The Iranian Revolution

The Iranian Revolution

"The very concept of history asserts that human development is not predetermined Ð'- not by nature, nor by God, nor by the totality of history itself" (Buck-Morss, Susan). However, there is always a combination of a willful action of knowledgeable groups within constraints and possibilities supplied by pre-existing structures. This is to suggest that there is a myriad of possibilities for people to make choices within given limits. Thus, an exploration of the Islamic Revolution in Iran conveys a great truth with vast implications: Religion can still be a more potent mobilizer of mass political action. In, addition, The Iranian Revolution consequently emerges as one of the most important events in modern history.

In the same token, a relation between structure and society can better explain the role of social-political forces in the 1979 Iranian Revolution. To clarify my argument, let me propose an equipped definition of structure and society in the context of the Iranian Revolution. In such a context, structure evolved in three major forms: First, uneven development, which came as a result of the Shah's strict modernization (Smitha, 1998), and made a significant impact on structural relations between and within classes and state. Second, the autocratic state; this created a context in which the more the Shah relied upon the state's dependent-forceful system the more he removed himself from the society (Bill, 1987).

Given the structural constraints, the extent to which Iranian social and political forces could play a role was limited to three following groups: Radicals, traditional institutions, and the clerical charismatic leadership (Smitha, 1998). In the following part, I will discuss the nature and diversity of these religious political forces, in particular Muslim's forces of the revolution. Pre-revolutionary Iran never experienced a unified Islamic culture. Rather, there were chunks of cultural and political discourses, representing their own histories and social bases and, in fact, reflecting multiple aspects of pre-revolutionary social partitions. I will focus upon three major groups that essentially had social authority throughout the revolution.

Ayatollah Khomeini was a high ranking Shiite influence whose populist and radical-militant discourse became a political ideology called Khomeinism. Khomeinism, like other versions of Islam, was not a traditional religious orientation; rather, it was a modern phenomenon. It makes little sense to characterize as anti-modern or even pre-modern, but was in fact engaged with modernity. "Yet, one has to be cautious not to see it as postmodern either; for in as much as the clerical Islamism insists on absolute foundations, is opposing to the anti-foundational feature of post-modernity" (Euben, 2000). Khomeinism is simultaneously a reaction against modernity and an expression of it. Ayatollah Khomeini's emergence as the leader of the revolution had more to do with his political critique of the regime. Khomeinism, in this sense, became an ideologized account of tradition and therefore a modern political force against the Shah, composed of Muslim and secular intellectuals of that time.

A second variant was liberal Islam, whose adherents sought political power and deposition of the shah through principles of constitutionalism, democracy, and favored an accommodation of Islam with liberal-democracy. The modern wealthy class, some merchants, the modern middle class, small segments of the clergy and some students and teachers embraced this powerful liberal orientation, which took its organizational form in the Liberation Movement of Iran (Grant, 1979).

The third religious groups were the "Guerilla" organizations with a revolutionary, socialist discourse, in forms of the Islamic Mojahedin and the Marxist Fadaian, which appealed to some students, intellectuals, and workers. Adhering to its own ideas, the Guerilla, like every other religious force, remained in steady opposition to the Shah, in hopes of implementing their own political system.

Given the diversity of the political forces, therefore, the essentialist, and unified concepts of Islamic discourse is simply misleading. Indeed, out of these complexities came a set of thoughts and ideologies that mobilized complex and different social classes of intellectuals and students, merchants, urban poor and workers whom were influenced in one way or another by radicalism, democracy, and Islam.

To sum up, we can only appreciate the meaning of the Iranian Revolution