Western scholars saw Islam as withering until the Iranian revolution changed minds

Evidence

As far as the study of Islam was concerned, Western academics and associated pundits had tended to regard the religion as a post-medieval survival, doomed to wither away in the face of Western-style secularism. It took the Iranian revolution of 1978–9 to change perceptions. — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 478

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader ‘end of religion’ fallacy and the sociology of secularization assumptions shattered by 1979. — connects to: Islam organizations were US allies before the 1979 Iranian Revolution — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 389; The 1979 Iranian Revolution shifted US policy from promoting Islam to denouncing it — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 407
• SHARE: Good for a friend working on secularization theory or the political economy of area studies funding.

Related

• The 1979 Iranian Revolution shifted US policy from promoting Islam to denouncing it (similarity 0.85)
• Scholarly focus on elites and modernization was swept away overnight in Iran (similarity 0.85)
• The Islamic threat emerged only after the 1979 Iranian Revolution (similarity 0.82)
• Leftist analysts of Iran ignored religious opposition before the revolution. (similarity 0.81)
• US policymakers treated Islamist movements as allies before the Iranian Revolution. (similarity 0.81)
• The American public first linked Islam with terrorism only after the Iranian Revolution. (similarity 0.81)
• Iran’s 1979 revolution redirected US fear from secular nationalism to Islamism (similarity 0.81)
• Iran’s 1979 revolution shifted the frame from Arabs to Islamism (similarity 0.81)
• Islam organizations were US allies before the 1979 Iranian Revolution (similarity 0.81)
• Real-world events, not scholarship, propelled political Islam to academic attention (similarity 0.80)
• Western ideological camps all reduce Islam to a scapegoat (similarity 0.80)
• Iran’s 1979 revolution grew from fifty years of secular modernization and economic mismanagement (similarity 0.80)
• Top-down secular nationalism failed in Iran because religion saturated daily life (similarity 0.80)
• The Iranian revolution reached far beyond Iran into the broader Islamic world (similarity 0.80)
• Islam has remained a dominant force in Middle Eastern life (similarity 0.80)