ABSTRACT
The history of Iran since 1921 still arouses intense emotions, and both the history and the historians of this period have often fallen victim to violent polemic and fierce political controversy. There has been little spirit of compromise. Competing in a climate of lingering hatred, rivals have waged wars of extermination on each other's persons, works, and values. For example, the Pahlavis, who came to power in 1925, bulldozed streets through the middle of mosques, bazaars, and old quarters to show their contempt for the Islamic components of Iranian tradition. The current Islamic republican regime has retaliated by attacking its predecessors' works with a vicious single-mindedness. In early 1979, for example, the new regime executed an elderly senator for having taken an active role in Reza Khan's treacherous coup d'etat of 1921. The revolutionary government has persecuted its opponents as God's enemies and has condemened the entire Pahlavi system as taghuti, i.e., outside the boundaries of humanity and allied with pagan forces in rebellion against divine commands. 1
