Written by Rafiq Ali

To understand the Islamic Revolution we must understand the history of colonialism in the country and its impact on the material and spiritual development of the Iranian people. Iran’s suffering under colonialism was the most acute during the age of Imperialism in the late 19th/20th century. What was many times throughout its history, one of the most powerful and advanced nations on Earth, had fallen behind the countries of Europe who had grown prosperous from their genocidal exploitation of Africa and the “New” World.

This process accelerated when oil was discovered in Iran in 1908. This discovery precipitated the formation of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (now known as BP), a corporation which would take shape as a state monopoly of the British Crown (1). The British bourgeoisie, backed by the power of its empire, directly controlled Iran’s most precious natural resource for nearly half a century. The British capitalists brutally exploited Iranian workers in the oil fields of Khuzestan, and reordered the nation’s economic, political and social life around colonial extraction. The British Empire would quickly exercise their might during the first Imperialist World War when Iran was occupied by the British and Tsarist Russian armies who requisitioned grain for their troops. Additionally, livestock and other resources of the nation were requisitioned to keep the oil in the Khuzestan region flowing into British warships, factories and vehicles.

Of the roughly 19 million person population of Iran, an estimated 8–10 million would perish between 1917–1919 (2). All living Iranians today are the descendents of the half of the population which survived this colonial genocide. This was my great grandmother’s generation, a woman who welcomed my birth and shared the first several years of my life with me. Popular unrest and dissatisfaction with the Qajar dynasties’ capitulation to foreign domination led to the establishment of a national constitution in 1911, enshrining the constitutional monarchy. This form of government would become one of the world’s first experiments in Neo-Colonialism, a method of indirect rule which would end up defining the post-WW2 Global South.

When popular resentment from the exploitation of the nation could not be suppressed with escalating force, the British simply substituted one puppet for another via Coup D’etats in 1921 (replacing the Qajar Dynasty with Reza Shah Pahlavi) and in 1941 (replacing the Reza Shah with his own son, the man most know as the Shah of Iran of the 20th century). Reza Shah Pahlavi, reflecting the wannabe tendencies of the domestic comprador class, passed policies that directly attacked the indigenous Islamic culture with the goal of westernizing the country. A law requiring Iranians to dress in western clothing and another which banned all forms of Hijab/Chador (among a comprehensive attack on Iranian culture) led to the first popular rebellion of the Islamic base at the Imam Reza Shrine in Mashad. Here were Muslims at the vanguard of the struggle against colonialism, and so deeply ran the Iranian Islamic spirit that domestic policemen and armies refused to violate the sanctity of the shrine. Clergy and protestors declared the Shah as “the new Yazid” [a reference to the murderer of Imam Husayn (AS)]. It would be impossible to define in this essay the importance of Imam Husayn (AS) and Karbala to the revolutionary Shia national identity, and here we would see the first rumblings of a sleeping giant.This rebellion was put down when the Shah brought in troops from Iranian Azerbaijan who massacred the protestors, defiling the sacred shrine.

Like many nations in the Global South which sensed the strategic opportunity of the post WWII period, Iran would elect a well intentioned nationalist by the name of Mohammad Mossadegh as prime minister in 1952. His administration quickly went to work nationalizing the oil industry and passing a variety of social reforms. This would lead swiftly to a coup against his government led by the newly formed CIA in partnership with MI6. It would prove a valuable trial run for tactics which would become emblematic of the imperialist attack on global south nations to this day. What would follow was a period of brutal repression led by the CIA trained SAVAK secret police which murdered thousands of Iranians.

While under severe repression, the “sleeping giant” would begin to stretch its legs. Revolutionary Islamic intellectuals like Ali Shariati, Jalal Al-e Ahmad, and most famously Sayyed Ruhollah Khomeini would formulate the theory of a revolutionary national identity based on the Islamic fabric of Iranian society. This would culminate in the overthrow of the Shah’s regime in 1979 through mass demonstrations. During this time, mosques would become a hub of revolutionary organizing and education. A driving force was that religious Iranians would commemorate the deaths of martyrs in the struggle against the Shah on the 40th day following their martyrdom. During these mass demonstrations the Shah’s forces would kill protestors which would lead to more martyrdom marches until the whole of the religious population of Iran was mobilized. Khomeini specifically directed his followers to not accept concessions and to raise their demands ultimately to revolution.