Ramin Jahanbegloo: Forty years after the Islamic Revolution: The young are talking back
February 2019 marks
the 40th anniversary of the Iranian Revolution, one of the major events of the
20th century and a momentous development in the modern history of Islam. The
revolution opened a new chapter for political Islam in the late 20th and early
21st centuries and had a deep impact on revolutionary movements across the
globe, especially those that were using the Islamic frame of reference for
political activism. In fact, the “religious dimension” of the Iranian Revolution,
through its dependence on Islam, was well-established in the decades leading up
to the uprisings of 1978. We can refer here to the notion, popularised in the
1970s, that Iranians should return to their cultural roots by resisting the
hegemonic influence of the West.
The immediate consequence of this
development was the establishment of a theocratic state with the
institutionalisation of the power of the “faqih” (jurist), who was supposed to
possess the necessary charismatic authority and political astuteness to rule
the Islamic Republic. However, the establishment of the Velayat-e-Faqih (the
rule of the jurist) could not put an end to the tensions between republicanism
and authoritarianism, which had existed since the early days of the Iranian
Revolution. Since its inception,
the Islamic Republic was dogged by tensions between two concepts of sovereignty
— the divine and popular.... read more:
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