iranian case, which has been a Shiʿi majority region since the sixteenth–seventeenth centuries). For example, Abdulaziz Sachedina, Professor of Islamic Studies at George Mason University, Virginia (who has been visiting lecturer in seminaries in Iran),¹⁹ speaks of an ‘epistemological crisis’ faced by jurists when it comes to legal matters pertaining to women, who have had restricted access to learning. Women’s voices are simply not heard when matters such as purity, equality or modesty are discussed. Sachedina observes, ‘There is no doubt that the tone of the rulings is set by the powerful male jurist who, in most cases, ignores the female evaluation of her own social situation.’²⁰ Another Western Shiʿi academic who advocates reform is Liyakat Takim, who has the Sharjah Chair in Global Islam at McMaster University in Canada. Takim discusses the ‘failure of ejtehad’,²¹ which is basically the jurists’ inability to provide adequate solutions, based on rational investigation that does not contravene sacred scripture, to the challenges of modern situations and circumstances. These observations and criticisms by Western Muslim scholars reflect the concerns of the so-called ‘New Religious Thinkers’ among the ulama in Iran. Not only are the major issues the same, but the language used by the Western-based scholars mentioned above is similar to that of their Iranian counterparts who speak of the cruelty and the ugliness of recent applications of fiqh.

*

The present work is divided into four parts. Part One provides an illustration of the most significant of the inventive methods that the aforementioned New Religious Thinkers among the seminarians have utilised in their interpretations of fiqh. It demonstrates the facile Western understandings of sharia to which this introduction has alluded by discussing the radical implications that these new interpretations of the key components of fiqh have for jurisprudence, theology and politics. The most controversial of the seminarians among the New Religious Thinkers, namely Hasan Yousefi Eshkevari,²² Muhsin Kadivar, Ahmad Qabil and Muhammad Mujtahid Shabistari are taken as examples, although these examples are not exhaustive of the movement.

The Second, Third and Fourth parts of this book share a symmetry in basic structure; they all contain sections which outline a chronological perspective of the main contours of the hijab controversy in Iran. Part Two deals with the pre-modern period and encompasses the impact of Western thought and orientalism in the nineteenth century, and the adoption of the ‘modernising’ meta-narrative of the Pahlavi monarchy which led up to the Islamic Revolution in 1978–79. Part Three concentrates on how the regulations on the hijab were established in Iran, and it highlights the challenges faced by the Islamic government between the years 1979–2005. Part Four concludes the historical survey examining the period from 2005 to the present, and it shows that the range of seminarian thinking is not limited to a single understanding, but continues to offer interpretations that may be considered ‘conservative’ to those that are regarded as radical and ‘liberal’.

After the historical-contextual sections in each of Parts Two, Three and Four, there are two further sections. The first of these sections investigates the general religious and theological perspectives of a seminarian chosen to represent that particular era. The subsequent section in Parts Two, Three and Four include translations of the works of the selected seminarian on the topic of the hijab. Part Two focuses on Ayatollah Murtaza Mutahhari (d. 1979), who is regarded by the Islamic regime as a great champion of the ongoing revolution and battle against the non-religious forces that struggled against the regime. Mutahhari’s theology provided an alternative to both the left-wing ideologies in Iran during the 1960s and 1970s, and also to the secularising and ‘modernising’ forces of the Shah. Whilst he was prepared to tackle many of the ‘traditional’ patterns of thought among the ulama, his writings on women and the hijab still betray a certain degree of conservatism in his thought. He is representative of those mullas who believe that the hijab is compulsory (vājib). Part Three focuses on the ideas of Ahmad Qabil (d. 2012), a seminarian who is virtually unknown in the West, but who achieved considerable fame in Iran because of his political opposition to the Leader, ʿAli Khamenei, and also due to his fatwa of 2004 in which he declared that the hijab was not compulsory, but desirable. This shift in the legal status of the hijab reflected Qabil’s larger theological perspective, built upon the exercise of reason. Part Four turns to the ideas and thinking of Muhsin Kadivar, who, like Qabil, has become known as a staunch opponent of Khamenei and his clique who rule Iran. And both Qabil and Kadivar share many of the same principles for reforming the ways in which seminarians think about jurisprudence. Nevertheless, there is great difference of opinion between them when it comes to the hijab, for Kadivar does not believe that the hijab is either necessary or desirable. Instead he holds that its use depends on the ‘time and place’ (a major jurisprudential principle), which allows for the setting aside of religious commands. Kadivar even goes as far as to say that there is no Qurʾanic imperative for women to wear the hijab.

Seminarians have responded to their changing socio-political contexts by utilising traditional jurisprudential methods that provide ‘legitimate’ ways to interpret sacred scripture and narrations. The three seminarians selected as case studies here were specifically chosen because of their different opinions. I would have liked to have studied female voices within the ulama on the topic of the hijab, but this has not been possible due to the fact that I have been unable to identify any female seminarian who has voiced an influential opinion about the hijab.²³ Female voices, seminarian or otherwise, that articulate views about the hijab must have their place in the general discussion. However, at present it seems that the women’s voices are reflected more in their actions rather than in theological and jurisprudential writing.

The New Religious Thinkers among the Iranian ulama have yielded substantial scholarship in Persian, but much of the English and European scholarship tends to focus on the views of the non-seminarian trained scholar Abdolkarim Soroush.²⁴ Studies on the seminarians among the New Religious Thinkers in Iran comprise a drop in the ocean of the literature on Shiʿi Islam that more usually concentrates on the ideas and policies of Khomeini, or politicians such as Ahmadinejad.²⁵ This work is the first to analyse the responses of the New Religious Thinkers on a specific issue that not only assesses their original approach to interpretations of fiqh, but also highlights the context in which they composed their answers to these challenges. More specifically, it provides an essential window through which to understand and assess debates around the hijab (seemingly a ‘simple piece of cloth’²⁶) which in Europe appears to many quite unfathomable, but which to Muslims in Europe and in Islam-majority states is of critical importance. Surprisingly, the English language literature on the hijab in Iran is minimal, despite the abundance of general and introductory literature in the West about the veil.²⁷ The most active scholar in the field is the feminist anthropologist Ziba Mir-Hosseini whose articles on gender and the hijab have provided inspiration on many occasions for this study. In several articles Mir-Hosseini has mentioned and highlighted ‘conservative’ thinking, typified in the writings of Mutahhari.²⁸ Her analysis also focuses on how this was developed by the likes of the non-seminarian ʿAli Shariʿati (d. 1977), and has been advanced by some of the ulama themselves in more recent years. Mir-Hosseini’s focus on the New Religious Thinkers is brief since most of her work has been in the form of articles or book chapters, and does not permit jurisprudential or contextual backgrounds in great depth. The kinds of responses to the hijab that attempt to highlight the dangers of patriarchal seminarian thinking (including Mir-Hosseini’s understanding) have been criticised by Minoo Derayeh who warns of the dangers of cultural relativism, which unwittingly endorses ‘fundamentalist conservatism’ that ‘fails to expose the reality of life and experiences of those Muslim women whose voices are silenced’ by post-modern relativism. (Derayeh includes Mir-Hosseini in her list of culprits, and she also talks of ‘over-generalized apologetic works consolidating patriarchy’.²⁹) Other authors have focused on various aspects of the hijab in Iran, such as Rebecca Gould whose work looks mainly at the hijab as a commodity form. Although she notes that her article focuses on the negative consequences of mandatory veiling, she cites Hoodfar who claims that ‘women have used the same social institution to free themselves from the binds of patriarchy’.³⁰ A cursory glance at these above mentioned articles demonstrates that the hijab is not a simplistic topic. What is missing from these works, however, is an in-depth study that examines the range of seminarian thinking, the theological underpinning of such perspectives, and the contexts in which they emerge.³¹

It is surprising that the issue of the hijab has not been considered in any profundity in a monograph by Western scholars, or even among Iranian academics who write in English. In an otherwise excellent survey of contemporary thinking among the ulama, Naser Ghobadzadeh writes, ‘the raising of sensitive subjects such as the hijab and the consumption of alcohol has been side-stepped by reformist scholars at the current stage of Iran’s political trajectory to avoid conflict.’³² But it will be demonstrated in this book that the issue of the hijab has in fact enjoyed a considerable degree of attention among reformist ulama.³³

*

In the course of writing this book, a social media campaign was initiated that encouraged women in Iran to put on a white head scarf or veil instead of the usual black.³⁴ This campaign mushroomed following events of 27 December 2017, when a young Iranian woman stood bareheaded in a busy main road – Inqalab Street in Tehran – and waved her hijab at the end of a wooden stick. Images of this event went viral on the internet and it was widely reported in the media.³⁵ The ‘Girls of Inqalab Street’ became a household term. Similar bareheaded protests proliferated throughout Iran, causing great concern among leading governmental figures from the ulama. Even the Leader of Iran, ʿAli Khamenei, referred to these events in a recent speech in which he accused Iran’s ‘enemies’ (the West, and those Iranians living there in exile) of cultivating the campaign to remove the veil. He said:

Several months ago, the enemies of Iran sat down in a room together, and over the past three months they schemed. In their imagination [they believed] they would finish-off the Islamic Republic by February or March (Isfand). [They have busied themselves with] so much expenditure, planning and propaganda, but in conclusion they have [merely] deceived a few girls who take off their head-covering in some corner or alley, and all their effort ends in this. [It is] trivial and insignificant. It is not a problem, but I think that the issue about ‘mandatory veiling’ is being articulated by several elites. [Some of them] are journalists, enlightened thinkers and even turbaned clerics (ākhūnd-i muʿammam).³⁶ They follow the same policy that the enemy could not bring to fruition, even with all of [their] expenditure.³⁷

Of particular interest is Khamenei’s claim that some among the ulama support the anti-mandatory hijab movement. It is to be wondered to whom Khamenei is referring; it is unlikely that he is making oblique references to those outside of Iran, such as Muhsin Kadivar who now resides in the US. However, there has been disquiet among the ulama about the use of force to implement the hijab. For example, President Rouhani has often issued a veiled argument that the strict enforcement should not be observed.³⁸ Moreover, in the middle of the recent controversy of the ‘Girls of Inqalab Street’, Rouhani chose to release an opinion poll from 2014 conducted by the Centre for Strategic Studies, a government research group, that found in a survey of 1167 people (including both men and women) that 49.8% of Iranians consider the hijab a private matter and think the government should have no say in it.³⁹ It can only be speculated why Rouhani decided to have the findings of the poll released at such an incendiary moment. Rouhani is not alone, as Ayatollah Muhammad ʿAli Ayazi⁴⁰ opposed mandatory veiling even before the recent outbreak of public disquiet, citing senior figures responsible for the establishment of the Islamic Republic (such as Ayatollah Mutahhari) and maintaining that they did not support compulsory veiling. He also believes that such a policy is against the sharia.⁴¹ There are other influential seminarians who share Ayazi’s view. A lower ranking member of the ulama and former editor of the popular newspaper Hamshahri, Hujjat al-Islam Muhammad Riza Zaʾiri has remarked, ‘I strongly believe the policy of mandatory hijab has been totally wrong.’⁴² In addition to Zaʾiri, another reformist member of the ulama, Abu Fazl Najafi Tihrani, uploaded a number of tweets seemingly in support of the ‘Women of Enqelab Street’. He has also tweeted photographs of the famous bareheaded female poet, Forough Farrokhzad (d. 1966), and of the Iranian faqīh who found fame in Lebanon, Musa Sadr, who, we are informed, did not mind having his photograph taken with a group of bareheaded women.⁴³ Clearly the Iranian regime has been rankled by the issue of the hijab and by Masih ʿAlinejad’s attempt to maintain momentum by posting film clips of bare-headed women walking in urban areas of Iran. This is evidenced by the threat from Tehran’s Revolutionary Court of a ten-year jail sentence for those appearing in these videos.⁴⁴

The significant point is that this diversity of opinion, ranging from mandatory veiling to freedom to choose, demonstrates the fallacy of a fixed and unchanging body of law called ‘sharia’ and represents the correct way of understanding Islamic law. The Islamic Republic has attempted to paper over such diversity, and in the opinion of Muhsin Kadivar it has done so for political reasons: ‘the case of the hijab is not a religious or legal one. It is completely political. The hijab has been a matter of maintaining face for the regime. The mandatory veil was born with the Islamic Republic and it will die with the Islamic Republic.’⁴⁵

*

Given the trajectory in the contents of this book (a movement from endorsement of the hijab, to the recommendation to adopt this custom, to a final rejection of compulsion to wear head-covering), it might be assumed that I have similar sympathies with the ‘progressive, broad-minded and liberal’ understanding. My own perspective on the Qurʾanic verses relating to the hijab are that they are all concerned with modesty and piety, and believing Muslim women are encouraged to cover themselves in some form which is not sufficiently clear to determine whether head-covering is absolutely necessary. From a historical perspective, this issue becomes more complex once the narratives of the Shiʿi imams are considered. It is for Shiʿi believers themselves to decide on how to understand these statements; whether to abide and respect the opinions of the imams, or to regard them as representative of their times and consider valid changes in conformity with the demands of the times and conditions of the contemporary period. Having said this, I believe that the issue for contemporary female believers concerns agency; if women feel comfortable wearing a hijab, and their decision is informed and intelligent, then surely there can be little meaningful objection to such sartorial choices. As Saʿdiyya Shaikh has observed,

Ultimately in any study of dress and hijab among Muslim women, it is necessary to look at the complexity of the varying narratives and to treat Muslim women as subjects instead of objects of research. Such an approach will prioritize Muslim women’s self-understandings, it will look at the varying ways in which veiling operates in relation to women’s agency, it will recognise sites of resistance as well as contradictions and ambivalence within the discourses, instead of treating veiling as evidence of the monolithic victimization of women.⁴⁶

The extent to which the three sources used in this book have observed the kind of advice offered by Shaikh is left up to the reader to decide. However, sufficient historical contextualisation is given throughout to enable the reader to reach an informed conclusion. More difficult questions surround the niqāb, or the face-covering, but that is a completely different issue. As a male scholar writing on the topic, I do feel that it is wrong for me to offer any definitive statements. As much as possible I have tried to follow the advice of the famous Persian poet Hafiz, who said:

Hafiz, you are the hijab in the path. Get up out of the way!

How fortunate is the person who walks on this path without a hijab.⁴⁷

1 Emily Schultheis, ‘Viktor Orban: Hungary does not want Muslim Invaders’, Politico 1 August 2018, https://www.politico.eu/article/viktor-orban-hungary-doesnt-want-muslim-invaders/.

2 Moustafa Bayoumi, ‘The Muslim Ban ruling legitimates Trump’s bigotry’, The Guardian 27 June 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/27/muslim-ban-ruling-trumps-bigotry.

3 Chloe Farand, ‘Marine le Pen launches presidential campaign with hardline speech’, The Independent 5 February 2017, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/marine-lepen-front-national-speech-campaign-launch-islamic-fundamentalism-french-elections-a7564051.html.

4 Henry Samuel, ‘French election 2017: Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen through to presidential run off’, The Telegraph 24 April 2017, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/23/french-election-live-results-exit-polls.

5 https://bnp.org.uk/policies/reversing-islamisation/.

6 Mehdi Hasan, ‘It’s time to lay the sharia bogeyman to rest’, New Statesman June 2011, https://newstatesman.com/religion/2011/06/islamic-law-sharia-british.

7 Jan Kuhlmann, interview with Muhammad Mujtahid-Shabestari (© Qantara.de 2012), ‘Why Islam and democracy go well together’, https://en.qantara.de/content/interview-with-mohammad-mojtahed-shabestari-why-islam-and-democracy-go-well-together.

8 This is the claim made by Hassan Rouhani, who wrote his PhD thesis under the name Hassan Feridon, which is his birth-name. His father was called Haj Asadollah Feridoun. Hassan Feridon, ‘The Flexibility of Shariah (Islamic Law) with Reference to the Iranian Experience’, PhD thesis, University Glasgow Caledonian University 1998, 392.

9 The word cleric/clerics is a translation of the Persian and Arabic term ʿalim/ulama that denotes an individual or body of individuals who have trained in the seminary, and still maintain seminary methods and belief in Twelver Shiʿi Islam. Despite this, some of the contemporary ulama have expressed ‘radical’ and ‘modern’ views which depart significantly from ‘traditional’ understandings. The word ulama is an umbrella term that includes theologians (mutakallimūn), jurists ( fuqahā), philosophers (i.e. Islamic philosophers), hadith scholars (muḥaddithūn) and Qurʾanic exegetes (muffasirūn). It might be argued that the broadness of the term is too loose to fit comfortably over the main scholars in this study (Murtaza Mutahhari, Ahmad Qabil and Muhsin Kadivar). Certainly, Qabil and Kadivar have considered themselves as mujtahids (private email from Muhsin Kadivar, dated 7 November 2018). And yet categorising other leading scholars in this study poses other problems; Mutahhari was a theologian and philosopher, while Muhammad Mujtahid Shabistari considers himself a theologian. The difficulty of bunching this group together within a single term is recognised, and although ulama has its limitations, it is the best term that can be employed.

10 Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi, ‘Women’s Rights, Shariʿa’ Law, and the Secularization of Islam in Iran’, International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 26.3, 2013, 237–53.

11 The influence of the ‘linguistic turn’ is most obvious in the ideas of Muhammad Mujtahid Shabistari, discussed in Part One.

12 Marion Katz observes this phenomenon in the Sunni tradition and says, ‘I would argue that one discernible and little-noticed phenomenon is that in some cases ethical themes have taken on a distinctly more prominent role in legal argumentation since the beginning of the twentieth century.’ See Ethics, gender, and the Islamic Legal Project, Yale Law School, Occasional Papers, 2015, 25.

13 Lara Deeb makes the pertinent point that a way forward in understanding Islamic societies is to trouble ‘or at least ethnographically unpack … our understandings of the boundary between what counts as piety or the pious and what does not, and by beginning to conceptualize that boundary itself as a moving target that is part of Muslims’ own ongoing discussions’. Lara Deeb, ‘Thinking piety and the everyday together: A response to Fadil and Fernando’, Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 5.2, 2015, 95.

14 Katz, Ethics, gender, and the Islamic Legal Project, 29.

15 Article 638 of Islamic Penal Code states that women who appear in public not wearing the hijab will receive a prison sentence of between 10 days to two months and a fine of between 50,000 to 500,000 rials (between $1.50 and $15 at the time of writing). (See ‘Iran’s Prosecutor Dismisses Hijab Protesters as Childish and Ignorant’, Iranwire 31 January 2018,