In Professor Dabashi’s recent article,(1) which draws a comparison between the 1979
Iranian revolution and the Egyptian revolution, is both a deeply biased
representation of the Iranian revolution and a misreading of Egypt’s ongoing
social movement. The Egyptian revolutionaries could examine the mistakes they
have made, such as their failure to develop a democratic alternative that was
communicated with people more widely, which left a political vacuum rapidly
filled by the Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafis and the regime; or the fact that
they embraced the Egyptian army after removing Mubarak, not realising that, as
in Iran, it is simply a military-financial mafia(Whether they did it out of belief
or political expedience is irrelevant here.) As a result of these mistakes, they are caught
between a rock and hard place, and Professor Dabashi simply proposes ways to
choose between ‘bad’ and ‘worse’ in the elections. But this is a false
dichotomy. Professor Dabashi’s suggestion that the choice is real is a fantasy,
and if it is believed by the Egyptian people, it will work as an opiate for revolutionaries.
Furthermore, Professor Dabashi reproduces a dichotomous
formula for polarising a comparison, and for 'othering'. Edward Said's
criticism of Orientalism was that it constructed people from 'the West' as
being 'rational, peaceful, liberal, logical, capable of holding real values,
without natural suspicion', and those from 'the East' as 'none of these'. In
Professor Dabashi's article, Egypt (once 'the Orient') takes the place of 'the
West', and Iran, 'the East'. This is done through the most extreme of
simplifications and misrepresentation of facts; so that anything and everything
related to the Iranian revolution becomes evil, while the opposite is true for
Egypt.
The Egyptian people should remember that more than two years ago,
Professor Dabashi, also misrepresented the Iranian Green movement by referring
to it as a ‘civil rights movement’. He took it out of its particular context
and compared it with the U.S. Civil Rights movement, while at the same time calling
the term revolution ‘old-fashioned’. Such misrepresentations of the movement,
produced by Professor Dabashi and other intellectuals, weakened the Green
movement considerably.
Therefore, I suggest that those working for revolution now in Egypt think
critically about any representations, and create the theories of your own
experience through your own perspectives and critical powers. Do not allow
others to misrepresent your heroic social movement.
If I get time, I would like to deconstruct Professor Dabashi’s
image of the 1979 Iranian revolution, which he argues was nothing but violent
and others argue was the model of non-violent social revolution which
subsequently inspired revolutions from those in Eastern Europe to the present
time. I just hope I can make time for
this.
(1). http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/06/20126121283667342.html
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