210
submitted 10 hours ago by Orwi@programming.dev to c/world@lemmy.world
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] rollin@piefed.social 4 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

It's important to bear in mind that those pictures show well-off urban people, who were by no means the majority.

During the first half of the 20th Century, even up to the 70s maybe, there was a growing sentiment amongst well-educated people throughout the Islamic world that secular societies like those of Europe and the US would be the way forward for their own countries.

Egypt for instance made great progress towards a more modern society under President Nasser. Before the 2 world wars, Turkey famously had Ataturk. These leaders framed religion as a personal matter while positioning the secular state as the vehicle for modernization, anti-imperialism, and economic progress.

Things were not all sunshine and rainbows of course, and there was terrible inequality and governments tended to be authoritarian. Rather than working tirelessly to foster more fair and open societies, the US and European govts were quite happy to exploit the nascent regimes for economic gain (typically access to oil) and political advantage (over the USSR).

Shitty behavior by US and European govts went a long way to destroying any good reputation and moral standing they may have had in the Middle East. Examples include, but are not limited to, the CIA coup that installed the Shah in the 50s and the 1956 Suez Crisis, where Britain and France held secret meetings with Israel and devised a plot where Israel would attack Egypt across the Sinai Peninsula, giving Britain and France a pretext to intervene militarily as "neutral peacemakers" to secure the canal zone.

[-] zqps@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 hour ago

It's so sad that people act like there's two diametrically opposed options - an illegitimate CIA puppet government robbing the country blind, or Sharia law under muslim extremist rule - when in reality one gave rise to the other.

The Iranian people are free under neither, no matter how pretty the propaganda pictures are. We have to dare to imagine a world without autocrats.

[-] Viceversa@lemmy.world 0 points 2 hours ago

So after islamic revolution iranians (especially women) lost nothing?

this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2026
210 points (96.1% liked)

World News

57952 readers
910 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News !news@lemmy.world

Politics !politics@lemmy.world

World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world

Ask Historians !askhistorians@lemmy.world


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS