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http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/007863.html
What Are The Iranians Dreaming About Michel Foucault
[…]
Is a long-foreseen split taking place within the opposition to the
shah? The “politicians” of the opposition try to be reassuring: “It
is good,” they say. “Khomeini, by raising the stakes, reinforces us
in the face of the shah and the Americans. Anyway, his name is only a
rallying cry, for he has no program. Do not forget that, since 1963,
political parties have been muzzled. At the moment, we are rallying
to Khomeini, but once the dictatorship is abolished, all this mist
will dissipate. Authentic politics will take command, and we will
soon forget the old preacher.” But all the agitation this weekend
around the hardly clandestine residence of the ayatollah in the
suburbs of Paris, as well as the coming and going of “important”
Iranians, all of this contradicted this somewhat hasty optimism. It
all proved that people believed in the power of the mysterious
current that flowed between an old man who had been exiled for
fifteen years and his people, who invoke his name.
The nature of this current has intrigued me since I learned about it
a few months ago, and I was a little weary, I must confess, of
hearing so many clever experts repeating: “We know what they don’t
want, but they still do not know what they want.”
“What do you want?” It is with this single question in mind that I
walked the streets of Tehran and Qom in the days immediately
following the disturbances. I was careful not to ask professional
politicians this question. I chose instead to hold sometimes-lengthy
conversations with religious leaders, students, intellectuals
interested in the problems of Islam, and also with former guerilla
fighters who had abandoned the armed struggle in 1976 and had decided
to work in a totally different fashion, inside the traditional society.
“What do you want?” During my entire stay in Iran, I did not hear
even once the word “revolution,” but four out of five times, someone
would answer, “An Islamic government.” This was not a surprise.
Ayatollah Khomeini had already given this as his pithy response to
journalists and the response remained at that point.
What precisely does this mean in a country like Iran, which has a
large Muslim majority but is neither Arab nor Sunni and which is
therefore less susceptible than some to Pan-Islamism or Pan-Arabism?
Indeed, Shiite Islam exhibits a number of characteristics that are
likely to give the desire for an “Islamic government” a particular
coloration. Concerning its organization, there is an absence of
hierarchy in the clergy, a certain independence of the religious
leaders from one another, but a dependence (even a financial one) on
those who listen to them, and an importance given to purely spiritual
authority. The role, both echoing and guiding, that the clergy must
play in order to sustain its influence-this is what the organization
is all about. As for Shi’ite doctrine, there is the principle that
truth was not completed and sealed by the last prophet. After
Muhammad, another cycle of revelation begins, the unfinished cycle of
the imams, who, through their words, their example, as well as their
martyrdom, carry a light, always the same and always changing. It is
this light that is capable of illuminating the law from the inside.
The latter is made not only to be conserved, but also to release over
time the spiritual meaning that it holds. Although invisible before
his promised return, the Twelfth Imam is neither radically nor
fatally absent. It is the people themselves who make him come back,
insofar as the truth to which they awaken further enlightens them.
It is often said that for Shi’ism, all power is bad if it is not the
power of the Imam. As we can see, things are much more complex. This
is what Ayatollah Shariatmadari told me in the first few minutes of
our meeting: “We are waiting 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.” As if to lend a
greater authenticity to his words, the ayatollah was surrounded by
several members of the Committee on Human Rights in Iran 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 control. 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 subsoil) shall not be
appropriated by anyone. 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 inequality with respect to rights, but difference,
since there is a natural difference. With respect to politics,
decisions should be made by the majority, the leaders 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
imprecise. 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.”
When Iranians speak of Islamic government; when, under the threat of
bullets, they transform it into a slogan of the streets; when they
reject in its name, perhaps at the risk of a bloodbath, deals
arranged by parties and politicians, they have other things on their
minds than these formulas from everywhere and nowhere. They also have
other things in their hearts. I believe that they are thinking about
a reality that is very near to them, since they themselves are its
active agents.
It is first and foremost about a movement that aims to give a
permanent role in political life to the traditional structures of
Islamic society. An Islamic government is what will allow the
continuing activity of the thousands of political centers that have
been spawned in mosques and religious communities in order to resist
the shah’s regime. I was given an example. Ten years ago, an
earthquake hit Ferdows. The entire city had to be reconstructed, but
since the plan that had been selected was not to the satisfaction of
most of the peasants and the small artisans, they seceded. Under the
guidance of a religious leader, they went on to found their city a
little further away. They had collected funds in the entire region.
They had collectively chosen places to settle, arranged a water
supply, and organized cooperatives. They had called their city
Islamiyeh. The earthquake had been an opportunity to use religious
structures not only as centers of resistance, but also as sources for
political creation. This is what one dreams about [songe] when one
speaks of Islamic government.
[…]