Interiorizing Islam: Religious Experience and State Oversight in the Islamic Republic of Iran

Recent work in religious studies has turned from a long-standing focus on interior expressions of religion to emphasize instead embodied worship and the materiality of religious expression. Yet, for all the worthwhile critique of experience as a theoretical category, in practice various communities have taken up the language of experience as a central term for their own traditions. Scholars of religion have traced the cross-pollination of modern Hindu and Buddhist traditions with the language of “experience”; however, this question has received little attention in the study of Islam. This article addresses that lacuna. Muslim writings on Islam, specifically within the Islamic Republic of Iran, demonstrate a clear engagement with “religious experience.” The Muslim writers discussed here, major figures of the Iranian reformist movement of the 1990s and 2000s, attempt to craft an arena of religiosity untouchable by state law and the Islamic Republic’s governance of religious action. The tired ones have all departed. Shut the house’s door. Laugh together at those tired people. Come to the Ascension (miʿrāj) since you are the Prophet’s people. Kiss the Moon’s cheek since you stand on heights of splendor.