Why did Iran of the late 1970s with a thriving economy, wealthy middle class, repressive political system, massive military might, and powerful international allies go through an Islamic revolution, while Egypt of the early 1990s with similar international allies, but poorer economy, impoverished large middle classes, and a more liberal political system did not go beyond developing an Islamist movement? 1 explaining the revolution Mainstream scholarship views the Iranian revolution as an outcome of an ideological process, the culmination of a long-lasting Islamic movement which had been evolving since the late 1960s. Hamid Dabashi's impressive work seems to suggest that in this "deeply religious society," the Islamists spent a long time preparing for an Islamic takeover. Through the institutions of mosque, hawzeh (theological seminary) sermons, preaching, and publications, they were busy with recruiting, organizing, training, and mobilizing their resources so that they could gain power when internal and international opportunities presented themselves. 2 Similarly, for Mansoor Moaddel, the I should like to acknowledge the MacArthur Foundation, the Program on Peace and International Cooperation, for supporting a broad project on 'grassroots constituency of Islamic activism in Iran and Egypt' of which this essay is a part. My thanks are also to Professors Saad Eddin Ibrahim, Fred Halliday, Ervand Abrahamian, Sami Zubaida, and Armando Salvatore, as well as the anonymous reviewers of this journal who read and commented on earlier versions of this essay. None of them are responsible for the conclusions drawn in this essay.
1 In 1978 the per-capita income in Iran was $2,400, compared to $660 in Egypt in 1988. During the 1970s, some 15 percent of Tehran's population lived in the squatter areas (and about 15 percent in slums), whereas this figure for Cairo in the early 1990s was 50 percent.
2 Hamid Dabashi, Theology of Discontent: The Ideological Foundation of the Islamic Revolution in Iran (New York: New York University Press, 1993), 110. For instance, Said A. Arjomand states that "in 1961-78 . . . the religious institutions came under relentless attack by the Pahlavi state and had to court the masses more assiduously in order to mobilize them in its defense"; see 8 Misagh Parsa, Social Origins of the Iranian Revolution