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

84 Foucault's Writings on the Iranian Revolution
201). Not only was Foucault infatuated with the revolutionary rhetoric of
militant Shi'ism, but he also parroted Shi'ite prejudices against Sunni Muslims.
Among them was the claim that the Shi'ite imams (twelve descendents
of the Prophet Muhammad, beginning with Ali) were all egalitarian religious
leaders, whereas the early Sunni caliphs were all corrupt.
After much other praise for the Shi'ite imams and clerics, Foucault seemed
finally to qualify his argument slightly, in an apparent attempt to avoid
sounding naIve to his readers: "Let us not embellish things. The Shi'ite clergy
is not a revolutionary- force" ("Tehran: app., 202). He admowledged that it
was part of the establishment and noted that one of its number, Ayatollah
Abulqasem Kashani, had opposed Mossadeq in 1953. He seemed to view this
incident as an aberration, however, for he now repeated the explanation that
the Islamists had evidently given him, that this violated the spirit of the rankand-file
clerics, who were "most often on the side of the rebels" (ibid., 202).
Shi'ism, he continued, was the very language of mass discontent and revolt,
not only in 1978, but also throughout Iranian history:
It is much more than a simple vocabulary through which aspirations, unable
to find other words, must pass. It is today what it was several times in the past,
the form that the political struggle takes as soon as it mobilizes the common
people. It transforms thousands of forms of discontent, hatred, misery, and
despairs into a force. It transforms them into a force because it is a form of
expression, a mode of social relations, a supple and widely accepted elemental
organization, a way of being together, a way of speaking and listening, some­
thing that allows one to be listened to by others, and to yearn for something
with them at the same time as they yearn for it. ("Tehran, " app., 202-3)
Unfortunately, he seemed unaware of the fact that Shi'ism was first imposed
on the majority of the population as late as the Safavid dynasty of the sixteenth
century. He also ignored the fact that, despite occasional clashes over
influence and authority, religious institutions ostensibly remained committed
to government rulers. Their challenges to the state had often been over
social and political reforms that threatened to undermine existing class, religious,
or gender hierarchies
Instead, Foucault continued in the same vein, suggesting that t.he mullahs
were a deeply rooted, even "irreducible" force of opposition to established
power, and not only in 1978: "Persia has had a surprising destiny. At the
dawn of history, it invented the state and government. It conferred its models
of state and government on Islam, and its administrators staffed the Arab
Empire. But from this same Islam, it derived a religion that, throughout the