Rel Notes: Islam Today Spurred on by tribal and religious zeal, between 1773 and 1819 the Sauds and the Wahhabis united, often through bloody conquest, most of the land that Muhammad had ruled and which would become a century later the modern Saudi kingdom. But in 1818 the first state and its capital, Diriyya, were destroyed by Egypt at the urging of the jealous and powerful Ottomans, a humiliation for which Egypt has never quite been forgiven. The second Saudi kingdom (1824-91), also the result of an alliance beteen the Al Saud and the Wahhabis, ended in civil war and the temporary exile of the House of Saud in neighboring Kuwait. The third Saudi kingom (modern Saudi Arabia) owes success to Ibn Saud who in 1902 recaptured Riyadh from local rulers in a daring raid. Attacks two years ag0 on Abolkarim Sorush, a philosophy professor in Iran who argues that Islam is compatible with democracy and pluralism and implicitly that a clerical rule in Iran is a distortion of the faith, suggests how passionately political currents still run as the revolution enters its twentieth year. Iram remains a nation of crises, uncertain about its economy, its political system, even its identity. Regime that rules Iran, a once oil-rich nation of seventeen nationalities and 65 million people in a land the size of the Unitd States east of the Mississippi has endured. The eight year war launched by Iraq in 1980, which the Ayatolla Ruholla Khomeini refused to end, is estimated to have claimed more than a million Iranian casualties, though exact figures are unknowable. The pauperization of the middle class and the educated elite continues to alienate young Iranians from the regime and even from Islam itself. After the Islamic revolution overthrew Pahlavi and forced him into exile, the militants' first impulse was to deface the friezes of Persepolis, a symbol not only of the shah's excesses but of the jahiliyya, the time before the Prophet Muhammad. But patriots had prevailed and Persepolis was spared. To this day Iranians seem incredulous that by 650 their empire (and much of Byzantium as well) had been conquered by Islam and the Arabs, a people they viewed, and still do, as primtive. How could God have spoken Arabic and not Persian (Farsi)? Iran responded by doing what came naturally in adversity or occupation: As Alexander eventually became an honorary Iranian, the new faith of Islam became "iranianized," imbued with the customs, traditions, and skills of their ancient civilization. Relations between Iranians and Arabs were always tense. Early Arab Muslims accused Persian Muslims of incest because of the Saddanid custom of marring one's mother or systers; Persians denigrated the Arabs as "lizard eaters." Iran had become officially Shiite, the minority branch of Islam, only under the Safavids, the sixteenth century dynasty of Turkish origin that conquered Iran and imposed Shiism as the state religion on what was then a mostly Sunni population. The choice may have been unfortunate, Shiism being the scorned, defeated branch of the faith. Shiites emphasise this historical dispossession, mourning f or their lost imams -- Shiism's rightful political and spiritual rulers -- as well as Iran's deep sorrow for its own lost empires and grandeur. Iranians practice "Twelver Shiism," which refers to the twelve divinely designated descendants of the sons of Ali, the prophet's cousin who were deprived of their right to rule. Persecuted and feared by Sunni Muslims, the later Shiite imams defended themselves and their faith by various stratagems, including taqiyya, or dissembling to avoid persecution. According to Twelver Shiite doctrine, God had ordered the Twelfth Imam in 874 to remain on earth in hiding or "occultation" until he was commanded to manifest himself -- to usher in Judgment Day by returning as the Mahdi, the Messiah. The successor to the Prophet Muhammad would possess walayat, the ability to interpret the inner mysteries of the Qur'an and the sharia Divinely chosen, he would be free of sin and error. As such, he had to be obeyed, a requirement that Khomeini would brilliantly exploit. Fate was not kind to the Iranian revolution. Iranians had barely written their new constitution and elected their first government when Saddam Hussein invaded in 1980. The price of oil that year had begun its steady decline. In addition, the Mujahideen-e Khalq, a socialist Islamic group -- the Khmer Rouge of Islamic militants -- based in enemy Iraq terrorized the new Islamic state with bombing and assasinations. Although such assaults went largely unreported in the United States, most Iranians loathed these Islamic extremists even more than they did their own revolution's most uncompromising men; they also never forgot that the Mujahideen have lavish offices in Washington. Iran's population exploded. Eager for more recruits for the war against Iraq and opposed to birth control on religious grounds, Khomeini's government encouraged Iranians to procreate, with disastrous results. By 1995 Iran's population, some 34 million on the eve of the revolution was 65 million -- 72% were under twenty-five; 53% under fifteen. Some 48 percent of Iranians are still illiterate. With low oil prices, a soaring population, and zealous but colossally incompetent clerical administration, Iran's economy staggered. Per capita income in real terms is about a quarter today of what it was before the revolution. About 6 million mostly middle-class Iranians now live outside their country, 1.2 million of them in the US.alone. In a dramatic departure from traditional Shite doctrine, Khomeini argued that Muslims should not wait passively for the return of the Twelfth Imam and the establishment of the imamate under the infallible Redeemer but turn immediately to the most enlightened clerics to establish a walayat al-faqih, or vice regency, the guaradianship of the jurosconsul, which would rule with the Messiah's authority until his return. He maintained that Iran's leadership could be vested in a "single outstanding religious figure," the preeminent jurist, whom all Muslims would be religiously bound to obey. The international Islamic revolution stumbled. If Shiism was born thirteen centuries ago with the slaughter of Imam Hussein (the Prophet's grandson) on the battlefield of Karbala, Khomeini's Shiite international revolution had died in modern-day Karbala after the Gulf war, when Iran had done nothing to stop Saddam's slaughter of Iraqi Shiites and the desecration of Shia shrines. Islamic Revivalism --product of many factors: collapse within region of Arab nationalism after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war collapse of Soviet Union and Marxist dream in late 1980s demographic explosion that has strained national resources failure of most Middle Eastern governments to deliver on ambitious promises made after independence effect of Khomeini's populist Islamic revolution in Iran explosion of petrodollars American support for mujahideen in Afghanistan Spread of hijab among young women Many cannot afford weekly trips to hairdresser or expensive cosmetics that middle-class Arab women take for granted In Algeria's Casbah, where families sleep in shifts and share a single bathroom with many, hijab provides pyschological as well as physical protection. To men, Hijab says: This is a devout woman. Leave her alone Also "high end" Islamic couture suggests that hijab can be as much a matter of fashion as of politics Jordan and Israel have been among the boldest in co-opting and marginalizing militant Muslims by offering them political rights and participation. But in neither state do militants stand much chance of ruling. In Israel, the overwhelming Jewish majority will not permit the country's non-Jewish minority, almost a fifth of the population, to challenge Israel's identity or threaten its existence. In 1960, average per capita income in the seven most prosperous Arab states was slightly larger than that of the seven East Asian "tigers." By the early 1990s, per capita income of the Arab group was only $3,342, while that of the Asian countries stood at $8,000. In Israel, per capita income is more than $12,000. Today the Middle East attracts only 3 percent of global foreign investment; Asia gets 58 percent. Middle East's share, despite Arab-Israeli peace treaties, continues to decine. Global economy is developing so quickly that nations or regions that fail to make the necessary structural adjustments to compete for market share and capital are now likely to remain permanently poor. Arab Middle East and Iran will have to create almost 50 million jobs by 2010 simply to provide sufficient work for those who will enter the labor force. No Middle Eastern state except Israel is now creating jobs to match current levels of growth.