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Islamism and Post-Islamism in Iran pp 189–225Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Post-Islamism Versus Neoconservatism

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Abstract

The current struggle for democracy in Iran contradicts the neoconservative project for democracy in the Middle East. The neoconservative statement of principles in the Project for the New American Century which was meant “to shape circumstances before crises emerge” came only 2 weeks after Khatami’s election as Iran’s president in 1997. Ever since, numerous scholars, experts, and activists advocating explicitly or implicitly the neoconservative project for democracy have been arguing that democracy and Western interests in the Middle East are identical. A segment of Iranian post-Islamists, known to be the advocates of liberal democracy in the 1990s, found the neoconservative argument convincing. However, because of its violation of the state sovereignty as the precondition for democracy, the majority of Iranian post-Islamists have rejected the neoconservative argument.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Wilfried Buchta, Who Rules Iran? The Structure of Power in the Islamic Republic (Washington, DC: The Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, 2000), pp. 156–158.

  2. 2.

    Ibid., pp. 259–260 and p. 220.

  3. 3.

    Ali Ansari, Modern Iran (London: Pearson-Longman, 2007), pp. 324–328.

  4. 4.

    Bayaniyeh-ye tahlili anjoman’ha-ye eslami-e daneshjuyan-e 24 daneshgah keshvar, Kohrdad 82/May–June 2003.

  5. 5.

    Mehrdad Mashayekhi, Gofteman-e sekular va demokratik cheguneh shekl gereft, http://www.akhbar-rooz.com/article.jsp?essayId=33494.

  6. 6.

    Hayden White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), pp. 74–75.

  7. 7.

    Akbar Ganji, Otopiya-ye Leninisti-ye Shariati, Zamaaneh.com, July 11 2007.

  8. 8.

    Ibid.

  9. 9.

    Ibid.

  10. 10.

    Ibid.

  11. 11.

    Ibid.

  12. 12.

    Ibid.

  13. 13.

    Ibid.

  14. 14.

    Ibid.

  15. 15.

    Ibid.

  16. 16.

    Ibid.

  17. 17.

    Naqd-e Akbar Ganji bar Shariati -6

  18. 18.

    Ibid.

  19. 19.

    Ibid.

  20. 20.

    Oliver Davis, Jacques Rancière (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010), p. 91.

  21. 21.

    Akbar Ganji, Manifest-e Jomhurikhahi, & Abdolkarim Soroush, Nameh’i beh Khatami, http://www.drsoroush.com/Persian/By_DrSoroush/F-CMB-13820417-1.htm

  22. 22.

    Ali Gheisari and Vali Nasr, Democracy in Iran: History and the Quest for Liberty (New York, Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 125.

  23. 23.

    Hemayat-e Qate-e Khatami az Mousavi, Paygah-e Khabari-ye Aftab, 02.02.1388/22.04.2009, http://aftabnews.ir/vdch6xn6.23nqidftt2.html

  24. 24.

    Mohamad Nourizad, a well-known conservative journalist, Emad Afrough, a conservative academic and a former member of parliament, Majid Majidi, a well-known and internationally recognized and politically conservative film-maker, and Saeed Aboutaleb, a conservative film-maker and former member of the parliament, are among many former conservatives who changed their political position in the reconfigured political stage in Iran with the reemergence of Mousavi in the 2009 presidential election.

  25. 25.

    Benedetto Fontana, Hegemony and Power: On the Relation Between Gramsci and Machiavelli (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), p. 158.

  26. 26.

    Yadullah Shahibzadeh, The election sparks popular enthusiasm http://gulfunit.wordpress.com, June, 11, 2009. It seems strange to see that Soroush, the main post-Islamist perspectivist who engaged a generation of Iranian intellectuals and political activists in the democratic discourse of the 1990s misunderstood Mousavi’s position on democracy and attacked him only a few days before the election, since he assumed that he represented the conservative forces in Iran, while Makhmalbaf, a post-Islamist perspectivist artist, supported Mousavi a hundred percent.

  27. 27.

    Mohsen Rezayi’s open letter to Iran’s supreme leader. http://tabnak.ir/fa/pages/?cid=79461, 01, January 2010.

  28. 28.

    Etemad-e Meli Newspaper, Rahkar-e Ayatollah Alozma Makerem Shirazi: Aahsti-ye meli baray-e hale ekhtelafat 06.04.1388/27.06.2009.

  29. 29.

    Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani’s Friday prayer after the 2009 presidential election.

  30. 30.

    During Khatami presidency in 1997–2005, Rafsanjani did not use such democratic arguments.

  31. 31.

    Abas Milani, The Mousavi Mission: Iran finds its Nelson Mandela, New Republic, February 17, 2010.

  32. 32.

    Bernard-Henri Levy, “The Swan Song of the Islamic Republic,” Huffington Post, July 23, 2009, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bernardhenri-lévy/the-swan-song-of-the-isla_b_219323.html

  33. 33.

    Steven Erlanger, “By His Own Reckoning, One Man Made Libya a French Cause,” New York Times, 1 April 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/02/world/africa/02levy.html?_r=0

  34. 34.

    Ibid.

  35. 35.

    Iran: la revolution au nom de Dieu, Claire Brièr, Peirre Blamchet, Didier Eribon, Suivi D’un Entretien avec Michel Foucalut (Paris: Éditions Du Seul, 1979), pp. 227–228.

  36. 36.

    Bernard-Henri Lévy, La Berbarie à Visage Humain (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1977), p. 11.

  37. 37.

    Hayden White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation, p. 128.

  38. 38.

    Michel Foucault, in The Foucault Reader P. Rabinow (New York: Pantheon, 1988), p. 298.

  39. 39.

    Jean François Revel, The Totalitarian Temptation (London: Secker & Warburg, 1977).

  40. 40.

    Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1991).

  41. 41.

    Alain Finkielkraut, La Défaite de la Pensée (Paris: Gallimard, 1987).

  42. 42.

    Shaygan’s Le Regard Mutilé, published in 1989, explains the Iranian revolution through the lens of this ideological order.

  43. 43.

    Hayden White, The Content of the Form, p. 128.

  44. 44.

    Sharq Daily, 18.03.1392. (8.06. 2013)

  45. 45.

    For a comprehensive discussion of the subject see Yadullah Shahibzadeh, The Iranian Political Language, From the Late Eighteenth Century to the Present (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), Chapters 3–6.

  46. 46.

    Akbar Ganji’s Republican Manifesto is a famous text written in Tehran’s Evin Prison in 2003 and published on the internet in the same year (http://redinblack.netfirms.com/manifest/).

  47. 47.

    “Interview with Habibollah Peyman,” RadioZamaneh, http://www.radiozamaneh.com/analysis/2009/07/post_1055.html.

  48. 48.

    Mir Hossein Mousavi, Bayaniyeh-ye shomareh-ye 11, http://www.kaleme.com/1388/06/17/klm-312/.

  49. 49.

    Revayat-e Montajeb’nia az mojadeleh-ye Rouhani ba tondrou’ha-ye majles-e sevvom, Mohttp://tarikhirani.ir/fa/news/30/bodyView/5166/, 10.06.1396./01.09.2009.

  50. 50.

    Ali Mirsepasi, Democracy in Modern Iran, Islam, Culture and Political Change (New York: University Press, New York, 2010), p. 140.

  51. 51.

    Ibid.

  52. 52.

    Shargh Daily, 19.Khordad.1392/9 June 2013.

  53. 53.

    Shargh Daily, 16.Khordad.1392/6 June 2013.

  54. 54.

    See a thorough definition of the term in Mohsen Kadivar’s Hagh al-Nas: Islam and Human Rights, Entesharat-e Kavir, Tehran 2008.

  55. 55.

    “Full text: Writers’ statement on cartoons,” BBC, March 1 2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4764730.stm.

  56. 56.

    Julien Benda, La Trahison des Clercs (Paris: Editions Bernard Gasset, 1927).

  57. 57.

    Giorgio Agamben, “Defining Moment,” PostCapital : Archive 1989–2001, transcribed and translated by Arianna Bove, February 25, 2009, http://www.postcapital.org/2009/02/25/defining-movement-giorgio-agamben/

  58. 58.

    Alain Finkielkraut, La Défaite De La Pensée (Paris: Galimard, 1987), pp. 13–61 and 109–131.

  59. 59.

    Ibid, pp. 66–76.

  60. 60.

    André Glucksmann, Les Maitres Penseurs (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1977), pp. 95–123.

  61. 61.

    L’antieroe Wellington, “Andre Glucksmann: An interview in Le Figaro about his new book ‘West Against West,’” The Adnre Glucksmann File, August 26, 2007, http://andreglucksmannfile.blogspot.com/2007/08/andre-glucksmann-interview-in-le-figaro.html.

  62. 62.

    Glucksmann, Les Maitres Penseurs, p. 100.

  63. 63.

    Richard J. Bernstein, Hannah Arendt and the Jewish Question (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996), pp. 65–68.

  64. 64.

    Hayden White, The Content of the Form, p. 133.

  65. 65.

    Mohammad Reza Nikfar, Tafsir va tajrobeh-ye setam, http://www.nilgoon.org/archive/mohammadrezanikfar/pages/Nikfar_Interpretation_and_Oppression.html

  66. 66.

    Balibar, Spinoza and Politics, p. 57.

  67. 67.

    Mohammad Reza Nikfar, Tafsir va tajrobeh-ye setam, http://www.nilgoon.org/archive/mohammadrezanikfar/pages/Nikfar_Interpretation_and_Oppression.html.

  68. 68.

    Aramesh Dustdar, Derakhshesh’ha-ye tireh (Paris: Entesharat-e Khavaran, 1999), and Emtena-e tafakor dar farhang-e dini (Paris: Entesharat-e Khavaran, 2004).

  69. 69.

    Dustdar, Emtena-e Tafakor, pp. 113–114.

  70. 70.

    Dustdar, Derakhshesh’ha-ye tireh, pp. 68–69.

  71. 71.

    Mostafa Malekian, Dar jostoju-ye Aqlaniyat va Manaviyat: Moruri doubareh bar tarh-e nazariyeh-ye aqlaniyat va manaviyat, Mehrnameh, Shomareh-ye 3, Khordad 1389/May–June 2010. http://www.mehrnameh.ir/article/639/

  72. 72.

    Ibid.

  73. 73.

    Abdulkarim Soroush, Expansion of Prophetic Experience, Essays on Historicity, Contingency and Plurality in Religion (Leiden: Brill Academic Pub, 2009).

  74. 74.

    Mostafa Malekian, Dar jostoju-ye aqlaniyat va manaviyat, Mahnameh-ye Mehrnameh, Shomereh-ye 3, Khordad 1389/May–June 2010.

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  1. Department of Cultural Studies and Orien, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Yadullah Shahibzadeh

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Shahibzadeh, Y. (2016). Post-Islamism Versus Neoconservatism. In: Islamism and Post-Islamism in Iran. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57825-9_7

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