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

206 Appendix
Shariatrnadari told me in the first few minutes of our meeting: "We are wait­
ing for the return of the Imam, which does not mean that we are giving up
on the possibility of a good government. This is also what you Christians
are endeavoring to achieve, although you are waiting for Judgment Day." AB
if to lend a greater authenticity to his words, the ayatollah was surrounded
by several members of the Committee on Human Rights in Iran53 when he
received me.
One thing must be clear. By "Islamic government, " nobody in Iran means
a political regime in which the clerics would have a role of supervision or con­
trol. To me, the phrase "Islamic government" seemed to point to two orders
of things.
"A utopia, " some told me without any pejorative implication. "An ideal, "
most of them said to me. At any rate, it is something very old and also very
far into the future, a notion of coming back to what Islam was at the time
of the Prophet, but also of advancing toward a luminous and distant point
where it would be possible to renew fidelity rather than maintain obedience.
In pursuit of this ideal, the distrust of legalism seemed to me to be essential,
along with a faith in the creativity of Islam.
A religious authority explained to me that it would require long work by
civil and religious experts, scholars, and believers in order to shed light on all
the problems to which the Quran never claimed to give a precise response.
But one can find some general directions here: Islam values work; no one can
be deprived of the fruits of his labor; what must belong to all (water, the sub­
soil) shall not be appropriated by anyone. 54 With respect to liberties, they will
be respected to the extent that their exercise will not harm others; minorities
will be protected and free to live as they please on the condition that they do
not injure the majority; between men and women there will not be inequal­
ity with respect to rights, but difference, since there is a natural difference.
With respect to politics, decisions should be made by the majority, the lead­
ers should be responsible to the people, and each person, as it is laid out in
the Quran, should be able to stand up and hold accountable he who governs.
It is often said that the definitions of an Islamic government are impre­
cise. On the contrary, they seemed to me to have a familiar but, I must say,
not too reassuring clarity. "These are basic formulas for democracy, whether
bourgeois or revolutionary, " I said. "Since the eighteenth century now, we
have not ceased to repeat them, and you know where they have led." But I
immediately received the following reply: "The Quran had enunciated them
way before your philosophers, and if the Christian and industrialized West
lost their meaning, Islam will know how to preserve their value and their
efficacy. "