Revolutionary Islam supplied both goals and a taxonomy of enemies for Iran’s revolution

Evidence

Islam provided more than symbols and slogans. As interpreted by the revo­ lutionary leaders and spokesmen, it formulated the objectives to be attained and, no less important, it defined the enemies to be opposed. These were familiar from history, law, and tradition: the infidel abroad, the apostate at home. For the revolutionaries, of course, the apostate meant all those Muslims, and espe­ cially Muslim rulers, who did not share their interpretation of authentic Islam and who, in their perception, were importing alien and infidel ways and thus subverting the community of Islam, and the faith and law by which it lived. … In principle, the aim of the Islamic revolution in Iran and eventually in other countries where such movements established themselves was to sweep away all the alien and infidel accretions that had been imposed on Muslim lands and peoples in the era of alien dominance and influence and to restore the true and divinely given Islamic order. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1122

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains the internal Islamic-revolutionary meaning of ‘apostate’ — directed at Muslim rulers importing infidel ways, not simply at non-Muslims — a distinction Western audiences often collapse.
• XREF: The apostate-importing-infidel-ways framing parallels Said’s point about how tradition supplies a ready-made enemy grammar; connects to analyses of Islamist political theology in the region.