A century has passed since the beginning of Iran’s Constitutional Movement. On this anniversary, Iranian scholars and researchers have analyzed this historical evolution from various points of view.

Iran was the first Asian country that made serious efforts to establish relations with Western social and political institutions. Therefore, the Constitutional Movement is more than a national issue since it had an impact on other cultures as well.

The spirit of Iranians, which, besides all their history and traditions have one of the world’s most famous cultures, is not unacquainted with the various global developments that have taken place and has recognized that one can not be indifferent to them.

Therefore, the Iranian intellectual vanguard was motivated to make strenuous efforts to create relations between Iranian traditions and these developments and phenomena.

The question of the relationship between these two tendencies is still the main question of our culture.

Nevertheless, the Iranian intellectual vanguard of those days made strenuous efforts during the Constitutional Movement era. Due to the measures they took, our culture became much more advanced than other cultures in the global South.

Despite the shortcomings of the Constitutional Movement and its pioneers, it must be acknowledged as a turning point.

Unfortunately, most Iranians do not have a deep understanding of our contemporary history. A considerable part of our information about Iran’s contemporary history, and particularly the Constitutional Movement, comes from hearsay, while most of us make few efforts to refer to reliable and first-rate sources.

This is why many researchers claim that we have no historical memory, which is of course not true.

Nevertheless, we need to take another glance at Iran’s contemporary history.

This lack of knowledge about the contemporary history of Iran is not limited to ordinary people. Even Iranian scholars and intellectuals, for the most part, do not have a comprehensive grasp of this history.

Thus, unaware of the historical experiences of their predecessors, contemporary intellectuals have gone about reinventing the wheel.

This is an obvious deficiency.

Furthermore, a great number of contemporary works on Iranian culture have been authored by foreigners who do not belong to the Iranian-Islamic culture and who conducted their research on the Iranian culture at various universities.

Naturally, since these research works are being compiled by non-Iranians, they also suffer some deficiencies that are amendable by the endeavors of indigenous researchers.

Moreover, many attitudes adopted toward the Constitutional Movement are misguided since they have failed to recognize the main question of the Constitutional Movement.

In fact, the main question posed by the Constitutional Movement is how to establish a bridge between tradition and modernity.

All other issues and problems can be resolved by finding an answer to this key question. Therefore, those who claim that the Constitutional Movement attempted to eliminate religion from both the public and private arenas of society have gone as far astray as those who believe that the Constitutional Movement tried to westernize all aspects of Iranian society.

These two attitudes have confused cause and effect.

Clearly, during the Constitutional Movement endeavors were made to communicate with another culture, which should not be condemned in and of itself.

Of course, one can criticize some tendencies that have their roots in this movement for not being able to create a satisfactory relationship between these two ideologies, but the noble cause of this movement is above reproof.

One should not adopt a one-dimensional attitude toward history, such that every connection with the West is interpreted as westernization or every single tendency toward religious traditions is interpreted as retrogression.

However, the intellectuals of the Constitutional Movement made this very mistake. Although the followers of the Constitutional Movement may be criticized for these two problems, the Constitutional Movement can not be blamed for them.

Human phenomena not only have a long historical background but also create a number of wanted or unwanted consequences. The Constitutional Movement is no exception.

There are many factors in the history of Iran that gave rise to the Constitutional Movement, including the inefficiency of the Qajar dynasty, neglect of cultural issues, the rising momentum of modernity, the wars between Iran and Russia, and the government’s harsh treatment of the people.

Indeed, the Constitutional Movement had a very great impact on Iran. Some historians whose field of study is the contemporary era believe that the current discourse in Iran was created by the Constitutional Movement. That is to say, the Constitutional Movement is a process that has continued to the present time.

Thus, the current situation in Iran can not be analyzed without looking at the Constitutional Movement. Yet, this fact is ignored by some Iranian political and cultural analysts.

Any research that aims to analyze Iran’s current situation must not neglect the history of the past century, and every single incident in this period must be examined.