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The Iranian Regime Is Marching Towards a Cliff

A special comment by Tamim Ansary, author of Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes.
June 23, 2009  |  
 
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The Khomeinist regime in Iran is in terminal trouble; but that doesn’t mean Iran is about to repudiate Islam and become a secular democracy. In order to see where Iran is going, it’s important to see where it’s been.

The so-called Islamic Revolution of Iran was never just about Islam. It was the product of  three revolutionary currents coming together. One was constitutionalism, a century-old struggle for democracy, driven mostly by Iran’s secular modernists.  One was Islamism, a push to put the shari’a in charge of political life—a movement fed by rural resentment of the Westernized urban elite and embraced by merchants of the country’s traditional economy.

Read the rest at The Rumpus.


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