Richard A. Horsley

Cultural elites in countries that dominate peoples have adapted subject people’s religion for their own purposes.

— Richard A. Horsley

A key factor in [the revival of Shiite Islam in Iran] was the Iranians’ refusal to accept the western reduction of religion to individual faith, which would have enabled an easier imposition of a global capitalist political economy.

— Richard A. Horsley

Frightened by the specter of “Islamic fundamentalism” we readily reject the “extremism” of “fundamentalists” and identify with “moderation” and “rationality,” the ostensible “values” of “western civilization.” We thus acquiesce in the practices of the global corporations and western political power.

— Richard A. Horsley

Mosques provided the only possible meeting places in which the coalition of resistance forces could meet, and they provided a ready platform for the communication of Islamic ideology. With civic space eliminated by the Shah in order to force development upon resistant Iranians, civil society moved into the mosques.

— Richard A. Horsley

Islamic revival sought the reunification of the spiritual with the social-political, and of contemporary life with cultural traditions, against the western imperialism that was forcing their separation.

— Richard A. Horsley

Since God himself is just and commands justice, the Muslim community (umma) cannot tolerate a tyrannical law or a tyrannical ruler.

— Richard A. Horsley

Khomeini ... was a paradigm of asceticism, which in Islam was not a withdrawal from worldly affairs but a refusal to be seduced by materialism. He was incorruptible.

— Richard A. Horsley

Shiite Islam was revived and transformed by Iranians in direct reaction not only against western separation of religion from political-economic life, but more comprehensively against the transformation of their way of life by western political-economic power.

— Richard A. Horsley

Against the U.S.-sponsored program to deny subject peoples their own cultural heritage as well as participation in shaping their own social and economic life, Iranian opposition took the form of a revival of the only sphere of life that remained available, Shiite cultural tradition and the ritual space and symbols of the mosques.

— Richard A. Horsley

Intensive measures of repression taken by the Shah to enforce his westernizing development program nearly eliminated effective political parties and forms of civil society other than activities in the mosques.

— Richard A. Horsley

The separation of religion from politics, and the historical emergence of Judaism and its spin-off, Christianity, however, did not develop until late antiquity; these institutions are a long-range result of the Romans’ use of political and military power to ensure that indigenous peoples’ commitment to their traditional way of life not interfere with their submission to the imperial order.

— Richard A. Horsley