15 March 2010 / RUŞEN ÇAKIR VATAN,
The biggest mistake of the leftists in the 1970s was viewing religion through the prism of “progressives-regressive” forms and to exalt themselves as “progressive” and label religious people “regressive.”
Due to this contemptuous attitude, they failed to give due attention to Muslim communities that had existed for years, or to the National Salvation Party (MSP), which had become a critical party in politics, or the Iranian revolution. From the 1980s onward, when the Muslim movement was in ascendance and the left was becoming marginal, the realities could have been embraced, but instead they chose to give credence to a frivolous claim that the junta had “opened the way for Islamists while crushing us.” It is true that the Sept. 12 generals met secretly with certain communities. But this is not enough to explain the “return to religion” phenomenon that occurred during the 1980s.
