The Iranian Revolution

That Islam played a significant role in events in Iran during 1978 and 1979 is hardly in question. What is much less clear is the nature and significance of that role. For many observers the Iranian 'revolution' was an upsurge of religious revivalism against materialism and corruption in high places. Others saw it as a rejection by the common people of the economic benefits of modernization and Westernization. For some it was a spontaneous reaction by a democratic faith against tyranny and absolutism. Yet others attributed to the most prominent of its leaders, the Ayatollah Khomeini, almost supernatural, messianic powers. No one seemed to be able, or even to desire, to offer a rational explanation of a situation in which a society that had been following a path of modernization and secularization for more than fifty years suddenly appeared to go into reverse, to throw overboard as it were the gains and achievements of two generations. This article does not set out to explain what happened, or even to give a consecutive account of the events of recent months, but rather to offer an analysis of the religious situation as it prevailed in Iran on the eve of the upheavals of 1978. It may be that such an analysis will help to place Iranian Islam in correct perspective and to assess more accurately the part it plays in political and social developments. It is part of conventional thinking in the West to consider religion as a 'reactionary* social force the 'opium of the people' -