Hassan Modarres

Seyyed Hassan Modarres

Seyyed Hassan Modarres ( Persian سید حسن مدرس; * around 1870 in Esfahan Province ; † probably December 1, 1937 ) was an Iranian Shiite clergyman. The surname "Modarres" means "teacher".

Life

When his birthplace applies Sarābe-Kachou (سرابه‌کچو) near Ardestan in Isfahan Province. In the literature, however, the place Shahreza can also be found. The place Asfeh near Isfahan is also mentioned . The date of birth is not exactly fixed either. Mohammad Gholi Majd mentions the year 1855. He attended elementary school in Qomsheh. He began his training as a clergyman in Isfahan. Later he continued his studies in Najaf with Mirza Shirazi . In 1910 he was sent to Tehran by Mirza Shirazi to oversee the legislative activity of the newly created parliament.

As part of the constitutional revolution , the democratically-minded constitutional movement fought for a constitution and a parliament in Iran in 1906. The conservative clergy and here in particular Fazlollah Nuri had, however, with the words

“The constitutional movement has written the words freedom and equality on the flags. These two demands contradict Islam. Islam demands obedience and not freedom, inequality and not equality. "

strictly against democratic reforms. Nuri demanded: "What I want is an Islamic parliament that does not pass any law whose content does not comply with the laws of the Koran." On June 15, 1907, a corresponding amendment was added to the constitution that a body should consist of at least five Clergy, all laws of parliament are checked to ensure that they comply with the "laws of the Koran". Hassan Modarres was sent to this body to represent the clergy. From 1914 he was then also elected as a regular member of parliament.

After the outbreak of the First World War , Modarres was among the MPs who took refuge in Qom from the Russian troops marching on Tehran . In 1916 Modarres became a member of the German-supported "provisional government" based in Ghasr-e Shirin (located directly on the present-day border between Iran and Iraq) under the leadership of Reza Qoli Khan Nezam al Saltaneh, which is an alternative government to the British and Russian The influence of the government in Tehran understood. Modarres took over the department of "upbringing and education". After the defeat of the units of the Persian gendarmerie fighting against the Russian troops , the "provisional government" dissolved and its members fled to Baghdad , Kirkuk and Istanbul .

After the end of the First World War, Modarres returned to Iran and was re-elected as a member of parliament. When Prime Minister Reza Khan , who later became Reza Shah Pahlavi, presented the abolition of the monarchy and the establishment of a republic to the newly elected parliament in 1924 , it was Modarres who organized parliamentary and extra-parliamentary resistance against this move. The clergy categorically rejected the introduction of a republic because they saw a secularization of society and thus a loss of power and influence. Political developments in Turkey, in which the republic emerged as a form of government and the separation of state and religion, had a decisive influence on the political ideas of Reza Khan and the clergy.

Modarres, the representative of the clergy in parliament, knew that due to the broad political support Reza Khan enjoyed in parliament, a vote on the question of establishing a republic in Iran would result in the republic's favor. The only way to stop the abolition of the monarchy and the establishment of the republic was to delay the vote and discredit the republican movement. In the parliamentary discussion, Modarres initially questioned the legitimacy of the MPs who supported the republic as a new form of government. He claimed that they only got into office through election fraud and bribery and that they have no right to make such a far-reaching decision. In the course of the heated discussion, one MP stood up and slapped Modarres at the lectern. After that, Modarre had an easy job of showing that the clergy in a republic obviously no longer enjoyed any respect and had to allow themselves to be beaten in public. For their part, the members of the republic questioned the legitimacy of electing Modarres and other members of the clergy. Modarres called on all opponents of the republic to leave parliament in order to reduce the number of MPs present below the minimum number necessary for resolutions. In the end, Modarres had achieved his goal. The MPs had fallen out hopelessly. Reza Khan's intervention in the leadership of the clergy in Qom did not help either. The project of a secular “Republic of Iran” begun in 1924 by Reza Khan , in which not the Shah but the parliament would have been the decisive political force, had failed because of the conservative stance of the clergy and Modarre's clever political tactics. Reza Khan had suffered a serious political defeat.

After Modarres was no longer elected to parliament in 1928, he was arrested and exiled to Khaf in the province of Razavi-Khorasan for his continuing criticism of the government, which was transforming Iran into a nation-state with its reform program .

There are contradicting statements about his death. According to official sources, he was murdered on December 1, 1937 in the Khorasan prison. In an edition of the Persian newspaper Chhreh-Nema , published in Cairo in 1937, it is reported that Modarres died of natural causes where he was exiled. The newspaper Peykar , which was published in Berlin at the time, also reported that the news of the Modarre murder was fabricated .

100 rials banknote with the image of Seyyed Hassan Modarres

Cyrus Ghani describes Modarres as a very popular MP who bravely stood up to British and Russian influence in Iran. In contrast to the official characterizations of Modarre as a courageous champion for parliamentarism in Iran, Ghani also emphasizes that “his simple, almost ascetic lifestyle did not reveal his arrogant and presumptuous nature”.

In the Islamic Republic of Iran, Modarres is celebrated as a hero and a martyr. Khomeini , called him the bravest man in Reza Khan's time.

"The late Hassan Modarres was a man who bravely stood up to the dictatorial aspirations of an evil person, Reza Khan."

His presumed death, 1 December ( 10 Azar ) is called a "day of Parliament" ( ruz-e Majlis celebrated). The likeness of Modarres is on the 100 rial banknote of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

literature

• Mohammad Taghi Bahar: Taarikh-e Mokhtasar-e Ahzaab-e Siaasi-e Iraan (A Brief History of the Political Parties of Iran), Amirkabir, 1978.
• Ervand Abrahamian: Iran Between Two Revolutions. Princeton University Press, 1982
• Roy Mottahedeh: The Mantle of the Prophet. Religion and Politics in Iran. One World, Oxford, 1985, 2000

Individual evidence

1. ^ Mohammad Gholi Majd: Great Britain & Reza Shah. P. 230
2. ↑ Homa Rezwani: The Sheikh Fazlollah's Tracts. Tehran 1983, p. 32 ff.
3. ^ Ulrich Gehrke: Persia in the German Orientpolitik. W. Kohlhammer, 1960, p. 240.
4. ^ Cyrus Ghani: Iran and the rise of Reza Shah. IB Tauris, 2000, pp. 312f.
5. ^ Mohammad Gholi Majd: Great Britain & Reza Shah: the plunder of Iran. 2001, p. 233.
6. ^ Cyrus Ghani: Iran and the rise of Reza Shah. IB Tauris, 2000, p. 156
7. ↑ Bahman Baktiari: parlamentary politics in revolutionary Iran. University Press of Florida, 1996, p. 18.