Historian of Islam Faisal Devji discussed with Monojit Majumdar the response in the Muslim world to the US-Israeli war on Iran, and of the likely future now of the political project that was begun by the Islamic Revolution of 1979.
There is the Western narrative that the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is an opportunity for Iranians to break out of the clutches of murderous authoritarianism. However, soon after the assassination at the beginning of the war, the mood in the Iranian street seemed to be more of grief and outrage than joy and relief. Why?
Like many societies around the world today, Iran’s is a deeply polarised one. Expressions of joy at Khamenei’s assassination on the streets of Tehran were more than matched by those of mourning soon after. Different classes of people have different experiences and views of their government, with those benefitting from it – both among state-created elites and the poor who depend on what remains of its welfarism – are no doubt more likely to be loyal.
But the scale and continuing pace of the US-Israeli attacks on the country may well unite a large number of people behind its government if only to maintain some measure of civil order in the chaos. Recall that the bombing of Gaza was also meant to destroy all support for Hamas but was unable to do so, probably for pragmatic rather than ideological reasons.
How important a force could the Shia Islam concepts of martyrdom and resistance, along with Iranian nationalism, be in shaping the Iranian people’s response to this ongoing humiliation?
Khamenei seems to have wanted to die a martyr, refusing to leave his house or hide in a bunker, and in doing so managing in the end to gain some redemption from his otherwise disastrous career.
While this kind of sacrifice is certainly linked to religious ideals, it also has more general and even universal meaning, with the martyr refusing to become a mere victim and so able to inspire heroism and pride rather than anger and despair. This was Mahatma Gandhi’s view of sacrifice as well, and he often cited the Shia Imam Hussain [who was killed in Karbala in 680 CE] as its model.
Martyrdom is a manifestation not of suicide but of fearlessness, and in attempting to embody this virtue, Khamenei probably sought in his last moments to attach them to the victory of the Islamic Revolution in 1979 which had established this ideal as its own.
Based on your understanding of the way in which Islamic ideology can manifest as political identity, what is next for Iran and its people over the next few years? Could Islam as a political force continue to shape the post-Khamenei transition?
I think Islamism has been a dead project politically for some two decades now. It was founded after the First World War in a global context defined by new political ideologies like communism and fascism. Modelled on the former in particular, Islamism’s glory days were not accidentally during the Cold War.
But Islamism had been founded by lay intellectuals, like the Indian [Islamic ideologue and philosopher] Abul A’la Maududi [1903-1979], and it was only much later, and when already in decline, that it was adopted by clerics in places like Iran and Afghanistan. The end of the Cold War and with it the battle of ideological states as we had known them, put Islamism on notice – and today it only enjoys power in a couple of countries, one of them being Iran.
While religious vocabularies and ideals will survive there as elsewhere, I doubt if Islamism or its domination by clerics will, and it is even possible we shall see Iran taken over by the military initially and by laymen subsequently.
Iran appears at this moment to be largely isolated in the Muslim world. Is there a moral or sectarian dimension to this silence?
While there may well be a sectarian dimension in the lack of support Iran has received from other Muslim countries, more important, I think, is the fact that with the decline of Islamism and the widespread repudiation of the globalised forms of militancy that had briefly succeeded it, Islam no longer provides the primary language to express support and solidarity.
Leaving aside the Gulf states, most Muslim countries are deeply concerned by and against the war, whether it is governments or their citizens we are talking about. They may well think of the war as being anti-Muslim, but without having to invoke Islam in rejecting it.
This indicates a hugely significant and global shift in the role of Islam in contemporary politics. But again, we have already seen this happen in similar Muslim responses to the Gaza war, which cannot be attributed to sectarianism.
The state that emerged after the 1979 Islamic Revolution has suffered grievous physical injury and its overseas proxies have been all but dismantled over the past couple of years. What is the future of the Iranian model of Shiite religious politics beyond Iran’s borders?
Unlike the Gaza war, which gave rise to a few and for the most part politically insignificant protests in the Muslim world, the attack on Iran and Khamenei’s assassination has already led to massive demonstrations in parts of Pakistan and India. These seem to have been largely Shia, and so made use of the mourning rituals familiar to that tradition.
In my view, the relative dearth of protests during the Gaza war signalled not any lack of support for the Palestinians but the fact that there seemed to be no viable political party or cause to support, just a legalistic and humanitarian one dominated by the West. Neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority have any authority or legitimacy in the Muslim world as a whole, not least because they are seen as lacking a political vision and abilities.
The Palestinians were certainly sympathised with but seen more as victims than political actors, just as the Uyghur [in China] and Rohingya [in Myanmar] have been. The same is not true of Iran, which remains a political actor with a strategy of its own.
Faisal Devji is Beit Professor of Global and Imperial History at Balliol College, University of Oxford. His most recent book, Waning Crescent: The Rise and Fall of Global Islam, was published in August 2025.
A man speaks in front of a picture of Mojtaba Khamenei, the son and successor to the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in Tehran, Iran, Monday, March 9, 2026. (NYT) 
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