However, neither the State’s intrusion into the religious field nor the clergy’s loss of funds and important functions in the fields of education and justice led to any organised opposition on the part of the latter. On the one hand this was due to the threats and violence with which Reza Shah enforced his policies. On the other hand, after the chaotic and conflictual period of the Constitutional Revolution many clerics were content to return to their traditional religious functions. Furthermore, if Reza Shah’s policies led to the loss of important functions and funds, they also helped define the religious field more clearly. While before it had encompassed a wide range of self-proclaimed clerics and preachers (rouze khan), who earned their money leading mourning sessions for Hussein but had little or no religious education, now only those with a formal religious education in the seminaries (madresse) were entitled to call themselves mullah. Thus, the reforms of Reza Shah helped establish the clergy as a professional group with a hierarchical structure and a formal education.
This was the context when Montazeri first came to Qom in 1935. Born in 1922 in the small rural city of Najafabad, some 30 kilometres northwest of Isfahan, as the eldest son of the peasant Ali Montazeri and Shah Beigum Sobhani, he attended several religious schools as well as one of the newly founded state schools. On the initiative of his father he started learning Arabic at the age of six. Although a peasant of very modest origin, his father valued religious learning and had himself acquired some religious knowledge under the guidance of the local mullah, so that he knew large parts of the Qur’an by heart and sometimes led the Friday prayer in the local mosque.
Only 13 years of age upon his arrival in Qom, Montazeri was not eligible for a stipend. However, having answered some questions to the satisfaction of Haeri-Yazdi he did obtain a small allowance, which enabled him to stay for ten months in the city. When this money ran out he was obliged to return to Isfahan, where he continued his studies at the local seminary and obtained a modest stipend. During these initial years his life at the seminary was hard. In the beginning he lived with an elder student who made him do the housework and beat him if he did not do it to his satisfaction. Since his allowance was too small to survive, he was obliged to travel every two weeks to Najafabad to bring back basic provisions from his parents’ garden. Officially, each of the students obtained a monthly stipend of four silver coins from the school. In reality, however, we only got two silver coins and for the rest I was obliged to make do with the bread, yoghurt and other things I brought from Najafabad.
Montazeri wrote in his memoirs.8 In the 1930s, the Isfahani seminaries were generally in a difficult financial situation, as income from the religious foundations was sparse and religious donations were mostly sent to Najaf. For students of Montazeri’s social origin it was particularly difficult to obtain a good scholarship. Although in principle the religious field valued piety, learning and other personal merits, in reality one’s position in the field often depended on genealogical descent. The posts of prayer leader, religious judge or shrine guardian were mostly held by families of clerics and seyyeds (descendants of the Prophet), who passed them on from one generation to the next. Related through marriage, these families formed a clerical elite into which it was difficult to penetrate. As Montazeri was not from any of these old families he remained in a marginal position, and it was only as he advanced in his studies that he was able to improve his social and financial position.
During this time, politics were discussed neither in the seminary nor in the mosque. As Montazeri critically remarked, only a few clerics were interested in political and social matters. Many were out of touch with the concerns of the people and, in the seminaries, most avoided discussing questions of current interest. Newspapers were not read among the students, and the radio was still looked upon with curiosity and suspicion. The situation only began to change in 1941 when Reza Shah was forced into exile by the British and the Soviets, who suspected him of harbouring sympathies for the Germans. Under the rule of his son, Mohammad Reza, Iran experienced a decade of relative freedom. The repressive measures against critical newspapers and dissident groups were eased. The young Shah also made efforts to improve relations with the clergy, which had been greatly strained by his father.
In 1946 he visited the highly respected Grand Ayatollah Hossein Borujerdi (1875– 1961) while the latter was in hospital in Tehran, and established a sort of non-intervention agreement.10 This tacit agreement implied that the State would refrain from meddling in religion as long as the clergy did not intervene in politics. When Borujerdi, upon the invitation of the local clergy, moved his seminary from Borujerd to Qom some months later, he imposed his position of political quietism on all other clerics. After the death of the highly respected cleric Seyyed Abolhassan Musavi-Isfahani in 1946, he advanced to become the supreme religious authority of the Shi’i world. Until his death in 1961, no cleric, with the notable exception of Ayatollah Abolqassem Kashani, dared intervene in politics.
Taleqani in Tehran: Politico-Social Activism against the Monarchical System
