That's the most crucial insight, which far too many leftists failed to grasp then and continue to deny even today, by suggesting, _against all evidence to the contrary_, that, if only Iranian leftists had not made this or that "error," they would have been able to defeat the incomparably more numerous Muslim supporters of Khomeini and turn the revolution into a socialist one. Foucault was among the greatest critics of political liberalism and state socialism, so he fell for neither an illusion that the Iranian Revolution would take a socialist turn nor a prejudice against the revolution on account of the fact that it was neither liberal nor socialist. He found the then new phenomenon fascinating, and he tried to understand what the Iranians saw in Islam, what they were dreaming of when they said they wanted an Islamic government, etc. on their own terms, rather than tell them what they should see and what they should dream about.
> While Foucault's insight into Islamism's global reach was surely
> prescient, this was undercut by Foucault's uncritical stance toward
> Islamism as a political movement.
Foucault, however, ended the essay "What Are the Iranians Dreaming About?" neither with affirmation nor negation of the Iranian Revolution. Rather, he raised a series of questions, both short-term and long-term:
<blockquote>I do not feel comfortable speaking of Islamic government as an "idea" or even as an "ideal." Rather, it impressed me as a form of "political will." It impressed me in its effort to politicize structures that are inseparably social and religious in response to current problems. It also impressed me in its attempt to open a spiritual dimension in politics.
In the short term, this political will raises two questions:
1. Is it sufficiently intense now, and is its determination clear enough to prevent an "Amini solution," which has in its favor (or against it, if one prefers) the fact that it is acceptable to the shah, that it is recommended by the foreign powers, that it aims at a Western-style parliamentary regime, and that it would undoubtedly privilege the Islamic religion?
2. Is this political will rooted deeply enough to become a permanent factor in the political life of Iran, or will it dissipate like a cloud when the sky of political reality will have finally cleared, and when we will be able to talk about programs, parties, a constitution, plans, and so forth?
Politicians might say that the answers to these two questions determine much of their tactics today.
With respect to this "political will," however, there are also two questions that concern me even more deeply.
One bears on Iran and its peculiar destiny. At the dawn of history, Persia invented the state and conferred its models on Islam. Its administrators staffed the caliphate. But from this same Islam, it derived a religion that gave to its people infinite resources to resist state power. In this will for an "Islamic government," should one see a reconciliation, a contradiction, or the threshold of something new?
The other question concerns this little corner of the earth whose land, both above and below the surface, has strategic importance at a global level. For the people who inhabit this land, what is the point of searching, even at the cost of their own lives, for this thing whose possibility we have forgotten since the Renaissance and the great crisis of Christianity, a political spirituality. I can already hear the French laughing, but I know that they are wrong.
(Le Nouvel Observateur, 16-22 October 1978, <http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/007863.html>)</blockquote>
The long-term questions are good ones, far more interesting than banal criticisms of Foucault's reportage, but few leftists have taken note of them.
The will for an "Islamic government," in my view, is a contradiction, just as the (now largely withered) will for a "Marxist" government is a contradiction. Both can be productive contradictions, however, for liberty is a product of conflict between leaders and masses, (as well as among factions of leaders and among factions of masses), and the contradiction between the state religion (be it Marxism or Shi'ism) and the religion -- or rather "a political spirituality" -- (be it Marxism or Shi'ism) that resists state power may very well invigorate the necessary conflict that makes politics alive. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>