Hybrid-Gastvortrag: The Mystical Appeal of a Revolution: Classified Documents, Islamic Third Worldism, and Iran in 1983

Simon Wolf­gang Fuchs (Hebrew Uni­ver­si­ty Jerusalem): The Mys­ti­cal Appeal of a Rev­o­lu­tion: Clas­si­fied Doc­u­ments, Islam­ic Third World­ism, and Iran in 1983

For a moment in 1979 and 1980, post-rev­o­lu­tion­ary Iran emerged as the torch bear­er of Third World­ism. Lib­er­a­tion move­ments from South Amer­i­ca to South­east Asia flocked to Tehran in the hope to receive sol­i­dar­i­ty, a base of oper­a­tion, finan­cial assis­tance, and even weapons. While this love affair quick­ly cooled, Iran did not give up look­ing for friends in the wider “Mus­lim world.” My talk draws on sev­er­al hun­dreds of pages of top-secret Per­sian doc­u­ments, gath­ered dur­ing field­work in Iran in 2019, to shine light on how ele­ments with­in the Iran­ian regime tried to test the waters in 1983. They sent out sev­er­al del­e­ga­tions in con­junc­tion with the fourth anniver­sary of the rev­o­lu­tion in Feb­ru­ary of that year. These groups trav­eled to Lebanon, Syr­ia, Pak­istan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Nige­ria, Sier­ra Leone, Gabon, Ivory Coast, Kenia, Tan­za­nia, and Mada­gas­car. Their mem­bers filed indi­vid­ual and very frank accounts of their trav­els, of the prob­lems they faced, and whom they met. My talk shows that, despite logis­ti­cal mishaps and poor intel­li­gence, the Iran­ian mes­sage of anti-impe­ri­al­ism and Mus­lim sol­i­dar­i­ty still found eager tak­ers in the ear­ly 1980s. What is most intrigu­ing, how­ev­er, is that the fig­ure of Khome­i­ni and mys­ti­cal inter­pre­ta­tions of Islam seem to have been cru­cial ele­ments in sell­ing the Iran­ian brand of Islam­ic Third World­ism.

Teil­nahme über Webex:

https://uni-erfurt.webex.com/uni-erfurt/j.php?MTID=mcb96a5b35fd94adaac08049ee2aac48f

Meet­ing-Code:
2730 634 2262

Meet­ing-Pass­word:
X8Ty5TFQ6ZJ