Arab toast in the manner of the obsessed Foucault

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About 47 years ago, a group of secular, revolutionary intellectuals in the West were fascinated by the movement of Khomeini and his disciples in Iran, and treated him as a “revolutionary saint” who would destroy the corrupt world with noble violence, and create the free, savage world with noble savagery. At the head of these was the French postmodern philosopher Michel Foucault.

Concerning this, Professor Hashim Salih wrote a beautiful piece in this newspaper, and what it said was that Foucault, professor of philosophy at the Collège de France, had agreed with his friend, Jean Daniel, editor-in-chief of the most important and enlightened French weekly magazine, “Nouvelle Observateur,” to go to Tehran to cover the raging events there. This was while Khomeini was in the suburbs of Paris, and the reports of Foucault and his colleague were merely promoting Khomeini propaganda, but in a secular, left-wing, revolutionary guise!

Saleh quotes this interesting description from someone who knows Foucault, saying: “Foucault personally was very impressed by violence, and fascinated by it. He hated every stable society. He was also very impressed by the raging masses, earthquakes, and volcanoes... His Nietzschean nihilism found satisfaction in this massive, destructive revolution.” He also refers to his article entitled: “The Shah is a hundred years behind his time.”

Saleh commented sarcastically: “Notice the irony: the Shah who modernized Iran was the latecomer to the era of modernity, not Khomeini!” With attention to the corruptions of the monarchy, the Shah’s family, and his cronies in Iran... as the writer points out. Then Foucault's misguidance reached its peak - as Saleh described - when he wrote, saying: “Khomeini is not a man of politics. He is just a cleric. There will be no Khomeini political party after the fall of the Shah, and no Khomeini government in Iran after the victory over him.”

Needless to say, the history of Iran over the lifetime of Khomeini and his successor, Khamenei, refutes all Foucault's nonsense, expectations, analyses, and dreams. The question is: Is Foucault an exceptional case, or a recurring pattern?

Today we have some Arab elites - let alone the West - who claim to be the descendants of modern thought and the secular scientific tendency in political and social thinking and analysis, but they use their writing skills and their verbal and constructive abilities to polish the Houthis, the PMF, Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad. They may even have gone so far as to glorify the Al-Qaeda organization, on the grounds that they are humanitarian revolutionary movements that demolish corruption and undermine the buildings of tyrannical authorities dependent on the West... like this. With all impudence!

We see them today on screens, social media platforms, and podcasts, forming a “secular” intellectual backing for the likes of Hassan Nasrallah and Abdul-Malik al-Houthi.

Therefore, the obsession that a provocative philosopher like Foucault fell into with a dark, mythical, revolutionary movement like Khomeiniism is not an anomaly, but rather a psychological trick used by some Arab elites to treat the itch that irritates their skin.

Quoted from "Al-Sharq Al-Awsat"