Faith in Revolution

During the Cold War, an anticolonial internationalist movement emerged from a surprising source: Shi’a Islamism. This distinctive political current fused traditional Shi’a symbols of resistance with revolutionary ideals like armed struggle and guerrilla warfare drawn from Third Worldist and anticolonial movements, offering a potent alternative to the superpower-dominated global order.

Timothy Nunan explores the rise and decline of Islamist internationalism, showing how anti-imperialist Shi’a Muslims launched a global revolution. Following a multinational cast of characters, he demonstrates that the ideological challenge posed by communism inspired Shi’a thinkers to develop a new political vision. These activists looked to national liberation struggles across Asia, Africa, and Latin America as models for combating tyrannical regimes in the Middle East. Their blend of religious tradition and global revolutionary thought led to a new form of international solidarity, which found its dramatic climax in the Iranian Revolution of 1978–1979. Yet the movement unraveled as efforts to export the revolution failed, thwarted by assassinations and hostile foreign powers that framed its global vision as a sectarian Shi’a agenda.

Drawing on Arabic and Persian primary sources from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Lebanon, Faith in Revolution reveals how Islamist internationalists transformed anticolonial politics—and sheds light on why the Islamic Republic of Iran and Shi’a movements like Hezbollah remain implacable opponents of the United States and its allies.