MODERNIST SHI'ISM AND POLITICS: THE LIBERATION MOVEMENT OF IRAN. (VOLUMES I AND II) (ISLAM, NATIONALISM, BAZARGAN)

This is a study of the Nehzat-e Azadi-ye Iran (Liberation Movement of Iran), a moderate nationalist party whose ideology is based on Islamic modernism.; Part I situates religious modernism in the context of Iranian history, politics, and society, and critically analyzes the thought of the LMI's leading figures: Mehdi Bazargan, Ayatollah S. Mahmud Taleqani, and Ali Shariati.; Parts II and III focus on Iranian politics, and the interaction of the LMI (and its precursor, the National Resistance Movement) with the various Iranian governments since 1953 as well as with other oppositional forces, both secular and religious.; Successive chapters deal with the party founders' early activities, the founding of the party in the context of the liberalization of the early 1960's, the Hoseiniyeh Ershad Institute, the activities of the LMI's exile branch, the emergence of the Mojahedin, the LMI's role in the Islamic revolution, the Provisional Government, and finally the party's role as the only tolerated opposition in the Islamic republic.; The study illustrates the difficulty of moderates to be effective in a polarized polity, and chronicles the gradual transformation over the last thirty years of Iran's political culture from a predominantly secular one to one infused with religious values and symbols.