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The West in the View of Ayatullah Khomeini: A
Postmodernist Reading of Sahifeh-ye Imam
(Abstract)
By Mansoor Limba
Posted: February 6,
2008
A postmodernist examination of the 22-volume
Sahifeh-ye Imam—the largest ever compiled
anthology of Ayatullah Khomeini’s speeches,
messages, interviews, religious decrees,
permissions, and letters—reveals the
paradigmatic shift of the “founder of
discursivity”, in the Foucauldian vocabulary, in
deconstructing the West.
By using “thin” and “thick” words purely derived
from Islamic metaphors and signifiers, the
embodiment of “the spirit of a world without
spirit” castigates the West’s claim for
meta-narrative and pretension to universality.
In particular, it is indicated in the
encyclopedic authentic reference source from its
first volume up to the 21st volume
(volume 22 being the indexes of the whole
voluminous treatise) the following points:
1. Imam Khomeini deconstructs the West’s
appropriation of the cultural production of
voiceless “others” and setting of the rules of
the game—same/other, the West/the Rest,
civilization/barbarism.
2. Contrary to Muslim eclectics and hybridists’
clichés of articulating Islam within the Western
logocentric logic, the Ayatullah articulates an
overarching discourse in the idiom of Islamic
truth regime with almost no reference at all to
Western political doctrines. There is no room
for “Islam-is-real-democracy” and
“Islam-anticipates-socialism” premises in his
narrative.
3. The leader of “the first postmodern
revolution of our time” pronounces the
illegitimacy of “national West” (Pahlavism) and
“regional West” (Zionism) (from the Iranian and
Muslim contexts, respectively) on universal
moral grounds such as justice, equality and
human rights.
4. In imparting his revolutionary texts and
discourses to the masses, the Imam adopts
simple prose and pronouncements that are
capable of being expressed, relayed and
understood through “small media”
technology—audio tapes, walls, leaflets,
posters, songs, slogans, and even jokes.
In sum, Ayatullah Khomeini’s treatment of the
West is a pursuit of “final vocabulary”. It is
turning up side down the table of “self/other”
project. It is a tale of both decentering and
recentering—decentering of modernity and
recentering of Islam.
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