Reflections on Shiite Futurism

Shiism as a body of belief has been from the outset grounded in the doctrine of futurism, albeit initially as a rudimentary notion that has grown throughout Shiism’s (turbulent) history on an evolutionary basis requiring close scrutiny.  Emerging as a protest movement centered on the question of just rule, yielding Imam Hussein’s martyrdom as a defining moment in its history and identity, Shiism and futurism are, in fact, interchangeable because of the principle of martyrdom (shahdat) that is imbued with the hope of a regenerative future fueled by the sacrifices of the present moment, i.e., a historical trade-off with a built-in hope in the future.  This is in line with the Quranic verses that sound the defeat of evil-doers in the future even if they are victorious now.  In other words, Shiism finds its primary teaching in Quran and the prophetic as well as Imamat tradition, which in the latter case reaches its apex with the disappearance, and promised return or resurrection, of Imam Mahdi.  In turn, this gives Shiism essentially a dialectical nature, as a negation of negation, periodizing history into the ‘era of absence’ (asre-gheybat) and ‘era of appearance’ (asre-zohoor), connecting the two with the hermeneutic of “expectation” (entezar).  Of course, this is no mundane, ordinary expectation, but rather a grand one, waiting for the history’s bus at the grand station of faith-in-the-future cemented in the pillars of faith.  Instead of a dogmatic faith, this is a creative wait, dynamic, energetic, and even pragmatic, one that puts history into overdrive rather than slow motion, with speed as a parameter of fulfillment, for the mission of a Shiite believer in the ‘era of absence’ is not to wait passively for the ‘corruptors on earth’ to bring about an apocalypse, but rather to fulfill the moral and ethical duties of one-in-waiting (montazer), who commits good and prevents evil on earth (i.e., amre be-maaroof va nahye az monkar), which in the contemporary setting means acting responsibly toward nature and its creature, preventing the destruction of environment, and promoting social justice in all its manifestations including ethnic and religious tolerance, respect for diversity, women’s and children’s rights, and so on.  The one net conclusion, or word, emerging from this understanding of Shiism as futurism is (faith in) progress, or rather, future as the outcome of progress, tantamount to Shiism’s unshakeable faith in the transformative nature of time and history.  Of course, there is no need to labor the point that Shiism does not prescribe to a linear view of history, or a circular one, in light of its keen awareness of the complex tappings of history that periodically solicit acts of sacrifice and martyrdom on the part of the believers (ahle beit).  In that sense, Shiite view of history is perfectly compatible with Hegel’s Phenomenology describing the complex repertoire of Geist’s (Spirit’s) actualization in history culminating in the absolute’s return to itself, i.e., a process of concretization and alienation destined to eventual fulfillment).  But, of course, one must be on guard in drawing to close an analogy between different thought traditions.

            In delineating the main contours of Shiism as futurism, the existential and traumatic experience of its history should not be conflated with the theological underpinnings that inform it as a distinct tradition built on the corpus of thought we identify as religious epistemology (maarefate dini).  The latter combine elements of empiricism, scientism, and intuitive theology, without reducing one to the other, in a fluid mix that fuels creative imagination and will to action.  Shiite futurism, inherently wedded to Mahdism, finds its engine for perpetual motion in the creative wait that turns the believer into an avant-garde, as the vanguard of history, oriented to future and intent on being an active participant in creating the not-yet future, that is, the era of Expected Imam (asre zohoor), which delay, parousia, can only be attributed to the unfinished project of modernity.  In a certain sense then, Shiism as futurism is post-modernist by nature, although in a distinct sense from the ordinary understanding of post-modernism, that in the European context prioritizes relativism and even nihilism (with respect to grand narratives).  In our sense, however, post-modernism is not an anti-narrative impulse but rather a modernist impulse that relies on its faith in the future as a jailbreak from modernism’s scientism and empiricism. 

            On the political level, shiite futurism is a transformative mode of politics that does not necessarily prescribe a radical departure from the present, but rather a leap forward in line with the essential ingredients of an enlightened and contemporary mind; the latter is identifiable in terms of environmentalism, gender-equality, republicanism, democracy, and globalism.  All these terms have their origins in the corpus of Shiite thought that, throughout the centuries, has accumulated a vast arsenal of knowledge indebted to the Imams as well as countless Shiite thinkers who have added meaningful depth to Shiite epistemology throughout the centuries.  Shiite futurism must therefore be properly understood through its own internal history and the vagaries of its intellectual tradition that has reached new heights since the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979, with the revolution as the culmination of the believers’ long wait, as a stepping stone in the consummation of the era of absence (asre gheybat).  As in other great revolutions in modern history, the Islamic revolution has been radical in nature, introducing historical discontinuity and the dawn of a new era-in-making in perpetual quest for evolution and adjustment, in a word, a permanent revolution. 

            Seen in this light, Shiite futurism, as a distinctly intellectual project, overcomes and causes a Hegelian aufhebung of the state-intellectual relationship in the nation’s history, transforming the previous schism and debunking the pre-revolutionary dichotomy of intellectual and the state, whereby the former was identified in its antinomy to the latter.  A conceptual revolution-in-revolution, the old dichotomy evaporated by the stirrings of a historic revolution immersed in faith, that generated a new class of ‘state intellectuals’ that were mandated with delineating the conceptual and epistemological foundation of a new polity in which the modern principles of electoral democracy and republicanism were infused with the traditional norms of Shiism, resulting in a unique articulation of old and the new warranting against any reductionism.  In this new milieu, the intellectual discourse has in a certain sense lagged behind history and has a large territory to cover in order to catch up with the transformative speed of politics in (post) revolutionary Iran, punctured by wars and foreign crises.  Consequently, for over 40 years, the intellectual laboratory of post-revolutionary society has had to grapple with a perpetual state of emergency, unconducive to the new ‘state intellectuals’ to whom is assigned the critical task of ‘producing meaning’.   The latter, as a result, remains an unfinished project, perhaps still in its infancy, but as a rich reservoir for creative political, cultural, and aesthetic imagination.  Shiite futurism (atieh negari Shia) owes itself to the tensions and releases of energy of this dialectical history that despite its ebbs and flows points straight at the direction of experimentalism and novelty.  In other words, alternative thinking (degar andishi) is inscribed in the very nature of the Islamic revolution and its byproduct, the present polity, that struggles for survival against enormous external odds threatening its survival.  Without Islamic future, even in its half-articulated versions, the religious renaissance associated with the Islamic revolution would never transpire and the new compact between the rulers and the ruled would not materialize.  The latter, enshrined in the Islamic Constitution, defines the new order along a modern subjectivity that recognizes the right to vote and freedom of press as the pillars of the new system, predicated on Islamic values and self-understandings that defy the western paradigms and, instead, bespeak of a unique and novel system that emphasizes authenticity (esalat) while promoting experimentalism and pragmatism; the two are not mutually exclusive even though certain tensions stem from their interaction, which in turn fuel futurism as an integral aspect of Shiism’s dynamic impulse.  

            As a result, the future of Shiite futurism rests on is ability to keep the ship of revolution afloat and, with it, to continue the path of experimentation and novelty.  It requires re-thinking and revision (dobare negari) as sine qua non for its perpetuity, i.e., a constant yearning for addition and improvement, instead of a stale approach or method that recycles the past.  Repetition is, of course, another important ingredient of Shiite futurism, for without it the false impression of a perpetual radical break with the present status quo reigns supreme, which is a fallacy born by an innate ability to properly understand the long-term consequences of the Islamic revolution interfaced with changing time.  To avoid this fallacy, it is imperative to view Shiite futurism as a new state project, rather than a purely societal project, stemming from the revolution’s breakdown of the old antinomy between state and intellectuals, which continues to dominate the Iranian secular intellectuals.  But, for the new class of “state intellectuals” the project of Shiite futurism underwrites a new polity that has inherited a religious protest movement and internalized it, thus creating the contours of a permanent revolution, i.e., permanent Islamic populism, transcending the tradition state-people distinctions and polarizations with the modalities of a new organic totality that is dynamic, republicanist,  participatory and inclusive, rather than exclusivist.  The latter, in turn, turns our attention to the social and economic content of Shiite futurism, prioritizing social justice, which decries against the widening gulf between the haves and the have-nots, that is, a growing class society.  Rather, Shiite futurism is averse toward capitalist logic of class inequality and, instead, leans in favor of a cooperative and even socialistic mode of production in which the state and cooperative sectors act as counter-balancers to the logic of capitalism breeding inequality.  In a certain sense, Shiite futurism equals post-capitalism, but only in the measured sense of an unregulated, or run away, capitalism that must be held in check by the interventions of the state and cooperative sectors, operating on the basis of solidarity and popular need, rather than pure profit.  As the vanguards of revolution, Shiite futurists are not content with mere political change of the ancien regime and its substitution with a new form of polity, but seek to extend the revolution to the level of economics and political economy, without however causing any radical rupture, in which case the accomplishments of the revolution would be lost in the name of further progress. Gradualism and reformism identify Shiite futurism, founded on political modernism and modernist rationality necessitating a modern subjectivity immersed in faith and the fundamental pillars of faith on the one hand and, on the other, a critical impulse for critical self-reflection, as an important prerequisite for a healthy and dynamic worldview.  Without the critical faculty, Shiite futurism runs the risk of becoming ossified and losing its intellectual luster, but then again the parameters of this doctrine set limits to the critical purview, which requires internal discipline that prevent it from being morphed into a runaway train.  Only through debate, dialogue and discussion, can these parameters of Shiite futurism be refined with the passage of time, otherwise in the absence of such intervening variables, it is destined to turn into a form of dogma, stale and intellectually uninteresting.  The one key advantage of Shiite futurism is that the corpus of tradition is, in fact, innovative and highly instructive, in light of Shiism’s double political impulse of pragmatic peace often identified as Hassani peace (solhe Hassani) on the one hand, and Hosseini oppositionalism on the other hand; the two are not mutually exclusive however and must be properly understood as perfectly legitimate mode of politics, as well as diplomacy, within Shiism. Henceforth, to conclude Shiite futurism must remain keenly aware of retaining and harboring both impulses and switching from one to the other, just as generations of Shiites have done so throughout the history, thus dictating both continuities as well as discontinuities.