Posted on 11/06/2005 2:59:23 PM PST by generalhammond
"As an Islamic movement it can set the entire region afire, overturn the most unstable regimes, and disturb the most solid," Foucault wrote enthusiastically. "Islam — which is not simply a religion, but an entire way of life, an adherence to a history and a civilization — has a good chance to become a gigantic powder keg, at the level of hundreds of millions of men"
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
but choice snips include:
Foucault's Iranian adventure was a "tragic and farcical error" that fits into a long tradition of ill-informed French intellectuals spouting off about distant revolutions,
Foucault pokes fun at the secular leftists who thought they could use the Islamists as a weapon for their own purposes; the Islamists alone, he believed, reflected the "perfectly unified collective will" of the people.
It also tied into his burgeoning interest in a "political spirituality" (by which he meant the return of religion into politics, a suspicious phenomenon in rigorously secular France) whose rise was then still obscured by the Cold War. These preoccupations made Foucault both more sensitive to the power of political religion, but also more prone to soft-pedal its dangers. In his articles, Foucault compared the Islamists to Savonarola, the Anabaptists, and Cromwell's militant Puritans. The comparisons were intended to flatter.
When an Iranian woman living in exile in Paris named "Atoussa H." wrote a letter to Le Nouvel Observateur in November 1978 castigating Foucault for his uncritical support of a solution that could prove to be worse than the problem, he airily dismissed her claims as anti-Muslim hate-mongering.
This is an article which analyses the folly of one if France's most influential thinkers, and darling of the left, in that he embraced the Islamic revolution as a beautiful thing. It also sheds some light on how the Islamic revolution has now erupted in France and why the French are so impotent to act decisively.
Exemely intersting. Thanks for posting this.
bump
Didn't Foucault also praise sadomasochism?
Which leftists?... there were many flavors of leftist back then. Good post though, thanks. Some of the writing coming out of Iran during that time was actually inspiring. Ali Shariati's writings inspired the nation to challenge the system. Khomeini's works were never very interesting but it is true that his speeches of the era were not indicative of the slaughter house Iran was about to become. It is said that he knew how to agree with everyone he met without appearing to contradict himself.
If only he knew how to govern... I think most everyone expected an improvement after life under the Shah and for six months Iranians really did get a chance to be intellectually and spiritually free. But that was never Khomeini's goal. He was a fascist... who floated to power on words like these.
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On the Sociology of Islam - Lectures By Ali Shari’ati Translated from Islamshinasi, Vol. I, pp. 97-98.
THE IDEAL SOCIETY OF ISLAM is called the umma. Taking the place of all the similar concepts which in different languages and cultures designate a human agglomeration or society, such as "society," "nation," "race," "people," "tribe," "clan," etc., is the single word umma, a word imbued with progressive spirit and implying a dynamic, committed and ideological social vision.
The word umma derives from the root amm, which has the sense of path and intention. The umma is, therefore, a society in which a number of individuals, possessing a common faith and goal, come together in harmony with the intention of advancing and moving toward their common goal.
While other expressions denoting human agglomerations have taken unity of blood or soil and the sharing of material benefit as the criterion of society, Islam, by choosing the word umma, has made intellectual responsibility and shared movement toward a common goal the basis of its social philosophy.
The infrastructure of the umma is the economy, because "Whoever has no worldly life has no spiritual life." Its social system is based on equity and justice and ownership by the people, on the revival of the "system of Abel," the society of human equality and thus also of brotherhood, the classless society. This is a fundamental principle, but it is not the aim, as in Western socialism, which has retained the world-view of the Western bourgeoisie. The political philosophy and the form of regime of the umma is not the democracy of heads, not irresponsible and directionless liberalism which is a plaything of contesting social forces, not putrid aristocracy, not anti-popular dictatorship, not a self-imposing oligarchy. It consists rather of "purity of leadership" (not the leader, for that would be fascism), committed and revolutionary leadership, responsible for the movement and growth of society on the basis of its world-view and ideology, and for the realization of the divine destiny of man in the plan of creation. This is the true meaning of imamate!
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