Khomeini ... was a paradigm of asceticism, which in Islam was not a withdrawal from worldly affairs but a refusal to be seduced by materialism. He wa… - Richard A. Horsley

Shiite Islam was revived and transformed by Iranians in direct reaction not only against western separation of religion from political-economic life, but more comprehensively against the transformation of their way of life by western political-economic power.

Intensive measures of repression taken by the Shah to enforce his westernizing development program nearly eliminated effective political parties and forms of civil society other than activities in the mosques.

Even though leading scholars ... recognize that Paul's letters were not theological treatises, they still construct Pauline Christianity as if it were an already existing definable religion. And apparently because religion in the modern West is separate from political and economic affairs—indeed, more or less subject to an agreement not to conflict with political and economic affairs—scholarly constructions often simply ignore (or avoid) implications in the sources of engagement with political-economic affairs, particularly any implications of conflict with the dominant political-economic order.