Iran: Information on whether the wealthy are considered to be taghoutis (taghootis), on the meaning of the term taghouti, and on the treatment of the wealthy by the government of the Islamic Republic

It is not clear from the sources consulted by the Research Directorate that the term taghouti is or has been considered to be synonymous with "rich," "wealthy," or "upper class." The sources consulted by the Research Directorate indicate that the term has been used by representatives and supporters of the Islamic Republic to refer to people, behaviour, and values that they consider to be immoral, Western, un-Islamic, or pro-monarchy. Examples follow.

According to a 27 June 1980 Reuters dispatch, the Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of Iran's Islamic revolution, publicly criticized the Iranian government ministries, which, he felt, were behaving as if the Shah were still in power. Khomeini is quoted as describing the ministries as "satanic" ( taghouti in Persian (ibid.). Taghouti is the term used in post-revolutionary Iran to describe everything associated with the pre-1979 monarchical regime of the Shah, according to the dispatch.

In an 11 May 1980 article in The Washington Post, the term taghouti appears in connection with the Center for the Abolition of Sin (CAS), described as an Iranian revolutionary organization, operating in conjunction with the Iranian "Islamic revolutionary prosecutor general." The mandate of the CAS was to enforce what it perceived as Islamic morality. Among its functions was to act to prevent contacts between men and women in such venues as beauty salons and at wedding celebrations (ibid.). In this context, the article states that the CAS is "spearheading the fight to cleanse the Islamic Republic of the influence of taghouti" (ibid.). The article states that taghouti is a word that the Ayatollah Khomeini "took from the Koran [and] that literally means 'the idol worshippers' " (ibid.). Elsewhere in the article, the term taghouti appears in the context of a statement issued along the following lines by the CAS to describe what it considered the immoral practice of male hair-dressers serving female customers: "those affiliated to the taghouti [the Shah's] regime ... still carry on doing women's and girl's hair" (ibid. Square brackets in the original).  

Among the nine books consulted by the Research Directorate in researching this Information Request, only one has an index in which the word taghouti (taghuti, taghooti) or taghout (taghut, taghoot) is listed. The book is Iran: Political Culture in the Islamic Republic, edited by Samih K. Farsoun and Mehrdad Mashayehki. In their introduction, the editors describe "taghooti" as a new concept that was introduced into Iranian political life after the Islamic revolution; they define the word simply as "satanic imposters worshipping false gods" (1992, 15). Another book, Iran Under the Ayatollahs by Dilip Hiro, does not list taghouti or taghout in the index, but it does list the word taghut in a "Glossary of Arabic and Persian Words," where it is defined as "personification of evil" (1987, xi). (For a recent reference to taghut from the Iranian press, please see the second to last paragraph of this Response).

The following books consulted by the Research Directorate in researching this Response contain no references to taghouti or taghout in indexes or glossaries: Class, Politics, and Ideology in the Iranian Revolution, by Mansoor Moaddel; The Eye of The Storm: Women in Post-Revolutionary Iran, edited by Mahnaz Afkhami and Erika Friedl; Iran After Khomeini, by Shireen Hunter; Iran After the Revolution, edited by Saeed Rahnema and Sohrab Behdad; Radical Islam: The Iranian Mojahedin, by Ervand Abrahamian; Shiism, Resistance, and Revolution, edited by Martin Kramer; and The Warriors of Islam: Iran's Revolutionary Guard, by Kenneth Katzman.

The following section of this Response deals with the attitude of the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran toward the wealthy and its treatment of them.

According to Shaul Bakhash, in his article "Islam and Social Justice in Iran," class conflict and hostility to the wealthy were important elements in the 1978-79 Islamic Revolution in Iran, but ultimately not dominant ones. The business community had allies in the revolutionary regime and was able to defend its interests to a considerable extent. Examples follow.

Bakhash writes that "in the first year of the revolution, the Revolutionary Council approved a mass of legislation aimed at distributive justice and against the interests of the wealthy and propertied classes" (1987, 96). The result was that the banking sector, the insurance sector, and heavy and large industries representing "perhaps 70 per cent of private industrial capacity," including up to 1000 factories, were taken over by the government (ibid., 99-100). However, when the Revolutionary Council approved a land reform that imposed severe limits on the amount of land an individual could own, it was opposed by many Muslim clerics, who felt that it was un-Islamic (ibid., 102-103). The resulting pressure led the Ayatollah Khomeini to order the suspension of the land reform in November 1980 (ibid.).

Moreover, despite the strong anti-wealth trend within the revolution, instability in Iran and the Iran-Iraq war that followed the revolution provided enrichment opportunities to some in the Iranian business community (Bakhash 1987, 110). This aroused resentment among some Iranians, to whom these businesspeople

appeared greedy for the quick and astronomical profits made possible by conditions of revolution and war. The overnight millionaire was as much a phenomenon of the revolutionary regime as of the monarchy of the oil-boom years. (ibid.)

Despite the considerable anti-business and anti-wealth sentiment among supporters of the revolution, the desire to reassure the business community led the Iranian parliament to append the following words to the preamble to a bill, debated in the parliament early in 1984, for the confiscation of property illegally acquired during the Shah's regime: "The property and possessions of real and legal persons is assumed to be legitimate and immune from violation" (ibid., 112).

Mansoor Moaddel writes in his Class, Politics and Ideology in the Iranian Revolution that class conflict intensified in Iran in the immediate post-revolution period, in 1980 and 1981, and that this conflict centred around three main issues: "land reform, labor law and the question of labor control of production, and the nationalization of foreign trade. These issues were eventually resolved in favour of the merchants and landowners" (1993, 199). Moaddel elaborates on this assessment as follows:

The initial years of the postrevolutionary period were punctuated by events favoring a major structural change directed against landowners and capitalists. However, a reverse trend soon gained momentum. At first, it was able to halt the move toward social revolution. Then it began to undo what had been done in the previous phase. (ibid., 223-24)

By the spring of 1983, according to Moaddel, any political impetus toward social revolution and a left-wing economic agenda "had been not only defeated but also removed from the government's agenda. ... As far as the existing distribution of economic resources was concerned, one could find few differences between pre- and postrevolutionary Iran" (ibid., 237). Moaddel believes that merchants and landowners were able to successfully repel moves toward social revolution and then to procure the reversal of left-wing economic policies "because of the built-in bias of the Islamic discourse in favour of the property-owning classes" (ibid., 246).

Fatmeh Moghadam, in a 1996 article on the consequences for property rights of the two Iranian revolutions of the 20th century (the Constitutional Revolution of 1906-07 and the Islamic Revolution of 1978-79), writes that segments of the wealthy class participated in both revolutions, and adds that

In the case of the Islamic Revolution, there were instances of confiscation and disruption of large-scale industrial and landed property rights. However, these disruptions were not systematic, many wealthy individuals maintained their wealth, and others were able to reclaim it. Furthermore, the ownership rights of the smaller agricultural and industrial producers did not become subject to disruption . In spite of some irregularity and arbitrariness in the treatment of large-scale wealth, the institution of private property has not been challenged by the state (Moghadam 1996, 45).

The term "Taghut" (but not taghouti) appears in a 9 July 1997 editorial in the Tehran newspaper Jomhuri-ye Eslami. According to a parenthetical note in the text of the editorial, the word "Taghut" means "idol," and is used in the editorial to refer to the Shah. The editorial harshly criticizes certain wealthy expatriate Iranians who have recently been returning to Iran. It alleges that they had accumulated their wealth illicitly during the Shah's regime; it was confiscated from them after the Islamic Revolution and they left the country, and in recent years have been returning to Iran and demanding ( and in some cases procuring ( the return of their confiscated wealth. The editorial refers approvingly to a recent speech by Iran's religious leader, Ayatollah Sayed Ali Khamene'i, in which the latter reportedly asked the Iranian judiciary to take measures against those people. Please see the attached text of the editorial for more details.

This Response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the Research Directorate within time constraints. This Response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim to refugee status or asylum.

References

Abrahamian, Ervand. 1989. Radical Islam: The Iranian Mojahedin. London: I.B. Tauris.

Bakhash, Shaul. 1987. "Islam and Social Justice in Iran," Shiism, Resistance and Revolution. Edited by Martin Kramer. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press.

Farsoun, Samih K. and Mehrdad Mashayekhi. 1992. Introduction. Iran: Political Culture in the Islamic Republic. London and New York: Routledge.

In the Eye of the Storm: Women in Post-Revolutionary Iran. 1994. Edited by Mahnaz Afkhami and Erika Friedl. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press.

Hiro, Dilip. 1987. Iran Under the Ayatollahs. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Hunter, Shireen T. 1992. Iran After Khomeini. (The Washington Papers/156) New York: Praeger. (Published with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, DC)

Iran After the Revolution. 1996. Edited by Saeed Rahnema and Sohrab Behdad. London: I.B. Tauris.

Jomhuri-ye Eslami [Tehran, in Persian]. 1 July 1997. "Iran: Editorial Condemns Wealthy for Returning to Iran." (FBIS-NES-97-190 9 July 1997/WNC)

Katzman, Kenneth. 1993. The Warriors of Islam: Iran's Revolutionary Guard. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press.

Moaddel, Mansoor. 1993. Class, Politics, and Ideology in the Iranian Revolution. New York: Columbia University Press.

Moghadam, Fatmeh E. 1996. "State, Political Stability and Property Rights," Iran After the Revolution. Edited by Saeed Rahnema and Sohrab Behdad. London: I.B. Tauris.

Reuters. 27 June 1980. AM Cycle. Patrick Worsnip. "Iran's revolutionary leader ...". (NEXIS)

Shiism, Resistance and Revolution. 1987. Edited by Martin Kramer. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press.

The Washington Post. 11 May 1980. William Branigin. "Iran's 'High Society Underground Parties Stealthily." (NEXIS)

Attachment

Jomhuri-ye Eslami [Tehran, in Persian]. 1 July 1997. "Iran: Editorial Condemns Wealthy for Returning to Iran." (FBIS-NES-97-190 9 July 1997/WNC)