Iranian Revolution turns 32

Achievement to be admired:

Hamza Haniffa

Islamic Revolution

*Unique achievement beholden of neither superpower

*Led by Imam Ayatollah Khomeini

*Western agents killed over 1,200 figures involved in Revolution

*Enjoys mass public support

*Helped Iran make remarkable progress in all fields

*Model for all Muslims

*An obsession of US and allies
 

Iran’s Islamic Revolution turns 32 this month and when we consider the pressures exerted on it during these years since the Shah’s regime was overthrown, even the Islamic nation’s strongest critics cannot but admit that there is something special about the Revolution.

If still there is doubt about this, we should go back to study how the Revolution occurred and what it signalled for the prevailing dominant global order.

We will find that despite much hype about national independence movements in the early part of the last century that culminated in the emergence of scores of new states on the world map, their independence was fraudulent. The regimes that emerged from the bowels of colonialism were as much a part of the colonial system as they were during direct colonialism imposed from Europe.

Business as usual

Only the rulers’ faces changed; from white men lording over brown-dark skinned people to brown-dark skinned men taking over from white masters. For the overwhelming majority of masses in Asia and Africa, it was business as usual.

The present political architecture of the world was cobbled together by the victors of the Second World War.

They declared that they have a right to determine how the rest of the world should be governed. It is a continuation of colonialism that had existed for at least 200 years.

At the end of the Second World War the exploitative system was formalized through such instruments as the United Nations and the Security Council, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. All these were actually aliases for the predatory powers led by the United States.

The world was also then divided into spheres of influence between the Soviet Union and the US ensuring no country was allowed to break from either power’s area of influence. If any dared, the predatory power’s tanks, ships, troops and planes were always ready to bring it back into line.

Malicious propaganda

Iran’s unique achievement is that its movement for freedom was beholden to neither superpower.

It was led by a Muttaqi alim (pious scholar), Imam Khomeini, whose understanding and learning of the global situation was rooted in the values and teachings of Islam.

He did not look or behave like any of the other leaders of so-called independence movements whether Ahmed Soekarno or Jamal Abdul Nasser of Egypt or the host of others. Imam Khomeini also did not lead a ‘national’ movements; he led an Islamic movement that wanted nothing less than the total dismantling of the colonial imposed order in Iran.

Had Iran conducted itself like Saudi Arabia or Pakistan, for instance, the West would not have unleashed its vicious propaganda and war against the Islamic State.

Criminal acts

Even before the revolution had succeeded in overthrowing the Western-backed regime of Shah Reza Pahlevi, malicious propaganda of willful distortions and lies were being spread. Worse was to follow. Immediately after the victory of the Islamic Revolution, a campaign of assassinations of leading figures of the revolution was launched. It was perpetrated through the West’s agents such as the munafiqeen who go under the name of MujahidinKhalq Organisation (MKO).

More than 1,200 leading figures of the revolution became victim of these criminal acts. Among them were Ayatullah Moffateh, Ayatullah Mutahhari, Chief Justice Ayatullah Beheshti, President Muhammad Ali Rajaei and Prime Minister Muhammad Bahonar.

Unshakable faith

Even the present Leader Ayatullah Khamanei lost the use of one hand in a bomb attack. Any other State would have collapsed, but the Islamic State led by the Imam stood firm because he had unshakable faith in Allah and enjoyed the support of the masses.

To add to this, while Iran was still in the throes of the revolution, the West led by America incited and supported an external invasion from Iraq. In fact, Saddam Hussain was only a front for a coalition of states.

The US, Britain, France, Germany and the entire crop of illegitimate Arabian regimes minus Syria.

The Iraq-led war was supposed to cripple Iran and bring it to its knees. Bani Sadr, who was President at the time, wanted to surrender after two weeks.

It was Imam Khomeini’s courage that dismissed all talk of defeatism. Bani Sadr soon fled the country to save his skin but Islamic Iran went onto wage a valiant struggle for eight years in defence of the revolution. And it did it all alone.

At the end of the war it had incurred no debt unlike Britain that had accumulated $ 55 billion in debt at the end of the Second World War that had lasted a mere five years. The US today has a debt of over $ 11 trillion because of the two wars it is waging in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We should also not forget the fact that the Islamic state has also been subjected to sanctions and the US is also holding billions of dollars of Iranian assets in the country. However, these sanctions have turned out to be blessings in disguise. Without any outside help, Iranian scientists and engineers have made remarkable progress in the nuclear and other scientific fields defying all Western predictions of its imminent collapse.

In addition, the US and the West and Zionist Israel have added sectarianism to their arsenal to prevent Iran becoming a model for all Muslims by propaganda that the revolution is a Shiah one and in this plot they have been supported by the Saudis and the other Sheikhdoms and kingdoms and Egypt which fear that if the Islamic Revolution takes hold their interests and their kingdoms and regimes will be history.

It is ironic that none of them spoke of Iran as a Shiah State when the Shah was in power. In fact even the Saudis were pals of the Pahelevis. Having failed in all these, the enemies of the Islamic State have brought up the case of Iran going for nuclear power despite the fact that it has been made very clear by Iranians that they have no intention to go for nuclear weaponry and unlike America’s favourite Israel, Iran is signatory to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.

Foreign policy

It is important to remember that when Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as President of the United States of America in January 1981, Iran and its recent Islamic Revolution was an obsession for the US and its allies. Thirty years later, little has changed in that regard. Although much was made in some circles of the inauguration of Barack Obama as US President in place of George W Bush, the fundamentals of American foreign policy have not shown any change - it’s the neo-con, Zionist-controlled and dictated policy that is being continued. It is bushism without Bush and the main target is Islam and the Islamic State of Iran.

In conclusion, let us remember that in addition to surviving all the hostile moves and propaganda the Islamic leaders and people of Iran have confirmed, after decades of propaganda to the contrary, that the principles and values of Islam can be used as the foundation of a modern state in a modern society and that an Islamic State can prosper as such.

For decades since the colonial period, Muslims had been told that modern societies had to be Western societies; that Islam had been outstripped by scientific and technological progress and the modernization of societies and could no longer provide the basis for social orders. Always there were Muslims who rejected such arguments, but increasingly Muslims, particularly the Western-educated ones implicitly or effectively accepted them.

Modern world

All the propaganda against it notwithstanding Iran stands as an example of an Islamic country and that a so-called Third World one that rejects Western hegemony and is charting its own path in the modern world, proving that Islam can be modern and progressive.

Doing so, it is developing the most dynamic political and social institutions in the Muslim world today.

Western intellectuals have long since declared the failure of ‘political Islam’, more in hope than expectation.

Islamic Iran stands before us as a beacon proving them wrong and providing an example for Islamic Movements everywhere to emulate.

What Iran’s Islamic Movement achieved in 1979 is what other Islamic movements the world over are trying to achieve in their own countries. If Iran falls, the task facing movements will become much more difficult even than it is now.

This is something we cannot afford to allow to happen.

The writer is the Chairman, Al Islam Foundation of Sri Lanka