Table of Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction The Setting The World Views 1. The Mullah: Uncommitted Formalism 2. The Former Landlord: Religion of Power 3. The Old Trader: Virtuoso Devotionalism 4. The Young Trader: Literal Zealotry 5. The Old Teacher: Idealistic Humanism 6. The Young Teacher: Rationalism and Orthodoxy 7. The Craftsman: Modernist Purism 8. The Representative of the People: Islamic Activism 9. The Prayer-Writer: The Problem of Efficacy 10. The Mystic: The Secrets of Control 11. The Old Hunter: Familiar of the Jinn 12. The Deep Believer: Belief as Knowledge 13. The Fundamentalist: Purist Orthodoxy 14. The Doubtful: Reason versus Tradition 15. The Calm: Grassroot Morality and Cosmic Harmony 16. The Pragmatist: Immanent Ritualism 17. The Mashhadi: Ritualism without Certainty 18. The Lower Peasant I: Low-Key Religiosity 19. The Lower Peasant II: Trustful Surrender to God 20. The Wealthy: Legitimization of Good Fortune 21. The Poor: Suppressed Revolt The Effect of the Revolution Theoretical Commentary Index

About the Author

Reinhold Loeffler is Professor Emeritus at Western Michigan University. Currently, he is head of the Department of Ethnology at the University of Heidelberg in West Germany.

Reviews

"This is a well-argued and long overdue articulation of a situation already perceived intuitively by many observers of traditional communities professing a salvation religion-especially Islam-but generally obscured in the literature by the observer's preconceptions. Here, by contrast, Iranian peasants and settled tribesmen talk directly to us for the first time: their attitudes and Loeffler's conclusions are a salutory and necessary counter to all the recent studies of Iran's urban-based 'Islamic Revolution' and of 'Islam' as an artifact of the establishment clergy, or of Marxist revisionists, or of western and westernized scholars." - John R. Perry, University of Chicago