ABSTRACT
By the end of WWI, the Ottoman Empire had lost the Middle East, as France and Britain carved up territories that became known as "mandates", with only Turkey and Iran remaining independent. It was in 1979 that Iran proclaimed itself as the revolutionary Islamic Republic, overthrowing the pro-Western regime of the shah and installing Sharia as the law of the land. The great shift consisted in revolutionary Islam being the product of an Islamic state, not of an Islamic movement or party any longer. While many events were pivotal in the years leading to the 1989 axial year, the most important among them were the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the rise of the international manifestations of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the First Palestinian Intifada. The watershed year of 1989 saw the fall of Sadiq al-Mahdi government, which was replaced by a much more Islamic one in which al-Turabi called the shots, enabling Sudan to become the second Islamic Republic after Iran.
