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Edinburgh Historical Studies of Iran and the Persian World

Religion, Orientalism and ModernityMahdi Movements of Iran and South Asia

By Geoffrey Nash

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£100.00

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About this book

Analyses modernity and Orientalist discourses in Iranian millenarian movements
  • Employs historical and discourse analysis to probe the conflict between orthodox and heterodox religious movements in 19th- and 20th-century Iran
  • Links the conflict between orthodoxy and heterodoxy to the impact of modernity on Iran’s society and religion and to colonisation on India’s Muslims
  • Broadens the scope of this conflict to include Palestine, Central Asia and Turkey
  • Presents a postcolonial analysis of the new movements and their broader relationship to the Islamic world during the age of imperialism

Religion, Orientalism and Modernity explores the emergence of the revolutionary Babis and reformist Baha’is and their conflict with mainstream Shi’a Muslims in Iran, and of the parallel Ahmadi movement in North India. It gives fresh insights into the writings that defined these innovatory movements, penned on the one hand by their proponents, and on the other by western interpreters.

Comparing these movements shows that, together, they define important aspects of Islamic modernity. A focus on two case studies (Babis and Baha’is in Iran, and Ahmadis in India) reveals similarities and differences in their responses to a perceived need for change and renewal of religious authority.

Reviews

Nash has written an interesting account of the complex entanglement of three very distinct nineteenth-century Islamic reform movements that reflects on Western Orientalist thought in the context of the asymmetric power relations with European imperialism.

This book represents a valuable contribution to the study of the Bahai faith and the Ahmadiyya movement, as well as a detailed analysis of minority movements’ adoption of the coloniser’s discourse on modernity and Islam.

Nash is to be commended for presenting an eloquently written and carefully considered study that is rooted in a postcolonial reading of foundational orientalist texts...Religion, Orientalism and Modernity demands a careful reading and will undoubtedly be rewarding for scholars who will appreciate a non-polemical postcolonial analysis of the Ahmadi, Babi, and Baha’i movements.
Table of contents

1. Introduction

  • Transmission to and reception in the West
  • Proselytism and Polemic
  • Orientalism and Modernity: key motifs
2. Contexts and Issues
Orientalism and Inter-Cultural Exchange
  • Mahdiya
    •  movements in the Colonial/Post-colonial Middle East and South Asia
  • Baha’is and Ahmadis on Government and Politics
  • Mahdi movements: religious communities in a modern world

    3. Race and Religion in Gobineau’s Persia

    • The taint of racism
    • Gobineau’s Persia: creation of an Orientalist image
    • Gobineau and the Messiah of Shiraz
    • Witnesses for the Baha’i faith: the role and function of Gobineau and other orientalists in Baha’i narratives
    • Interpolation, rewriting and narrative intent: Shoghi Effendi’s Christianising of Dawn-Breakers
    • Conclusion: Gobineau’s Persian master narrative

    4. Ernest Renan’s search for a Religion of Modernity

    • Race and Philology
    • Judaism, Islam and ‘Le sémitisme’
    • Aryanism and a Persian Revelation
    • Revitalising Religion: Arnold’s programme in ‘A Persian Passion Play’
    • Modern Refractions: Renan, Science, Rationalist method, and the Baha’i faith

    5. Edward Granville Browne and the writing of Babi Narratives

    A peculiar style of Orientalism
  • Appropriating Orientalism: Browne and Curzon’s place in Baha’i literature
  • Ahmadi schism, western conversions, and anti-Baha’i polemic
  • More Ahmadi positions: Orientalism, modernism, and in-betweenness
  • Conclusion: Browne’s Babi-Baha’i legacy and the scope of mahdiya

    • 6. Empire and Orient: Baha’is in Russian Transcaspia and Palestine

    Russian Orientalism and the Baha’is of Transcaspia and the Caucasus
  • Ashkhabad’s Baha’i community: an oasis of modern religion?
  • The Baha’is, Palestine and Great Britain
  • Zionism, Israel and the Baha’i faith
  • Ahmadi colonial and post-colonial orientations

    7. Orientalism and Modernity in Baha’i and Ahmadi writings

    • Revisionist applications of Orientalism in the context of eastern voices
    • Hidden intertextualities: Aqa Khan Kermani’s orientalism and Baha’i pre-Islamic panegyric
    • Orientalism in writings of early western Baha’is
    • Baha’i World
      • and the civilising of Persia
    • From the periphery
    • ‘Returning to the Orient as Orientalist, but not as an Oriental’
    • Keith Ransom-Kehler and Reza Shah Pahlavi
    • The end of Colonialism and a New World Order
    • Another World Order and an Ahmadi ‘gift’ to Edward, Prince of Wales

    8. Muslim responses and a future for Mahdi Movements

    • Muhammad Iqbal on Ahmadism and Babi-Baha’ism - and the category of ‘non-Muslim’
    • Muslims, Mahdi movements, and Postcolonial critique
    • Some Twentieth Century Shi‘a and Baha’i configurations Conclusion - Baha’i and Ahmadi futures

    Notes BibliographyIndex

    About the author

    Geoffrey Nash

    Formerly Associate Professor at the University of Qatar and Research Associate at the School of African and Oriental Studies. He works in the areas of Postcolonial Studies, Travel Writing, Arab Anglophone and Muslim writing. Among the many books he has authored/edited are: Orientalism and Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2019), Marmaduke Pickthall, Islam and the Modern World (Brill, 2017), Writing Muslim Identity (Continuum, 2012), Comte de Gobineau and Orientalism (Routledge, 2009) and From Empire to Orient: Travellers to the Middle East (I.B. Tauris, 2005).

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