Secularization, Industrialization, and Khomeini’s Islamic Republic

Abstract

The recent political developments in Iran are frequently said to reflect a failure of intelligence and policy in Washington and other major world capitals. With equal justification, one could speak of a failure of orthodox theories of development. The establishment of an Islamic republic by means of a mass-based movement in Iran in 1979-and signs of a similar popular potential in countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and even Turkey-could not have been predicted by either liberal or Marxist theoretical models of modernization. The time has come to reassess one of the most cherished and basic assumptions of mainstream theory: that secularization accompanies industrialization and social change, with the traditional elites and belief systems giving way to a modern state, and religion occupying its allotted space in the private realm. In earlier cases it was easier for the theorist of development to explain the political uses made of Islam, the reference to Islamic values, and identity. In the case of Qadhafi's Libya, for example, the reestablishment of Islamic law could be interpreted as an attempt to achieve popular and ideological support for what was in reality a modernizing military government. Theorists portrayed Islam as serving as a traditional fundament for a transitional society that constructed its value system from heterogeneous elements including socialism, neutralism, and a belief in progress. In the case of the Palestinians, the mixed religious composition of even the most radical segments of the Palestine Liberation Organization allowed it to be classified as a nationalist irredenta movement rather than a genuinely Islamic phenomenon. Based on the Iranian revolution and Khomeini's concept of an Islamic