Foucaultʹs Iran and Islamic Identity Politics Beyond Civilizational Clashes, External and Internal

Foucault’s writings on the Iranian revolution and the works of the revolutionary Islamist intelligentsia (not the clerics) are of tremendous relevance to social scientists today because they show us a way out of the internal clash of civilizations Islam suffers from. By extension this helps alleviate the confrontation between the civilizations of the West and Islam because culture clashFthe fear of cultural imperialism and WesternizationFis holding back the forces of modernization in the Muslim world. Iran’s revolutionary thinkers, as Foucault demonstrates, were against this standoff. Afary and Anderson’s review of the Foucault controversy inadvertently brings this out because the mistakes they make are paradigmatic errors made by the social sciences and many Western (and Eastern) decision-makers; assuming that modernization means secularization means Westernization.