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

78 Foucault's Writin gs on the Iranian Revolution
hand, ever since the Constitutional Revolution, orthodox Shi'ite clerics op­
posed to the democratic movement had also instituted their own grassroots
councils, often called Islamiyehs. During the Constitutional Revolution, the
Islamiyehs were highly conservative cultural institutions that provided the
clerics with groups of vigilantes for confrontations with the Constitution­
alists, who were supported by a large body of progressive mullahs.9 The
Islamiyehs opposed the demands of the more liberal and left-wing grass­
roots associations, and openly campaigned against Iran's non-Muslim mi­
norities and secular democrats. In 1908, for example, the Islamiyeh council
in Tabriz, Azerbaijan, had been the headquarters of forces opposed to the
Constitutional Revolution. In 1953, Ayatollah Abuiqasem Kashani had relied
on similar grassroots Islamic societies in his struggle against the nationalist
Mossadeq regime, overthrown that year by te CIA. Since his exile in 1963,
Khomeini had encouraged the fo rmation of thousands of Islamiyic Coali­
tion Councils, which now existed throughout the country. These grassroots
associations raised money for the needy, but they also propagated an au­
thoritarian and intolerant interpretation of Islam. Unfortunately, Foucault
seemed unaware of this checkered history.
The Shah and the "Dead Weight of Modernity"
Foucault's second article on Iran, published on October 1, shows a more
obvious connection to larger themes in his work, especially his critique of
modernity. Foucault's proposed title for this second piece, "The Dead Weight
of Modernity, " changed by the newspaper editors to a more modernist ''The
Shah Is a Hundred Years Behind the Times," suggested a substantial continu­
ity between his overall critique of modernity and his writings on Iran. This
was the article that Iranian students would translate into Persian and paste
on the walls of Tehran University.
In this article, Foucault stressed the dependent nature of Iran's modern­
ization and the limited success ofReza Shah in constructing a coherent policy
of nationalism and secularism:
[Reza Shah] had three objectives borrowed from Mustafa Kemal: nationalism,
secularism, and modernization. The Pahlavis were never able to reach the
first two objectives. As to nationalism, they neither could nor knew how
to loosen the constraints of geopolitics and oil wealth. The father placed
himself under English domination in order to stave off the Russian threat.