Toppling a fanatical Shia Islamist regime would be an extremely good thing.
I’m not convinced that it is necessary to topple it. Iran has been Shia for 5 centuries, and during those 5 centuries has attacked its neighbors very little.
Er, something pretty important happened in 1979. Also, the issue is not Shi’ism in general, “Shia Islamism” refers specifically to the flavor of political Islam instituted by the revolutionaries.
1979 can be seen as a return to traditional Iranian governmental policies after an experiment of a few decades with Western policies. Yes, the form of the current government (namely, a republic at least in principle) is more modern and Western than the form of the pre-1979 government (namely, a heriditary monarchy), but the monarch’s policies were more secular and Western than the current regime’s policies.
Islam has always been political in Iran, which has never had anything like the West’s separation between church and state except maybe to some extent during the experiment with Western policies that ended in 1979. We in the West shouldn’t attack countries just for being different from the West.
I’m not convinced that it is necessary to topple it. Iran has been Shia for 5 centuries, and during those 5 centuries has attacked its neighbors very little.
Er, something pretty important happened in 1979. Also, the issue is not Shi’ism in general, “Shia Islamism” refers specifically to the flavor of political Islam instituted by the revolutionaries.
1979 can be seen as a return to traditional Iranian governmental policies after an experiment of a few decades with Western policies. Yes, the form of the current government (namely, a republic at least in principle) is more modern and Western than the form of the pre-1979 government (namely, a heriditary monarchy), but the monarch’s policies were more secular and Western than the current regime’s policies.
Islam has always been political in Iran, which has never had anything like the West’s separation between church and state except maybe to some extent during the experiment with Western policies that ended in 1979. We in the West shouldn’t attack countries just for being different from the West.