Welcome and thank you so much for joining us
for another Deep Dive. Yeah, we are absolutely
thrilled to have you here today. We really are
because if you are the kind of person who loves
connecting historical dots. Oh, absolutely. If
you, you know, live for those profound aha moments
where the past suddenly just. brilliantly illuminates
the present. Right. And if you want to understand
the incredibly complex currents shaping our world
without feeling completely overwhelmed by information
overload, well then you have found exactly the
right place to be. You're in good hands. Today
we have a very specific mission. We are looking
at a single, incredibly sweeping, and frankly
fascinating piece of geopolitical and historical
analysis. It's a massive text. It really is.
We're unpacking an article by Iqbal Akhtar. It's
titled, The Shia World's Kill -a -Fat Moment,
The Killing of Ayatollah Khamenei and the End
of Political Islam's Last State Project. Yeah.
And it is essentially a masterclass in Middle
Eastern geopolitics, Islamic history and political
philosophy all rolled into one incredible narrative.
It really is a phenomenal text to explore. Akhtar
is doing something incredibly ambitious here.
He's not just giving us a dry timeline of current
events. Right. It's not a standard news recap.
Exactly. He is offering a grand, overarching
historical framework. He's asking us to look
at the immediate, chaotic, often terrifying events
of the present and see the deep, century -long
structural patterns underneath them. I mean,
it is the kind of analysis that requires us to
synthesize very diverse fields. Yeah. History.
Theology, economics, international relations.
Pulling it all into one coherent picture. Right.
But before we get any further, before we even,
you know, start to pull on these threads. We
have to pause and set some very strict mandatory
ground rules for this deep dive. Yes, absolutely.
This is crucial. I cannot emphasize enough how
crucial this is. The source material we're examining
today deals with highly charged, deeply sensitive
and ongoing modern political events. It touches
on military strikes, the Israeli -Palestinian
conflict, the actions of the Iranian government.
And the broader, often violent geopolitical struggles
in the Middle East. These are issues that affect
millions of lives. They involve deeply held religious
beliefs and frankly, profound human suffering.
Right. And because of that intense reality, we
need to make something explicitly crystal clear
to you. the listener, we as your hosts are strictly
impartial in this discussion. Strictly impartial.
We are absolutely not taking any sides. We're
not endorsing any state's actions, nor are we
validating, promoting, or defending the political
viewpoints presented in the text by the author.
Our sole mission today, our only goal, is to
unpack the author's arguments and impartially
report on the ideas contained in this original
source material. We are here to act as your guides
through the author's intellectual framework to
help you understand what is being argued. Nothing
more and nothing less. Precisely. We are analyzing
the text as a piece of scholarship and political
theory. We're looking at the mechanics of the
argument. The historical parallels the author
draws and the evidence he presents to back up
his claims. We leave the political judgments
and the moral conclusions entirely up to you.
Okay, with that vital disclaimer firmly in place,
let's drop the central shocking premise of the
text right here at the start. Let's do it. This
is the hook that drives this entire massive analysis.
The author... Iqbal Akhtar argues that the dramatic
geopolitical events culminating in the February
2026 death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei are not
just another geopolitical headline. Right. He
argues that they are structurally identical to
one of the most profound world altering events
of the entire 20th century. He's drawing a direct
line to the 1924 abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate.
Exactly. He is saying that what happened to Sunni
political Islam 100 years ago. That total structural
collapse of a transnational dream has just happened
to Shia political Islam today. What's fascinating
here is the sheer audacity and scale of that
comparison. Massive. The author is taking an
event that fundamentally shattered the political
imagination of the Muslim world a century ago
and saying, look closely at the architecture
of what is happening right now. The exact same
structural collapse is happening before our very
eyes. Just in a different theological register.
It forces us to ask a really heavy question.
Which is? What actually happens to millions of
people when a transnational religious political
project completely evaporates? Okay, let's unpack
this. Because to understand why this 2026 moment
is so monumental, we can't just start in 2026.
No, we have to start at the chronological beginning
of the author's framework. We have to travel
back a full century to March 1924. This is when
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk makes a decision that sends
absolute shockwaves across the globe. He officially
dissolves the Ottoman Caliphate. Now, we all
know from basic history that empires fall. Sure.
But the text frames this as something much deeper
than just a regime change. Why was this such
a psychological earthquake? We really need to
pause and appreciate the weight of that loss.
The author relies heavily here on the work of
historian Mona Hassan. She's written brilliantly
on this concept of transregional collective loss.
Transregional collective loss. Right. When Ataturk
dissolved that institution, he wasn't just firing
a political official or updating a constitution.
constitutional clause in a newly formed Turkish
republic. He was severing a symbolic thread that
had existed for over 13 centuries. 13 centuries.
That's almost unfathomable in modern political
terms. It is. I mean, for over a millennium,
the global Muslim community, the Ummah, had a
living, breathing center of political and spiritual
authority. Even when the caliphate was politically
weak, as it frankly often was in its later centuries,
it existed as a unifying symbol. It was the ultimate
horizon of belonging. To put it in perspective,
imagine if tomorrow an institution that had defined
the overarching identity of your civilization
since the Middle Ages was just... Erased. Erased
by a stroke of a pen. I'm trying to wrap my head
around that. It's like the anchor of your entire
worldview is just cut loose. Completely. But
reading through the notes, there was a part of
Akhtar's argument that really surprised me. He
brings in the research of Simel Aden, and Aden
argues that... Our modern understanding of this
idea of a unified Muslim world or pan -Islamism
wasn't actually this ancient, timeless reality.
It wasn't. I always assumed the Muslim world
had always viewed itself as one giant, unified
political bloc since the 7th century. It's a
very common assumption, but Aidan's research
shatters it. This is a crucial piece of context
for the whole discussion. Right. Pan -Islamism
as a coherent, organized political ideology was
actually a remarkably modern construct. It really
only emerged in the late 19th century. So it's
basically a Victorian era invention. In terms
of its modern political application, yes. And
it didn't emerge in a vacuum. It was a highly
reactive formation. Right. It was a direct defense
mechanism against the encroaching, racializing
logic of European imperialism. Think about what
the world looked like in the late 1800s. European
empires, the British, the French, the Dutch,
the Russians were rapidly carving up the globe,
subjugating incredibly diverse populations. And
they were often categorizing these subjugated
people on deeply racist, civilizational lines.
Exactly. So they were looking at millions of
diverse people from Morocco to Indonesia and
just stamping them all as the Orientals or the
Mohammedans. Yes. They were flattening the incredible
diversity of these societies into a single subordinate
racial category to justify ruling them. Wow.
So Muslim intellectuals realized they needed
a counter -narrative. The text points to a fascinating
figure here, Jamal al -Din al -Afghani. Okay.
He is really the quintessential architect of
this modern pan -Islamic thought. What was his
pitch? I mean, how do you unify such a massive,
diverse group of people against the British Empire?
Al -Afghani essentially looked at the geopolitical
board and argued the Europeans are expanding
territorially and their strategy is to dominate
us by dividing us. They want us fighting over
local borders or ethnic differences. Exactly.
He said the only way to resist this modern industrialized
imperial machinery is to forge our own modern
transnational solidarity. And the only identity
marker strong enough to link someone in Cairo
with someone in Delhi was their shared faith.
That makes so much sense when you frame it that
way. It really does. It wasn't that they had
always acted as one political unit for a thousand
years. It's that in the face of a global empire.
They needed a global resistance identity. They
were trying to build an ideological fortress
against colonialism. Precisely. The idea of the
Muslim world as a unified political bloc was
a defensive strategy forged in the crucible of
late 19th century geopolitics. But here is where
the text throws a massive historical curveball.
When that fortress finally collapses in 1924,
when the caliphate is abolished by Ataturk, you
would naturally think the shockwaves would be
felt most intensely right next door, right? In
the Arab heartlands. Oh. Places like Egypt or
Syria or the Arabian Peninsula where Islam originated.
But the author points out that the loss was actually
felt most acutely thousands of miles away. In
South Asia. In India. Yes. Why did Indian Muslims
care so deeply about a Turkish sultan losing
his job? It is a brilliant historical anomaly
and understanding it perfectly sets up the parallel
Akhtar is going to draw later with the modern
Iranian diaspora. So why South Asia? Well, if
we look at the historical context, the Arab nations
were already beginning to experiment with other
ideas. They had pan -Arabism. They were developing
local secular nationalisms. They had ideological
alternatives ready to go. Exactly. But South
Asian Muslims were in a uniquely vulnerable,
almost precarious position. They existed as a
minority population, completely subsumed under
British colonial rule. And Akhtar mentions they
had lost their own native political power long
before this. He brings up the end of the Mughal
dynasty. Yes. For centuries, the Mughal Empire
had been this magnificent, powerful Muslim dynasty
ruling over a Hindu majority, India. Right. But
once the British fully dismantled the Mughal
Empire in the mid -19th century, Indian Muslims
found themselves fundamentally unmoored. They
were suddenly without any native sovereign political
leadership there were subjects of a distant european
christian crown living as a minority among a
massive hindu majority so they were feeling entirely
squeezed out of history Entirely. So for them,
the Ottoman Caliphate, however geographically
distant it might have been, and even if they
didn't speak Turkish or know much about Istanbul.
It took on an outsized, incredibly idealized
significance. It was the ultimate living proof
that Muslims could still possess actual political
sovereignty somewhere in the world. It's like
a psychological safety net. Like we might be
subjects here in Delhi, but the caliph in Istanbul
is still standing tall. Exactly. It offered a
horizon of belonging that transcended the artificial
colonial borders drawn by the British. The pan
-Islamists in India genuinely viewed those colonial
borders as a deliberate European strategy of
divide and rule. To them, loyalty to the caliphate
was the ultimate anti -colonial statement. Which
brings us to a massive historical phenomenon
that the text highlights, and frankly, something
I don't think gets talked about enough. The Kilofat
Movement? Yes, the Kilofat Movement. This ran
from 1919 to 1924. The author relies on the detailed
historical research of Aisha Jalal and Gail Anol
to explain this. And reading their accounts,
this wasn't just a handful of intellectuals writing
angry letters to the editor. No, this was a massive
grassroots mobilization of millions of Indian
Muslims. It was one of the largest political
mobilizations of the era. And Asha Jalal's research
is so vital here because she shows that. for
these Indian Muslims. Figures like the famous
Ali brothers or the scholar Abul Kalamazad. Right.
For them, this wasn't just some abstract theological
debate. It was a lived, desperate aspiration.
The idea that Muslims could constitute a political
community defined entirely by faith rather than
by the oppressive colonial territory they lived
in was the very core of their political identity.
And the caliphate was the anchor holding that
identity in place. And the political alliances.
created were just wild. The text points out that
Mahatma Gandhi, who was, of course, a devout
Hindu and the leader of the Indian nationalist
movement, actually formed the All India Kilafat
Committee in 1919. He allied directly with these
Muslim leaders who were protesting for a Turkish
caliph. It sounds contradictory at first glance,
doesn't it? It does. But if we connect this to
the bigger picture. Gandhi was a master strategist.
He recognized the immense mobilizing power of
this pan -Islamic sentiment. By championing a
cause that Indian Muslims cared about so deeply,
saving the Ottoman caliphate from being carved
up by the British and the French after World
War I. He brought them completely into the fold
of his broader non -cooperation movement against
British rule in India. It's framed as perhaps
the most remarkable example of anti -colonial
Hindu -Muslim solidarity in South Asian history.
You had Hindus and Muslims marching together,
boycotting British goods together, going to jail
together. All loosely tethered to this idea of
preserving an Islamic institution in Turkey.
It was a brief, shining moment of unified resistance,
but it was entirely dependent on the survival
of that distant symbol. And then 1924 happens.
The symbol is destroyed. Not by the British,
but by the Turks themselves. Ataturk pulls the
plug. He abolishes the caliphate to modernize
and secularize Turkey. And the text notes that
the aftermath, the collapse of this beautiful
pan -Islamic dream in India and elsewhere, was
incredibly swift and chaotic. It was absolutely
devastating for the movement. I mean, you can't
protest the British to save the caliphate when
the caliphate no longer exists. They tried to
salvage it, of course. The text mentions a fascinating,
somewhat tragic event. The 1926 Cairo Caliphate
Congress. Right. They basically called an emergency
global summit. They brought delegates from all
over the world. Muslim world to Egypt to try
and agree on a way to restore the institution.
OK, the Turks don't want it. Who takes it next?
But it was a complete failure. They couldn't
agree on who should be the new caliph, where
it should be based, or what actual executive
power it should have. The underlying painful
reality was exposed for everyone to see. The
political energy of the Ummah had permanently
fragmented. The era of the transnational empire
was over. The dream of a borderless, unified
political community was dead. And the author
cites the scholar James Piscatori here. who formulated
a really profound conclusion about what happened
in the decades following 1924. Piscatori noted
that instead of Islam replacing the nation state,
which was the whole point of pan -Islamism, to
transcend borders, the nation state simply became
an Islamic value. That is the crucial pivot of
the 20th century for the Middle East. Once the
transnational option was definitively gone, Muslims
everywhere had to channel their collective aspirations
into the very nation -state system that pan -Islamism
was originally designed to resist. The borders
drawn by the colonial powers largely became permanent,
and religion had to figure out how to exist within
those national borders rather than transcending
them. Okay, so I want you, the listener, to keep
that entire historical arc in your mind. The
idealized transnational dream, the sudden, shocking
collapse of the central authority, the desperate
failure to rebuild it, and the forced eventual
acceptance of the nation -state. Because now,
the author transitions us away from the 1920s
and brings us into the contemporary timeline.
We are fast -forwarding to the chaotic events
culminating in 2026. And this brings us right
to the core of Akhtar's argument about the Shia
world's kilafat moment. The author is arguing
that the Islamic Republic of Iran, established
by the 1979 revolution, was essentially the last
serious, heavily state -backed attempt to prove
James Piscatori wrong. They wanted to prove that
the transnational dream wasn't dead. Exactly.
It was the last great effort to demonstrate that
an Islamic political theology could successfully
organize a modern state, ignore Westphalian borders,
project its power across the region, and offer
a genuine, viable alternative to the Western
-dominated international order. Iran wasn't just
trying to be a country. It was trying to be the
vanguard of a global movement. But the author
details a terrifyingly rapid cascade of events
that dismantled that entire project. According
to the text, between 2023 and 2026, we see the
complete systematic collapse of what Iran called
its axis of resistance. The timeline Okhtar presents
is stark. It outlines the methodical destruction
of Hamas in Gaza, the decimation of Hezbollah's
leadership and infrastructure in Lebanon, and
the neutralizing of the Houthi militias in Yemen.
These weren't just allies. These were the forward
operating bases of the Iranian transnational
project. And the climax of this collapse, the
absolute focal point of the article, is the February
28th, 2026 joint American -Israeli strikes that
resulted in the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
If we connect this to the bigger picture. The
historical parallel the author is drawing becomes
incredibly, almost chillingly stark. Just as
Ataturk's action in 1924 created a massive vacuum
of Sunni political identity and authority. The
events of February 2026 marked the collapse of
the only state project that ever attempted to
turn Shia Islam into a comprehensive, governing
political ideology. So it's not just a geopolitical
loss. It's an existential collapse. Precisely.
The death of the supreme leader, the valier Fakih,
under these circumstances isn't just a change
in administration. It's not just a blow to Iranian
national security. In the author's view, it is
the definitive end of an era. The transnational
structure is broken. Akhtar uses very strong,
uncompromising language here. He says this event
exposes the total bankruptcy of the entire Iranian
state project. Politically, economically, and
most importantly, morally. The post -1979 dream
has essentially evaporated as a viable transnational
force. So what does this all mean? I mean, how
did a project that started with such incredible
world shaking revolutionary fervor in 1979 end
up completely bankrupt by 2026? To answer that,
we have to look under the hood of the Iranian
state. We can't just look at the missiles and
the militias. No, we have to understand the specific
theological machinery that powered the whole
thing. This is where Akhtar's analysis becomes
truly profound because he argues that the seeds
of this 2026 collapse were actually planted in
1979 in the very theology that created the state
in the first place. Here's where it gets really
interesting. We are pivoting from the geopolitical
battlefield to a theological deep dive. And I
have to admit, as someone who reads a lot of
history, I was blown away by this section of
the text. It's eye -opening. Because the entire
system of the Islamic Republic rests on a doctrine
introduced by Ayatollah Ru 'ala Khomeini in 1979.
It's known as Velayat -e -Faqih, which translates
roughly to the guardianship of the Islamic jurist.
Right. I always assume this was just standard
traditional Shia practice that Khomeini finally
got the chance to implement. But the text says
that's completely false. It is a massive misconception.
And the text relies on the... deep jurisprudential
analysis of scholars like Hamid Mavani and Norman
Calder to unpack just how insanely radical Khomeini's
concept actually was. Khomeini didn't just stand
up and say, hey, as a cleric, I think religious
values should guide our laws. He made a staggering,
unprecedented theological claim. He asserted
that the senior Islamic jurist, the supreme leader,
possesses the exact same absolute ruling authority
over society as the Prophet Muhammad and the
12 imams of Shia. Okay, I want to make sure I
understand the gravity of that. To a layperson,
comparing yourself to a prophet might just sound
like standard, over -the -top religious political
rhetoric. But in the context of classical Islamic
theology, how big of a leap is that? It is an
astronomical leap. It's practically reinventing
their religion. The text points out that historically,
for over a thousand years, traditional Shia guardianship,
the concept of wilaya, was strictly limited.
It was incredibly mundane. Mundane how? I mean,
what did a cleric actually do before 1979? They
handled non -litigious matters. For centuries,
the absolute consensus among Shia scholars was
that in the absence of the hidden 12th Imam,
the messianic figure who is believed to be an
occultation and will return at the end of times.
True. Perfect political authority is impossible.
Therefore, religious scholars had a duty to guide
the community in matters of faith, to answer
questions about prayer and fasting. And they
had legal guardianship over very specific vulnerable
elements of society. Managing the affairs of
orphans, protecting widows, and administering
unclaimed property or endowments. That was it.
Wait, so the historical role of the guardian
was essentially acting as a high -level social
worker and trust manager. Exactly. It was a duty
of communal care. Absolutely not a mandate for
executive political power, let alone commanding
armies or dictating foreign policy. As Norman
Calder showed in his foundational study, classical
Shia jurisprudence had always maintained a very
careful, pragmatic balance. It held on to its
theological idealism, waiting for the true imam
to return while making practical, quiet accommodations
with whoever happened to hold secular political
power at the time. Whether it was a shah or a
sultan. Khomeini deliberately took a sled hammer
to that centuries -old balance. He took a concept
designed to protect orphans and stretched it
to cover the absolute dictatorial rule of a modern
industrialized nation -state. That is wild. And
the text reveals a genuinely shocking detail
about how he justified this massive power grab
to the other clerics. When Khomeini presented
the religious texts of the Hadith, which are
the recorded sayings and traditions of the prophet
and the imams to support this expansion of power,
the text says those... specific hadith were actually
considered weak. What does that mean in this
context? This is a devastating point in the realm
of Islamic jurisprudence. To understand this,
we have to talk about the science of hadith.
In Islamic scholarship, you can't just claim
the prophet said something. Every single hadith
has a chain of transmission attached to it called
an isnad. It's like a highly formalized, centuries
-long game of telephone. I heard from my teacher
who heard from his father who heard from the
companion of the prophet. So it's basically citing
your sources all the way back to the 7th century.
Yes. And Islamic scholars have spent lifetimes
rigorously evaluating these chains. They look
at the biographies of every single person in
that chain. Was this person known to have a bad
memory? Was this person known to exaggerate?
Did this person actually live in the same city
as the person they supposedly heard it from?
If there is a break in the chain or an unreliable
narrator, the hadith is classified as da 'if,
meaning weak or unreliable. And you're saying
the core text Khomeini used to build a modern
superpower were rated as weak? The text notes
that the chains of transmission for the specific
handful of Abith Kameni relied upon to justify
absolute political rule by clerics were largely
classified as daith by traditional rigorous standards.
They were not the strong universally accepted
text that you would normally use to upend centuries
of theology. So the very foundational bedrock
of this entire political system was fundamentally
shaky from day one. Which raises a massive question
for me. If this system wasn't rooted in solid,
traditional Shia theology, where on earth did
Khomeini get the idea? This raises an important
question, and Akhtar turns to historians and
scholars like Hamid Dabashi and Vali Nasser for
the answer. They argue that the 1979 system wasn't
really an expression of traditional Shia piety
at all. It was actually a highly modern, incredibly
synthesized political ideology. Khomeini was
essentially a theological hacker. He was borrowing
heavily from sources far, far outside Islamic
tradition. The text uses a phrase that made me
do a double take. Plato and Marx meet Islam.
Okay, let's unpack that. Marx in a fundamentalist
Islamic republic. How does that work? It's an
incredible ideological patchwork. Let's start
with Plato. Vali Nasser points out that Khomeini's
vision of a society ruled by an elite class of
specially trained, morally superior, ascetic
jurists looks a whole lot less like early Islamic
history in Medina. and a whole lot more like
Plato's Republic. The concept of the philosopher
king. Exactly. It's the philosopher king and
the guardian class just dressed in clerical robes
and turbans. Plato argued that only those who
truly understand the forms of goodness should
rule. Khomeini just substituted Islamic jurisprudence
for Platonic philosophy. And the Marxist element.
Hamid Dabashi notes that the revolutionary fervor
of 1979, the aggressive anti -imperialist rhetoric,
the framing of the entire global struggle as
the oppressed masses, the mustazafin rising up
against the corrupt capitalist elite, the mustakbirans.
That entire vocabulary was heavily lifted from
20th century Marxist and third -worldist revolutionary
theory. Because that was the dominant revolutionary
language of the 1970s. Right. Leftist Marxist
movements were highly active in Iran leading
up to the revolution. Yeah. Khomeini was brilliant
at co -opting their energy. He took Plato's rigid,
elitist structure of governance, took Marx's
explosive revolutionary energy and language of
class struggle, and grafted it all onto a very
specific, stretched, weak, Hadith -based interpretation
of Shia law. It's basically a political Frankenstein's
monster. And because it was so contrived, it
immediately ran into practical problems. I want
to ask you about this massive constitutional
paradox the text highlights, which occurred in
1989. Because this seems like the moment the
ideology truly broke. 1989 is a critical turning
point. This is the year Ayatollah Khomeini dies.
The system now faces its first succession crisis.
According to the constitution they wrote in 1979,
the supreme leader had to be a marja. A marja
being a top -ranking cleric. Yes, a source of
emulation. The absolute highest level of jurist,
someone universally recognized for their unparalleled
mastery of Islamic law. The logic was, if the
ruler has the same authority as the prophet,
they better be the most learned person alive.
But there was a huge problem. The person they
politically wanted to take over, Ali Khamenei,
wasn't a marja. Not even close. He was a mid
-ranking cleric. He had strong political credentials,
he was loyal to the revolution, but he absolutely
did not have the scholarly chops required by
their own constitution. So what did they do?
Did they find a better scholar? No. They simply
changed the rules of the game. They quickly amended
the Constitution. They removed the strict requirement
that the Supreme Leader had to be a top -ranking
jurist. The scholar, said Amir Arjumand, points
out the profound, glaring irony here, which defined
the next four decades of the Islamic Republic.
They continually expanded the absolute... dictatorial
political power of the supreme leader, while
simultaneously diminishing the actual scholarly
and theological qualifications required to hold
that office. They basically admitted that the
theology didn't matter anymore. It was entirely
about maintaining political control. Precisely.
The mask slipped. And because of all of this,
the weak texts, the platonic borrowing, the constitutional
hypocrisy, the author emphasizes that the project
was always deeply theologically contested from
the inside. This isn't just Western analysts
saying this doesn't make sense. Top -tier Shia
scholars have been rejecting this since 1979.
The text introduces the research of Mohsen Kadivar.
He's a calm, trained scholar, a brilliant mind
now at Duke University. What did Khadivar find?
Khadivar did something remarkable. He conducted
a systematic, exhaustive review of all the revered
classical Shia texts and centuries of Islamic
legal rulings. His findings are a total devastating
refutation of the Iranian state's ideology from
within its own tradition. He demonstrated that
within the classical texts, you can actually
find jurisprudential support for nine distinct
forms of government. Nine. different ways to
run a state according to Shia Islam. Yes, ranging
from consultative assemblies to conditional monarchies.
But Khadiver found that the one specific form
of government that is not validated by the traditions
of the prophet or the imams. The one that has
no solid basis in the history of the faith. Is
absolute validefaki. The exact system ruling
Iran. Yes. The state's foundational, unshakable
doctrine is, in reality, a massive theological
outlier. It's a modern invention masquerading
as ancient tradition. OK, so let's summarize
where we are. You have a system built on weak
traditions. It's borrowing heavily from Greek
philosophy and Marxist rhetoric. It's constantly
altering its own constitutional rules just to
maintain power for its political insiders. And
it is fundamentally rejected by its own top theologians.
It's no wonder the author calls it a bankrupt
project. And that brings us to the actual ledger
of this bankruptcy. Akhtar asks us to look past
the rhetoric and look at the hard numbers, the
actual human and economic costs of this four
-decade experiment in transnational revolution.
Let's start with the external costs. The sheer
scale of Iran's investment in its axes of resistance
is staggering. The figures cited in the text
represent a massive, generation -defining diversion
of national wealth. Optar notes that we are talking
about an estimated $30 to $50 billion spent over
four decades. Just pause on that number. Up to
$50 billion. And that money wasn't spent on domestic
infrastructure. It was entirely dedicated to
building, arming, and funding proxy militias
across the Middle East. The text traces the origins
of this all the way back to 1982, right? Which
is incredible because Iran was in the middle
of a brutal existential war with Saddam Hussein's
Iraq at the time. Yes, the Iran -Iraq war was
raging. Hundreds of thousands of Iranians were
dying. The economy was under immense strain.
Yet despite that domestic crisis, the Iranian
Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC, dispatched
1 ,500 highly trained instructors to Lebanon's
Beka Valley. To do what? to essentially build
Hezbollah from scratch. They found disparate
Shia militias, unified them, trained them, funded
them, and infused them with Khomeini's ideology.
They prioritized exporting the revolution to
the Mediterranean over securing their own borders.
And the text points out this pattern never stopped.
Decades later, when the Assad regime in Syria
was on the brink of collapse during the Syrian
civil war, Iran didn't just send money. They
sacrificed... 2 ,100 of their own soldiers, IRGC
and regular army, and spent billions more just
to keep a brutal, secular dictator in power.
Because he was a crucial link in their proxy
network. If we connect this to the bigger picture,
the author is making a profound point about state
priorities and the nature of this project. The
entire strategic orientation of the Islamic Republic,
its vast oil wealth, its military capability,
its diplomatic capital was never directed toward
the productive, creative flourishing of Iranian
society. It wasn't about building a strong economy,
modernizing schools, or improving the lives of
everyday citizens. It was entirely obsessively
oriented outward. It was dedicated to the destruction
of Israel, the destabilization of Arab rivals,
and the projection of this revolutionary anti
-Western ideology. They treated their own country
like a resource extraction mechanism to fund
a foreign empire. And what was the return on
that massive $50 billion investment? According
to the timeline in the text, the return has been
catastrophic. Let's look at the external collapse
first. The author cites a brilliant analysis
by Chatham House, specifically by Sanam Vakil
in 2024. What did her research conclude? Vakil's
analysis was incredibly prescient. She concluded
long before the final collapse that this entire
axis of resistance was always built on incredibly
fragile foundations. It looked intimidating on
paper, a ring of fire around Israel, missiles
in Yemen, militias in Iraq. But Vakil argued
it was a mirage of power projection, not genuine,
sustainable strategic depth. It relied on a level
of continuous funding and ideological zeal that
simply couldn't survive intense pressure. And
we see that fragility brutally exposed in the
timeline the author provides. The unraveling
doesn't happen overnight. It's a cascading failure.
It begins with the brutal Gaza war in October
2023, which fundamentally destabilizes the region.
It accelerates dramatically with the fall of
the Assad regime in Syria in December 2024. Which
was a massive, irreplaceable loss of a state
ally and a vital logistical... land bridge to
Lebanon. But the real proof of the hollowness,
the moment the mirage vanishes, comes during
what the text calls the June 2025 war. When the
pressure was finally applied to the entire network,
what happened? The entire proxy network went
silent. That's the stunning part. After decades
of rhetoric about unity and resisting together,
the architecture collapsed. Hezbollah and Hamas
were unable to act in a coordinated way, having
been systemically decimated. And the Houthis
in Yemen and the Shia militias in Iraq looked
at the situation and were simply unwilling to
risk their own domestic survival for Tehran's
grand strategy. The axis proved to be transactional,
not unbreakable. When it was finally tested in
a total conflict, it shattered. The external
projection failed entirely. But the author argues
that the internal catastrophe, what happened
within Iran itself, is perhaps even more damning
to the legacy of the Islamic Republic. Because
we often hear about the protests. But the text
pivots to the domestic front and reveals some
truly stunning hard statistics about what four
decades of theocracy have actually produced in
the hearts and minds of Iranian society. This
is where the deepest paradox of political Islam
is most evident. It is the ultimate cautionary
tale. The author argues that by forcing religion
into every single aspect of state control, by
making it the law, the police, the economy, the
censor, the theocracy, actually produced massive
widespread secularization by coercion. Because
if you hate the government and the government
says it speaks for God, you end up resenting
God. Exactly. When the state is religion, rejecting
the corruption and oppression of the state inherently
means rejecting the religion it claims to champion.
The data the text provides here is mind -blowing.
It cites the sociologist Misa Parsa and the Goman
Polling Institute. We aren't talking about a
recent shift. The text notes that by the year
2000, 75 % of Iranians had stopped performing
the obligatory daily prayers. Think about that
for a second. In a state that claims to be a
divine republic, governed by God's representatives
on earth, three -quarters of the population gave
up the most basic pillar of Islamic practice
decades ago. Furthermore, the text points out
that today over half of the country's mosques
are completely inactive or abandoned. They are
empty structures. And when Gammon conducts anonymous,
secure polling, approximately 73 % of the population
openly favors the complete secular separation
of religion and state. They aren't asking for
a milder version of theocracy. They have lived
the reality of clerical rule, and an overwhelming
majority want it permanently ended. And then
there's a statistic that genuinely made me pause.
It's perhaps the most jarring symbol of this
disconnect. The text states that Iranian citizens
are spending an estimated $12 billion annually
on alcohol. $12 billion. Now put that in context.
This is a country struggling with crippling sanctions
and inflation. And more importantly, alcohol
is strictly, severely forbidden by the state
religion. The penalty for a first offense of
drinking is 80 lashes with a whip. Yet there's
a $12 billion underground industry. What's fascinating
here is what that number represents sociologically.
It's not just about a desire for consumption
or partying. In the context of the Islamic Republic,
it's a massive multibillion dollar daily act
of societal defiance. Every sip is a rejection
of the state's moral authority. It shows a population
that is completely irrecoverably alienated from
the moral dictates of the regime. The state tries
to micromanage piety. And the population responds
by building massive underground networks to bypass
the state entirely. You summarize it perfectly
in our prep notes for this deep dive. A regime
that claimed to govern in God's name ultimately
produced a population fleeing God's house. The
ideological exhaustion inside Iran is total.
The people are done. Done with the ideology,
done with the proxies, done with the clerics.
So internally, the project is a hollow shell
and externally the proxies are gone. The state
is bankrupt on every ledger. But here is where
Akhtar introduces a completely fascinating new
dimension to the analysis, something I hadn't
considered at all. He says that to truly understand
the emotional and historical impact of this 2026
collapse, we can't just look inside Iran. We
have to zoom out and look at the global Shia
diaspora. Yes, the text introduces a great, highly
descriptive term here, the global Iranification
of Shia Islam. The author draws on his own extensive
anthropological research regarding the Koja Shia
communities in East Africa, as well as looking
at massive populations in Pakistan and even communities
right here in the U .S., like in Dearborn, Michigan.
What does Iranification actually mean in practice?
It means that the 1979 Iranian revolution didn't
just stay within Iran's borders. It fundamentally,
aggressively reshaped the religious practice,
the communal identity, and the political orientation
of Shia Muslims all over the world, even those
who had no ethnic or linguistic connection to
Iran. So it wasn't just organic inspiration.
Tehran was actively pushing this. Highly active.
They didn't just hope people would be inspired
by Khomeini. They built a massive, well -funded
machinery to export the ideology. The text mentions
institutions like the Bilal Muslim Mission in
East Africa. Tehran utilized massive clerical
networks, funded publications, and crucially,
they strategically distributed thousands of seminary
scholarships to bring foreign students from Pakistan,
Africa, and the West to study in the holy city
of Qom in Iran. So they train the next generation
of global clerics in the theology of the revolution
and send them back home. Exactly. And through
these institutions, drawing on the work of scholars
like Lawrence Loehr and Toby Matheson, the text
shows how Tehran successfully shifted the entire
global discourse of what it meant to be a Shia
Muslim. What was it like before 1979? Before
the revolution, Shia identity in these diaspora
communities was often highly quietest. It was
focused on local community building, traditional
piety, mourning the historical martyrs, and generally
staying out of high -stakes geopolitics. Tehran
reframed all of that. They made modern Shia identity
inherently political. They made it inherently
oppositional, deeply anti -Western, and intimately
tied to the success of the Iranian state. They
exported the revolutionary literature, modernized
the celebration of martyrdom narratives, and
effectively turned a diverse global religious
community into a sympathetic, mobilized audience
for the Iranian regime's foreign policy. But
here's the devastating irony that the text analyzes.
And honestly, it is the emotional core of Akhtar's
entire argument. The diaspora communities who
were often the most enthusiastic cheerleaders
for the Iranian revolution, the ones who hung
pictures of Khomeini in their homes, and most
deeply internalized this oppositional identity.
They never actually had to live under it. This
raises an incredibly important question about
the nature of ideological commitment. It's easy
to be a revolutionary from afar. These diaspora
communities bought the ideology without ever
having to suffer its daily reality. Right. They
could celebrate the anti -imperialist rhetoric,
the speeches defying America from the safety
of functioning democracies or relatively stable
states. They could feel a sense of pride that
a Shia state was standing up to the world. But
they never had to deal with the... 50 % inflation,
the collapsing currency, the brutal morality
police beating women in the streets, the rampant
corruption of the IRGC, or the sheer stifling
oppression that actual Iranians inside the country
were enduring every single day. The text notes
an incredibly poignant reality. The pro -Iranian
revolutionary sentiment was often far more fervent
in places like Pakistan or Dearborn than it was
in Tehran. The citizens of Iran had grown deeply,
bitterly disillusioned with the mullahs decades
ago. They knew the reality. While some of the
diaspora were still tightly holding on to the
romanticized, pure 1979 ideal that had been sold
to them. So when the geopolitical collapse finally
comes in 2026, when the supreme leader is killed
and the state project shatters, the emotional
experience is totally bifurcated. Exactly. For
the people inside Iran, the fall of the Velayah
-e -Faqih is a moment of profound relief. It's
the end of a corrupt, suffocating government
they had endured for generations. It's the lifting
of a crushing weight. But for the diaspora who
had anchored their religious and political identity
to the idea of this invincible, righteous state.
It is the evaporation of an idea they cherished.
It is a profound, disorienting crisis of identity.
And this. This is where the genius of the author's
framework becomes clear, because this brings
us right back to the central hook of the article,
right back to the South Asian Muslims of 1924.
The parallel is absolutely perfect. It is a stunning
historical rhyme. Think about those Indian Muslims
in the Kilifat movement we talked about earlier,
Gandhi's allies. They were fiercely idealizing
an Ottoman rule that they never actually lived
under. They invested the distant Turkish caliphate
with a symbolic spiritual perfection that far
exceeded the messy, corrupt, failing political
reality of the late Ottoman Empire. And when
Ataturk finally abolished it, The grief, the
psychological shock was most profound precisely
among those Indian Muslims who had idealized
it the most, not the Turks who lived it. The
author is arguing that the 2026 Shia diaspora
is experiencing the exact same psychological
trauma as the 1924 Sunni diaspora in India. The
dream is dead. And the hardest pill to swallow
is the realization that the reality of the dream
was never what they thought it was in the first
place. The transnational anchor is gone. So the
grand project has failed. The state is bankrupt,
the proxies are destroyed, the theology is exposed
as a modern invention, and the global diaspora
is in a state of shock. This brings us to the
final and perhaps most crucial section of our
deep dive. The post -Islamist horizon. The dust
is settling. What on earth comes next? To frame
what comes next, Akhtar introduces the foundational
theories of two prominent scholars. Olivia Roy
and Asaf Bayat. These are thinkers who saw this
coming a long time ago. Roy wrote a highly influential
book way back in 1994 called The Failure of Political
Islam. 1994, that's incredibly early to call
it. It was. But Roy argued three decades ago
that Islamist movements, despite their massive
revolutionary energy and ability to mobilize
the masses in opposition, had fundamentally failed
in their core goal. They could not create genuinely
Islamic states, economies, or societies. He predicted
that once these movements actually seized power
and had to run a country collecting garbage,
managing currency, dealing with trade, they would
inevitably succumb to the exact same mundane
governance failures, corruption, and real politic
as the secular autocrats they had replaced. The
religious veneer would just become a tool of
oppression. Which is exactly what we just described
happening in Iran. And then there's SF Bayat,
who coined the term... post -Islamism in 1996.
What does post -Islamism actually mean? Is it
just secularism? Not exactly secularism. Bayat
described post -Islamism as a specific social
and political condition. It emerges when the
Islamists themselves and the societies they govern
become intensely aware of the anomalies and the
utter inadequacies of their own political discourse.
The spell breaks. They realize the system simply
doesn't work. The economy is ruined. The youth
are alienated. So society begins seeking ways
to transcend the fundamentalist project. They
try to find a way to fuse religiosity with democratic
rights rather than using religion as a weapon
to deny rights. The author argues that the total
collapse in 2026 is the most dramatic, undeniable,
empirical confirmation of both Roy's and Bayat's
theories that we have ever seen. Political Islam
as a comprehensive state -building project is
exhausted. It's done. It has run its course.
So if the revolutionary state -led Islamist model
is dead, what are the alternatives? Nature of
whores of vacuum. The text lays out two major
competing visions that are now vying for the
future of the Muslim world's relationship with
modernity, governance, and the global order.
Let's look at vision one first. the Abraham Accords
model. This is the model heavily championed by
states like the United Arab Emirates and increasingly
Saudi Arabia under its current leadership. It
is a deeply pragmatic, almost aggressively post
-ideological vision. It proposes that Muslim
majority states can and must integrate fully
into the Western -led global economy. They argue
for normalizing relations with Israel, focusing
entirely on national prosperity, artificial intelligence,
tourism, and technological advancement. It's
the Let's build gleaming cities, host international
sporting events and create sovereign wealth funds
approach, leaving the dusty revolutionary rhetoric
and the proxy wars behind. It's highly appealing
from an economic standpoint. It is. But Akhtar
points out a massive glowing vulnerability in
this model. It suffers from a severe, potentially
fatal legitimacy deficit. What do you mean by
that? If we look at the actual data, the author
cites Arab barometer polling, which is frequently
referenced by scholars like Mark Lynch and Cole
Bunzel. This data consistently shows that overwhelming
majorities of Arab publics deeply, viscerally
reject normalization with Israel. And the sheer
brutality of the Gaza war in the preceding years
has made that gap between what the wealthy elite
autocrats want and what the popular sentiment
on the street feels even wider and more volatile.
So the Abraham Accords model offers sleek economic
integration, but it operates in direct, almost
arrogant defiance of the emotional and political
sympathies of its own citizens. It's a top -down
mandate. Exactly. It might look stable from the
windows of a skyscraper in Dubai, but underneath,
it's brittle. It lacks organic, grassroots legitimacy.
Which brings us to Vision 2, which the text calls
the Sistani model. We talked earlier about how
the Iranian project was contested from within
Shia theology by scholars like Kadivar. Well,
here is the institutional alternative, the other
center of gravity, Grand Ayatollah Ali al -Sistani,
based in the ancient holy city of Najaf in Iraq.
The Sistani model is the absolute epitome of
the quietest tradition we discussed earlier regarding
classical Shia thought. It is the tradition that
survived Khomeini's revolution, watched the chaos
of the Islamic Republic from across the border,
and has persisted quietly and powerfully in Najaf.
How does Sistani view the role of a cleric? Sistani's
formulation is remarkably clear and traditionally
grounded. Religion is absolutely vital for guiding
the ethics, the personal morality and the spiritual
life of society. Clerics should speak out against
injustice and corruption. But clerics must emphatically
stay away from the trappings of executive state
power. Let me try to use an analogy here. It's
like the difference between a spiritual advisor
who gives you profound life advice, helps you
navigate moral dilemmas and holds you accountable.
versus a spiritual advisor who suddenly demands
the keys to your car, control of your bank account,
and the right to tell you who you can marry.
That is an excellent analogy. Sistani is the
former. He believes the jurist is a moral guide,
a stabilizing force in times of crisis, like
when he rallied Iraqis against ISIS. But he is
absolutely not a president, a prime minister,
or a supreme leader. He rejects Vali Adafaki.
The text makes a really interesting structural
contrast here. When the Sunni world lost the
caliphate in 1924, they were completely unmoored.
They didn't really have an alternative, universally
recognized, independent center of religious authority
to fall back on. But the post -Khamenei Shia
world in 2026 does have Najaf. Najaf is still
there, intact, deeply respected, and offering
a completely different, non -state -obsessed
path. And this leads to the critical, suspenseful
question the author poses for the future. We
have this massive global Shia diaspora that has
just watched its oppositional, politicized identity
collapse. They have a massive amount of political,
financial, and spiritual energy. Where does that
energy go now? Can the quiet, ethical, non -political
framework of Anash absorb that energy? Can Sistani's
model guide those disillusioned diaspora communities
back to a more traditional spiritual focus, acting
as a shock absorber for this trauma? Or, Akhtar
suggests a darker alternative. Does the sudden
vacuum of power and identity create a new, uncontrollable
wave of radicalization? Just think about history.
The post -1924 vacuum in the Sunni world eventually
birthed highly politicized, often militant movements
like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Madhudi's
Jamaat Islami in South Asia. Will the 2026 vacuum
produce a new, perhaps even more volatile, decentralized
mutation of Shia political grievance, a movement
that doesn't even need a state to cause chaos?
It is the ultimate open question. We are watching
history unfold in real time. But the author's
overarching conclusion about what this all means
structurally is definitive. He calls this collapse
the Muslim world's Westphalian moment. That is
a powerful historical framing. So what does this
all mean? For those who might need a quick refresher,
the Westphalian moment refers to the Treaty of
Westphalia in 1648. That treaty essentially ended
the horrific... decades -long religious wars
in Europe between Catholics and Protestants.
He established the modern system of sovereign
nation states, basically agreeing that transnational
religious empires could no longer dictate the
borders of Europe. The state became supreme over
the church. Exactly. And Akhtar is saying that
after a century of delay, after all the pan -Islamic
aspirations, after the kill -a -fat movement
in India, and after the bloody exhaustive four
-decade Iranian revolutionary project. The nation
-state has definitively won in the Middle East
as well. It has absorbed, domesticated, and ultimately
broken transnational religious politics. The
era of the religious empire is closed. Yes, the
post -Islamist fusion of faith and freedom that
Asa Bayat predicted isn't arriving through careful,
enlightened reform. It's arriving because every
other alternative, every attempt to build a utopian
religious state has simply exhausted itself into
total collapse. The century -long battle is over.
The borders hold. Which leaves us with a final
provocative thought to mull over. We always like
to leave you with a concept to explore on your
own, something that builds on our discussion
today, but... pushes it a little further. If
we accept Akhtar's premise that the secular nation
state has definitively won this century -long
battle against transnational religious empires
and caliphates, it raises a fascinating, perhaps
terrifying new problem. What happens when those
victorious secular nation states fail? Which
many of them are doing right now. Exactly. If
the nation state is now the only game in town,
but it chronically fails to deliver economic
prosperity, fails to provide social stability,
or fails to offer a sense of justice and dignity
to its citizens, where do people turn? That eternal,
deep -seated human desire for a broader borderless
collective identity hasn't vanished just because
the Ayatollahs failed? Will humanity simply seek
out a new kind of transnational ideology to fill
that void? That's a fascinating thought. If not
religion, then what? Perhaps a transnational
identity driven entirely by technology, digital
communities that ignore physical borders entirely.
Or perhaps an ideology based on global economic
classes uniting against inequality, completely
bypassing national governments. The religious
caliphate. may be gone, but the fundamental human
need for a grander belonging, for a purpose larger
than a national passport, is surely waiting to
be filled by something else. The vacuum is still
there. A truly profound, slightly unsettling
question to leave you with. Thank you so much
for joining us on this incredibly intense, rewarding,
and deep intellectual journey today. We hope
this deep dive has helped illuminate the deep
historical currents that are quietly shaping
the loud headlines of our modern world. Keep
asking questions, keep looking for the historical
rhymes, keep connecting the docks, and we will
see you next time.