VANESSA MARTIN, Creating an Islamic State: Khomeini and the Making of a New Iran (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2000). Pp. 263.

Extract

Vanessa Martin's second book begins like an intellectual challenge and mostly succeeds in giving an original and sophisticated view of Ayatollah Khomeini's political thought. Her previous field of study, the history of clerical militancy in the Constitutional Movement, resulted in a brilliant book entitled, Islam and Modernism: The Iranian Revolution of 1906 (London: I. B. Tauris, 1989). A common query seems to characterize the two works: how have the Islamic theologians managed to adapt their political beliefs to modernity?