Islamic revolutionaries selectively accept Western technology despite rejecting its ideology.

Evidence

An examination of the record of these revolutionaries, however, in Iran and elsewhere, reveals that the rejection of the West and its offerings is by no means as comprehensive and as undiscriminating as propaganda might indicate, and that at least certain importations from the lands of unbelief are still very welcome. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1123

Categorization

Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims

• SEED: Article angle: ‘The selective Westernization of anti-Western revolutions’ — how revolutionary movements reject ideologies but eagerly adopt the material technologies (cassettes, telephones, weapons) of their enemies.

Related

• Islamist revolutionaries rejected the West selectively, not wholesale (similarity 0.92)
• Anti-Western Islamic revolutionaries eagerly adopted Western media and communications technology (similarity 0.85)
• Even radical Islamic fundamentalists have adopted Western institutions like constitutions and elected assemblies (similarity 0.82)
• The concept of revolution as legitimacy was alien to Islamic tradition (similarity 0.82)
• Iranian revolution’s methods borrowed from European Jacobin and Stalinist precedents (similarity 0.82)
• Iran’s revolutionaries imitated Robespierre and Stalin, not Islamic models (similarity 0.81)
• Islamic revolutionaries retained Western constitutional and legal forms while rejecting Western laws (similarity 0.80)
• Iran’s revolutionary methods derived from European models, not Islamic precedent (similarity 0.79)
• The concept of revolution is a Western import to the Middle East (similarity 0.79)