Since the 1979 revolution, scholars and policy makers alike have tended
to see Iranian political actors as religiously driven--dedicated to
overturning the international order in line with a theologically
prescribed outlook. This provocative book argues that such views have
the link between religious ideology and political order in Iran
backwards. Religious Statecraft examines the politics of Islam, rather
than political Islam, to achieve a new understanding of Iranian politics
and its ideological contradictions.
Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar traces half a century of shifting Islamist
doctrines against the backdrop of Iran's factional and international
politics, demonstrating that religious narratives in Iran can change
rapidly, frequently, and dramatically in accordance with elites' threat
perceptions. He argues that the Islamists' gambit to capture the state
depended on attaining a monopoly over the use of religious narratives.
Tabaar explains how competing political actors strategically develop and
deploy Shi'a-inspired ideologies to gain credibility, constrain
political rivals, and raise mass support. He also challenges readers to
rethink conventional wisdom regarding the revolution, Ayatollah
Khomeini, the U.S. embassy hostage crisis, the Iran-Iraq War, the Green
Movement, nuclear politics, and U.S.-Iran relations. Based on a
micro-level analysis of postrevolutionary Iranian media and recently
declassified documents as well as theological journals and political
memoirs, Religious Statecraft constructs a new picture of Iranian
politics in which power drives Islamist ideology.
