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Journalists and historians are examining the factors behind Iran’s revolution in 1979 to see how the situation in Egypt, a neighboring Middle Eastern country, compares.
Ethnically, Iran is a Persian country, while Egypt is Arab, which means they have different languages and histories, but the conditions of fear, disillusionment and poverty are similar.
Historians compare Egypt to Iran
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Iran's Shah, or monarch, was ousted in 1979 after Iranians took to the streets in protest. |
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In Iran, the ruling monarch, known as the Shah, left the country after Iranians took to the streets seeking his departure in 1979. Some Iranians thought the Shah was a puppet of Western governments who was compromising Iranian values and culture. Others felt they lacked important freedoms under the Shah’s government.
After the Shah left, Iran briefly had a power vacuum - a volatile time when no one was in charge. Eventually, a Muslim leader named Ayatollah Khomeini who had led the revolution against the Shah became Iran’s “Supreme Leader.” Under Khomeini, Iran became an Islamic Republic, ruled by Khomeini and Muslim clerics who held Iranian citizens to the strictest tenets of the Islamic religion. Iran remains under Islamic rule today.
As a primarily Muslim country, Egypt also has a political party based on Islam called the Muslim Brotherhood. Some analysts say it’s possible that the Muslim Brotherhood could take power in Egypt, but others say Egyptian society is so varied that its people would never accept an Islamic government.
“The Iranian revolution was taken over by an Islamist, a charismatic Islamist, Khomeini,” Egyptian analyst Mustafa Abulhimal told CNN. “Whereas in Egypt, the charismatic figures we have in the street today or yesterday were secular figures like Mohamed ElBaradei or Ayman Nour, (two key opposition leaders).”
Comparisons to the French Revolution
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On July 14, 1789, French commoners stormed the Bastille prison in Paris, which was a symbol of the aristocracy. |
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About 200 years before Iran’s revolution, in 1789, France underwent a major upheaval that overthrew its longtime monarchy and royal family, and brought about a form of government run by the people. Before its revolution, French society was governed by a strict feudal class system. Peasants had little hope of improving their standing in society, and the wealthy nobility controlled all of the money and power.
Ordinary working people, who made up most of France’s population at the time but had the least power, revolted against the monarchy in a quest for equal treatment and the chance to control their own destinies. In the famous “storming of the Bastille” on July 14, 1789, French commoners took over the Bastille prison, a symbol of the monarchy’s control in the center of Paris. Today, France celebrates its national holiday on July 14 - “Bastille Day.”
Like in 18th-century France, many of the ordinary Egyptians currently protesting their government feel they lack both control over their own destinies and the opportunity to improve their lives.
However, the path to democracy was long and bloody, as distrust and rivaling groups led to the Reign of Terror.
The American experiment
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American colonists threw tea into Boston Harbor in 1775 to protest the British king's high taxes on certain goods. |
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Before the French people rose up against their king, British colonists in modern-day America felt cheated by their king’s taxation system. As a result, the colonists organized boycotts of British goods like tea that they felt were taxed exorbitantly. On December 16, 1773, a group of colonists threw many cases of valuable tea just imported from Britain into Boston harbor as a protest against the king’s rule and unfair taxes.
By 1775, anger among colonists had grown so great that many were training openly as part of volunteer militias, or small local armies. Their British rulers took that as a sign of aggression and stormed a storage facility for the militias’ gunpowder in Lexington, Massachusetts, officially beginning the Revolutionary War.
Americans officially declared themselves independent from Great Britain through the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The Revolutionary War ended in 1783 when the U.S. and Great Britain signed the Treaty of Paris. Thus began the “American experiment,” with elections that laid the groundwork for the form of democracy the U.S. practices and advocates for today.
Historians watching the protests in Egypt are wondering whether that country will emerge from its struggles with a religion-based form of government like Iran, a democratic government, a military government, or a combination of different elements influenced by Egypt’s unique Arab culture and history. |
I think we've been witnessing violence for years, whether in reality through the media or through video games, and I don't think that's a first-hand effect.
