No one within Islam has ever asserted otherwise, and there is no liberal theology or critical Koran study against which a protest or reaction might be necessary. There is another respect in which the Islamic revolutionaries in Iran have, alas, borrowed from Europe. The Islamic Republic of Iran has a written constitution and an elected parliament, in which lively debates take place. However, with recent efforts to place more focus on quality and less on quantity, Sicilian winemakers are concentrating on the use of native varieties. In recent years it has become common practice to use the Western term fundamentalist to denote a wide range of militant Islamic movements, both radical and conservative. Though recent events do not encourage such a perspective, some Muslim leaders have already begun to look in that direction. Such have been the various fates of once prominent figures like the former foreign minister Sadeq Qotbzadah, who was executed; the former president Abolhasan Bani Sadr, who escaped to Paris; and the first prime minister of the revolutionary regime, Mehdi Bazargan, who, though alive and in Iran, has been excluded from power and reduced to insignificance.

In Iran, according to the exponents of the Iranian revolution, the first stage has already been accomplished, and the second is under way. In principle, the aim of the Islamic revolution, in Iran and eventually elsewhere, is to sweep away all the alien and infidel accretions that were imposed on Muslim lands and peoples in the era of alien dominance and influence, and to restore the true Islamic order as it existed in the days of the Prophet and his companions. An examination of the record however, in Iran and elsewhere, reveals that the rejection of Europe and its offerings is by no means as comprehensive and as undiscriminating as the propaganda might indicate, and that some of the importations from the lands of unbelief are still very welcome. These chemicals generate electrical signals that form the means by which neurons communicate with one another and ultimately form neural networks.

In Indonesia the people of Bali still follow a form of Hinduism adapted to their own genius. In other Islamic countries, the first task still remains. The Islamic revolution in Iran was the first truly modern revolution of the electronic age. The external enemy Iran now confronts is, for the present rulers of that country, defined by Islamic law and identified by Islamic history. Moreover, present global issues and problems have created a complex confusion regarding identification of individual. Other proponents of re-Islamization, in Egypt and elsewhere, have made similar complaints. What are the grievances that have aroused such passionate anger, and that call so urgently for remedy? The so-called Muslim fundamentalists are something quite different. Where the so-called Muslim fundamentalists differ from other Muslims-and incidentally also from Christian fundamentalists-is in their scholasticism and their legalism. Southern Baptists and Roman Catholics are both considered Christian even though their religious practices differ greatly. This obedience develops Christian character and results in a sense of well-being. The character was voiced by Harry Hamlin, who was chosen due to his previous portrayal of the character in the 1981 film Clash of the Titans.

Only when the neopagan apostates who rule in Islamic lands have been deposed, and their laws and institutions abrogated and annulled, will the true Islamic life become possible, and the true mission of Islam be accomplished. Khomeini was the first charismatic orator who sent his oratory to millions of his compatriots at home on cassettes; he was the first revolutionary leader in exile who directed his followers at home by telephone, thanks to the direct dialing that the Shah had introduced in Iran and that was available to him in France (though not in Iraq). Judaism has an estimated 17 million followers in the world making it the third largest Abrahamic religion behind Christianity and Islam. To the east and south of the classical Islamic world there were only pagans, some of them, as in India and China, with high levels of material culture, but both essentially regional, and neither offering a serious challenge to Islam. While Western-inspired laws have been abrogated and replaced by the Shari’a, Western-style legal procedures remain, and there are courts and lawyers to administer them.