Defying the Iranian Revolution
Defying the Iranian Revolution

Author: Manouchehr Ganji

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2002-09-30

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 031301616X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The realities of Iranian life are far more harrowing than most people imagine from the outside. Ganji paints a portrait of duplicitous clerics arbitrarily arresting, torturing, mutilating, and executing citizens, all in the name of Islamic Justice. A system of apartheid has been instituted against women. While 60% of the population lives below the poverty line, the mullah regime has hoarded billions of dollars in accounts and properties in Europe, Canada, and Japan. Roughly 70% of the population is under 30 years of age and opposes the regime. In the year of 2001 alone, 220,000 people—mostly educated youth—left the country in search of better lives. Ganji stresses that the best defense against terrorism is offense, and that the United States can and must establish a proactive policy of helping Iranians struggling for the freedom of Iran, in and out of the country. Western policies toward the Iranian mullah regime have thus far been reactionary rather than proactive. The regime in Iran has been an incubator of international terrorism, aiding and abetting international terrorist groups in and out of the Middle East. The author argues that now is the time for the United States to substitute rhetoric with action in policies toward the ruling clerics in Iran.

Inside the Iranian Revolution
Inside the Iranian Revolution

Author: John D. Stempel

Publisher:

Published: 1981

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In this Second Edition of Inside the Iranian Revolution, first published in 1981, author John Stempel describes his experience and insight as a U.S. Foreign Service Officer in Tehran from 1975-1979. He then continues with an updated chapters to describe what we can draw from the experiences of three decades ago and apply to the current diplomatic relationship between the U.S. and Iran. "John Stempel is a Foreign Service officer who was stationed in Tehran through the early stages of the Iranian revolution; he left four months before the hostages were taken. Mr. Stempel explains the strength and weaknesses that accumulated through the Shah's reign. Among the latter, he says, was the Shah's alternating between attempts to build genuine political support for his regime and reliance on the repressive tactics of his secret police. Mr. Stempel's concluding chapters are effective. He suggests that the Shah might have survived by being simultaneously more liberal and more ruthless-by offering more than a token of political participation to opposition groups, but then punishing those who would not support the liberalized regime. On the American side, Mr. Stempel points out the slowness to develop intelligence sources among opposition groups and the contradictory signals sent to the Shah. Mr. Stempel also implies that, once the hostage situation reached deadlock, the United States should have come more quickly to the recognition that military force was necessary." -- Amazon.com.

Contesting the Iranian Revolution
Contesting the Iranian Revolution

Author: Pouya Alimagham

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2020-03-19

Total Pages: 335

ISBN-13: 1108475442

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Examines the last forty years of Iranian and Middle-Eastern history through the prism of the Green Uprisings of 2009.

Ghosts of Revolution
Ghosts of Revolution

Author: Shahla Talebi

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2011-01-14

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 0804775818

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"Opening the enormous metal gate, the guard suddenly took away my blindfold and asked me, tauntingly, if I would recognize my parents. With my eyes hurting from the strange light and anger in my voice, I assured him that I would. Suddenly I was pushed through the gate and the door was slammed behind me. After more than eight years, here I was, finally, out of jail . . . ." In this haunting account, Shahla Talebi remembers her years as a political prisoner in Iran. Talebi, along with her husband, was imprisoned for nearly a decade and tortured, first under the Shah and later by the Islamic Republic. Writing about her own suffering and survival and sharing the stories of her fellow inmates, she details the painful reality of prison life and offers an intimate look at a critical period of social and political transformation in Iran. Somehow through it all—through resistance and resolute hope, passion and creativity—Talebi shows how one survives. Reflecting now on experiences past, she stays true to her memories, honoring the love of her husband and friends lost in these events, to relate how people can hold to moments of love, resilience, and friendship over the dark forces of torture, violence, and hatred. At once deeply personal yet clearly political, part memoir and part meditation, this work brings to heartbreaking clarity how deeply rooted torture and violence can be in our society. More than a passing judgment of guilt on a monolithic "Islamic State," Talebi's writing asks us to reconsider our own responses to both contemporary debates of interrogation techniques and government responsibility and, more simply, to basic acts of cruelty in daily life. She offers a lasting call to us all. "The art of living in prison becomes possible through imagining life in the very presence of death and observing death in the very existence of life. It is living life so vitally and so fully that you are willing, if necessary, to let that very life go, as one would shed chains on the legs. It is embracing, and flying on the wings of death as though it is the bird of freedom."

Foucault in Iran
Foucault in Iran

Author: Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2016-08-08

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 1452950563

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Were the thirteen essays Michel Foucault wrote in 1978–1979 endorsing the Iranian Revolution an aberration of his earlier work or an inevitable pitfall of his stance on Enlightenment rationality, as critics have long alleged? Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi argues that the critics are wrong. He declares that Foucault recognized that Iranians were at a threshold and were considering if it were possible to think of dignity, justice, and liberty outside the cognitive maps and principles of the European Enlightenment. Foucault in Iran centers not only on the significance of the great thinker’s writings on the revolution but also on the profound mark the event left on his later lectures on ethics, spirituality, and fearless speech. Contemporary events since 9/11, the War on Terror, and the Arab Uprisings have made Foucault’s essays on the Iranian Revolution more relevant than ever. Ghamari-Tabrizi illustrates how Foucault saw in the revolution an instance of his antiteleological philosophy: here was an event that did not fit into the normative progressive discourses of history. What attracted him to the Iranian Revolution was precisely its ambiguity. Theoretically sophisticated and empirically rich, this interdisciplinary work will spark a lively debate in its insistence that what informed Foucault’s writing was not an effort to understand Islamism but, rather, his conviction that Enlightenment rationality has not closed the gate of unknown possibilities for human societies.

An Island of Stability
An Island of Stability

Author: Mark Thiessen

Publisher: Sidestone Press

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 80

ISBN-13: 9088900191

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In 1979, the world was taken by surprise when the Iranian people revolted against their westernized ruling elite, and traded in the Shah for a radical Islamic republic ruled by the most senior Shiite cleric, ayatollah Khomeini. The Islamic revolution of Iran was a breaking point in history. It was the defining moment for Islam in the twentieth century and fuelled the Islamic confidence that has since then only grown. The roots of the revolution were deeply entrenched in the recent history of Iran, yet in the West, almost no one knew what was happening. The rise of ayatollah Khomeini and the Islamic republic seemed to have come out of nowhere. In this book, historian Mark Thiessen tries to answer the most important questions of the Islamic revolution. What happened, and where did it come from? This book explores the background of the revolution, and gives a detailed account of its course. It analyzes the rise of Khomeini, and his ideology. By studying the archives of the Dutch embassy in Tehran, Thiessen finally tries to find out about the way the Dutch mission experienced and interpreted the revolution, at a time when the outcome was not yet clear.

Days of Revolution
Days of Revolution

Author: Mary Elaine Hegland

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2013-10-30

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 0804788855

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Outside of Shiraz in the Fars Province of southwestern Iran lies "Aliabad." Mary Hegland arrived in this then-small agricultural village of several thousand people in the summer of 1978, unaware of the momentous changes that would sweep this town and this country in the months ahead. She became the only American researcher to witness the Islamic Revolution firsthand over her eighteen-month stay. Days of Revolution offers an insider's view of how regular people were drawn into, experienced, and influenced the 1979 Revolution and its aftermath. Conventional wisdom assumes Shi'a religious ideology fueled the revolutionary movement. But Hegland counters that the Revolution spread through much more pragmatic concerns: growing inequality, lack of development and employment opportunities, government corruption. Local expectations of leaders and the political process—expectations developed from their experience with traditional kinship-based factions—guided local villagers' attitudes and decision-making, and they often adopted the religious justifications for Revolution only after joining the uprising. Sharing stories of conflict and revolution alongside in-depth interviews, the book sheds new light on this critical historical moment. Returning to Aliabad decades later, Days of Revolution closes with a view of the village and revolution thirty years on. Over the course of several visits between 2003 and 2008, Mary Hegland investigates the lasting effects of the Revolution on the local political factions and in individual lives. As Iran remains front-page news, this intimate look at the country's recent history and its people has never been more timely or critical for understanding the critical interplay of local and global politics in Iran.

The Iranian Revolution
The Iranian Revolution

Author: Brendan January

Publisher: Twenty-First Century Books

Published: 2008-01-01

Total Pages: 164

ISBN-13: 0761340270

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In the Middle Eastern nation of Iran, discontent simmered for decades. The Iranian people despised their leader, Reza Shah, who catered to foreign businesses while ruling Iran as a dictator. In 1979 discontent boiled up into all-out revolution. Led by the charismatic Ayatollah Khomeini, the Iranian people seized control and created a new government based on the Islamic religion. The Iranian Revolution quickly became a showdown between the ideas and values of Islam and those of the West—particularly the United States. The most dramatic event in this showdown occurred in late 1979, when Iranian students captured a group of U.S. Embassy staff, holding them hostage for more than a year. During the following decades, the revolution recast the face of the Middle East: it set in motion a movement of Islamic fundamentalism—a movement that has taken center stage in world events in the twenty-first century. The Iranian Revolution is an ongoing story. However the story ends, the revolution is surely one of world history’s most pivotal moments.

Days of God
Days of God

Author: James Buchan

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2013-10-15

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13: 1416597824

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A myth-busting insider’s account of the Iranian Revolution of 1979 that destroyed US influence in the country and transformed the politics of the Middle East and the world. The 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran was one of the seminal events of our time. It inaugurated more than thirty years of war in the Middle East and fostered an Islamic radicalism that shapes foreign policy in the United States and Europe to this day. Drawing on his lifetime of engagement with Iran, James Buchan explains the history that gave rise to the Revolution, in which Ayatollah Khomeini and his supporters displaced the Shah with little diffi­culty. Mystifyingly to outsiders, the people of Iran turned their backs on a successful Westernized government for an amateurish religious regime. Buchan dispels myths about the Iranian Revolution and instead assesses the historical forces to which it responded. He puts the extremism of the Islamic regime in perspective: a truly radical revolution, it can be compared to the French or Russian Revolu­tions. Using recently declassified diplomatic papers and Persian-language news reports, diaries, memoirs, interviews, and theological tracts, Buchan illumi­nates both Khomeini and the Shah. His writing is always clear, dispassionate, and informative. The Iranian Revolution was a turning point in modern history, and James Buchan’s Days of God is, as London’s Independent put it, “a compelling, beautifully written history” of that event.

Iran Awakening
Iran Awakening

Author: Shirin Ebadi

Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks

Published: 2007-04-10

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 0812975286

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • The moving, inspiring memoir of one of the great women of our times, Shirin Ebadi, winner of the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize and advocate for the oppressed, whose spirit has remained strong in the face of political persecution and despite the challenges she has faced raising a family while pursuing her work. Best known in this country as the lawyer working tirelessly on behalf of Canadian photojournalist, Zara Kazemi—raped, tortured and murdered in Iran—Dr. Ebadi offers us a vivid picture of the struggles of one woman against the system. The book movingly chronicles her childhood in a loving, untraditional family, her upbringing before the Revolution in 1979 that toppled the Shah, her marriage and her religious faith, as well as her life as a mother and lawyer battling an oppressive regime in the courts while bringing up her girls at home. Outspoken, controversial, Shirin Ebadi is one of the most fascinating women today. She rose quickly to become the first female judge in the country; but when the religious authorities declared women unfit to serve as judges she was demoted to clerk in the courtroom she had once presided over. She eventually fought her way back as a human rights lawyer, defending women and children in politically charged cases that most lawyers were afraid to represent. She has been arrested and been the target of assassination, but through it all has spoken out with quiet bravery on behalf of the victims of injustice and discrimination and become a powerful voice for change, almost universally embraced as a hero. Her memoir is a gripping story—a must-read for anyone interested in Zara Kazemi’s case, in the life of a remarkable woman, or in understanding the political and religious upheaval in our world. Praise for Shirin Ebadi and Iran Awakening “This is the riveting story of an amazing and very brave woman living through some quite turbulent times. And she emerges with head unbowed.”—Archbishop Desmond Tutu “The safety and freedom of citizens in democracies is irretrievably bound with the safety and freedom of people like Shirin Ebadi who are fighting to reassert the best achievements of mankind: universal human rights. One of the staunchest advocates for human rights in her country and beyond, Ms. Ebadi, herself a devout Muslim, represents hope for many in Muslim societies that Islam and democracy are indeed compatible.”—Azar Nafisi “A moving portrait of a life lived in truth.”—The New York Times Book Review “A riveting account of a brave, lonely struggle . . . [Iran Awakening] reads like a police thriller, its drama heightened by Ebadi’s determination to keep up the quotidian aspects of her family life.”—The Washington Post Book World “A must read . . . may be the most important book you could read this year.”—Seattle Post-Intelligencer