Freedom is so essentially a part of human nature that even its opponents help to realise it in combating its reality….
Marx
Abstract
This paper looks at the spectacle raised in Iran of the “homecoming” of the Cyrus Charter loaned from the British Museum for a public display in 2010. The Charter was an inscription on a clay cylinder of the proclamations by the ancient Persian king in the wake of his conquest of Babylon in 539 BC. The temporary rehabilitation of the pre-Islamic relic under Islamic rule at “home” renewed its global status as the world’s first “charter” of human rights. The “return” of the Charter brought about a provisional alteration in the relationship between the ruled and their Muslim rulers in Iran. It entailed a partial recognition by the rulers of the ruled’s heterogeneous subjectivity previously ignored in the official representation of Iranian identity as homogeneously Islamic. The adjustment gave rise to the popular reception of the Charter at “home” and its collective appropriation as a national asset. Drawing on the Charter’s newly formed national constituency, the Muslim rulers invoked Cyrus’ recognition of particularized subjectivity of the ruled in the periphery of his kingdom to demand tolerance for otherness in the international domain. The invoked duality of rule sanctioned by Cyrus served the Muslim rulers in Iran to represent themselves as the object of the ancient king’s tolerant rule abroad whilst exercising their crushing agency as the subject of power at home. Thus, the precedent set in the Charter was harnessed by the Islamic government to the articulation of the national and the international as exclusive domains of power and rights. The distance between “home” and “abroad” inserted between the two domains precluded the encounter between power and rights—the rulers versus the ruled—out of which politics is created. The neutralized relationship between the ruled and their rulers at home and the simultaneous reactivation of the encounter between power and rights abroad served a double purpose for the Islamic regime. It relativized the regime’s gross violation of the rights of Iranians to be “the other” at home whilst making their grievances absolute against outsiders for not tolerating their otherness including the desire to be a nuclear power. The Charter’s homecoming is looked at as the latest attempt to resolve the absolute antagonism between the Republic—the home of Islamic Truth—and democracy—the profane domain of opinions—that has bedevilled the Islamic state since its birth. Unlike the previous, characteristically bloody attempts that left so many victims behind, the invoked image of Cyrus required the Islamic state to re-identify itself as the victim of unequal international relations.
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Notes
Among Iranians ‘paternal house’ (khaneh-i-pedari) is the place to which a married woman usually returns, often temporarily, when she finds the cohabitation with her husband unbearable.
In an early warning, as violent as personal, to those who were expressing publicly their disagreement with the Islamic authorities Ayatollah Khomeini made it clear that dissent whatever means used to express it is considered as excessive and, therefore, violent under the Islamic rule. The synonymy between the expression of dissent and a violent act makes redundant the reference to the use of force as an essential ingredient of the concept of violence. In the following passage Ayatollah Khomeini makes it clear that under his rule terror is not defined with reference to an excessive use of force but by a mere opposition to the Islamic Truth guarded by him and other powerful mullahs blessed by him. Addressing a group of Muslim clergy gathered at Qum to hear his instructions in October 1979 Khomeini reminded his audience of their current privileged position in the control the clergy exercised over ‘the Islamic nation’. He then goes on to allude to the fact that the clergy’s privileged position was linked to their duty to protect the nation against anyone whose action is out of line with Islam. In an attempt to lead by example Ayatollah warns the dissenters that unless they are silenced he will use physical force to stop them. The Iranian dissenters were living under the grip of the Islamic state and the Ayatollah did not need to issue a fatwa to make them appreciate the gravity of the following words,
"We have to identify those who are not in line with Islam and the Islamic movement by their articles, speeches, and activities. You the clergy, thank God, who have control over the Islamic nation have to warn people of the devils who arrange gatherings and lectures. They are all afraid of one thing, which is Islam. They might criticise many things, but the key point is that they are attacking Islam itself. Their pens are the same old bayonets that have become like pens … [sic]. They all have to understand that as long as there is a pulpit and an altar, and as long as these homily readers exist, they cannot do anything. To all of you who oppose us, I recommend that you don't gather so much, don't send so many fliers, don't publish so much; have you now become brave enough to stick out your neck? I will slap you on your mouth. You think that you have power? Stop all these words and all this gibberish." (Quotes from Ayatollah Khomeini 2003).
The term taghooti is a Farsi (Persian) derivative of the Koranic word taghoot (idol) that gained a wide currency under the Islamic rule that emerged out of toppling of the Shah’s rule in 1979. The term was often used by the ruling mullahs to portray a variety of tastes, ideas and positions that were deemed incompatible with the Islamic. The old regime was only one, even though frequently used, referent of the label ‘idolatrous’ (taghooti).
The time available within the loan period was rationed to secure the presence of as many Iranians on the scene as possible whilst maintaining the distance of visitors from the rare historical relic. Only 15 visitors were allowed in at a time to see the clay cylinder for only 5 min. Visitors were also required to hand in their handbags and mobile phones before entering the exhibition hall. At the end of the first four months based on the number of tickets sold and of the visitors with free access to the museum the authorities in Tehran announced that more then 200,000 people had visited the Cylinder. The figure given for the number of visitors at the end of exhibition, however, jumped to over a million. The figure of more than one million visitors to the Museum over a period of seven months should be treated with scepticism bearing in mind the number of visitors at the end of the first four months announced by the director of the National Museum of Iran. Thus, by claiming over one million visitors for the entire period of the exhibition the Islamic officials actually claimed 800,000 people had visited the Cylinder during the last three months of its stay in Iran. The procedure surrounding the admission to the hall in which the clay cylinder was housed only allowed no more than 180 visitors per hour. Consequently, had the National Museum of Iran stayed open 24 h and every day of a month the number of visitors could not even reach 100,000 a month!.
The head of the Shah’s notorious secrete service, SAVAK, who was closely involved in the preparation of the anniversary celebration in 1971 has reportedly said to another courtier after it was over ‘that in addition to the extraordinary security measures he had instructed SAVAK to detain 1,500 suspects” (2500 Years of Iranian Monarchy…2009).
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My special thanks to Pam for her criticism and encouragement.
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Sanadjian, M. Islamic rule and the pre-Islamic blessing, the “homecoming” of the Cyrus Cylinder. Dialect Anthropol 35, 459–474 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10624-011-9258-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10624-011-9258-2