ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that argument against the key event in modern Middle Eastern history which appears more than any other to show the importance of Islam. The Iranian revolution of 1978–79 was made in the name of religion and its call for a resurgent Islam resonated through the Middle East and beyond. On 30 March a referendum proclaimed Iran an Islamic Republic. In November 1979 a new Islamic constitution was similarly passed by referendum, and Khomeini was officially accepted as the faqih or supreme judicial authority with extensive powers. The Iranian revolution was indeed one of the epic events of postwar history, involving a remarkable level of political mobilization, crisis on an international scale and political brutality. The novelty of the Iranian revolution can be said to reside, in the first instance, in the role played within it by religion and in particular by what is loosely termed ‘religious fundamentalism’.
