The Individual as an Agent of Change: Khudsazi-ye Inqilabi

Abstract

The urban youth of Iran had found in Shari’ati a voice that was completely different from that of any other political figure or ideologue, speaking for or against the government at a time of great social and economic change. The regime was busy projecting itself as the successor to the great Persian empires—the Achaemenids, the Sassanids, the Safavids— and was promising further greatness if the people were to follow the lead of the Pahlavi establishment. The opposition (be it Khomeini, advocating Islamic government from exile in Iraq, or Islamic democrats like Bazargan) each were speaking in terms of an Islamic order where the people were to be guided by laws (under a system of clerical or democratically elected stewardship). Shari’ati broke the trend by talking not of systems, but of the individuals who would make up the society.