Description

This monograph, in its original form, was a doctoral research essay submitted to faculty members of St. John’s University, New York, and Columbia University, New York, in 1996. This current form (in 2024) includes light edits and more footnotes, but not many new sources. Accordingly, this essay is a legacy academic product. This essay’s topic for research was focused on this historical question: How and why did Iran’s Shi’ite Ulama (learned men of religion, religious leaders, “clergy”) come to oppose the Shah’s Regime and his programmes for religio-cultural, social, political, and economic modernisation? Employing a comprehensive, inter-disciplinary approach, this essay examined how and why the Ulama came to be activists against the Shah in the context of Iranian historical and religio-cultural antecedents. The author hopes this essay will be a précis to the history of clerical opposition to the Shah’s Regime, introducing readers to the subject for their further research.