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

Visits to Iran and Controversies with " Ato ussa H." and Maxime Rodinson 73
military officer who had suppressed a communist uprising, assumed the
title of Reza Shah with the backing of the British, the leading clerics, and
the remnants ofthe 1906-1 1 parliament. Modeling himself on Mustafa Kemal
(Ataturk), but without the latter's anti-imperialist credentials, Reza Shah
created a modem military and state bureaucracy. In addition to thoroughly
crushing the Left, he reduced the powers of the clerical establishment, and
muzzled the parliament.3 Reza Shah also encouraged a stronger sense of national
identity, one that glorified the pre-Islamic past. He promulgated a more
secular legal code, but left most gender and family issues under the religious
courts. Educated women were granted a few new rights. Most dramatically, in
1936 he issued a formal decree ordering women to unveil, violently crushing
sporadic resistance from conservative religious forces.
In 1941, the Allies deposed Reza Shah because of his government's pro­
Axis sympathies, placing his son, who was twenty-two, on the throne as
Muhammad Reza Shah. The years 1941 to 1953 saw the reemergence of
democratic and leftist forces. During this decade, the pro-Soviet Tudeh Party
also came onto the scene as a major force. The more open political climate
allowed the ulama to reappear on the political scene as well. As a junior cleric,
Khomeini published Kashf al-Asrar (The unveiling of secrets) in 1943, a book
that advocated a return to clerical supervision of the entire legal code, the reo
tum of the veil, as well as "Quranic" physical punishment. At the same time,
in an innovation for clerical politics, Khomeini wished to take over rather
than dismantle the state apparatus built by Reza Shah.4
From 1951 to 1953, the left-of-center Prime Minister Muhammad Mossadeq
headed a nationalist and social democratic coalition, the National
Front, whose leadership included some nationalist clerics. Mossadeq's government
was overthrown in 1953 during a confrontation with the United
States and Britain. These two powers, outraged by Mossadeq's immensely
popular nationalization of the vast holdings of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company,
conspired with the military and parts of the clergy. The CIA orchestrated
a coup that overthrew Mossadeq and restored the shah to absolute power. 5 As
feminist historians Parvin Paidar ( 1995) and Maryam Matin-Daftari (2001)
have shown, an often ignored but crucial issue in the breakup of Mossadeq's
coalition prior to the coup was the burgeoning movement for women's suffrage,
which by 1952 had won voting rights for women in local elections.
After 1953, the previous policy of authoritarian modernization from
above was attempted anew. On the one hand, the SAVAK, a U.S.-trained
political police, ruthlessly crushed all opposition, while on the other, many
urban, middle-class women obtained new rights. By the 1960s, thousands of