Before the Revolution

Prior to the mid-twentieth century, Shi?ism, to be found in southern Iraq and Iran mainly, was regarded as a quiescent and atavistic form of Islam. All modernising movements came from Sunni countries which had adapted European languages, forms of narrative like the novel, short story, historical narrative etc. However, none of these counties ? North Africa in particular ? had generated a particularly revolutionary form of Islam. What is seen in these cultures is an amalgamation of Western forms to the existing ones or the creation of a mythical ?fundamentalist? origin, which can be returned to. Shi?ism had developed differently because, unlike Sunnism, it was not confined to the text of the Qu?ran. The split which led to Shi?ites giving their allegiance to Imam Ali was created by unwritten narratives which form the basis of the peculiarity of Shi?ite identity, such as the narrative of the martyrdom of Imam Hussein. These narratives were repeated and enacted on dates observed as significant only for Shi?ites. In addition, Shi?ism developed peculiarities of doctrine which made it accommodate itself more readily to secular power. Although the basic text of the Qu?ran is accepted by both Sunnis and Shi?ites, differences of emphasis and interpretation of key words were read by the latter as predicting Shi?ism. The emergence of Twelver Shi?ism in Iran came with its imposition as the ?official? state religion under the Safavids in the fifteenth century. The narratives of the lives of the 12 imams with the acceptance of the doctrines of dissimulation and emulation marked the characteristic distinguishing features of Shi?ism. All of these elements were abandoned or inverted by the Revolutionary discourse prior to the Revolution and yet Iranian Shi?ism remained a viable identity and after 1980 became the dominant ideological source not only for all Shi?ites, but even for many Sunnis.

There is a lot of analysis still to be undertaken of the way traditional Shi?ite narratives began to be interpreted in the period from 1963 onwards after the White Revolution of the Shah and Khomeini?s opposition to this. Huge changes occurred in Iran with the emergence of a class of self-created teachers who wrote and preached until the revolution. This led to a revolutionary interpretation of traditional stories and interpretations of the Qu?ran, often in response to the Marxist teachings of the TUDEH, the Iranian Communist Party.