Shiites Muslim Jihadists
Twenty eight years ago God’s Muslim warriors rocked the world and gave America a tasted fundamentalism, when Islamic revolutionary students stormed the embassy and took American diplomats hostage for 444 days, which set off a wave of Islamic fundamentalism throughout the Muslim world.
The Iranians were reacting against decades of Western interference. You could see this as Iran’s declaration of independence. The ruler of Iran, the Shah, had been restored to power in the 1950s in a CIA coup. He was rushing to modernize his country, like his father before him.
The Shahs in Iran used to make their soldiers go out with their bayonets at the ready, ripping off women’s veils and tearing them to pieces in front of them in the streets. Mohammed Reza Shah ruthlessly crushed dissent and exiled mullahs who challenged him. The most prominent, a firebrand cleric named Ayatollah Khomeini, blasted back, calling the Shah the enemy of Islam.
He brought Iranians out onto the streets by pointing out the injustice of the Shah's rule. With Iran’s constitution in one hand and the Koran in the other, Khomeini offered up Islam as the antidote to and Western dominance of Iran. Many Iranians saw it as a purifying ritual. Khomeini and the revolutionary mullahs were able to speak to Shiite traditions, not to Marxism or secularist ideas that had no grassroots among the ordinary people.
Khomeini’s revolution created the world’s first modern theocracy, a fundamentalist Islamic republic that stood up to Americans and humiliated a superpower. The relationship between Iran and America has never recovered from the takeover of our embassy in the heart of Tehran.
Back in 1979, Dr. Massoumeh Ebtekar was the voice of the revolution. She would eventually become Iran’s first female vice president and is presently pushing for more democracy.
Recently, Dr. Ebtekar has said: “We felt very strongly for the independence of our country. We felt very strongly for the dignity of the Iranian people. We felt very strongly about the intervention of the American government in our affairs. We were not terrorists. We were not militia. We had no military training. It was a genuine student movement and the hostages were considered spies working in the United States embassy.”
The Iranians were reacting against decades of Western interference. You could see this as Iran’s declaration of independence. The ruler of Iran, the Shah, had been restored to power in the 1950s in a CIA coup. He was rushing to modernize his country, like his father before him.
The Shahs in Iran used to make their soldiers go out with their bayonets at the ready, ripping off women’s veils and tearing them to pieces in front of them in the streets. Mohammed Reza Shah ruthlessly crushed dissent and exiled mullahs who challenged him. The most prominent, a firebrand cleric named Ayatollah Khomeini, blasted back, calling the Shah the enemy of Islam.
He brought Iranians out onto the streets by pointing out the injustice of the Shah's rule. With Iran’s constitution in one hand and the Koran in the other, Khomeini offered up Islam as the antidote to and Western dominance of Iran. Many Iranians saw it as a purifying ritual. Khomeini and the revolutionary mullahs were able to speak to Shiite traditions, not to Marxism or secularist ideas that had no grassroots among the ordinary people.
Khomeini’s revolution created the world’s first modern theocracy, a fundamentalist Islamic republic that stood up to Americans and humiliated a superpower. The relationship between Iran and America has never recovered from the takeover of our embassy in the heart of Tehran.
Back in 1979, Dr. Massoumeh Ebtekar was the voice of the revolution. She would eventually become Iran’s first female vice president and is presently pushing for more democracy.
Recently, Dr. Ebtekar has said: “We felt very strongly for the independence of our country. We felt very strongly for the dignity of the Iranian people. We felt very strongly about the intervention of the American government in our affairs. We were not terrorists. We were not militia. We had no military training. It was a genuine student movement and the hostages were considered spies working in the United States embassy.”
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