"WAR IS THE HEALTH OF THE STATE":

Ideas matter. Ideology made Iran's Islamic revolution possible. But ideas do not come fully formed in a vacuum. Unusual ideas are typically the product of unusual situations. As perhaps all political doctrines are, the unadorned radicalism of Khomeini's philosophy of government was a reaction to what had come before. The shah wasn't just any dictator. He was an exceptionally brutal one. More than that, he fashioned himself an authoritarian modernizer, like Turkey's Kemal Atatürk before him, who would cut Islam down to size and reorganize society on strictly secular lines--with Western backing no less. The orchestrated attack on Islam that many Iranians perceived was made more sinister by the unfortunate fact of a CIA-supported coup that had ousted the democratically elected prime minister in 1953, thereby elevating the shah.

Khomeini, along with a growing number of conservative clerics and laymen, came to believe that Islam was in danger of being extinguished. If as much as Islam's very preservation was at stake, exceptional measures would have to be taken, with a frown and a grimace if need be. This helps explain how Khomeini could possibly declare that the absolute mandate (velayat-e-motlaq) of Islamic government was "the most important of the divine commandments ... and has priority over all derivative commandments, even over prayer, fasting, and pilgrimage to Mecca." In another time and place, this would have been dismissed as nonsensical ranting, or worse, heresy.

Khomeini's radicalism was real and deeply felt. His grievances were legitimate. But the totalizing nature of the dictatorship to come was not predestined. Another ingredient was necessary. That something else was the modern state, in all of its sprawling, overbearing glory. Until the 20th century, states simply could not be authoritarian in the fullest sense of the word. Their bureaucratic, technological, and surveillance capacity was limited. Even under despots, ordinary people could still live relatively free lives because the state could only extend its tentacles of control so far. The introduction of the nation-state removed any such constraints. Leaders could seek dominion not just over government but over society, too. Not only did they want to change your behavior; they wanted to transform the way you perceived the world.

If the shah's strong state was what threatened Islam, a strong state--and perhaps even a stronger one--would be required to protect it from its enemies at home and from those abroad as well. This expansiveness is in the character of revolutions, when they succeed. They are wondrous events. As the longtime Berkeley professor Hamid Algar once argued, perhaps with a hint of hyperbole, the Iranian revolution was "the most significant, hopeful, and profound event in the entirety of contemporary Islamic history." But many revolutions prove too wondrous. Because they fight against great injustice and promise, in turn, a great reordering, revolutions can't help but forge a stronger state than the one they seek to destroy.

The irony is that the clerics were well aware of these pitfalls. As the Iranian American sociologist Said Arjomand writes, Khomeini's original vision was one of "a withered state." For both better and worse, this antiauthoritarian impulse is embedded in Islam.

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