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

76 Foucault's Writings on the Iranian Revolution
Europe had experienced as part of the English Revolution of the seventeenth
century-could provide a new point of departure in thought and in actuality.
Foucault reported that a number of people in Iran had told him that Marx's
1843 statement that religion was "the opium of the people" was either wrong
or inapplicable to the case of this predominantly Shi'ite society. Khomeini
was making similar statements during this period, as seen in'his October 30
denunciation of Marxism aimed at Iranian students abroad: "They say Islam
is opium! That religion as a whole is opium! ... [When in fact] the prophet
ofIslam, and other Muslims, fought the wealthy. Now [the leftist opposition)
has injected the thought [in people's minds) that it is the rich who introduced
religion! All these machinations are so they could separate you from one another
and from the Quran" (Khomeini 1999, 4:240).
Foucault indicated that there was something special about Shi'ism, here
recalling some of the statements of the Islamist theoretician Ali Shariati. Foucault
suggested that Shi'ism had played a key role in "inciting and fomenting
political awareness" in Iran, as well as an "oppositional role" ("Dialogue, "
app., 186). Christianity had played a similar oppositional role at certain periods
in European history, especially in religious and political movements
of the early modem period. Religious movements had sometimes fought
against feudal lords, against the state, and alongside the revolutionary peasantry.
Here, Foucault singled out the Anabaptist movement and its role in the
German peasant uprisings of the sixteenth century. He declared that the Anabaptists
"rejected the power of the state, government bureaucracy, social and
religious hierarchies, everything" (ibid., 186-87). They also supported the
right to individual conscience, as well as the independence of small religious
groups from the powerful centralized church. That was why these religious
movements, as well as the history of religion and its connection to politics,
had to be studied anew, to provide an alternative foundation for a new type
of revolutionary social movement. Foucault concluded that Marx's statement
on religion as the opium of the people was correct for a particular period
in history, the rise of capitalism in Europe, when the state and the churches
had colluded to induce workers to "accept their fate." However, in his view
Marx's statement could not be regarded "as a general statement on all eras of
Christianity, or on all religions" (ibid., 187).
Foucault's First Report from Iran: The Clerics and the Local Councils
Foucault's first report from Iran, "The Army-When the Earth Quakes," was
published on September 28, 1978, in Carriere della sera, a few days after