LECTURE # 3

1398/1399 A.H., The Year of Islamic Revolution in Iran
PROF. HAMID ALGAR, University of California, Berkeley
(delivered in October, 1979)
WE came today, after considering certain of the important factors in the background of the Islamic Revolution, to consider the Revolution itself; that is, the series of events that began in January 1978, to use the Christian calendar, and terminated a little over a year later with the final removal of all traces of the Shah's regime in Iran and its substitution by a provisional Islamic revolutionary Government. We have seen how there existed in Iran with growing intensity from the latter part of the nineteenth century onwards a tradition of opposition to the monarchy, the institution of the monarchy, and the foreign powers that stood behind it. This opposition was led, directed and inspired by the most prominent of the Shi'ia ulema in Iran. We have seen also, as the culmination and perfect embodiment of that tradition, that there came to the fore the unique figure of Ayatullah Khomeini in 1963.
We need some investigation to establish precisely why, at the beginning of 1978, a long tradition of agitation, discontent and opposition turned into a revolutionary situation.
We can find throughout the years of the Shah's dictatorship numerous signs of all not being well in the so-called oasis of stability in the turbulent Middle East, this being the image the Shah and his propaganda agents sought constantly to create. But the signs of discontent multiplied throughout 1977 and, to some degree, even earlier. We saw, for example, in the summer of 1977 remarkable evidence that even on the material plane the Shah's regime had failed to create the so-called civilization that was offered. There were vast electricity failures in Tehran which in a way came to symbolize the inability of the regime to create the very simple infrastructure of a modern industrial economy which had been the great promise held out by the Shah. Together w1th this, there was rising inflation, a soaring of cost of living, not merely in the capital city, but in the major provincial cities, and to some extent in the countryside, This economic discontent soon intensified the existing social and ideological discontent so that in the fall of 1977, shortly before one of the Shah's trips to the United States, there were a large number of demonstrations and open letters to the regime demanding, not yet abolition of the regime, but certain reforms.
We find, for example, that as one consequence of Carter's hypocritical election propaganda concerning human rights, people decided that this was a useful instrument to employ against the Iranian regime. It is sometimes said in America in the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution that Carter somehow undermined the Iranian regime by promising people human rights and that people, encouraged by President Carter, therefore took to the streets. This is an absurdity. A more accurate version of the situation is that it was seen as a useful tactic to demand human rights, not that the regime was deemed capable by its nature of giving human rights, but simply that given this apparent verbal change in American policy, the slogan of human rights was a useful one to be used for tactical purposes against the regime. Similarly, the partial demands made by certain professional organizations, of writers and lawyers, calling for freedom of expression, the abolition of the restrictions and censorship, and the strict observance of the Iranian legal code all had the same purpose of tactically whittling away at the regime's position. None of this was new in the Iranian context and none of it was aimed at a totally comprehensive revolution, and sweeping away for the very foundations of the regime. It was a question of tactically harassing the regime in a fashion which might be thought to coincide with the new emphasis in American policy abroad.
In November 1977, the Shah of Iran visited the United States. The Shah had been visiting the United States continuously since his accession to power in 1941. In the American press at that time an interesting series of photographs appeared which showed the Shah in friendly conversation with every American president since Truman. A commentary supplied by an Iranian friend seemed apposite. He said that those pictures of the Shah shaking hands with every incoming president reminded him very much of the traditional political practice in Iran when the provincial governor, at the accession of every new king, would travel to the capital city, offer some appropriate present to the king! be confirmed by him in his position and then he sent back to the province under his control to resume plundering and looting for his own profit and that of the central government. We can say that this is a very apposite comparison for the appearance of the Shah in Washington, to swear allegiance to every new American president.
It turned out that this visit of the Shah to Washington was to be his final overshadowed by unprecedented student demonstrations in America, so much so that the tear gas employed in putting down the demonstrations drifted even across the White House lawn and caused the Shah to shed a few tears. Despite the massiveness of the Iranian protest against the Shah on the thresholds of the White House, Carter now proclaimed a total reversal of his policy and, far from criticizing the Shah or exercising pressure upon him to change his human rights policy, praised him in lavish terms, saying that there was complete identity of policy between the United States and Iran. This declaration of friendship and support to the Shah was repeated in even more exaggerated and fulsome terms when Carter visited Tehran on New Year's Eve. He said that he and the Shah saw eye to eye on the question of human rights -an interesting confession on the part of Mr. Carter. These expressions of support were to be repeated throughout the year at strategic and crucial points by the Carter administration.
We find, for example, that immediately after the great massacre in Tehran on 8 September 1978, when an estimated 4,000 people were killed, Carter left his humanitarian efforts on behalf of the so-called peace of Camp David to send a personal message of support to the Shah. It is noteworthy that Sadat and Begin and the other participants in these humanitarian efforts at Camp David also took time off to telephone their best wishes to the Shah in the aftermath of this massacre.
Given this timing of Carter's expression of support for the Shah, we can do no other than regard his visit to Tehran and his proclamation of support for the Shah at the beginning of 1978 as an implicit statement of support of the Shah and of all the acts of massacre and repression that he undertook in the year of the Revolution. It was not only a Revolution, an uprising designed to shake and destroy the tyrannical rule of the monarch; it was at the same time in a real sense a war of independence waged against a power which had successfully turned Iran into a military base and which had incorporated the military, repressive apparatus of that other country into its own strategic system.
One of the errors that proved fatal for the Shah's regime and hastened its eventual downfall, an error which we may say for a Muslim perspective was divinely determined, was that the Shah's regime, in its arrogance, caused a series of articles to be published, insulting Ayatullah Khomeini in the grossest and most obscene terms. They were published in the government-controlled press shortly after the visit of President Carter to Iran. In these articles it was claimed that Ayatullah Khomeini was guilty of sexual deviance, that he was of Indian origin, which was meant in the terms of the Shah's regime and mentality to be an insult, and that he was an agent of British intelligence.
Such a series of accusations and fabrications is a common weapon in the armory of various tyrannical regimes in the Muslim world. In documents that have recently become available in various Iranian consulates and embassies around the world, we see that the Iran regime fabricated similar allegations to discredit the late Dr. Shari'ati. In another Muslim country, to engage in a brief diversion, we can see that recently the governments of Syria and Iraq have accused the Muslim Brethren of being traitors and the servants of Zionism and United States imperialism. This is a familiar tactic. Its application in the case of Iran backfired totally against the regime. Immediately after the publication of the offending articles in the government-controlled press, demonstrations and protests broke out in Qum. This is in the same city in central Iran where Ayatullah Khomeini studied and had first risen to public prominence in 1963. The people of the city took to the streets denouncing not merely this latest affront of the Shah's regime against all sense of humanity, Islam and decency, but also against the overall record of the regime. The answer of the regime was the usual one -the massive use of force resulting in the loss of about 200 lives. In this case, as in other subsequent cases, the exact number of casualties is difficult to determine.
After the events in Qum, a cycle of recurring demonstrations, put down with heavy loss of life, began to be repeated. These gradually changed from being a series of isolated incidents in different parts of the country to a coordinated, unified movement, having not merely the negative aim of removing the Shah but the positive aim of establishing in the place of his regime an Islamic Republic. Forty days after the martyrdom of the people of Qum, demonstrations and ceremonies of remembrance took place in the north western city of Tabriz, which is the capital of the large and populous province of Azerbaijan in the north west of the country.
Tabriz has had a long history of prominence in Iranian revolutionary politics, for various reasons, partly because of its proximity to Turkey and Russia, or better to say the Caucasus, which were in the early part of this century centers of revolutionary thought and activity, and also partly because of the character of tile Azarbaijans themselves. In any event, the demonstrations and commemorative ceremonies in Tabriz soon took on the complexion of a full-scale uprising, and for at least two days the entire city of Tabriz was out of control of the government forces.
The uprising was on a scale that the government had been unable to foretell. The local police and Savak proved unable to cope with the massive scale of the uprising and members of the local garrison also proved either unwilling or unable to intervene effectively. Reinforcements were then brought in from outside the city, but these were met by the people of the city themselves who pointed out that they were Muslims and it was the duty of the soldiers not to engage in the killing of their own brethren. This argument appears to have had an effect on a large number of soldiers. Finally, the uprising in Tabriz was broken not so much by the use of the police or the army as by firing on the population from the air from military helicopters, gunships of the same type that the United States used repeatedly in Vietnam. Very heavy reprisals took place. It has been estimated that a minimum of 500 people were killed in the course of the uprising in Tabriz.
In the aftermath of the Tabriz uprising, the Shah and his representatives claimed that the people of the city were in reality not participating in the uprising but that it had been a question of foreigners smuggled in massive numbers to perpetrate this plot. It seems remarkable that thousands of Azerbaijani-speaking foreigners could be infiltrated into the city without detection. Another absurdity propagated by the regime and others associated with it was that the uprising in Tabriz had as its object the suppression of the Bahai community. This was one line put out by the former American ambassador to Iran, Mr. Sullivan, who happened to visit Berkeley shortly after the Tabriz uprising. The only problem, as one member of his audience pointed out, was that there is no Bahai community in Tabriz for people to rise up in protest against. This same member of the audience further suggested that the traditional definition, by Samuel Johnson, of an ambassador or a diplomat should be revised. You may recall that Samuel Johnson defined a diplomat as a man who went abroad to lie for his country. In the case of Mr. Sullivan, it appeared that, on the contrary, the diplomat was the man who came home to lie on behalf of the government to which he had been accredited.
The uprising in Tabriz was followed soon after by the series of commemorative ceremonies in different cities of Iran. That also took on an aspect of minor insurrection. We can mention in particular the case of Yazd, where people emerging from a peaceful commemorative ceremony in one of the main mosques of the city were met with a hail of machine gun fire. A tape recording of these events was made and circulated widely throughout Iran. As anyone who has had occasion to hear this and similar tapes will know, it is a remarkable sequence of sounds which bears great witness to the brutality of the Shah's regime and its repressive methods.
On the tape one hears the termination of the Khutba end the commemorative ceremony, people emerging from the mosques into the streets and then the wail of police and army sirens, then the opening of machine gun fire and the wailing and screaming of the dying and the wounded. This tape, and the even more horrific tape made on the occasion of the government attack on the inside of a mosque several months later in Shiraz, should be required listening for all of those who have any lingering doubts concerning the nature of the Shah's regime.
We can say that the cassette tape played a role of considerable importance in the Islamic Revolution. The Shah had a technological apparatus of repression of considerable sophistication. He has an army of 400,000 men, among the best equipped in the Middle East, second in military potential only to the other agent of the United States, Israel. He had also a sophisticated repressive apparatus which had struck fear into the people for about fifteen years. In contrast to this, the Iranian people had, at their disposal, very little in the way of armaments, organizational or technological capacity. The one thing that was used and used to great effect was the cassette tape.
Not only were recordings such as those I have mentioned circulated widely throughout Iran, but the declarations of Ayatullah Khomeini in their spoken as well as their printed form were circulated throughout the country by a simple means, through the use of tape recording. I was a witness, while in Paris, to the dispatch of one such message to Iran. The simplicity of this apparatus of dispatch and transmission of recorded messages was a source of astonishment to many western observers. All that happened was the message would be recorded in Paris and read over the telephone to a number of individuals in Tehran who would have tape records held against the telephone. They would then telephone other individuals in provincial cities who were waiting with their tape recorders, and in a brief time the message would be duplicated and circulated throughout the country.
Many people in the Middle East and South Asia will know how frequent it is for taxi drivers and lorry drivers to go round with tape cassette players listening to the latest "pop" music. It was one symbol of the Islamic Revolution in Iran that the only tapes played in long-distance trucks in buses and taxis were the tapes of Ayatullah Khomeini. We can say that in one way the Revolution was a revolution of which the technological symbol was the cassette tape, just as earlier; the Constitutional Revolution was the revolution of the telegram. Telegrams were sent back and forth between the 'atabat and the various centers in Iran.
To return to the chronology of events, after the uprising in Yazd and the heavy casualties inflicted there, we find for the first time in August major disturbances occurring in Tehran also. These obliged the Shah to cancel his projected European trip. On two occasions during the Revolution the Shah was obliged to cancel foreign trips. On both occasions, the trips he had planned were to the communist states of Eastern Europe. The incongruity of this situation was not perceived by most foreign journalists and observers, who persisted in the argument that the Shah was a bulwark of the west in the strategic struggle against communism and that he was threatened by a communist-manipulated uprising at home. It was precisely communist states he had been planning to visit when the uprisings broke out in Tehran. It was also a prominent communist visitor, Hua Kuo Feng, the Chinese Premier, who saw fit to come to Tehran and to fly by helicopter from the airport over the battle-torn streets of Tehran to confer with the Shah and offer him his condolences and his encouragement in the imperial struggle for progress and emancipation.
The month of August, not only because of the occurrence of large-scale disturbances in Tehran, but as a result of other events, saw a significant rise in the level of the struggle. It was in the month of August, 1978, to be precise August 19, that there took place the most infamous of the crimes of the Shah's regime -the burning of the cinema Rex in the south west city of Abadan. You may recall that on that day the cinema was burnt to the ground, resulting in the deaths of at least 419 or 420 people who were locked. inside the cinema. This was billed in the western press as one of the fruits of the fanatical reactionary Islamic movement in the country which was annoyed when people went to the cinema during the month of Ramadan. It is true that it was the month of Ramadan, a month of intensified religious feeling and struggle. It is also true that numerous cinemas had been burnt and destroyed throughout Iran by the Islamic movement.
There are two things to be noted here. The first is in the case of the other cinemas that had been burnt, without exception, advance warning had been given to the staff of the cinema to evacuate the premises in time and a time had been chosen for the burning or the explosion when no showing was taking place and no audience was present in the cinema. Secondly, the film that was showing in Abadan was a film which obliquely and in a censored fashion referred to the activities of one of the guerilla movements in Iran. This was hardly therefore a film likely to be found obnoxious by the Islamic movement as a whole. By contrast, in all the other cinemas that had been destroyed elsewhere, the films shown were pornographic and obscene films that offended against the standards of Islamic morality.
Possibly the most telling piece of evidence -and there is a large amount of evidence pointing to the responsibility of the regime for this arson -is that not more than four days before the event, the Shah had given a speech in which he said, "I promise you the great civilization; all that our enemies are capable of offering you is the great terror, vahshat-i-kabir.â€‌ It seems remarkably convenient that a few days later an event should occur which seemed to supply confirmation of this prediction -that the great terror would be created.
The families of those burnt in the cinema Rex were in any event not deceived by the government propaganda. Such was the extent of their protest and outcry that martial law had soon be imposed on the city. In one grotesque instance of humour which one finds recurring throughout the Revolution, the cinema Rex in Abadan was bitterly nicknamed as the Pahlavi kebab house. The people who had been burnt to death there were the direct victims of the Shah's regime.
The series of events which gained momentum throughout Ramadan, including the burning of the Cinema, Reza continued without let into September so that the Shah began to make a number of outward concessions. He installed the government of Sharif Imami, who was widely praised in the western press, or at least described in the western press as a pious Muslim. You may know that this title of "pious Muslim" is given on a rather arbitrary basis by the western press. Someone who is from our point of view very obviously a Muslim and serving the interests of Islam is decried as a reactionary and a fanatical Muslim. Someone who is willing to do the ways of the west is generally described as a pious Moslem. In this context, for example, Anwar Sadat is a pious Muslim, but Ayatullah Khomeini is a fanatic or a reactionary Muslim.
In any event, Sharif Imami, because of certain family ties several generations back, was designated as a pious Muslim and the Shah went through the gesture of removing certain Bahais from his immediate entourage, abolishing the imperial calendar which he had introduced in substitution of the Islamic calendar and promised a complete purge of the administration to remove all traces of corruption. The problem was that he was the greatest instrument of corruption and thus that promise was self-contradictory. As the Turkish proverb says, "When fish stinks, it stinks from the head first."
It was soon realized that the month of Muharram would be a crucial period in Iran. In preparation for that month, which corresponded approximately to the month of December 1978, the Shah's regime made certain preparations. First of all, Sharif Imami was replaced by an outright military government under General Azhari. The immediate pretext for this was provided by successive days of riots and burning in Tehran when part of the British Embassy was burnt down and a number of other targets attacked. Shortly after, the Shah brought pressure upon the Iraqi government to expel Ayatullah Khomeini from his long-standing place in exile in Najaf. We may regard this attempt to exile anew Ayatullah Khomeini from the Islamic world as one of the great blunders of the Shah's regime. This turned out to be very much to the advantage of the Shah 's opponents.
Ayatullah Khomeini was harassed in Najaf by the Ba 'athist regime -not for the first time, by the way. There had been numerous instances over the years when he had been placed under pressure as a result of the Ba'athist regime's amenability to the Shah 's desires. On this occasion, Ayatullah Khomeini was placed under house arrest virtually.
His house was besieged and he was informed that he could continue to reside in Iraq only on two conditions: first, that he abandon all political activity; and, secondly, that he move from Najaf to somewhere else of the Iraqi government's own choosing. These conditions were rejected by Ayatullah Khomeini. The Iraqi government then proceeded to expel him from the country. The original plan, according to those in the entourage of Ayatullah Khomeini, was that he should pass through Kuwait, there to embark for a further destination. Interestingly enough, the Kuwaiti government, which has a ministry of Islamic affairs, which publishes books on Islam, which hosts conferences and sends money for various mosques abroad, was so concerned about the promotion of 'Islam' that it did not give permission to Ayatullah Khomeini even to transit through its territory. As a result of this, Ayatullah Khomeini remained for a few dangerous hours in the 'no man's land' between Iraq and Kuwait, with neither government responsible for his safety, leaving him vulnerable to any conceivable attack from Savak agents.
After a time, the Iraq government permitted him to reenter the country on condition that he leave, and he left for Paris, which one can say was a remarkably fortunate choice. That is not to say that there is any particular virtue inherent in the French government. Ayatullah Khomeini merely embarked on the plane and presented the French government with a fait accompli by arriving there with a valid Iranian passport and desiring to stay there for three months on a tourist visa. Of course, Ayatullah Khomeini had a far more important task than tourism awaiting him in Paris. He took up residence in a house in the little village of Neuple le Chateau in the Parisian suburbs which soon became a point of attraction for Iranians from Europe, North America and Iran itself as well as a large number of representatives of the world's press.
It can be said without doubt that communication between Paris and Iran was infinitely easier and swift and unimpeded than had been communication between Najaf and Iran. Also, Ayatullah Khomeini was now able to bring the cause of the Iranian people more effectively before world public opinion.
The month of Muharram was described by Ayatullah Khomeini in one of the proclamations that he issued from Neuphle le Chateau, as the month of triumph of blood over the sword. This, one may regard, in one way, as a brief description of the Islamic Revolution in Iran. But it applies most particularly to Muharram in the sense that the willingness, the eagerness even, of the Iranian people for the sake of martyrdom during the month of Muharram, manifested on a greater scale. A greater mass of people than ever before responded to the call of martyrdom which totally discredited and destroyed the basis of the Iranian regime.
From the first day of the month of Muharram a large number of people appeared in the streets of Tehran and other cities wearing their shrouds, preparing for martyrdom and advancing unarmed on the rows of machine guns ready to shoot them down. The number of victims is difficult to establish precisely, but probably in the first few days of Muharram a larger total of people were killed than on any other occasion, with the single exception of Black Friday, 8 September 1978, massacre in Tehran.
It occurs to me now that I should have accorded some separate and detailed mention to the events of 8 September. You must pardon me for this. One of the decisive turning points in the struggle after the firing of the cinema Rex in Abadan was the massacre that took place on 8 September in Tehran. This came shortly after the end of Ramadan, when a number of demonstrators were gathered in what was formerly called the Maydan-e-Jaleh and is now called the Martyrs' Square in Tehran. A curfew had been proclaimed, before there was the possibility of those gathered in the square learning of it, and abiding by it, if they had chosen so to do. No chance was given to those gathered in the square to disperse. They were closed in on all four sides and soon the Shah's troops began firing from all four directions and from the air, from military gunships. A tape recording of this horrendous occasion has also been made, or part of it.
The slaughter lasted the better part of a day. A number of incriminating photographs are also available. On that occasion it was said that Israeli troops had participated in the work of massacre. In the nature of things, it is not possible to have any decisive proof one way or the other. This much is certain. According to certain eyewitnesses of the event, one company of troops that stood in the forefront on that day had shown reluctance to fire and it was swiftly removed and replaced by fresh troops dressed in Iranian uniforms. These troops spoke a language other than Persian and had the usual unkempt appearance -long beards and semi-hippy appearance -typically associated with the Israeli soldiers. It might be said that the Shah's troops had shown little reluctance to slaughter people throughout the better part of the year and people might wonder why it should be necessary for the regime to have recourse to Israelis on this occasion. A possible answer is that in the week preceding this, from the end of Ramadan onwards, a series of huge, indeed unprecedented, demonstrations had taken place in Tehran and the Shah may have regarded this as a crucial week in his struggle for survival. It may be that he thought it best to have at his disposal troops, mercenaries virtually, whose willingness to fire, even happiness in firing when their targets were Moslem, would not be called into question.
Whether that precise accusation be true, the fact that it was circulated and widely believed is an indication of the perception of the Iranian people of the deep involvement of Israel in the repressive apparatus and policies of the Shah.
To come from Ramadan to Muharram, from September to December 1978, the massive demonstrations that had taken place at the end of Ramadan were repeated on the two most crucial days -9th and 10th of the month -which are in terms of the traditional Shi'ia commemorative ceremonies of the martyrdom, the most important days. First, it was said by Azhari, the military premier, that a dawn to dusk curfew would be imposed and that not even ceremonies would be allowed in the mosque, let alone on the streets of the city. Then, when it was made clear that the people had no intention of observing this ban, gradually it was lifted and permission was given for a vast demonstration that took place along the major thoroughfares of Tehran, concluding at the so-called Shahyad monument -the monument to the 2,500 years of Iranian monarchy. We may remark in passing on another instance of revolutionary humour in Iran, which was the renaming of the Shahyad monument as the Shayyad monument -a monument not in memory or commemoration of the Shah but in commemoration of a scoundrel. On this day the streets leading to the northern parts of Tehran, where the royal palaces and the abodes of the wealthy are situated, were sealed off and a vast number of people, estimated at 5 million and 6 million, moved along the main arteries towards the square where a manifesto was read and approved by those present.
The manifesto called for the abolition of the monarchy, for the institution of an Islamic Republic and the observance of certain points relating to internal and external policy. There was a total of sixteen points. President Carter, in one of the foolish remarks for which he is becoming increasingly celebrated, said that the fact that the day had passed off without bloodshed was somehow a triumph for the Shah's regime and somehow an indication that, after all, things would not be too bad and he could weather the storm, as he had weathered previous storms. The fact that there had been no bloodshed was uniquely the result of the non-intervention of the army on that day. It was a moral triumph for the Islamic movement and a stunning defeat for the Shah.
It became increasingly recognized by the Shah, and more important of his foreign advisers, that his was a lost cause and that the best that could be hoped for was the installation of what was called in American terminology a compromise solution -that is to say, neither the Shah nor the Islamic regime but something in between led by moderate, reasonable people; in other words, people who would be content to see a prolongation of American strategic domination in Iran.
After some hedging and looking around for a suitable candidate one was decided upon, Shahpoor Bakhtiar, the leader of the National Front, who was immediately promoted in western propaganda as being a long-standing foe of the Shah, a leading member of the opposition, a champion of human rights, and all other kinds of high-sounding titles.
It should be pointed out that the National Front, particularly as it had come to exist in recent years in Iran, was not a major organ of opposition to the Shah. It had a certain weight and represented a certain number of interests, but it was not in any way an important organization of political opposition such as it had been in the days of Dr. Mussadeq. Even within the attenuated National Front, Shahpoor Bakhtiar had a very devious standing. There were a number of incidents in which he was involved which had earned him the suspicion of his associates, so much so that when he accepted the offer of the Shah, at the prompting of the United States, to become the new Prime Minister, with the Shah going on vacation, members of the National Front and still less the Iranian people at large were not surprised.
Shahpoor Bakhtiar arranged for the departure of the Shah, which took place in January 1979, and then began the hopeless task of attempting to shore up the foundations of his own power.
Whatever the failings of Shahpoor Bakhtiar, and they are numerous, he was obviously a man not totally without intelligence. One of the intriguing questions which, to my mind, has not yet been fully answered is why Bakhtiar chose to take on this hopeless task of saving the American cause in Iran after the departure of the Shah in mid-January. The only interim answer that can be given to that question is that he was a man, first of all, totally contemptuous of religion and, therefore, like many other secularists, assumed that religion had no effective power. Because he did not believe in it, he thought ipso facto nobody else sincerely believed in it either and, therefore, it should be discounted as an effective force.
We can say that this kind of assumption is shared in general by many members of the Iranian bourgeois. They thought, "Let the revolution go through, let the rebellion be led for the time being by the ulema. After all, these people are not people of the world and they are politically naive, and we, the secular bourgeoisie, the western educated, the liberal intelligentsia, will assume our natural right of leadership in due time."
Something of the same mentality in a rather extreme form was present in Bakhtiar, I think. He was incautious enough to describe Ayatullah Khomeini as "an insane old man". It was precisely this "insane old man" who totally outmaneuvered and destroyed the regime of Bakhtiar within less than a month of its installation. You may recall that at the beginning of February 1979, after a series of political maneuvers on the part of Bakhtiar and the Iranian army, including the closure of Tehran airport for a number of days, Ayatullah Khomeini returned to a triumphal welcome from the people of Iran. It has been estimated that on this occasion about one third of the total population of Iran was in Tehran to receive him. A number of cities in the country were almost completely emptied as their inhabitants converged on Tehran to give a triumphal welcome to Ayatullah Khomeini.
He returned, and, in accordance with his proclaimed intention, proceeded immediately to the cemetery in Tehran where the martyrs of the Revolution were buried and gave one of his typically courageous and uncompromising speeches, denouncing the United States for its role during the Revolution, saying that the Iranian people had desired freedom and that they had been given in exchange by imperialism and its agents a graveyard full of martyrs as the answer to their demands. He pointed out also that the struggle was not yet over, and he summoned the Iranian people to continue in their struggle.
Six days after his return, Ayatullah Khomeini named his own government --the provisional Government headed by Mehdi Bazargan. Progressively, ministers were named to complete the Cabinet. This was a process which continued after the final triumph of the Revolution. In the two weeks between the return of Ayatullah Khomeini and the final overthrow of the regime the crucial question appeared to many people to be the possibility of an American-inspired and directed military coup d'etat. The great fear of numerous people was precisely this. After all, the United States had been heavily involved in Iran to a degree unparalleled virtually in any other country. Doubtless it must have had some contingency planning for a day such as that now dawning in Iran. Would the United States easily abandon the strategic, economic and military advantages that it had enjoyed in Iran for a quarter of a century?
Anxiety was increased by the arrival in Tehran of the commander of the American land forces in Europe, General Hauser. The ostensible purpose of his visit to Tehran was to discuss the problems of arms supply in the aftermath of the disturbance and uprising in Iran, and also to dissuade the Iranian military from attempting a coup d 'etat. It seems that the time, just over a month, which he spent in Tehran was rather a generous period of time for dealing with these limited objectives.
Since the triumph of the Revolution, documentary evidence has been uncovered to the effect that the purpose of Hauser's visit to Tehran was, on the contrary, to undertake a contingency study of the possibility of a military coup d 'etat. His departure from the country should be taken as a sign that the study had yielded negative results, that at least in the short term the possibility of a military coup d 'etat successfully imposing itself was extremely limited. The Iran of 1979 was no longer the Iran of 1953. After all, the Iranian army had become subjected to increasing desertions by its recruits, considerable psychological pressure had been exerted by the religious leadership headed by Ayatullah Khomeini, who repeatedly called for the army to return to the people, to which it essentially belonged. At the same time, it was known that the people were arming in such a fashion that a military coup d'etat would not have been unopposed.
It was, strangely enough, the most recalcitrant elements in the army which brought about the final downfall of the last vestiges of the Shah's regime. On 10 February 1979, in one of the airforce barracks in Tehran, airforce cadets were engaged in watching an Iranian television replay of the newsreel film showing the return to Tehran of the Ayatullah Khomeini. As a result of watching this film, they broke out into demonstrations demanding the installation of an Islamic government under Ayatullah Khomeini. Their officers insisted that they return to barracks, instead of which they raided the armory and resisted by armed forces. The commanders of the garrison called in the Imperial Guard, the so-called eternal or immortal guard, the so-called crack troops of the Shah, to aid in the task of repression. A number of tanks arrived very quickly at the airforce garrison.
The beginning of this battle was the sign for an armed uprising throughout Tehran which resulted in the overrunning, one after another, of all the major installations of power, the Prime Minister's office, radio and television, the parliament building, the headquarters of Savak and its various interrogation and torture centers throughout the city, so that after two or three days, which saw a minimum of 700 to 800 further casualties, the regime of the Shah was finally swept away in the last bloodbath.
This has been an approximate retelling of the important events of the Revolution. Of course, details have been left out, but I think that I have given you a sketch of the most important events of the Black Friday, 8 September. It is time now, by the way of conclusion to this lecture and the series of lectures generally, to try to draw a few conclusions which are, I think, of particular relevance to Muslims and which will, I hope, illustrate the contention I made at the beginning of my first lecture, namely, that the events in Iran are the most important and significant events for the entire Muslim world in recent history. They are not in any way an isolated series of events determined by the circumstances of Iran.
First of all, I point out that the movement of the Iranian Muslim people was opposed unanimously by all the major superpowers and their agents in the region. One can think of this as a simple and automatic test of the authenticity of any Islamic movement. If any Islamic movement finds itself allying, even circumstantially and unintentionally, with a certain major power, there is a certain problem. It means that there is some willingness to compromise, to settle, to collaborate with a non-Islamic power, or there is the perception that it is willing to do so.
The Islamic Revolution in Iran was opposed by the United States, the Soviet Union, China, Great Britain, West Germany -by all these major centers of power and corruption in the world. Within the Middle Eastern region, it was opposed in varying degrees of active engagement by the so-called reactionary regimes and so-called progressive regimes alike. It was opposed by King Hasan of Morocco, who described the Ayatullah Khomeini as a naive old man and who sent his special envoy to speak to some of the Iranian ulema to persuade them that they should not fall into the trap of communism. It was opposed by President Sadat of Egypt, who had displayed to the world now his policy--of capitulation in his search for a personality and identity, something which he clearly lacks and has little chance of finding.
The movement was opposed by the Saudi regime which, for all its sponsorship of Muslim conferences and for all its mismanagement of the Haramayn is clearly at the service of the United States and opposed to all manifestations of Islam in the Islamic world. On the side of the so-called progressive regimes, it was opposed by the Iraqi government, the Ba'athists, who are meant to be the ultra hard-Line rejectionists in terms of the current political jargon. It was opposed by Libya; let there be no doubt about that. Mr. Qadhafi was opposed to the Shah, but he was not in any way favourable to the Islamic movement in Iran until it became clear that it was about to triumph. The only support given by Mr. Qadhafi was to a Marxist guerilla group called Fidaiyan-e-Khalq and to the separatist movement in Kurdistan. It is interesting that recently Mr. Qadhafi has also come out in favour of Kurdish nationalism, the secession of Kurdish areas of Iraq and Iran to form a separate and independent state.
In short, there was this alliance of the great powers and their regional satellites arrayed against the Islamic Revolution. We may say that this is at once a proof of the authenticity of the Revolution and a warning that when any genuine Islamic movement comes into being it will be faced with similar opposition. Yet it was precisely in the face of such opposition that the Islamic movement in Iran triumphed. To find an explanation for this in terms purely of the familiar means of political and historical analysis is impossible. When Ayatullah Khomeini was asked, concerning the causes for the success of the Revolution, he said simply that it was the will of God. The will of God manifests itself through causes which are capable of being analysed, but we as Muslims believing in Islam as a total view of reality, a set of methods for the understanding of reality, should say that the triumph of the Islamic Revolution was simply the fulfillment of God's promise, which remains eternally valid to those who struggle in His path.
At one point, some Iranian friends of mine who were visiting Imam Khomeini in Paris asked him, "Do you not think there is a danger of this continual bloodshed and sacrifice on the part of our people inducing despair and weariness in them so that the point of our movement will become lost? Might it not be better to pause, to have some temporary arrangement seeking a reform of the existing regime?", to which Ayatullah Khomeini replied simply that it is our task to do that which Allah tells us to do and it is then up to Allah whether He supplies the results in our lifetime or in a future lifetime. It was as a result of this trust in Allah, of this solitude with Allah, this deprivation of any form of worldly support and this reliance on the support of Allah -a reliance which was clearly testified through the martyrdom of not less than 100,000 people in the year of struggle -that ultimately the Revolution in Iran was able to succeed.
The second general conclusion we as Muslims should draw from the Revolution is the fact that the crucial factor in the success of the movement is not sophistication of organization. It is not the working out of any precise strategic plan that is crucial, although at various points in the struggle questions of strategy assume importance. It has often been said that in Iran we have a hierarchy of Shi'ia ulema that is lacking elsewhere in the Muslim world and, therefore, this triumph is not easily to be duplicated elsewhere.
What is meant by this so-called hierarchy of Shi'ia ulema? All one has is the simple mechanism of taqlid, which I attempted to describe for you in my first lecture, whereby the individual believer regards himself as duty bound to follow the guidance of a religious leader. This guidance is given, not through any formal channel, but on the basis of a moral and spiritual authority that is gained exclusively on the basis of popular assent. There is no electoral process for the choice of the marja or the mujtahid. It is simply that an individual, or series of individuals, emerge, who in themselves come to embody the aspirations or the desires of the people so that they obtain a freely given consent which is willing to' offer itself in a blood sacrifice.
The same process, although in a different fashion, may exercise itself outside the Shi'ia context, i.e. in the Sunni Muslim world. If there emerges a leader of a movement which clearly presents itself as a totally uncompromising and radical alternative to the existing system or systems, if it shows itself not concerned merely in a theoretical sense but in a practical sense with the actual, tangible problems of the people, there is no reason why it should not be able to elicit the same response as that which was elicited by Imam Khomeini from the Iranian people.
Why is it that in Iran today we see the only genuine experiment in the foundation of an Islamic state in which we can have some confidence and hope? It is not because the Iranians, as compared with other Muslim peoples, are gifted with a superior degree of piety. It is not because they have discovered some particular secret that is inaccessible to the rest of the Muslim world. Certainly, it is not so. Let us not forget that Islam remains the motive force, at least in potentiality if not in actuality, of all the Muslim peoples without exception, whether they be Arabs, Turks, the peoples of the Indo-Pakistan sub-continent, South-East Asia, Africa or any other group of Moslems. Ultimately, it is not possible to eradicate Islam from the hearts of the Moslems. It is possible only to annihilate the Muslims themselves. Given that, what is necessary is to activate this resource of faith, belief, and readiness to struggle and sacrifice. This is something which is present within the hearts of all the Muslim peoples and even within the hearts of individuals who are apparently secularized.
One of the things which happened in the course of the Islamic Revolution in Iran was the rediscovery of Islam by those who were partially secularized. I have described one aspect of this process in a lecture on Dr. Shari'ati, but it was not merely an intellectual process. It was also a question of an individual return to the self, to the deepest self, to a realization of what is after all fundamentally a mystery. It is possible to evoke this realization in any Muslim country, in any Muslim society, with the overwhelming majority of people, including those who apparently are lost to Islam. This is possible by the presentation of a clear, radical and complete series, a conscientious alternative which has no connection with the existing system, which does not wish to participate in it, does not enter it on the pretext of reforming it, but stands totally apart from it.
This leads me to one more conclusion concerning the Islamic Revolution -that an Islamic movement will not only be automatically opposed by all the major superpowers and their local agents, but also, to be authentic and to have any chance of success, such a movement must be uncompromising. There comes a time when to be uncompromising is the only realistic course. It is not realistic to be moderate and compromise for an Islamic movement. For an Islamic movement to enter into so-called realistic compromises means, in effect, the sacrificing of its own nature and ultimate goals. There are too many examples of this for it to be overlooked. We may mention the example of Turkey, where a so-called Islamic party, which contains many people of great sincerity, energy and devotion, has decided to enter into the parliamentary game for the sake of promoting Islamic interests. We see that precisely through entering the parliamentary game, it begins playing all the familiar parliamentary tricks, beginning with the swearing of an oath of allegiance to the secular republic. It is not possible for this party in this situation, or similar parties in a similar situation elsewhere in the Islamic world, to present itself as opposed to the system in which it participates, and, therefore, in the survival of which it has a partial interest.
There is one other conclusion. It is that the Islamic movement, if it be correctly identified with the popular interests and not kept on the plane exclusively of pure ideology, if it be an uncompromising one which refuses any form of participation in the existing sociological system, if it does this, it will be able totally to outdistance any form of secular competition. One of the great differences between 1953 in Iran and 1979 in Iran is that in 1953 there was a Mussadeq and in 1979 there was a Khomeini. There was an Islamic involvement in the events leading up to the nationalization of the Iranian oil industry in 1953. But the secular figure -and I do not wish to imply "anti-Islam" but merely "non-religious" -of Mussadeq dominated and towered over the religious figures on the scene such as Ayatullah Kashani. Precisely because of this, the nationalist movement of Dr. Mussadeq could never be a mass movement with profound roots.
In 1978-79, we see on the contrary the so-called secular opposition, the National Front, with people like Sanjabi and the rest of them, being totally overshadowed by the religious leadership. To have any form of political influence, the secular opposition was obliged to abandon all of its positions and to conform unconditionally to the demands advanced by Ayatullah Khomeini. Similarly, in all other Muslim countries other forms of ideology and political organization, whatever inroad they may apparently have made, have failed totally to penetrate the depths of the hearts and minds of the Muslim people. Even though they may appear to be competitors for the future of the Muslim Ummah, if correctly confronted, there is nothing to be feared from them. This is something that goes also for the purveyors of the secular nationalism and ethnic-based nationalism in the Arab world, in Turkey and elsewhere. It also goes for the Marxists. It is only the Islamic movement, the potential and not necessarily the actual Islamic movement, in various Muslim countries which has the ability to call upon the deepest resources of the people and bring about a genuine revival and renewal.
Any attempt to formulate a path to the future for the Muslim peoples other than with Islam, is ultimately a waste of time and energy and a waste of the most precious of our human and material resources. To prevent that waste, the Islamic movement must learn the fundamental lessons of the Islamic Revolution in Iran. Otherwise it will contribute to the state of ideological and spiritual anarchy which persists in the Muslim world. Unfortunately, the signs that the leaders, or at least the self-appointed leaders, of Islam in other countries are ready to learn from the Islamic Revolution in Iran are not very bright.
Let us take two examples. I saw recently an issue on an Islamic magazine called Hilal, from Turkey by a certain Salih Ozcan, who is significantly the representative of Turkey on the Rabitat al-Alam al-Islami. This magazine was published in March, one month after the triumph of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, and yet it did not include a single word on the subject of Iran. Similarly, in Pakistan the magazine Criterion, which is affiliated to the Jama'at, also has been revived recently. Its first issue appeared after a long period of interruption, and it did not contain a word about the tumultuous events in Iran.
There is a great responsibility, not only upon the Muslim leaders and the Muslims at large, to learn the lessons of the Islamic Revolution but upon the leaders of the Revolution to communicate their experience to the Islamic world as a whole. There are signs that this responsibility is perceived in Iran and that steps are being undertaken to fulfill it. It is too soon to predict with any confidence the future course of events in Iran. There are grave problems now being confronted in that country, which are to be anticipated and which are not as grave or as fatal as the western press makes out. They are, nonetheless, real problems demanding real solutions.
It is also far too soon to say what will be the ultimate impact of the Revolution on other Muslim countries. Whatever be the future turn of events in Iran and other Muslim countries, there is no doubt that what has already occurred in Iran is at the same time the most unexpected and the most joyful triumph of the Islamic Ummah in the present century.