Sociology
M.R. Kolahi
Abstract
According to prevalent narratives, firstly, the Iranian revolution was the outcome of the dominance of the religious-traditional part of the society over the modern part. And secondly, it was the same religious-traditional section that took power and had their sway over the Iranian society after the ...
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According to prevalent narratives, firstly, the Iranian revolution was the outcome of the dominance of the religious-traditional part of the society over the modern part. And secondly, it was the same religious-traditional section that took power and had their sway over the Iranian society after the victory of the revolution. This article wants to challenge both of these narratives. From this article’s perspective, the religious-traditional section of pre-revolutionary Iran itself can be divided into political and non-political parts. The discourse of “political Islam” was different from those of traditional and conservative ones which prevailed among large parts of the religion-oriented population of Iran. But the second and more important point is that even the pre-revolution discourse of political Islam did not remain the same, after the revolution and with the establishment of the Islamic Republic in the 1980s. It was found that during the post-revolutionary era, a new discourse was emerging as a result of the conjuncture of the event of war and “Imam Khomeini’s charisma”. This discourse shaped an ideology that gave legitimacy to the Islamic Republic in the sixties, inevitably demanded obedient and conservative subjects and could not remain the same discourse that nurtured rebellious revolutionary subjects prior to the revolution.
