Sunni Islamic thinkers have A LOT to learn from their Iranian counterpart. They should stop peddling with the fake-conservative-liberalism-ladden bullshit if they really wanted to preserve Islamic civilization.
if the author had even seriously engaged with the historical development of Persian civilisation from an Iranian point of view, the limits of a purely philosophical critique of modernity would become immediately visible. We did not emerge as a peripheral culture waiting to be modernised. Persian society grew as an independent civilisation, with its own political traditions, administrative systems, intellectual life, and material base long before Europe imagined itself as the centre of history. Our encounter with the West was never neutral, nor was it primarily intellectual. It was violent, strategic, and continuous.
From Alexander’s conquest onward, the desire of Western powers to control Persia has functioned as a symbolic and material assertion of dominance. To conquer Persia was never only to occupy land, but to demonstrate mastery over a civilisation that refused erasure. Each invasion, whether military or economic, sought to break that autonomy and redirect its surplus outward. What appears in Western narratives as “civilising missions” or “modernisation” is experienced from within as repeated attempts to subordinate an independent historical subject.
From a Marxist perspective, this continuity cannot be explained through Heideggerian anxiety about modernity or loss of being. The issue has never been that Iran misunderstood Western rationality, but that Western capitalism could not tolerate an autonomous civilisation controlling its own labour, resources, and political direction. Oil, trade routes, and strategic geography intensified this contradiction, but they did not create it. They merely sharpened an older imperial impulse rooted in the logic of accumulation.
As Persians , we recognise that Western modernity arrived not as an open horizon but as a disciplinary force. It restructured classes, empowered local collaborators, and fractured social life in the name of progress. The Pahlavi state’s forced modernisation did not liberate us from history; it attempted to sever us from it. What was presented as rational development functioned materially as class reorganisation aligned with global capital, marginalising traditional producers, peasants, and religious communities while consolidating a comprador elite.
To frame resistance to this process as nostalgia or metaphysical rejection is to misunderstand its material basis. Our resistance was never to technology as such, nor to change itself, but to the loss of sovereignty over the conditions of our own transformation. The Iranian Revolution, whatever its contradictions, emerged from this historical memory of domination. It was not a rebellion against modernity in abstraction, but against a specific form of capitalist modernity imposed through coercion, extraction, and ideological subordination.
By ignoring this, the essay reduces a long history of imperial pressure to a crisis of meaning. From our point of view, the crisis was always political and economic before it was philosophical. Ideas mattered, but they followed lived experience. The West did not seek to understand Persia; it sought to manage, discipline, and integrate it into a global system that could not tolerate independent centres of power.
What this really means is that Iran’s struggle cannot be read as an exception or a civilisational anomaly. It represents a broader contradiction within global capitalism itself: the inability of the system to peacefully coexist with societies that retain historical consciousness and refuse total submission. Any critique that fails to ground this reality in material history risks turning resistance into abstraction and domination into misunderstanding.
"should Iran submit to the West’s liberal world order, or are they entitled to their own independent civilizational reality?"
Does having an independent civilizational reality necessitate having a islamic society ? Iran had a non islamic society for a long time before invasions converted it to Islam. The change was so drastic that dugin should call it as destruction of history.
Iran's conversion to Islam did not destroy Iran. In fact, if anything, it raised Iran's civilizational influence across everywhere Islam spread. The Islam that arrived to the Turkic nomads, Indian subcontinent, and later through the Turks, to Southern Europe, was a Persianized Islam. Many of these groups would form "Persianate" societies adopting a Persianized Islamic culture, such as the Ottomans, Mughals, and many other Turkic/Indic Muslim polities. It is why many of these groups have substantial Iranic cultural traits imprinted on them from shared vocabulary, grammar, and expressions to customs such as Nowruz celebrated among Albanians, Central Asians, and many Indian Muslims.
The narrative that Arabs spread Islam by force and "destroyed Iran" is largely bogus romanticization of history by 20th century modernists and 21st century Israel-aligned Pahlavi monarchist propagandists. I recommend you read "Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire: The Sasanian-Parthian Confederacy and the Arab Conquest of Iran" by Parvaneh Pourshariati. It goes into detail about how the Parthian great houses of Iran's nobility, who were feuding with many Sassanian kings ever since Khosrau I's centralization efforts in the 6th century, in effect caused the collapse of the Sassanid Empire; many such nobles defected to the Arabs and retained their fiefdoms while having to contribute less to the central state, and would go on to found some of Iran's first post-Islamic dynasties a century and half later as the Caliphates declined.
The process of Iran's Islamization was a very gradual, three century process rather than a rapid, brutal process as is commonly narrativized. It wouldn't be until the 900s when Iran was finally majority Muslim. And reasons for conversion had in most cases very little to do with force, but rather social benefits. For the nobility, it would be to integrate themselves with the new elites; for the commoners, it would be to no longer pay the jizya poll tax, social status, and/or to liberate themselves from certain Zoroastrian practices in some cases. Like for instance, blacksmiths were commonly looked down upon in Sassanian society as their field of work involves working with fire, something Zoroastrian society believed shouldn't be "corrupted" by man's breath and touch. Converting to Islam would in turn make their line of work less ostracized.
I will read "Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire: The Sasanian-Parthian Confederacy and the Arab Conquest of Iran" when I get the chance. Thanks for the recommendation.
"Iran's civilizational influence across everywhere Islam spread."
Civilizational influence of a civilization that got drastically changed by islam. Whether over time or within a short time frame, there were drastic changes to the iranian civilization. I am not denying that some structures survived but as far as I can tell most got changed. If the current iran becoming liberal can be called a "destruction", I don't see why the former iran becoming islamic cannot be called a "destruction"
"For the nobility, it would be to integrate themselves with the new elites; for the commoners, it would be to no longer pay the jizya poll tax, social status"
Pretty much the same tactics used by the brits in south asia. How is jizya not force ? At the very least it's at least coercion.
Yeah, we don't disagree. Shariati and Al-e Ahmad weren't at all in the "third position", rather disillusioned by the rigid, pro-Soviet Tudeh party. Al-e Ahmad himself had a preference towards Mao & China which was noted in this article, as more authentic than Khrushchev's USSR which caused a flocking towards it by "leftists and pseudoleftists". Al-e Ahmad's quote below is in a way also comparable to Stalin's comment in how the socialism of the future, even the King of England can be "socialist".
“No longer is the specter of communism dangled before the people in the West and that of the bourgeoisie and liberalism in the East. Now even kings can be ostensibly revolutionary, and Khrushchev can buy grain from America. Now all these "isms" and ideologies are roads leading to the sublime realm of mechanization. The political compass of leftists and pseudoleftists around the world has swung ninety degrees to the Far East, from Moscow to Beijing, because Soviet Russia is no longer the "vanguard of the world revolution".”
Perhaps the wording and focus on this article regarding Heidegger's influence on the revolution & connections to the German conservative revolution, as well as the revolution's anti-modernist aspects, may have made our article come across that way. Considering it was our first substack, there is a lot to improve. There will be a second substack follow-up to this in the future covering the Islamic Republic itself and how it is authentically closer to communism than the rigid Soviet-inspired parties. Part of that will go into further details regarding the influencers of the revolution itself such as Ahmad and Shariati. Iran will be frequently revisited topic lol, though for now there are other substacks being planned.
Great stuff, well-written.
Patriots in Control
Incredible read, thank you RTSG.
Banger
Sunni Islamic thinkers have A LOT to learn from their Iranian counterpart. They should stop peddling with the fake-conservative-liberalism-ladden bullshit if they really wanted to preserve Islamic civilization.
if the author had even seriously engaged with the historical development of Persian civilisation from an Iranian point of view, the limits of a purely philosophical critique of modernity would become immediately visible. We did not emerge as a peripheral culture waiting to be modernised. Persian society grew as an independent civilisation, with its own political traditions, administrative systems, intellectual life, and material base long before Europe imagined itself as the centre of history. Our encounter with the West was never neutral, nor was it primarily intellectual. It was violent, strategic, and continuous.
From Alexander’s conquest onward, the desire of Western powers to control Persia has functioned as a symbolic and material assertion of dominance. To conquer Persia was never only to occupy land, but to demonstrate mastery over a civilisation that refused erasure. Each invasion, whether military or economic, sought to break that autonomy and redirect its surplus outward. What appears in Western narratives as “civilising missions” or “modernisation” is experienced from within as repeated attempts to subordinate an independent historical subject.
From a Marxist perspective, this continuity cannot be explained through Heideggerian anxiety about modernity or loss of being. The issue has never been that Iran misunderstood Western rationality, but that Western capitalism could not tolerate an autonomous civilisation controlling its own labour, resources, and political direction. Oil, trade routes, and strategic geography intensified this contradiction, but they did not create it. They merely sharpened an older imperial impulse rooted in the logic of accumulation.
As Persians , we recognise that Western modernity arrived not as an open horizon but as a disciplinary force. It restructured classes, empowered local collaborators, and fractured social life in the name of progress. The Pahlavi state’s forced modernisation did not liberate us from history; it attempted to sever us from it. What was presented as rational development functioned materially as class reorganisation aligned with global capital, marginalising traditional producers, peasants, and religious communities while consolidating a comprador elite.
To frame resistance to this process as nostalgia or metaphysical rejection is to misunderstand its material basis. Our resistance was never to technology as such, nor to change itself, but to the loss of sovereignty over the conditions of our own transformation. The Iranian Revolution, whatever its contradictions, emerged from this historical memory of domination. It was not a rebellion against modernity in abstraction, but against a specific form of capitalist modernity imposed through coercion, extraction, and ideological subordination.
By ignoring this, the essay reduces a long history of imperial pressure to a crisis of meaning. From our point of view, the crisis was always political and economic before it was philosophical. Ideas mattered, but they followed lived experience. The West did not seek to understand Persia; it sought to manage, discipline, and integrate it into a global system that could not tolerate independent centres of power.
What this really means is that Iran’s struggle cannot be read as an exception or a civilisational anomaly. It represents a broader contradiction within global capitalism itself: the inability of the system to peacefully coexist with societies that retain historical consciousness and refuse total submission. Any critique that fails to ground this reality in material history risks turning resistance into abstraction and domination into misunderstanding.
"should Iran submit to the West’s liberal world order, or are they entitled to their own independent civilizational reality?"
Does having an independent civilizational reality necessitate having a islamic society ? Iran had a non islamic society for a long time before invasions converted it to Islam. The change was so drastic that dugin should call it as destruction of history.
Iran's conversion to Islam did not destroy Iran. In fact, if anything, it raised Iran's civilizational influence across everywhere Islam spread. The Islam that arrived to the Turkic nomads, Indian subcontinent, and later through the Turks, to Southern Europe, was a Persianized Islam. Many of these groups would form "Persianate" societies adopting a Persianized Islamic culture, such as the Ottomans, Mughals, and many other Turkic/Indic Muslim polities. It is why many of these groups have substantial Iranic cultural traits imprinted on them from shared vocabulary, grammar, and expressions to customs such as Nowruz celebrated among Albanians, Central Asians, and many Indian Muslims.
The narrative that Arabs spread Islam by force and "destroyed Iran" is largely bogus romanticization of history by 20th century modernists and 21st century Israel-aligned Pahlavi monarchist propagandists. I recommend you read "Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire: The Sasanian-Parthian Confederacy and the Arab Conquest of Iran" by Parvaneh Pourshariati. It goes into detail about how the Parthian great houses of Iran's nobility, who were feuding with many Sassanian kings ever since Khosrau I's centralization efforts in the 6th century, in effect caused the collapse of the Sassanid Empire; many such nobles defected to the Arabs and retained their fiefdoms while having to contribute less to the central state, and would go on to found some of Iran's first post-Islamic dynasties a century and half later as the Caliphates declined.
The process of Iran's Islamization was a very gradual, three century process rather than a rapid, brutal process as is commonly narrativized. It wouldn't be until the 900s when Iran was finally majority Muslim. And reasons for conversion had in most cases very little to do with force, but rather social benefits. For the nobility, it would be to integrate themselves with the new elites; for the commoners, it would be to no longer pay the jizya poll tax, social status, and/or to liberate themselves from certain Zoroastrian practices in some cases. Like for instance, blacksmiths were commonly looked down upon in Sassanian society as their field of work involves working with fire, something Zoroastrian society believed shouldn't be "corrupted" by man's breath and touch. Converting to Islam would in turn make their line of work less ostracized.
I will read "Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire: The Sasanian-Parthian Confederacy and the Arab Conquest of Iran" when I get the chance. Thanks for the recommendation.
"Iran's civilizational influence across everywhere Islam spread."
Civilizational influence of a civilization that got drastically changed by islam. Whether over time or within a short time frame, there were drastic changes to the iranian civilization. I am not denying that some structures survived but as far as I can tell most got changed. If the current iran becoming liberal can be called a "destruction", I don't see why the former iran becoming islamic cannot be called a "destruction"
"For the nobility, it would be to integrate themselves with the new elites; for the commoners, it would be to no longer pay the jizya poll tax, social status"
Pretty much the same tactics used by the brits in south asia. How is jizya not force ? At the very least it's at least coercion.
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Yeah, we don't disagree. Shariati and Al-e Ahmad weren't at all in the "third position", rather disillusioned by the rigid, pro-Soviet Tudeh party. Al-e Ahmad himself had a preference towards Mao & China which was noted in this article, as more authentic than Khrushchev's USSR which caused a flocking towards it by "leftists and pseudoleftists". Al-e Ahmad's quote below is in a way also comparable to Stalin's comment in how the socialism of the future, even the King of England can be "socialist".
“No longer is the specter of communism dangled before the people in the West and that of the bourgeoisie and liberalism in the East. Now even kings can be ostensibly revolutionary, and Khrushchev can buy grain from America. Now all these "isms" and ideologies are roads leading to the sublime realm of mechanization. The political compass of leftists and pseudoleftists around the world has swung ninety degrees to the Far East, from Moscow to Beijing, because Soviet Russia is no longer the "vanguard of the world revolution".”
Perhaps the wording and focus on this article regarding Heidegger's influence on the revolution & connections to the German conservative revolution, as well as the revolution's anti-modernist aspects, may have made our article come across that way. Considering it was our first substack, there is a lot to improve. There will be a second substack follow-up to this in the future covering the Islamic Republic itself and how it is authentically closer to communism than the rigid Soviet-inspired parties. Part of that will go into further details regarding the influencers of the revolution itself such as Ahmad and Shariati. Iran will be frequently revisited topic lol, though for now there are other substacks being planned.