HUMSS - Simon Wolfgang Fuchs

When Tehran was the brightest star: Writing a global history of the Iranian Revolution of 1979

The Iranian Revolution of 1979 shook the word. While some observers relished in new forms of “spiritual politics” which the upheaval against the Shah had supposedly unleashed, others saw merely the dangerous spread of fundamentalism in the Middle East and beyond. Even scholarly analyses during the 1980s frequently gave way to the geopolitical fear about Tehran’s attempted “export of the Revolution”. In my talk, I argue that this analytical lens has blinded us to some more subtle but long-term intellectual implications for (Sunni) Islamic thought in both the Arab world and South Asia. The Iranian Revolution led to novel fusions of Islamic and leftist approaches, endowed religious scholars with unprecedented influence, and gave rise to sophisticated constitutional models that were meant to usher in a modern Islamic state.