Encyclopedia of Islam

(Jeff_L) #1

ics at the same time the Anglo-Russian Conven-
tion of 1907 was dividing Iran into respective
spheres of British and Russian influence. Not
long after an unsuccessful coup attempt by the
anticonstitutionalists, reflecting deep divisions
among the elites and in the larger society as well,
the Cossack Brigade helped shut down the majlis
in June 1908. Constitutionalists, nationalists,
and revolutionary Social Democrats regained
control in July 1909 and deposed the shah.
Dissatisfaction on many fronts descended into
rounds of assassination and terrorism, while
public discontent with an increasingly conserva-
tive constitutional government grew from 1910
to 1911.
With the consent of the British, the Russians
offered an ultimatum to the government when the
American financial adviser Morgan Shuster was
brought in to help the country out of its financial
morass. Fortified by antiimperialist demonstra-
tions, the majlis rejected the ultimatum. By the
end of 1911, the Russians were bombing Tabriz
and Gilan, massacring revolutionaries in Azerbai-
jan, and executing and deporting constitutional-
ists. A coup led by Nasir al-Mulk and the cabinet
ended the second majlis and the revolution that
brought it to power. However, future revolution-
ary forces would look back to Iran’s first Consti-
tutional Revolution to learn from its lessons and
inspire their own efforts to oppose tyrannical
regimes.
See also colonialism; democracy; politics and
islam.


Patrick S. O’Donnell

Further reading: Janet Afary, The Iranian Constitutional
Revolution, 1906–1911 (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1996); Mangol Bayat, Iran’s First Revolution: Shi-
ism and the Constitutional Revolution of 1905–1909 (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1991); Hamid Enayat,
Modern Islamic Political Thought (Austin: University of
Texas Press, 1982); Nikki R. Keddie, Modern Iran: Roots
and Results of Revolution (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 1981); Nikki R. Keddie, ed., Religion and


Politics in Iran: Shiism from Quietism to Revolution (New
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1983).

conversion
Conversion to Islam is a remarkably simple pro-
cess, normally entailing no more than saying, with
the proper intent, the shahada: I declare that there
is no god but God, and that mUhammad is the
messenger of God. The qUran explicitly rejects
imposition of religious belief, and Islam has his-
torically allowed other religions great freedom.
Islam has always been a proselytizing religion;
Muhammad converted his earliest followers in the
seventh century from the pagan ways of mecca to
the worship of a single God, allah. After suffering
Meccan persecution, the small community moved
to medina, where the small band of Muslims grew
to form the nucleus of the Islamic community, or
umma. After the death of the Prophet in 632, the
Arab Muslim armies burst out of the Arabian Pen-
insula, conquering enormous swathes of territory
of the Byzantine Empire and utterly destroying
the Persian empire of the Sassanians. In the resul-
tant Islamicate empire, Islam was the religion of
the state, but members of other religious groups
were allowed freedom of worship as dhimmis, or
“protected subjects.” As a result of the military
expansion of the Islamicate empire, the errone-
ous notion of “conversion by the sword” has his-
torically taken root among non-Muslims. In fact,
there was little attempt to convert non-Muslims
during the early conquests. In some cases, conver-
sion was actively discouraged, for it deprived the
state of a source of revenue, as dhimmis were taxed
differently from Muslims. The empire itself, how-
ever, clearly emerged through the use of military
power, and the dominance of Muslims within that
empire should be considered a major, if partial,
motivation for later conversion. Nonetheless, it
is important to note that non-Muslims living in
Islamicate polities generally had freedoms and
rights that non-Christians could only dream of in
medieval Europe.

conversion 165 J
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