Iran’s revolutionary methods derived from European models, not Islamic precedent

Evidence

There was, tragically, another respect in which the revolutionary regime in Iran borrowed from Europe. While its symbols and allusions were Islamic rather than European, its models of style and method were often more European than Islamic. The summary trial and execution of great numbers of ideologically defined enemies; the driving into exile of hundreds of thousands of men and women; the large-scale confiscation of private property; the mixture of repression and subversion, of violence and indoctrination that accompanied the consolida­ tion of power—all this owes far more to the examples of Robespierre and Stalin than to those of Muhammad and ‘Ali. These methods can hardly be called Is­ lamic; they are, however, thoroughly revolutionary. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1125

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader Said-adjacent question of how ‘Islamic revolution’ became legible to Western audiences — here Lewis himself inverts the framing by calling its mechanics European.
• QUESTION: How does this Lewis claim square with scholarship on the Iranian revolution’s genuinely indigenous religious/political grammar (e.g., Arjomand)? Worth chasing.