Religion and Revolution: Spiritual and Political Islam in Ernesto Cardenal

Religion and Revolution provides a comprehensive study of spiritual and political Islam in Ernesto Cardenal, the great Latin American poet, priest, and revolutionary. The work studies the relationship between Thomas Merton and Sufism, Cardenal's connection to spiritual Islam, as well as the Sufi sources cited in his Cosmic Canticle. The work equally examines the impact of political Islam on his ideology, focusing particularly on his trip to Iran during the very triumph of the Islamic Revolution. Using Cardenal's Interlude of the Revolution in Iran as a starting point, the work provides a vivid and detailed description of the early days of the revolution as well as the ties between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Latin American left.