Imperialism In Persepolis

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In 1980, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was replaced by a religious regime under the leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini. Khomeini believed that the Iranian culture was polluted with imperialism and was led astray of the Islamic path. Many of his pre-revolutionary promises were forgotten after he was in power, and he implemented Islamic fundamentalism through law. In Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis the Story of a Childhood religion is portrayed as a tool used by the government that incites extreme nationalism, sexism, and secures the ignorance of Iran’s people throughout the Iranian Revolution. In the memoir Marji learns through her parents how the Iranian government with the British influence worked together exploiting its people’s religious ethic in order to maintain sovereignty over the Iranian population while the British keep control of Iran’s resources. The memoir depicts Marji’s parents demonstrating everyday during the year of the Revolution; before the…show more content…
The Shah and his father both strongly supported the westernization of Iran, as they were placed in power with the help of the British. At the end of the Revolution and the Shah’s reign, it made sense to strongly detest imperialism, and to create a new invulnerable identity for Iran. The year prior to the Islamic Revolution, there were French anti-clerical schools, until the newly instituted Republic quickly declared, “all bilingual schools must be shut down” (Satrapi 4). The universities were later closed because, “the educational system and what is written in school books, at all levels, are decadent. Everything needs to be revised to ensure that our children are not led astray from the true path of Islam [...] better to have no students at all than to educate future imperialists” (Satrapi 73). The Republic thrived on the secured

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