foucault-and-the-iranian-revolution-janet-afary

Visits to Iran and Controversies with " Atoussa H." and Maxime Rodinson 101
app., 226). He noted that a small part of the educated classes in the Islamic
world had become, under Western influence, more skeptical in recent years,
quickly adding:
But the conversion of these people to such Westernizing trends has reinforced
the attachment to Islam, in its most rigidly traditional form, among the
more numerous masses. The poor, driven to the limit of famine or wretched
subsistence, direct their anger and recrimination against the privileges of
the rich and powerful-their ties with foreigners, their loose morality, and
their scorn of Muslim injunctions, the most obvious signs of which are the
consumption of alcohol, familiarity berween the sexes, and gambling. (Ibid.)
This included attacks on "the places of worship of 'heretics ' or non-Muslims"
(ibid.) . Here, there was an acknowledgment of the deep oppression and anger
of the masses, but, in strong contrast to Foucault, there was also an analysis
of the retrogressive features of lslamism.
Since the nineteenth century, continued Rodinson, much of the Muslim
elite had been attracted to new ideologies such as nationalism or socialism.
However, the masses often reinterpreted these ideologies in religious terms:
"It happened that foreign domination was the work of infidels and that the exploiters
were infidels or else one's fellow countrypeople in the pay of infidels"
("Islam Resurgent?" app., 227). However, there also had been instances when
significant parts of the population had been touched by modernizing ideas.
As Rodinson also argued: "In areas of the Arab East where there were religious
minorities, the national and social struggles were often fought in common by
Muslims, Christians, and (until quite recently) Jews' (ibid .) . However, these
secular nationalist tendencies had lost ground in recent years.
Additionally, Rodinson reviewed the checkered results of secular Arab nationalist
movements in the post-World War II period . In 1978, the rulers of
predominantly Muslim countries were often attracted to Western lifestyles
and technology. However, the more religious majority was incensed by what
it considered to be the Westerners' "impious morality, their debauchery and
drunkenness, " and "their bad example regarding the equality of the sexes,
if not indeed female domination" ("Islam Resurgent?" app., 229). Because
of this, nationalism in the Muslim world had become more and more 18lamicized.
Islam's persistent traditionalism had also strengthened the notion
of male domination: "As with Latin Catholicism in the past, for example,
religious tradition can be exploited in order to dominate the sex. which the
males unquestioningly consider to be weak and subordinate" (ibid., 230).
Rodinson harbored no illusions about an Islamist government and saw it as