Those other revolutionaries and parties are long dead. The rest of the socialist world moved on. This isn’t to say that they’re not secular or that they won’t drop the hammer on any religious org that refuses to toe the socialist line like what the CPC did to Falun Gong. AES handles religion by vetting clergy and quietly removing those who are counterrevolutionary. People are free to worship within a curated box. This is much wiser than militant atheism, and I suspect this policy of being publicly reconciliatory towards religion while privately controlling it from within came from the failures of militant atheism.

Also what were the religious norms in those places at the time versus Iran? Islam is very different than Russian Orthodox and Chinese animism and Confucianism. The way that those institutions controlled people in support of the ruling class is very different than how Islam functioned and continues to function. Crushing the religious institutions who heavily influenced the state was a requirement in the USSR and China for their revolutions at the time but that doesn’t mean this is applicable everywhere. In some places the religious forces are not the state forces, and are in fact the more progressive forces.

They can even transform, if you look at Catholic influence in Latin America you can see that it is the original colonial philosophy but later becomes a vehicle for anti-colonial liberation, despite the Catholic leadership likely wishing otherwise. The masses took what they needed from the religion and made it their own tool for liberation.

pretending that Iran’s success is reliant on Islam, that Iran can only resist because it is Islamic, should be deeply embarrassing to hear from a communist.

Islam is an observable, defining characteristic of the Iranian Revolution and its strength. I’m not embarrassed to be a Muslim hijabi communist, and I’m not embarrassed to read history and news from the IRI as it actually exists.

You must have never spoken to a real basiji woman in your life. Every one I’ve ever met loves her hijab. You clearly know very little about the Islamic Revolution and the role of Shia Islam.

It is insulting to these women

Six years of “support” yet here we are having this conversation where you are appointing yourself secular defender of Iranian women because I posted about how the revolutionaries are primarily hijabis.

Nothing on this website has any significant bearing on the real world.

Convenient to declare that none of this matters. Convenient.

I’d just like to imagine that the people I’m chatting with are more than just anti-American Reddit refugees

Surely nobody here could be an actual refugee from yankee child-killing. No, everyone is a white ‘reddit refugee.’

Thank you Parzivus for your six years of support. Have an ally cookie.

But pretending that Iran’s success is reliant on Islam, that Iran can only resist because it is Islamic, should be deeply embarrassing to hear from a communist.

They had and have maintained an Islamic revolution that wasn’t communist and it was the successful route of their liberation from monarchy and colonial influence. What else was their success in these endeavors reliant on? Why is it insulting to look at the material conditions of the people and see the correlation? A bunch of proud and devout religious people overcame adversity through their faith.

A large part of the Black liberation movement came out of Christianity that was forced on Black people via their subjugation by Europeans, should they be embarrassed of that or is it just the circumstances they found themselves in while still attempting to better their circumstances?

I don’t understand why a communist should be embarrassed of having a clear and accurate analysis of any given situation. Islam is obviously an intrinsic part of Iran, which is why the leadership hasn’t become like most of the nations around them and succumbed to Israel and US influence.

Syria is run by self proclaimed Muslims but they obviously don’t actually prioritize their religion because they are actually pawns of Israel and the US. Saudia Arabia is run by self proclaimed Muslims but they worship money, not Allah, so they are not beholden to the demands of Islam. If Iranian leadership acted like this, there would be a second Islamic revolution in Iran that would put devout Muslims in charge again, because that is the priority of the masses as devout Muslims themselves. These are simply the conditions of these nations, and if there is anything to be embarrassed about, it is not doing enough as a communist to provide an alternative example on how to organize against and overthrow imperialism

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I haven’t seen anyone saying you can’t critique Iran, the OP of this thread is just refuting common imperialist narratives about Iran and showing that the material reality within Iran is different from how it is commonly portrayed

why should Iran be any different?

People here constantly shit on the reformists fucking up like what’s going on with the ceasefire negotiations right down to the original comment of this stupid struggle session of women chanting “Death to Araghchi.” The “Iran sucks because Islam” falls flat in this case because the reformists are more secular sympathetic while the principlists are more religious.

It turns out, for various reasons, the people who are least swayed by the words and actions of the reformists come from the more religious sectors of Iranian society. And this isn’t even getting to how the Iranian diaspora is more secular than Iranians living in Iran, and the less said about the unhinged diaspora, the better.

That’s why this whole “critique” of Iran being too religious is so obnoxious. Actually existing criticism of actually existing Iran is that reformists are too liberal and compromising with the West, especially the news of what’s going on with the ceasefire negotiations. They are going to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Not sure what religion has to do with the inadequacies of the reformists.

You’re right. I meant it more to evoke a sense of religious fervor putting the cart ahead of the horse theoretically speaking. We might be talking the same language of anti-imperialism, but there’s deep metaphysical differences between secular and religious comrades and that’s not entirely avoidable as a topic either. Ultimately, our chain of causality is going to diverge in a serious way, and so too are our ideals for a future society. I believe in religious freedom and want people to be able to practice whatever way of life they genuinely choose for themselves within the realm of epistemological stalemate. I suspect people who are religious first are going to have different ideas about where the epistemological stalemate begins, and I’m not going to be soft on that disagreement when it’s relevant.

Liberalism manifests itself in various ways.

To let things slide for the sake of peace and friendship when a person has clearly gone wrong, and refrain from principled argument because he is an old acquaintance, a fellow townsman, a schoolmate, a close friend, a loved one, an old colleague or old subordinate. Or to touch on the matter lightly instead of going into it thoroughly, so as to keep on good terms. The result is that both the organization and the individual are harmed. This is one type of liberalism."

Religion is a unifying force as an anti-imperialist element of society, but it is oppressive and reactionary in many ways too and certainly worthy of criticism. I interact with enough people seriously committed to a variety of faiths, including Muslims from Asia, and know first hand that their conviction would have me persecuted for one reason or another, as there are many ways I live my life that does not align with their dogma. So far as I agree with people of differences of faith on political strategy, it is in resisting imperialism and liberating the working class. A movement that thinks religion is central both in causality and aim is not one I can work with past the point of toppling the status quo, though. They will mistake religion for the magic ingredient in their material analysis, degrading both their diagnosis and prescriptions, and I will not hesitate to disagree openly and in good faith.