Iranian Revolution: Islamists, Leftists, and the Purge of Students

I'm here to tell you something that may make some people feel

uncomfortable.

I have seen this movie before, and I know how it ends.

In 1979, the Shah of Iran was overthrown by an alliance

that should never have made sense.

The Islamists joined forces with the Marxist and socialists.

Think about that. Sound familiar, huh?

The leftists believed religion was backwards.

The Islamists wanted religious rule.

The leftists claimed to support women's liberation.

The Islamists wanted to control how women dress, how they

behave, and where they could go. The leftists talked about

sexual freedom. The Islamists would build a regime that

terrorized and murdered gay people.

They had almost nothing in common except for two things:

They hated Israel and America,

and they wanted to bring the regime down.

My family lived through what happens next.

In Iran, the leftists thought they were using the Islamists.

They thought the Islamists were useful.

They thought, "We will join forces now.

We will tear down the Shah. We will destroy the

existing system. We will have our revolution, and then we

will take power." They were so arrogant, and they were so

naive. The Islamists were using them.

And when the Islamists no longer needed them, they turned on them.

The college students who helped bring the revolution

to power, they were purged. The professors,

purged. The intellectuals, imprisoned.

The leftists, tortured and executed.

The universities themselves were shut down.

The Islamists used the college students to take power,

and then they crushed the very college students who helped put them there.

And you know what the Islamists told them?

They said, "If you will turn on your own country,

how do we trust you not

to turn on us? If you don't stand for your own country,

you stand for nothing."

That is the part of the Iranian revolution that every American

college student should be forced to study,

not what our indoctrination camps we call college

education are teaching them.