Busy presents beget busy histories
It is strangely refreshing to see that nobody “knows” anymore. The critical thinking previously reserved for epistemologists has been ushered in healthy doses into the domain of common sense. Where once intellectuals, nay-sayers, and outsiders alone celebrated the limits of human knowledge, today prime ministers, merchants, and manual laborers stand together amidst the fog of the present. To better understand the world around us, we decided to rip a page from the anti-modernist playbook, plowing forward by looking backwards to two key dates of the recent past – 1979 and 1989 – in the hopes of coming to terms with 2009.

A rough but welcome swing at stability
2009 has already refuted the Anglo-American model of capitalism. 1989 tore down the Wall and sedated Communism. 1979, though, provided a model of political Islamism that offers a counter-narrative to the Atlanticist understanding of the Middle East and Eurasia at large. The ripple effect set off by the Iranian Revolution is second only to that of the Russian Revolution in the 20th century. Like its Russian precedent, the events of 1979 in Tehran were based on an anti-imperialist ideology (instead of capitalist, read Western) which was subsequently exported beyond its borders. If Ceausescu, Castro, and Ho Chi Minh are the bastard children of Lenin, then the political impacts of such a diverse range of figures as Sheikh Yassin (of Hamas), Hassan Nasrallah (of Hezbollah) or Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani (of Iraq) owe a great deal to the events of Tehran 1979.
     Perhaps the last true modernist revolution, the Iranian Revolution resulted in massive and profound changes within a very short period of time. On New Year’s Eve 1977 in Tehran, President Carter made a toast to the Shah of Iran:
Iran, because of the great leadership of the Shah, is an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world. This is a great tribute to you, Your Majesty, and to your leadership and to the respect and the admiration and love which your people give to you.
     Within a two-year span, the Shah would flee the country, Khomeini would return from exile in Neufchâtel, outside Paris, the Iran hostage crisis would bring down the Carter administration, and the first Muslim theocracy in more than 1,000 years would come into existence.

The march of the immaterial
With some inadvertent help from the Bush administration (who removed two of Iran’s neighboring enemies, the Taliban to the east and Saddam to the west), Iran has been able to punch at or above its weight in a world of opponents whose boxing gloves aren’t getting any softer. And in the tradition of that very administration, it may be the only country in the Middle East to play such a significant role in the affairs of so many neighbors: Syria and Lebanon via Hezbollah, Palestine via Hamas, Afghanistan via the Karzai government, and Iraq with backing for the Shi’as. Still, to combine a theocracy with a republic – as the Islamic Republic of Iran does – is to collide two sufficiently complex notions: the mysticism of the rule of god (in a theocracy) comes crashing against the material concerns of the rule of man (in a republic). It is, after all, hard enough to deliver results on a material utopia without trying to advance a metaphysical one as well. Yet that is what the Islamic Republic of Iran attempted, especially in its early days: a politico-mystical salvation.
     Today, 30 years later, as Iran prepares its presidential election, it is not only the country’s direction that is at stake but also the future of Islam’s relation with modernity at large. Just as the events of 1979 brought the religion out of seminaries and onto front pages of newspapers and prime-time programs across the Western world, Iran can today play a pivotal role less in redeeming the radicalism of Islam but rather in reinventing its progressive potential.
 

Nothing perhaps best encapsulates the rapidity of the Shah’s fall than the celebration of 2,500 years of Iranian monarchy, known as the Peacock Throne, in 1971. With no extravagance spared, a tent city with air conditioning was erected on the site of Persepolis, near Shiraz in southern Iran. Maxim’s de Paris did the catering (including roast peacock stuffed with foie gras), Limoges provided the dinnerware, and Lanvin the uniforms for the Imperial household. 250 red Mercedes-Benz limousines shuttled hundreds of presidents, prime ministers, and royalty around in what turned out to be the swan song of the Pahlavi dynasty.
The Peacock with a wee cock.
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran with Empress Farah

Mix tapes of modernist Islam courtesy of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (1902-1989)
During Khomeini’s 14-year exile, first in Iraq then in France, his sermons and speeches were smuggled into Iran via audio cassette tapes and distributed throughout the country. The ‘70s equivalent of the Russians’ samizdat, Khomeini’s tapes played a significant role in mobilizing both the masses and energizing the disillusioned middle class during the 1970s.

After more than a decade of exile in Iraq, Khomeini spent some time in Neufchâtel, a leafy suburb outside Paris, where urban legend has it he often ran into Marguerite Duras at the grocery store where the two would discuss different sorts of pasta.
Meanwhile in Neufchâtel …
Marguerite Duras (L) and Ruhollah Khomeini (R)

Man is an animal who, just like a tree, grows toward the sky above. He is the tall statue of rebellion who has risen from the lowliness of the mundane world toward the beyond. He has been created in the image of imagination and dream to pierce all ceilings. All his organs are swords fighting whatever “is.” He fights against whatever holds him, whatever imposes him. He has a rebellious neck to stick out. He has not submitted to the corrosive effects of the elements and has not surrendered in weakness; he has not conformed to the bonds of nature. He wishes to break, tear, pierce, clutter, soar, and be liberated. He is the tree of rebellion, the flower of negation. His answer to the eternal “is” is “no.”
Ali Shariati, “Hubut” (The Fall). Collected Works, vol 13. Tehran: Chapakhsh, 1983.

Feeding Carter to the sharks
Carter was largely defeated due to the 444-day Iran hostage crisis, the first time a non-equal power openly challenged the hegemony of the United States’ power and the US flinched.
Returning from Exile in Style
Khomeini’s return aboard an Air France Boeing held huge symbolic power by adding the final, gilded legitimacy to a man who had been publicly condemned by the regime, whose son had been murdered by the Shah’s secret police, and who had been in exile for more than 15 years.

Participation, Paper, Politics
The relatively hard versus the hardly relative

Injured we are in the soul by you, History
A sense of historical injustice or victimhood plays a significant role in the Shi’a faith, originating from the very split from the Sunnis. Every year, Shi’as mourn the beheading of Imam Hossein, one of the twelve imams, at the hands of the Sunni Umayyad Caliph. The role of martyrdom has since been appropriated by Sunnis, and in particular Wahhabis, as justification for various suicide attacks.

Punching at yr weight or how to have one’s fingers in many kibbehs
(clockwise L-R) Kurdistan, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq
Beveled, Brutal, Bling: attraction sans repulsion of mirrored mosaics
Shi’ite Shrine, Damascus, Syria
Original photography by Abbas Attar, Reza Deghati, Denis Glicksman, the estate of Kaveh Golestan, Shahrokh Hatami, Mohammad Kalari, and Slavs and Tatars.