Abstract
One of the most important “sticking points” in studying and teaching the 1979 revolution in Iran is how Islam, as a factor of the revolution and the postrevolutionary state, predetermines students’ and educators’ (and even scholars’) evaluation of the revolution itself. The persistent image of the Islamic Republic of Iran as a turbaned/veiled theocracy, combined with the difficulty of teaching revolutions as the contingent events they truly are, works to minimize the contradictory processes and complex ideologies that came together in the fall of 1978 and eventually led to the victory of the revolution in February 1979.
It is, of