According to global historian Timothy Nunan, the origins of political Islam in Iran and the Shiite networks in the neighboring countries lie in the geopolitical constellation of the Cold War. Together with political scientist Siarhei Bohdan, Nunan is investigating how Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his followers developed their ideology in order to be able to compete with capitalist and socialist ideas.

Is Political Islam a Product of the Cold War?

Reporting on political Islam and its fundamentalist form, Islamism, often traces the ideologies of these movements back to extreme traditionalism. “Islamism, however, did not emerge as a traditionalist, but rather modern and revolutionary program,” says Timothy Nunan. “It did not originate in the distant past, but in the 1960s and 1970s, as a reaction to the political developments at the time, for example, in Iran.”

Nunan, who holds a doctorate in global history, is examining the role the Cold War played in the development of various Islamist ideologies that still shape world events today. He says, “The question arises as to whether the geopolitical conflict between the capitalist and the socialist systems created a breeding ground where modern Islamism was able to emerge.”

The research will initially focus on political Islam with Shi’a characteristics. This form was largely propagated by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who overthrew the Shah of Iran in 1979 and founded the Islamic Republic of Iran. At the Friedrich Meinecke Institute of History at Freie Universität, Nunan heads a junior research group funded by the Volkswagen Foundation, “The Cold War’s Clash of Civilizations: The Soviet Union, the Left, and the International Origins of Islamism.”

The members of the research group proceeded from two premises. First, that Khomeini’s movement did not limit itself to the Iranian Revolution of 1979. This movement can only be understood by taking into account Shi’a networks in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Lebanon – networks that still play a major role today. Second, the scholars assume that this transnational movement was trying to establish a new world order that saw itself as a “third way” in response to the East-West conflict.

“Khomeini did not want to lead Shi’a Islam back to the Middle Ages, but rather to make it competitive with capitalist and socialist ideologies,” says Siarhei Bohdan. “He did not teach along traditional lines. Unlike the mullahs and believers who lived ideologically in the 14th century, his followers wanted radical modern changes.”

Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as a Puppet of the USA

Siarhei Bohdan, who holds a doctorate in political science, is a research associate in this project. He emphasizes that an Islamic Revolution like the one that took place in 1979 would be unthinkable under traditional teaching. “The idea that the clergy would no longer let themselves be led by the political rulers, but instead grabbed power themselves, was a radical innovation,” he says, continuing, “For many believers, the need for these changes arose from the geopolitical situation of the Cold War.”

Many of Khomeini’s supporters had accused the USA of imperialism, but they also suspected the Soviet Union and China of expansionism. They felt threatened. Popular narratives have portrayed the last Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi primarily as a puppet of the United States, says Bohdan. More recent research findings suggest, however, that the Soviet Union and China also tried to expand their influence in Iran in the 1970s.

“Ultimately, the Iranian revolutionaries saw the state of God as the means to overcome this oppression from both sides,” says Siarhei Bohdan. They consciously developed and propagated this new Islamist ideology, partly in order to be able to survive in the competition between capitalist and socialist ideas.

“The believers were afraid of losing touch with the youth,” says Timothy Nunan. For that reason, political Islam in Iran promoted many modernizations based on the model of the socialist states, such as the development of heavy industry, the nationalization of banks and large companies, as well as the introduction of social security systems.

From today’s perspective, it is hard to imagine that Shiite revolutionaries would also have maintained contact with leftist groups in South America or anti-colonial movements on the African continent at first. “In the early years there were even some among the ideologues who represented ideas that could be described as emancipatory,” says Siarhei Bohdan. “Their means quickly betrayed their goals. They acted so brutally that talk of emancipation quickly became pointless.”

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This text originally appeared in German on June 21, 2020, in the Tagesspiegel newspaper supplement published by Freie Universität.