Answering Only to God: Faith and Freedom in Twenty-First-Century Iran

Answering Only to God: Faith and Freedom in Twenty-First-Century Iran
ISBN-10
0805075143
ISBN-13
9780805075144
Category
History
Pages
324
Language
English
Published
2003
Publisher
Macmillan
Authors
Jonathan Lyons, Geneive Abdo

Description

“Riveting . . . a side of Iran that is often misrepresented by the world’s media—[an] insightful, captivating book.” —San Francisco Chronicle Taking the reader inside Iran’s key institutions, Geneive Abdo and Jonathan Lyons argue that the 1979 Iranian revolution, long viewed in the West as the pursuit of an imagined medieval Utopia, was in fact a political movement designed to modernize Islam. Twenty years later, a power struggle between conservative and reform elements provoked a clash that has destabilized the country and limited Iran’s ability to integrate with the world community. Answering Only to God challenges the prevailing Western belief that the Islamic world is an undifferentiated mass of disaffected and dangerous fanatics or that a Western-style democracy will soon transform this ancient land of Shi’ite and Sufi tradition. Instead, the authors explore the controversial view that beyond their quarrel with the West, stemming from decades of exploitive foreign policies, the real struggle in Iran is between reformers and conservative mullahs.

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