The role of the religious ideologues in the Islamic revolution of Iran, based on the cultural approach(re-interpretation of tradition)

Understanding the causes of the great political revolutions, such as the Islamic Revolution of Iran, is very important in the political sociology.Till the victory of the Islamic revolution of Iran in1979, the researchers, basically focused on the role of the structural causes in the revolutions. Influenced by the Islamic Revolution, a change occurred in the theorizing of revolutions, and the outstanding role of the cultural factors in creating the revolutions has been appeared.
The main question in this article is the role of the religious ideologues- as the main actors of the cultural field- in forming the Islamic revolution, based on Eric Selbin’s “agent-culture” theory. Related to the research question, the hypothesis is that “the Religious ideologues such as Shariati, Motahhari and Imam Khomeini, played a key role in making the Islamic revolution of Iran, by using the potentials of Islam and turning “Islam as a public culture “to “Islam as an ideology”.
In order to change Islam as a public culture to Islam as an idealogy, Islamic and Shia concepts were represented by the religious thinkers and also they used the symbols and historical collective memories, to present Islam as full-blown socio-political ideology. They also have combined nationalism and Islam to present the “west” instead of “Islam” as the “other ideology” of the “national identity”.In addition by creating concepts and culture of resistance, they prepared public perceptions to fight against the oppression, secularism and dependency which in turn made the Islamic revolution of 1979.
The research results indicated that the religious ideologues by using the opportunities based on the west-oriented cultural engineering (secularism, semi-modernism, ancient nationalism) in Pahlavi era, the revolutionary interpretation of Islam and creating the culture of resistance, brought out the public perceptions for the Islamic revolution.