The Iranian Revolution at 30

The Three Paradoxes of the Islamic Revolution in Iran
Abbas Milani
The Islamic Revolution of 1979 is an event defined as much by its ironies and paradoxes
as by its novelties and cruelties.
It was, by scholarly near-consensus, the most “popular revolution” in modern times —
almost 11% of the population participated in it, compared to the approximate 7% and
9% of the citizens who took part in the French and Russian revolutions. As a concept,
revolution is itself a child of modernity, in that it revolves around the idea that legiti-
mate power can emanate only from a social contract consecrated by the general will of
Abbas Milani is the Hamid
a sovereign people. Before the rise of modernity and the idea of the natural rights of and Christina Moghadam
human beings, “revolution” as a word had no political connotation and simply referred Director of Iranian Studies
to the movement of celestial bodies. The word took on its new political meaning — the
at Stanford University where
he is also a Research Fellow
sudden, often violent, structural change in the nature and distribution of power and at the Hoover Institution.
privilege — when the idea of a citizenry (imbued with natural rights, including the right His most recent book, Emi-
to decide who rules over them) replaced the medieval idea of “subjects” (a passive popunent Persians: The Men and
Women who Made Modern
lace, bereft of rights, deemed needful of the guardianship of an aristocracy or royalty).
Iran, 1941-1979 (two volumes)
was just published by
In Iran, despite the requisite popular agency of a revolution, events in 1979 paradoxi- Syracuse University Press.
cally gave rise to a regime wherein popular sovereignty was denigrated by the regime’s
founding father, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, as a colonial construct, created to undermine
the Islamic concept of umma (or spiritual community). In Ayatollah Khomeini’s
treatise on Islamic government, the will of the people is subservient to the dictates of
the divine, as articulated by the Supreme Leader. In this sense, his concept of an Islamic
Revolution is an oxymoron and its concomitant idea of Islamic government — velayate
faqih, or rule of the Jurist — is irreconcilable with the modern democratic ideal of
popular sovereignty. On the contrary, velayat-e faqih posits a population in need of a
guardian, much as minors need guardians. The people are, in other words, “subjects,” not
citizens. On the other hand, he called the same populace to a revolution —historically,
the defiant act of a citizenry cognizant of its ability and right to demand a new social
contract. The most popular of all “modern revolutions” then led to the creation of a state
whose constitution places absolute power in the hand of an unelected, unimpeachable
man, and whose basic political philosophy posits people as subjects and pliable tools of
the Faqih. If this constitutes the philosophical paradox of the Islamic Revolution, there
is also a stark historic paradox evident in its evolution.
The Islamic Revolution was in a sense a replay of Iran’s first assay at a democratic con-
26 The Middle East Institute Viewpoints: The Iranian Revolution at 30 • www.mideasti.org