Status Updates From Empire of the Mind: A Histo...

Extremely sad in light of current events:
“The failure of the West fully to take advantage of the opportunity offered by a reformist president in Iran already looks like a bad mistake. One such opportunity came after the September 11 attacks in the US when members of the Iranian leadership condemned the terrorist action in forthright terms, and ordinary Iranians showed their sympathies with candlelight vigils…

“The [Pahlavi] monarchy became more remote and disconnected from the attitudes and concerns of ordinary Iranians. In a sense, paradoxically perhaps as a result of combatting underground Marxists for so long, the Shah [Mohammed Reza] made the mistake of a Marxist analysis: he thought that if he could just secure material prosperity through successful development, then everything else would fall happily into place.

Much respect to Abdol-Hosein Sardari Qajar.

“Like [Christian] friars, the Sufis were intimately involved in the religious lives of ordinary people and were responsible for missionary activity in the countryside and beyond Persia. Given the low level of literacy at the time, and the fact that the population lived overwhelmingly in the countryside, it becomes plain that the Sufis were central to the diffusion of Islam outside the towns and cities. The center