Christopher de Bellaigue > Quotes

“The trouble with big empires is that the enemy is far away and there is weather in between.”
― Christopher de Bellaigue, The Lion House

“In his Interview in Les Nouvelles, Mosaddegh gave an unintentional insight into his own marriage at this stage when he described Iranian women as "more mother than wife." (p37)”
― Christopher De Bellaigue, Patriot of Persia: Muhammad Mossadegh and a Tragic Anglo-American Coup

“Elections to the sixteenth majles were held first in the provinces, and they were conducted so dishonestly that even the British were shocked.”
― Christopher De Bellaigue, Patriot of Persia: Muhammad Mossadegh and a Tragic Anglo-American Coup

“The 1953 coup was a catastrophe which slammed him [Mosaddegh] to floor, and from which Iran never fully recovered”
― Christopher De Bellaigue

“He seemed to believe that every battle was worth fighting.”
― Christopher De Bellaigue, Patriot of Persia: Muhammad Mossadegh and a Tragic Anglo-American Coup

“Even those who were ignorant of the word of God were not entirely deprived of divine light,”
― Christopher De Bellaigue, The Islamic Enlightenment: The Struggle Between Faith and Reason, 1798 to Modern Times

“since ‘nothing can be begun with certainty, it’s better we begin with doubt’.”
― Christopher De Bellaigue, The Islamic Enlightenment: The Struggle Between Faith and Reason, 1798 to Modern Times

“Reza implemented an impressive number of reforms that were designed to turn the cracked empire he had inherited into a purposeful nation state. But he ended up, like so many of his fellow dictators, alone in his citadel. And much of the goods he did was nullified by the way he did it.”
― Christopher De Bellaigue, Patriot of Persia: Muhammad Mossadegh and a Tragic Anglo-American Coup

“the Brotherhood was not a throwback to the past but a reflection of its modern rivals, with attributes that would allow it to take on such ideologies and defeat them.”
― Christopher De Bellaigue, The Islamic Enlightenment: The Struggle Between Faith and Reason, 1798 to Modern Times

“Seyyed Hassan Modarres: "However good the guarddog is, it stops being useful the moment it bites the hands of its master's child, and must be banished”
― Christopher De Bellaigue, Patriot of Persia: Muhammad Mossadegh and a Tragic Anglo-American Coup

“The historical point that needs to be made here is that Shia Islam and Arab culture were no longer being seen as contributory to the national sense, but inimical to it.”
― Christopher De Bellaigue, The Islamic Enlightenment: The Struggle Between Faith and Reason, 1798 to Modern Times

“The first constitutional monarchy in the Muslim world was established in Tunis in 1861.”
― Christopher De Bellaigue, The Islamic Enlightenment: The Struggle Between Faith and Reason, 1798 to Modern Times

“He [Mosaddegh] was part of a generation of Iranian men who were inspired by Europe but who expected their wives to remain Iranian. (p37)”
― Christopher De Bellaigue

“He ran Iran, which is a big and complicated country, wearing a pair of pyjamas.”
― Christopher De Bellaigue, Patriot of Persia: Muhammad Mossadegh and a Tragic Anglo-American Coup

“Jamal al-Din embodied the use of Islam as a worldwide ideology of resistance against Western imperialism, knitting the Islamic heartlands together in a way that today seems impossible. He was the godfather of universal, modern Islamism.”
― Christopher De Bellaigue, The Islamic Enlightenment: The Struggle Between Faith and Reason, 1798 to Modern Times