Review: Days of God, by James Buchan
December 17 | Posted by mrossol | Middle East, Radical IslamSounds like a very good read. Maybe because the 1979 revolution happened as my “political being” started to mature, and I took interest?
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In “Days of God,” James Buchan comes as close as anyone—certainly as close as any Westerner—to capturing the Iranian predicament of the past 34 years: “Those who make great revolutions forget that prisons and torture chambers survive into the new era, but good manners, good food, the small pleasures of family life, and literary excellence all go to hell. What Iranians most wished for they never gained, and what they most sought to preserve they lost.”
Mr. Buchan, a British journalist and novelist, first traveled to Iran in 1974, when the shah was still at the height of his powers, and he worked for many years as a Middle East correspondent for the Financial Times. The author’s grasp of Persian literature and the Persian language allows him to treat Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution with rare insight and compassion.
The book chronicles the rise and fall of Iran’s Pahlavi kings, the last in a monarchical tradition stretching back 2,500 years. In Mr. Buchan’s telling, Iran’s turbulent 20th century was defined by the conflict between the modernizing Pahlavis and the country’s powerful Shiite clergy, led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The ayatollah-turned-revolutionary had always viewed secular rulers—be they despots or democrats—as an affront to the divine sovereign, and as Mr. Buchan writes, he believed that it was the clerics who “as heirs to the Prophet and the Imams . . . must lead the Muslim community.” …
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