Ideology of the Iranian revolution
The ideology of the Iranian revolution has been called a "complex combination" of Pan-Islamism, political populism, and Shia Islamic "religious radicalism";[1] "a struggle against paganism, oppression, and empire.
[4] Contributors to the ideology also included Jalal Al-e-Ahmad, who formulated the idea of Gharbzadegi—that Western culture must be rejected and fought as was a plague or an intoxication that alienated Muslims from their roots and identity.
[7] Revolutionaries railed against corruption, extravagance and autocratic nature of Pahlavi rule;[8] policies that helped the rich at the expense of the poor; and the economic and cultural domination/exploitation of Iran by non-Muslim foreigners—particularly Americans.
He preached that revolt, and especially martyrdom, against injustice and tyranny was part of Shia Islam,[10] that clerics should mobilize and lead their flocks into action, not just to advise them.
[note 3] He did reassure the public his government would "be democratic as well as Islamic" and that "neither he nor his clerical supporters harbored any secret desire to `rule` the country",[30] but mainly and stuck to attacking the Iranian monarch (shah) "on a host of highly sensitive socioeconomic issues": Accused him of widening the gap between rich and poor; favoring cronies, relatives ... wasting oil resources on the ever expanding army and bureaucracy ... condemning the working class to a life of poverty, misery, and drudgery ... neglecting low-income housing", dependency on the west, supporting the US and Israel, undermining Islam and Iran with "cultural imperialism",[31]often sounding not just populist but leftist ("Oppressed of the world, unite", "The problems of the East come from the West -- especially from American imperialism"),[32] including an emphasis on class struggle.
The classes struggling were the oppressed (mostazafin) that he supported, and the oppressors (mostakberin)[33] (made up of the shah's government, the wealthy and well-connected, who would be deposed come the revolution).
[38] Khomeini maintained the opposition to velayat-e faqih/theocratic government by the other revolutionaries was the result of propaganda campaign by foreign imperialists eager to prevent Islam from putting a stop to their plundering.
Al-e-Ahmad "was the only contemporary writer ever to obtain favorable comments from Khomeini", who wrote in a 1971 message to Iranian pilgrims on going on Hajj,"The poisonous culture of imperialism [is] penetrating to the depths of towns and villages throughout the Muslim world, displacing the culture of the Qur'an, recruiting our youth en masse to the service of foreigners and imperialists..."[53]At least one historian (Ervand Abrahamian) speculates Al-e-Ahmad may have been an influence on Khomeini's turning away from traditional Shi'i thought towards populism, class struggle and revolution.
[52] Fighting Gharbzadegi became part of the ideology of the 1979 Iranian Revolution—the emphasis on nationalization of industry, "self-sufficiency" in economics, independence in all areas of life from both the Western (and Soviet) world.
[57] Iran's education system was "substantially superior" to that of its neighbors, and by 1979 had about 175,000 students, 67, 000 studying abroad away from the supervision of its oppressive security force the SAVAK.
[59] Shariati was also a harsh critic of traditional Usuli clergy (including Ayatullah Hadi al-Milani), who he and other leftist Shia believed were standing in the way of the revolutionary potential of the masses,[60] by focusing on mourning and lamentation for the martyrs, awaiting the return of the messiah, when they should have been fighting "against the state injustice begun by Ali and Hussein".
Shari'ati was often anticlerical but Khomeini was able to "win over his followers by being forthright in his denunciations of the monarchy; by refusing to join fellow theologians in criticizing the Husseinieh-i Ershad; by openly attacking the apolitical and the pro-regime `ulama; by stressing such themes as revolution, anti-imperialism, and the radical message of Muharram; and by incorporating into his public declarations such `Fanonist` terms as the `mostazafin will inherit the earth`, `the country needs a cultural revolution,` and the `people will dump the exploiters onto the garbage heap of history.` [64] Shariati was also influenced by anti-democratic Islamist ideas of Muslim Brotherhood thinkers in Egypt and he tried to meet Muhammad Qutb while visiting Saudi Arabia in 1969.
[66] Ayatullah Hadi Milani, the influential Usuli Marja in Mashhad during the 1970s, had issued a fatwa prohibiting his followers from reading Ali Shariati's books and islamist literature produced by young clerics.
[67] Mahmoud Taleghani (1911–1979) was another politically active Iranian Shi'i cleric and contemporary of Khomeini and a leader in his own right of the movement against Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
[68] a veteran in the struggle against the Pahlavi regime, he was imprisoned on several occasions over the decades, "as a young preacher, as a mid-ranking cleric, and as a senior religious leader just before the revolution,"[69] and served a total of a dozen years in prison.
But there were non-religious changes as well, such as an emphasis on proletarian dress, manners, and customs, as opposed to Western aristocratic or bourgeois elegance and extravagance of the Shah's era.
For example, observers noted in the early days of the revolution the "canteen-like" nature of restaurant meals, meant "to underscore the triumph of the Muslim proletariat."
