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Religion In The Iranian Revolution

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The Iranian revolution was surrounded by the imagery and representation of the religion Shiism Islam. The religion served as the fuel filling the revolution. “Ideology is not simply a set of ideas in people's minds or in an accomplished text. Ideology can be observed in people's attempts to formulate their strategies of action and in the activities and artifacts of its producers (Wuthnow 1989, p. 16 as cited in Moaddel, 1992).” Wherefore, ideology is best theorized using concepts, principles and customs to provide answer to problems “in a particular historical episode” (Moaddel, 1992). According to Homa Katouzian, the 1979 revolution was an uprsing against the state in particular the Shah regime. For him, the revolution imitate the common …show more content…

It was Shariati who influenced Khomeini the most. His popularity and his ideas and theories about social change, Islam, Shiism, Western Imperialism among other provided him and the Iranians the path to take on to successfully wage a revolution. As previously discussed in the last sections, Shiism Islam was according to Shariati the answer to all problems. He “made Islam hip, in no small part by his connecting Islam to Third Worldism, including to political and cultural anti-Americanism (Clawson, 2004).” While the clerical establishment hated Shariati, Khomeini took a neutral standpoint, being well aware of Shariati's popularity among the Iranian youths. Likely in response to the interest for anti-Western seen in Shariati’s political theories, he began to use many Third Worldist phrases (Clawson, …show more content…

Thus, the exceptionality of the 1979 Iranian Revolution emphasizes the influence of religion and its role and contribution in revolutions and revolutionary ideology. The oppressed majority of Iranians, consist of mainly of Shiites, may well sympathize with Shariati’s form of Shiism which defined the religion as, “the struggle for justice against foreign rule, tyranny, feudalism, and exploitation (Brandis, 2009).” Also, the U.S.-Iranian relations went downhill after the revolution. In fact, Khomeini accused the U.S. of exploiting Iran’s resources. This exploitation from the west forced Iranians to take part in a revolution where many Iranians had to die and killed by the repressive Shah regime (Wise, 2011; Shadmehr,

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