Iranian nationalism
Iranian nationalism was fostered under the Pahlavi dynasty (1925-1979). After the Iranian revolution, Iranian or Persian ethnic nationalism was mostly found among the Iranian diaspora, but there has been a resurgence of nationalism also within the Islamic Republic of Iran in the wake of the Iran student protests, July 1999.
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[edit] History
Iranian nationalism is in origin a reaction to 19th century European colonialism in the region, which led to the loss of Qajar possessions in the Caucasus.[1]
Modern nationalism in Iran dates back to 1906, when an almost bloodless constitutional revolution created Iran's first parliament. Reza Shah, helped shape Iranian nationalism by infusing it with a distinctly secular ideology, and diminishing the influence of Islam on Iran. In addition, Reza Shah sought to change the names of various towns to honor pre-Islamic Persian kings and mythological heroes, and to continue to reduce the power of the mullahs by seeking to modernize Iran. The Pahlavi dynasty thus was set irrevocably down the road towards infusing the country with a form of secular nationalism, a path that would eventually bring it into conflict with the country's clerical class. Iranian nationalism was a deciding force in the 1951 movement to nationalize Iran's oil wealth.
Iranian nationalist discourse focuses on pre-Islamic Persian antiquity, whilst negating the 'Islamization' of Persia by Muslim forces.[2] In the 20th century, different aspects of this idealization of a distant past would be instrumentalized by both the Pahlavi monarchy, which employed archaizing titles such as Āryāmehr "Light of the Aryans", and by the Islamic Republic that followed it; the Pahlavis used it as a foundation for anticlerical monarchism, and the clerics used it to exalt Iranian values vis-á-vis westernization.[3] This dichotomy of ethnic vs. religious nationalism continues into the present, with the former taken up by Iranians in the diaspora, and the latter represented in the figure of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.[2]
[edit] Nationalist parties of Iran
- active
- Pan-Iranist Party of Iran (sice 1950)
- Marz-e Por Gohar (since 1999)
- Mellat Iran (since 1951, illegal since 1979)
- defunct
- National Front (Iran) (1949-1982)
- Rastakhiz (1975-1978)
[edit] Other groups
- Kingdom Assembly of Iran (militant royalist group)
- SUMKA (Neo-Nazi group in Iran)
- The Constitutionalist Party of Iran (CPI) (since 1994, based in exile)
- Revenge group (Anjoman) (nationalist guerilla during World War II)
[edit] References
- ^ Patrick Clawson writes:
- "Since the days of the Achaemenids, the Iranians had the protection of geography. But high mountains and vast emptiness of the Iranian plateau were no longer enough to shield Iran from the Russian army or British navy. Both literally, and figuratively, Iran shrank. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Azerbaijan, Armenia, much of Georgia were Iranian, but by the end of the century, all this territory had been lost as a result of European military action. Iran translated her territorial losses into a sense of both victimization and a propensity to interpret European action through the lens of conspiracy. This in turn has helped shape Iranian nationalism into the twenty first century." Patrick Clawson, Eternal Iran. Palgrave. 2005. Coauthored with Michael Rubin. ISBN 1-4039-6276-6 p.31-32
- ^ a b Adib-Moghaddam, Arshin (2006), "Reflections on Arab and Iranian Ultra-Nationalism", Monthly Review Magazine 11/06, http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/aam201106.html.
- ^ Keddie, Nikki R.; Richard, Yann (2006), Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution, Yale University Press, pp. 178f., ISBN 0-300-12105-9.
- Richard W. Cottam, Nationalism in Iran, University of Pittsburgh Press, ISBN 0-8229-3396-7
[edit] See also
- Pan-Iranism
- Nationalist-Religious movement
- Mirza Fatali Akhundov
- Rezā Shāh
- Mohammad Reza Pahlavi
- Reza Pahlavi
- Mohammad Mossadegh
- Mehdi Bazargan
- Dariush Forouhar
- Cyrus Cylinder#Human_rights
- 300 (film)#Controversy
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