Why Murdering the Religious Elite In Iran Was Dumb

Many Islamic societies are caught between forces that, in Europe, historically unfolded in sequence but here appear simultaneously and in compressed form. These forces are threefold: religious reform, nationalism, and industrialisation. These are not independent processes. They interact, overlap, and sometimes contradict one another in ways that produce a distinctive kind of social strain. 

Ernest Gellner contrasts the Islamic world with the European trajectory. In Europe, the transition to modernity involved a gradual differentiation of the spheres of religion, politics, economy, culture. The Reformation, the rise of nation states, and industrialisation unfolded over centuries, with each transformation reshaping the others in relatively distinct phases. But in many new Islamic states in North Africa and the Middle East, for example, this sequence is compressed. Reformist Islam, nationalist politics, and economic modernisation are all happening together. This creates what Gellner presents as a problem of simultaneity. Institutions and ideas that, in Europe, stabilised one another through time are here forced to coexist and compete at once. 

Gellner's theory about these Islamic societies is broadly Weberian in that he constructs a schematic Ideal Type model to account for their distinctiveness.  He suggests that Islam historically contains an internal duality. On the one hand, there is a high, scriptural, literate Islam, associated with scholars, law, and textual authority. On the other hand, there are local, popular, often mystical or tribal forms of Islam, embedded in everyday social life. Islam becomes a structured field with internal tensions. Post-colonial Reform movements tend to align with the high, scriptural tradition, seeking purification, standardisation, and a return to foundational texts. Popular practices, by contrast, are more flexible, local, and syncretic. Reformist Islam, in its emphasis on textual purity and uniformity, unexpectedly mirrors certain features of modernity. It pushes toward standardisation of belief and practice, which resonates with the needs of a more centralised, literate, and mobile society. 

Gellner is not bothered whether reformist Islam is theologically correct. He is asking what kind of social function it performs. And the suggestion is that it may, in some respects, facilitate aspects of modernisation, even as it resists others. Gellner identifies another tension. Nationalism, as it developed in Europe, is tied to the idea of a culturally homogeneous population aligned with a political state. But in many Islamic societies, identities are not neatly organised along national lines. They may be tribal, religious, linguistic, or imperial. So nationalism enters as both a unifying and a disruptive force. It seeks to impose a new kind of alignment, but it must do so in a context where older forms of identity remain powerful. This produces instability. Nationalism does not simply replace older structures; it competes with them. 

The third strand, industrialisation, introduces yet another layer of pressure. Industrial society requires mobility, education, standardisation, and bureaucratic coordination. It tends to favour impersonal, universalistic forms of organisation. But these requirements can clash with both traditional social structures and certain forms of religious authority. 

Reformist religion, nationalism and industrialisation generate dilemmas. One dilemma is that reformist Islam may align with the need for cultural standardisation, yet resist the secularisation often associated with modern states. Another is that nationalism may demand a cultural unity that cuts across religious divisions, or alternatively may itself become infused with religious identity. Industrialisation may require changes in education and social organisation that unsettle both religious and national frameworks. Gellner refuses to treat these tensions as temporary or accidental. They are not simply transitional difficulties on the way to a stable modernity. Rather, they are structural, arising from the interaction of different organising principles. 

There is also an important methodological stance. Gellner does not approach the region through moral judgement or cultural essentialism. He does not say that these societies are “failing” to modernise, nor that Islam is inherently incompatible with modernity. Instead, he frames the situation in terms of competing logics of social organisation. We need to avoid both romanticism and dismissal. The point is not to praise or criticise, but to understand how different systems, religious, political, economic, generate pressures that shape outcomes. 

Another subtle move is temporal. Gellner suggests that what we are seeing is not simply a delayed version of the European path. The simultaneity of these processes means that the outcome may be qualitatively different. The “dilemmas” are not just about catching up; they are about navigating a distinct configuration of forces. The southern Mediterranean and by extension parts of the Middle East is presented as a space where three major transformations intersect, each with its own logic, each reshaping the others. Reformist Islam pushes toward purification and standardisation of belief. Nationalism pushes toward alignment of culture and political power.
Industrialisation pushes toward mobility, literacy, and systemic coordination. The difficulty is that these pushes do not coincide perfectly. They overlap, reinforce, and undermine one another in different ways across different contexts. 

I think this helps us understand why much of the current discussion in the public square about Islam in both the Islamic and the non-Islamic world is confused. From the non-Islamic perspective there is a tendency to try and understand the Islamic states as being faulty modern states. From the Islamic perspective the non-Islamic world is seen as an immoral version of Islamic modernity. But neither view is correct if Gellner’s analysis is right. There are different species of modernity, so to speak, and each impose different structural tensions on one another. European/transatlantic modernity is not put together in the same way as Islamic modernity. Without noticing the differences we make very silly basic mistakes, like assuming that modernity requires secularisation, for example. But once we see that religion and nationalism are competing ideologies within Islamic modernity then we should stop setting up expectations for dialogue and negotiation that ignores this. 

Take for instance the current illegal and barbaric attack of the USA and Israel on Iran and Palestine. Regardless of what you think of the rights and wrongs of the war (for the record I think it both illegal and immoral) it is clear that within Iran the difference between the religious and nationalist leaders in the top tier of government was an important factor in preventing the development of nuclear weapons. The fact that Iran has been making very aggressive statements about the USA and Israel for the last forty years should have made people wonder. What was the hold-up if those alarming statements and threats were real? And how could they be best interpreted given the structural tensions within the Iranian modern state? 

The subtle blend of fierce religious as well as nationalist rhetoric could be read not merely as literal intent but as a political necessity to appease different forces within the state. The belligerence was not primarily for export. Think about how the UDA and IRA continued and may even have escalated their rhetorical belligerence to cover up the fact that their political leaders were meeting in secret to make a deal that the Blair government would then take credit for in Northern Ireland. If Iran had been so true to its revolutionary rhetorical threats why didn't it become the Middle East's North Korea? 

That the Iranian religious elite were the counter balancing force within Iran actually ensuring that the nukes were not being made was not even considered by the morons now running the USA and that was because of deep ignorance about the structural differences between their own modernity and Iran’s. Religion is not a lobby group in Iran. There is no 'Koran belt' there like the Bible belt in the USA. The whole country is the ‘belt’. Gellner helps us understand how this works. If the ridiculous Hesgeth and Trump were even a little curious about the world they might have known this. By killing the religious elite on the first day of their illegal war they may well have made it more not less likely for Iran to become a nuclear missile state. Idiots.