Clergy known as Ayatollah or Marajah have had a significant influence on most Iranians, who have tended to be religious, traditional, and opposed to any process of widespread westernisation. The Ayatollahs first showed themselves to be a powerful political force in opposition to Iran’s monarch with the 1891 Tobacco Protest boycott that effectively destroyed an unpopular concession granted by the Shah giving a British company a monopoly over buying and selling tobacco in Iran.
Decades later, the monarchy and the clerics clashed again, this time monarchy holding the upper hand. Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi’s father, Reza Shah, replaced Islamic laws with western ones, and forbade traditional Islamic clothing, separation of the sexes and veiling of women (hijab). Police and SAVAK – the Shah’s intelligence – forcibly removed and tore chadors off women and turban of Men who resisted his ban on public veiling and donning religious gears. In 1935 dozens were killed and hundreds injured when a rebellion by pious Muslims against Reza Shah broke out in Tehran and other cities of the country.
In 1941, the young Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was installed by foreign powers in place of his father Reza Khan in a well-orchestrated palace coup. The young Shah continued the process of westernisation of Iranian society. He was harsher than his father in enforcing the ban on headscarves, veil and turban from public sphere in Iran. Young Shah surpassed his father in developing very close relationship with the United States and then newly formed State of Israel. Later, young Shah cemented the ties with Israelis when he supplied oil to beleaguered Israel in Arab-Israel wars.
Demonstrations against the Shah commenced in October 1977, developing into a campaign of civil resistance that was partly secular and partly religious, and intensified in January 1978. Between August and December 1978 strikes and demonstrations paralysed the country. The Shah left Iran for exile on 16 January 1979 as the last Persian monarch and in the resulting power vacuum two weeks later on 1 February 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Tehran to a greeting by several million Iranians. The royal reign collapsed shortly after on 11 February when guerrillas and rebel troops overwhelmed troops loyal to the Shah in armed street fighting. Iran voted by national referendum to become an Islamic Republic on 1 April 1979, and to approve a new democratic-theocratic hybrid constitution Vilayate Faghih, Ayatollah Khomeini became Supreme Leader of the country, in December 1979.
Radiance kept a close eye on the unfolding events in Iran in the mid and late 1970s. Radiance has covered the Iranian Revolution since its beginning; to be precisely when the discontent against Shah started – that ultimately culminated into the overthrow of western backed Pahlavi regime and Shah Reza Pahlavi left the country to save his life. Radiance perspective on the Iranian Revolution has always been pro-people, pro-revolution and raised the concerns and plight of Iranian masses that were subject to extreme suppression and tyranny of the Shah Regime.
Then return of Ayatollah Khomeini witnessed the sea of people in Tehran to welcome him on the Airport, later renamed to Imam Khomeini International Airport. Shah Reza, who, like his father, was western installed monarch in Iran, imposed strict secularism rivalled only with Mustafa Kemal’s staunch secularism in Turkey.
The Islamic Revolution of Iran was hailed by the Muslim world with huge expectation; it was the first time in the modern history of Muslim world when a people’s movement ousted a ruler. It took 16 years since the ouster of Mohammad Mosaddegh, the first democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister in US-UK sponsored coup.
On 18 February 1979 Radiance published a story with title “We Hail the New Dawn” analysing the new Islamist Iran: “It is a thrilling experience. Great things are happening in important parts of the world. After a long time the world is witnessing religion, which had for long been on the defensive asserting itself and taking the lead which had all along been its due.”
The article, “Tasks before Bazargan” in the 25 February issue focussed the Ayatollah Khomeini appointed rival Prime Minister Mehndi Bazargan of the country. In his 40 minutes speech at Behesht-e-Zehra cemetery, Ayatollah Khomeini addressed huge mass which was heard in pin-drop silence. “I beg the Almighty to cut the hands of foreigners and loosen their grip on Iran.” He complained that Tehran had “more bars and liquor shops than book-shops. We are not against modernism; we are combating its savage and immoral aspects”.
Western media’s coverage on Iran was as biased at that time as it is today; they covered the stories most of them exaggerated and crooked focusing on mistreatment of foreigners and problem faced by western embassy and consulate staff residing in Tehran and other big cities of the country.
Writing for Radiance in the 15 May 1979 issue, R. Mohan in his “Iran after Shahenshah” covered the entire spectrum of the Iranian Revolution and discipline and commitment showed by Iranian youth during the chaotic transition after the Shah’s exile where 3,70,000 armed forces of Shah crumbled and dismantled , entire police force and SAVAK were withdrawn from the streets of Tehran and other cities.
The immense hopes that the Islamic revolution of Iran espoused in the heart and mind of dejected and deprived Ummah from decades soon met with the stumbling blocks erected by the leadership of the revolution. After consolidating power inside Iran, the leader of the revolution started exporting the revolution outside the border of Iran. The first country that faced the ire of revolutionary Iran was its neighbour Iraq that was then under the Ba’ath Party regime.
Suffice it to say here that Islamists the world over who considered the Islamic revolution of Iran to be a turning point, not only in the rather short history of their own struggle to bring about Islamic changes but also in the whole human history and therefore greeted it with the best of their sentiments, there is at least a section which found certain areas which present themselves as disharmonious spectacle in the scenario offered by the total landscape of the-then revolution of Iran
Radiance in post-revolution Iran covered the phenomenon of Revolution inside and outside the borders of the country. Critically analysing the aftermaths of Islamic revolution, Jalal-ul Haq in the 1 April 1980 issue elucidated: “A telescopic study of the revolution reveals three main defects in its external structure. First is an unprecedented arrogance that the leaders of revolution have assumed while dealing with their friends and foes. Second is the lack of imagination and ingenuity in setting the priorities. And the third, which is more serious defect, is that there are many aspects where it has come in an open conflict with its own essential personality”.
In the same issue Mr. Haq explained the internal dynamics of post-revolution Iran where he put emphasis on uncompromising and unaccommodating stand of Iranian leadership on domestic and international issues. “The Iranian intransigence is not stopping its war, imposed though, forms only a small portion in a total syndrome of negativism that characterises its contemporary reality. There is in general more hatred and little love, more suspicion and little trust, more revenge and little mercy. The frequent resort to name-calling slogan shouting and emotionalism can also be taken as a sign of inner hollowness and lack of depth in thinking and feeling”.
The relation between Iraq and Iran had been very strained during Shah’s reign in Iran. In April 1969, Iran abrogated the 1937 Treaty over the Arvand Round and in 1975 forced Iraq to sign humiliating Algiers Agreement. The Iraqi government of Ba’ath Party initially welcomed Iran’s Revolution, which overthrew Iran’s Shah, who was seen as a common enemy.
Ayatollah Khomeini called on Iraqis to overthrow the Ba’ath government, and it was received with considerable anger in Baghdad. On 17 July 1979, despite Khomeini’s call, Saddam Hussein gave a speech praising the Iranian Revolution and called for an Iraqi-Iranian friendship based on non-interference in each other’s internal affairs. When Khomeini rejected Saddam’s overture by calling for Islamic revolution in Iraq, Saddam was alarmed. Iran’s new Islamic administration was regarded in Baghdad as an irrational, existential threat to the Ba’ath government, especially because the Ba’ath Party, having a secular nature, discriminated and posed a threat to the Shia movement in Iraq, whose scholars were Iran’s allies within Iraq and whom Khomeini saw as oppressed. Some scholars have argued that Iranian-backed attacks and cross-border raids on Iraqi territory compelled Iraq to launch a pre-emptive invasion.
The 14 February 1982 issue of Radiance with the headline “How to Prevent Iran-Iraq Conflict from Snowballing” explicates the issues relating to Iran-Iraq crisis. The intrigue of global powers with shifting sides and use and abuse of ethnic and religious slogans and connotations by the warring parties in a conflict that was simply avoidable. The article categorically explained: “The saddest aspect of this tragedy was the deliberate misuse of certain allusions in Islamic history like “Qudaisiah” and “Yarmook”; the ethnic and sectarian overtones that these terms lend to Iraq-Iran conflict is doubly unfortunate. First, it is a travesty of facts: neither the Qudaisiah nor the Yarmook war was between Arabs and non-Arabs. Both were ideological wars fought between Islam and un-Islam.” The article further explained: “And we need hardly say that Mr. Saddam Hussein launched aggression against Iran to establish the rule of Qur’ān and Sunnah there. It is conspicuous by absence in his own country, rich in Islamic tradition”[sic].
Radiance, in its coverage of the Iranian Revolution, flawlessly un-weaves the many entwined threads that led to the Islamic revolution in Iran and its regional implications and impact on different Islamic movements world over. Analyses of Islamic revolution of Iran and its micro and macro study within and outside the amorphous boundaries is a voluminous treasure in Radiance’s archive.
Thus, Radiance’s extrapolate coverage of pre-, during and post-Islamic revolution of Iran with articles and analyses is a true treasure for scholars and academia.