Iran’s revolution resonated most with Sunnis where Shi’ism was unknown

Evidence

Like the French and the Russians in their time, the Iranian revolutionaries played to international as well as domestic audiences, and their revolution ex­ ercised a powerful fascination over other peoples outside Iran, in other countries within the same culture, the same universe of discourse. The appeal was naturally strongest amongst Shi‘i populations, as in south Lebanon and some of the Gulf states, and weakest among their immediate Sunni neighbors. It was for a while very strong in much of the Muslim world where Shi‘ism was virtually unknown. … In these, the sectarian difference was unimportant. Khomeini could be seen, not as a Shi‘i or an Iranian, but as an Islamic revolutionary leader. Like the young Western radicals who, in their day, responded with almost Messianic enthusiasm to events in Paris and Petrograd, so did millions of young and not-so-young men and women all over the world of Islam respond to the call of Islamic revolution—with the same upsurge of emotion, the same uplifting of hearts, the same boundless hopes, the same willingness to excuse and condone all kinds of horrors, and the same anxious questions about the future. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1127

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The Iranian revolution’s appeal crossed sectarian lines where Shi’ism was unknown — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting…, 1514; Shi’ism functioned to differentiate Iran from all its Sunni neighbors; Iran’s 1979 revolution shifted the frame from Arabs to Islamism — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 455 (+2 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: The Iranian revolution’s appeal crossed sectarian lines where Shi’ism was unknown — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting…, 1514; Shi’ism functioned to differentiate Iran from all its Sunni neighbors; Iran’s 1979 revolution shifted the frame from Arabs to Islamism — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 455 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• The Iranian revolution’s appeal crossed sectarian lines where Shi’ism was unknown #corroborates (0.98) — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1514