Answering Only to God : Faith and Freedom in Twenty-First Century Iran

The story of the internal clash of Islam versus Islam in today’s Iran
Two seasoned scholar/journalists of the Islamic world focus on Iran-the modern age’s first theocracy-to challenge the prevailing Western belief that the Islamic world is an undifferentiated mass of disaffected and dangerous fanatics. Instead, Geneive Abdo and Jonathan Lyons explore the controversial view that Iranians have a legitimate quarrel with the United States and the West stemming from decades of exploitive foreign policies against Iran and its people.
Taking the reader inside the country’s key institutions, the authors, whose research includes an astounding three years of intensive meetings with leading theologians, argue that the 1979 Iranian revolution, long viewed in the West as the pursuit of an imagined medieval Utopia, was, in fact, a political movement designed to modernize Islam. A power struggle between conservative and reform elements has provoked a clash that is destabilizing the country and limiting Iran’s ability to integrate with the world community. Since 2000, when the authors were forced to flee Iran, free expression has been stifled and the democratically elected president, Mohammad Khatami, has been stripped of power, as have other mullahs who advocate flexibility in the application of Islamic law. The uninformed U.S. response to this struggle has strengthened the hand of the conservatives. The authors demonstrate Iran’s critical influence on the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims and Islamists and its chances for democracy in the years ahead.
Hope emerged for a republic accountable to Iran’s 62 million people with the landslide election of President Mohammad Khatami in 1997. Like Islamic reformers throughout history, Khatami argued that the needs of modem Muslims could be met if reason and rationality were introduced into the practice of the faith. His ideas energized other parts of the Muslim world yearning for free expression, the rule of law, religious and political tolerance, and increased participation among women and minorities. The promised land of the modem Islamic movement, the founding of a true Islamic republic, suddenly appeared within reach.
Geneive Abdo and Jonathan Lyons, experienced Middle East correspondents, felt the same tug, and arrived in Tehran to document Iran’s rebirth ten months after Khatami took office. Instead, they found themselves chronicling the collapse of this republican ideal under the weight of Iran’s religious and social traditions. “Answering Only to God” gives readers an inside look at this secretive society and its battle for the true faith. It is a struggle that has plagued the Islamic Republic from birth: Is it a Shi’ite Muslim state ruled by clerics, or a republic ruled by the people? Unable to resolve this conflict, the clerical establishment has come to rely on repression to maintain power. Yet such despotism flies in the face of traditional Shi’ite Muslim practice, just as it shatters the dreams of millions of Iranians for a society that is both religious and free.
As the only American journalists to live in Iran since the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution, Abdo and Lyons draw on hundreds of interviews carried out over almost three years. Their research and reporting reveal the most intimate workings of the Iranian regime. In 2001, they were forced to flee under the threat of prosecution and have been banned from returning. “Answering Only to God” will appeal to anyone searching for a deeper understanding of the conflicts sweeping the entire Muslim world.
“Abdo and Lyons have made a major contribution to contemporary Iranian history. Their eyewitness accounts are absolute gems of investigative journalism, done with courage and imagination and guided by a caring intellect.”–Hamid Dabashi, Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies, Columbia University, and author of “Theology of Discontent”
“Insightful, captivating, and] riveting.”–Jonathan Curiel, “San Francisco Chronicle”
“Abdo and Lyons have made a major contribution to contemporary Iranian history. Their eyewitness accounts are absolute gems of investigative journalism, done with courage and imagination and guided by a caring intellect.”–Hamid Dabashi, Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies, Columbia University, and author of “Theology of Discontent”
“A timely and very intelligent first-hand account of the current reform movement in the context of Iranian politics and theocratic government.”–Said Amir Arjomand, author of “The Turban for the Crown” and President of the Association for the Study of Persianate Societies and Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook
“A remarkable first-hand account of Iran, the most interesting contemporary social experiment on the face of the planet. Abdo and Lyons bring us inside the soul of this intriguing country–which in many ways is the crucible in which the contemporary mix of radical religion and politics has been forged.

In-depth analysis of one of the world’s most controversial religions in a country full of enigma