Iran's Quiet Revolution

"In remembering the 1978 Iranian Revolution, there is a scholarly convention of memory capturing our imagination. A given consensus seems to be evolving that, at the cultural and intellectual levels, the Revolution represented a sharp cultural war opposing the "modernist" Pahlavi State to a fiercely traditional "religious" opposition. Following this unthought template, the Revolution is recalled as a major confrontation between modernity and tradition. This book ventures a different and more nuanced analysis, arguing for a convergence of anti-modern, spiritual, and nativist discourse in both the Pahlavi state and the Islamist revolutionary movement"--