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Theology of Discontent: The Ideological Foundation of the Islamic Revolution in Iran

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Originally published about 1996, then some revision and reprinted again in 2006 and 2008 (as a Second Printing by Transaction Publishers, but with a new, brief `Introduction'). The author started researching and writing his original book immediately following the 1979 Khomeini Revolution in Iran which dumped the monarchy. The author opined: "the immediate failure of the Islamic revolution...brought its ideological foregrounding...to a historic conclusion. `Islamic ideology' succeeded in establishing an Islamic Republic, but it ultimately failed to result in any enduring institutions of a democratic state apparatus or the necessary civil liberties needed conducive to it...and degenerated into a theocracy" (p. xiv). The author seems to be surprised that the Revolution should have ended otherwise; apparently, he failed to remember why the Muslim prophet Mohammad engaged in his military campaigns: to thwart those who opposed his taxation-without-representation religion. Instead, the author blames Western colonialization throughout the Arab world during the 18th and 19th centuries, which essentially `corrupted' most Muslims from seeing Islam's secular enlightenment to the "Straight Path." But the author openly spreads the blame: "No one was more responsible for this mutation than Muslim intellectuals themselves: (p. xiii). The author provides 500 pages of a "who done it" analysis as to who were the spiritual figureheads of the 1979 Revolution (there are another 100 pages of endnotes). Chapter topics include: Formative Forces of `the Islamic Ideology'; (1) Jalal Al-e Ahmad: The Dawn of `the Islamic Ideology'; (2) Ali Shariati: The Islamic Ideologue Par Excellence; (3) Morteza Motahhari: The Chief Ideologue of the Islamic Revolution; (4) Sayyid Mahmud Taleqani: The Father of the Revolution; (5) Allamah Sayyid Muhammad Hossein Tabatabai: The Philosophical Dimension of `the Islamic Ideology'; (6) Mehi Bazargan: The Devout Engineer; (7) Abolhasan Bani-Sadr: The Monotheist Economist; and (8) Ayatollah Khomeini: The Theologian of Discontent. Pertaining to Taleqani, the author discusses Taleqani's wrestling his Islamic thoughts against Social Darwinism and `Free Will' over Predestination - and how these thoughts impacted his influence on the Revolution (p. 251). It helps if the reader has some understanding of market-economics in order to read through the author's socialist-Islamist `liberation' perspective of the Revolution. He discusses the impact of other forces influencing the Revolution: college students, women, anti-Israel, communists, the mullahs, socialists, sexism, Khomeini, the oil oligarchy, the bazaar merchant's complaint of the importation of competing lower-priced Western-produced consumer-goods, etc. If you can work around the author's sociological concern for the "hegemonic perceptions of Muslim `Self'", you can still find some informative, background-source `tidbits' herein. [The author also wrote: "Islamic Liberation Theology", and was one of the co-authors of "Staging a Revolution: The Art of Persuasion in the Islamic Republic of Iran" (a wonderful collection of hundreds of photographs of various banners, posters, stamps, etc. that championed the 1979 Revolution).]