From Latin American Liberation Theology to Islamic Coalition Theology: The Case of the Islamic Revolution of 1979 in Iran

This article will offer a comparative analysis between Latin American Liberation Theology (LALT) and Islamic Coalition Theology in the broader literature on liberation theology. The purpose of this comparison is to highlight a fundamental structural divergence in their political and theological orientations. The 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran is elaborated in this conceptual context to situate the debate in a recent practical example of the Islamic Coalition Theology that led to a political revolution. Whereas LALT developed as an autonomous Christian critique of structural injustice and Western capitalist domination, Islamic Coalition Theology, as also reverberated in the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran evolved through a coalitional paradigm—what was contemporaneously described as the ‘red and the black reaction’ (ertejāʿ-e sorkh o siyāh in Persian)—in which Islamic, non-religious, and even irreligious ideologies temporarily converged to confront a shared adversary: Western imperialism and its domestic expansionism worldwide. Under the broader intellectual influence of twentieth-century global leftist movements, Iran’s revolutionary Islamism absorbed and adapted elements of Marxist and anti-capitalist discourse, and indeed merged with them without relinquishing its theological core. This study argues that such ideological hybridity reveals a distinctive pragmatism within Islamic political philosophy, wherein the pursuit of liberation is not confined to doctrinal purity but is instrumentally open to external alliances and ‘coalitions’ that lead to a common political goal. Through a comparative theological and political hermeneutic, the article will situate Islamic Coalition Theology within the global genealogy of liberationist thought, demonstrating how its strategic inclusiveness contrasts with LALT’s predominantly intra-Christian reformism. The article will build on the argument that Islam primarily encompasses a comprehensive normative and political and jurisprudential order grounded in the Quran; therefore, its coalition theology is charged with its political openness to be chaperoned with any political agenda that too pursues the common political goal.