[R-G] Interview with Hamid Dabashi

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

<http://www.asiasource.org/news/special_reports/dabashi.cfm>
June 12, 2003

Hamid Dabashi is Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies, the
chair of the Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures Department,
and the director of Graduate Studies at the Center for Comparative
Literature and Society, all at Columbia University.

Professor Dabashi's research interests include the comparative study
of cultures, Islamic intellectual history, and the social and
intellectual history of Iran, both modern and medieval.

Professor Dabashi's publications include Authority in Islam: From the
Rise of Muhammad to the Establishment of the Umayyads (1989), Theology
of Discontent: The Ideological Foundation of the Islamic Revolution in
Iran (1993), Truth and Narrative: The Untimely Thoughts of Ayn
Al-Qudat Al-Hamadhani (1999), Staging a Revolution: The Art of
Persuasion in the Islamic Republic of Iran (with Peter Chelkowski,
1999), and Close Up: Iranian Cinema, Past, Present, Future (2001).

In this interview with AsiaSource, Professor Dabashi discusses, among
other things, colonialism and religious violence, Iranian cinema,
activism in the academy, American foreign policy towards Iran, and the
long-term consequences of the military invasion of Iraq.

Read Hamid Dabashi on The Moment of Myth: Edward Said (1935-2003)
<http://www.asiasource.org/edwardsaid.cfm>

[Q]  You have said that trying to understand religion (notably Islam)
in the context of terrorism is a red herring, since those perpetrating
acts of terror are waging a political struggle against the perceived
effects of colonialism simply veiled in the language of God. Could you
elaborate on this claim?

[A]  My position is this: it is impossible to understand not only
modern Islam but any other religion in modernity outside the context
of colonialism. This is simply because colonialism has been the single
greatest source of power in modern history and has had a catalytic
effect on every culture and every religion.

Historically, Islam has always been in conversation with a major
interlocutor; that interlocutor could be Greek philosophy, or Buddhist
asceticism, or Christian monasticism, or Jewish theology. In
conversation with these moral forces, or with political forces such as
the Sassanid and Byzantine empires, Islam has articulated itself.

However, over the last 200 years, what we call 'Islam' has articulated
itself in conversation with colonialism. It is because of this fact
that it is impossible to understand Islam outside colonialism.

What I argue has happened over the last 200 years is a systematic
corrosion of the multiplicity of sites and visions of Islam as a
religion and as a culture, narrowing it exclusively to a site of
ideological resistance to colonialism. Let me elaborate: If you go
back to pre-modernity, before the rise of colonialism, Islam is: (i)
poly-vocal (it speaks with many languages); (ii) poly-local (it is
located in South Asia, Western Asia, North Africa), and (iii)
poly-focal (it has any number of focal points: juridical,
philosophical, literary). All these narratives have existed
simultaneously, although of course sometimes one discourse was more
powerful than the other.

I also name these narratives "logo-centric" when the basis of Islamic
self-definition is Reason, or nomo-centric when it is Law, or
homo-centric, as in mysticism, which is human-based. All of these
multiplicities start a process of corrosion when Islam begins a
conversation with colonialism. Islam then mutates into a site of
ideological resistance to colonialism.

The paramount figures and the most vocal, articulate Muslim public
intellectuals from Sayyid Ahmed Khan in South Asia to Mohammed Abdou
in North Africa begin to converse with colonialism. As a result, they
translate and mutate a multifaceted Islamic intellectual history into
a single site of ideological resistance to colonialism.

[Q]  In your book, Theology of Discontent you argued that what
animated the revolutionary movement in Iran was a theological language
of discontent, involving the construction of a homogenized, hostile
"Other" poised against an injured "Self". Is this ideological
formation unique to the Iranian revolution? Do you think this
prognosis could equally be applied to the present global
configuration?

[A]  First of all, this ideological formation is not exclusive to
Iran, it is endemic to Islamic societies. However, in Iran, it has an
added momentum by virtue of the Shi'i component of the Islamic
Revolution. I understand Shi'ism not exclusively as a sectarian,
sub-division of Islam (constituting 15 per cent of the world's Muslim
population), I understand it, as I argued in Authority and Islam, as
the unfulfilled dream of Islam. Shi'ism remained a paradox: the
institutionalization of an uninstitutionalizable charisma (that is,
Mohammad's charismatic authority is transmuted into Ali, and from Ali,
descends into twelve saintly, infallible figures).

With the disappearance of the twelfth Imam, going into occultation, as
the Shi'is believe, history is at a standstill, in a state of
expectation (for whenever the twelfth Imam will reappear). This gives
Shi'ism the character of a religion of protest. As a religion of
protest, it is predicated on a paradox: it will always have to remain
in a combative position (speaking truth to power); however, as soon as
it comes to power, it negates itself. This happened to the Safavids in
Iran, to the Fatamids in Egypt, to the Hamdanids in Syria, and now to
the Islamic republic in Iran: Shi'ism comes to power, it negates
itself immediately, it is no longer Shi'ism.

This fact is best represented in Tazi'eh, which is a theatre of
protest; this characterization of Shi'ism I propose is actually a
kernel of Islam itself, in its entirety. As a result, if you look at
the Iranian scene, immediately after the coming to power of Khomeini,
Shi'ism loses its combative energy. While Saddam Hussein is in power
or with the American and British colonial occupation in Iraq, Shi'ism
is in its combative posture, as it was in southern Lebanon during the
Israeli occupation between 1982-2000. In fact the Hezbollah in
southern Lebanon were the only force that defeated the expansionist
policies of Israel.

So this ideological formation is exclusive to Iran. However, by virtue
of this description of Shi'ism as integral to the rest of Islamic
doctrinal history, I propose it is endemic to Islam.

[Q]  What precisely is the shape of this ideological formation?

[A]  It is this self/Other that I spoke of and the paradoxical
generation of revolutionary energy. It has something in common with
liberation theologies in Latin America, obviously.

The notion of "the West" as an iconic reference to colonial power has
now, in my judgment, dissipated and disappeared. The recent
bifurcation between the US and Europe is only one indication of this.
Because Islam has lost its colonial interlocutor called "the West", it
has now entered a different phase. But in what particular
revolutionary posture Islam will re-articulate itself remains to be
seen because globalized capital at this stage has an amorphous
hegemony (it has not yet articulated its hegemony). The West was the
hegemonic constellation of colonialism in its classical form in the
19th century. This has been dissolved.

Right now what we have in the shape of the emerging American empire
does not have an identifiable hegemony because the capital that it
tries to control is amorphous. The center-periphery bifurcation that
we had in classical colonialism - capital based in the so-called West,
colonies dispersed around the world - has disappeared. The process of
globalization has shown that the centre-periphery divide was a
smokescreen. The very assumption of colonialism concealed the fact
that colonialism was nothing other than abused labor. Abused labor
domestically generates a proletarian class vertically and colonial
side effects generate the same horizontally. It is this vertical abuse
of labor and colonial abuse of labor - one called colonization and one
called working class - that have dissolved into one single abuse of
labor by capital; the generation and accumulation of capital by abuse
of labor. Whether this is done horizontally across the globe or
vertically is incidental to the project. It doesn't matter if you have
a sweatshop here in Manhattan or in Guatemala, it is the same abuse of
labor.

As a result of the process of globalization, massive labor migrations
have dismantled that center and periphery and created, what in the
1980s was horrifying people as multiculturalism: South Asians in
England, North Africans in France, Turks in Germany, and all of them
in the United States. They did not come here for good weather, they
came here looking for work. That has now accelerated the labor
migration and made capital amorphous; electronic capitalism means
there is no center.

As a result, the World Trade Center was an entirely symbolic signifier
without the signified. "World trade" does not take place in the World
Trade Center; world trade does not have a center.

[Q]  In your book on Iranian cinema, Close Up, you say that "Iranian
cinema took the world by surprise simply because the world got a
glimpse of our cinema only after it had decided the character of our
culture through the prism of the Islamic revolution." Does this
account for the continuing appeal of this genre to audiences in the
West?

[A]  No, it has now assumed an entirely different momentum. Embedded
already in Iranian cinema was a worldly conversation - to use Edward
Said's language. Cinema has its own republic and Iran has been in
conversation with this republic: from Satyajit Ray in Bengal to Akira
Kurasawa in Japan to Souleymane Cissé in Mali, with Italian
neo-realism, French new wave, Japanese masters, Russian formalism.

The emerging masters of Iranian cinema were already aware of these
global masters of their craft and in conversation with them. At the
popular level, people talk about the humanism of Iranian cinema. But
the reason that Iranian cinema so quickly found its niche was that
already embedded in its visual vocabulary was a worldly conversation
with the best of world cinema. If you speak to Amir Naderi, and ask
him where he learnt to direct, or where he learnt to film an exterior,
or how to close a door, he will point to Ozu and Kurosawa, or he will
say how he is influenced by John Ford. So when people in Cannes or
Berlin see Iranian cinema, it is not a terra incognita, the sights and
visions are new but the visual vocabulary is not entirely new at all.

There are other factors when considering the global reception of
Iranian cinema, especially for instance in the United States, where
there has been an aggressive and universal demonization of Iran since
the hostage crisis. When audiences are suddenly confronted with sweet
kids running around, and how cute they look and so forth, they like
it; it is almost a guilty conscience over-compensating for all the
harsh things that were said before.

That aspect of welcoming Iranian cinema had its phase and generated
some ghastly films, in my view, because directors began to cater to it
(in films like "Color of God"). But now the more genuine parts of
Iranian cinema - things that were in conversation with the world - are
what have proven to be more enduring and versatile.

There are other developments that have made the genre so dynamic. More
recently, the emergence of women filmmakers, like Manizheh Hekmat's
"Women's Prisons," or the addition of minority directors like Bahman
Ghobadi, who has two incredible films on Kurdish issues. There are
political questions that are also being raised, for instance in the
films about Afghanistan or Iraq, or about the Kurdish predicament.
These have added political momentum to the genre and injected new life
into Iranian cinema. So it is a constantly changing mechanism, there
is not just one factor.

Global attention also has a downside. The downside is that
inexperienced people who come into the market start to cater to the
worst stereotypes of Arabs, Iranians, and Muslims in the emerging
American empire. These films will get immediately accepted to film
festivals and propagated and bought by TV, etc. This is something we
all have to be wary about.

[Q]  You have recently gained notoriety by being listed on Campus
Watch, a project of Daniel Pipes' Middle East Forum, which closely
monitors academics and Middle East Departments throughout the country
perceived to be critical of Israel, and sympathetic to the Palestinian
cause and/or Islam. What do you think the implications of these kinds
of initiatives are on academic freedom in this country?

[A]  There are two rather contradictory responses, but they are both
true. There are negligible or no repercussions for recognized scholars
who have established their teaching and academic career long before
this charlatanism emerged. Certainly in my own experience here at
Columbia, there have been no repercussions whatsoever in terms of my
career.

However this does not mean that I have not created a headache for my
university. Especially after I organized the Palestinian Film Festival
in January 2003, a three-pronged attack began to take formation. One
was the intelligence arm that began to collect things about me and
what I do. This was accompanied by two contradictory but complementary
actions: one was the lunatic fringe who hacked my computer, spammed my
email, subscribed me to obscene websites, and basically disrupted all
my communications. The other was to mobilize the 'Millionaires' Club'
among Columbia University Alumni, so they began to bombard the
President's office, and the University Development and Alumni
Relations Office, with attacks against me and what it is they thought
I was doing. At official university functions such as a recent John
Jay Award, an alumnus attacked my department and myself. It is a
nuisance more than anything else; but perhaps it is just an
occupational hazard.

For junior faculty, however, it has serious repercussions. Graduate
students, those who are just beginning their career, are of course the
most vulnerable. When they look at the horror that comes the way of
those who remain loyal to certain political and moral convictions, it
may dissuade them from doing the same.

In addition, people whose names are associated with "creating trouble"
will have problems. Even the way your question is framed suggests that
people acquire a certain reputation associated with political activism
of a particular kind; this explains why you used the term 'notoriety'.
I used to be a very respectable scholar, and I tend to think I am
still a half-decent one, but my academic credentials become
overshadowed by the reputation I have acquired as a public
intellectual.

Ironically enough, when I speak out against the depredations of the
Iranian government or any Arab government or the Indian government, I
am applauded and told how courageous I am. But the minute I begin to
criticize the United States and Israel in conjunction, and speculate
about the relationship between these sorts of colonialism - the US in
Iraq, Israel in the Occupied Territories - then I am maligned and my
name is added to these websites and so on.

The other problem is that the trouble that comes my way can have a
negative catalytic effect on my junior colleagues. I have extremely
courageous young colleagues who put their careers on the line to speak
their mind. But the fact remains that they are professionally much
more vulnerable than I am.

[Q]  How would you respond to widespread claims that the positions you
take on the Israeli-Palestine conflict are tantamount to
anti-Semitism?

[A]  I think these claims are too ludicrous to deserve a response.

I will simply respond by looking at the spectrum of political
sentiments and activities of which I am a part, and those whom I count
among my comrades. These include not only progressive Jewish
intellectuals in this country but also the most progressive Jewish
intellectuals from Israel. They are all my comrades so if I am
anti-Semitic, then they are anti-Semitic as well -- which is obviously
silly.

First my critics separate me from my comrades in this way; mark me as
a Muslim, and can then say I am a pro-terrorist, anti-Semite. I have
comrades throughout the world, including and particularly in Israel.
So if you place me in my natural habitat, I am with progressive
intellectuals globally and in Israel, so it would be rather absurd to
accuse me of anti-Semitism.

That said, I think there is anti-Semitism both in Europe and in the
United States and it is an extremely dangerous factor that one has to
keep in mind. We have to always be careful that a legitimate criticism
of the Israeli government is not identified with that anti-Semitism.

The so-called pro-Israel lobby - I do not even believe they are
pro-Israel, because their activities in the long-term will only harm
the Israeli state - cannot see what Israel now represents. They cannot
see that Israel over the past 50 years as a colonial state - first
with white European colonial settlers, then white American colonial
settlers, now white Russian colonial settlers - amounts to nothing
more than a military base for the rising predatory empire of the
United States. Israel has no privilege greater or less than Pakistan
or Kuwait or Saudi Arabia. These are all military bases but some of
them, like Israel, are like the hardware of the American imperial
imagination. Some are software, like Jordan or Kuwait or Pakistan or
Tajikistan. There is clearly a division of labor in the rising empire.

And who pays the price? Israeli mothers, who have lived for 50 years
with perpetual war and bloodshed. The pro-Israeli ideologues live in
very wealthy houses in suburban New Jersey, they have nothing to do
with the miseries that Israelis have to endure. They are integral, all
of them, to this predatory empire and I for one never credit them with
"pro-Israeli" sentiments. I am pro-Israel, but I am against a Jewish
state with the same logic that I am against an Islamic state or a
Christian state. I believe in one secular state with equal rights for
all its citizens. And this is bracketing out for the moment the
historical fact that over the last 50 years the Israeli state has
systematically, in broad daylight, swiped the land from under the feet
of Palestinians.

It is clear that the formation of a Jewish state in 1948 has had a
catalytic effect in the sustained rise of religious movements, not
only in the Islamic world, but also with this ghastly Hindu
fundamentalism in South Asia. It is wrong to attribute all religious
fundamentalisms in the region to a Jewish state. The Jewish state was
formed in 1948, and it was only three decades later, in 1979, that an
Islamic republic was founded. I am opposed to a Jewish state in the
same way that I am to an Islamic republic or a Hindu fundamentalist
state in South Asia.

[Q]  How would you explain the politics involved in participating in
public sphere debates in the West where you are frequently expected to
represent -- both in the sense of characterizing and speaking for --
Muslims or Iran? Since the Western public sphere, and especially, one
might argue, the US public sphere, is permeated with the demonisation
of Third World societies in general, and Muslim societies in
particular, how should the diasporic postcolonial intellectual
negotiate this aspect of the Western public sphere while articulating
criticism of these societies?

[A]  There are two complementary ways of doing this. One: there are
certain strategic moments that require one to speak as a postcolonial,
Third World intellectual. I have no problems with that but at the same
time this can sometimes degenerate into an identitarian political
position which is not at all what I am interested in.

Second we must remain cognizant of the fact that because of massive
labor migrations, cultures are in a state of flux, and as a result, I
would be equally ignorant of the fact of my own biography - a
Gramscian inventory of my own identity - if I forgot that I have lived
in this country for more than a quarter of a century. As a result it
is as integral to my critical apparatus as anything else may be. So I
do not always speak as a postcolonial Muslim intellectual; I have to
speak from the location of my culture and the location of my culture
is New York.

Of course people do expect that I will speak as a Muslim, or as an
Iranian, or some combination of the two. I will always correct them,
though, and sometimes, depending on the context, I will abrogate the
fact of representation. I will stress that I represent nothing at all,
or that I am as representative of Iranians, or Muslims, or Shias, as I
am of New Yorkers.

I am downplaying the importance of this because there is still a
public perception that I will say this or that, and constantly, even
if inadvertently at times, I am reduced to a native informant. But
other than saying I am not, there is little I can do.

There is also an added complication that nobody addresses, which is
the professional pacification of intellectuals in the academy. The
disappearance of public intellectuals has its own history, especially
in this country. Public intellectuals became compromised and
institutionalized intellectuals, which inhibited public activism, and
continues to do so now.

Right now the problem I face is how to combine my status as a public
intellectual with that of a teacher. I have been forced to say that
when I enter my classroom, an entirely different animal emerges. I am
far more fascinated by a close-up or a long-shot in a film, or with a
literary passage in a novel, irrespective of its politics, than with
what is happening in the world on that day.

[Q]  The US-led military intervention in Iraq has been portrayed as a
success in sections of the American media. Do you think this
conclusion might be premature?

[A]  It is very premature. There have been massive civilian casualties
in Iraq, to this day we have no statistics of how many people were
killed there. Who is supposed to tell us? Not only has it been a
failure in terms of its stated objectives, it is a catastrophic
failure in terms of its whiplash effects domestically, i.e., in terms
of our civil liberties in the United States. These liberties have been
systematically corroded to the point that the combined effects of the
Homeland Security Act, the USA Patriot Act, and the specter of Patriot
Act II are devastating and create political conditions worse than
those found in the Islamic Republic.

The massive tax-cuts that Bush is now proposing will leave millions of
American kids without protection and basic needs while increasing
money for millionaires. It is a failure not only in terms of its
target (creating democracy under the barrel of a gun) but also in
terms of its effects: creating more resentment and hatred against
innocent Americans both at home and abroad, creating an even more
dangerous situation in terms of possible terrorist attacks globally,
and equally important, the corroding of our civil liberties,
destroying our environment (Patriot Act II would have all sorts of
ghastly environmental consequences), and the cutting of social
services for the underprivileged.

[Q]  The recent ceasefire between American military forces in Iraq and
the Iraqi-based Iranian opposition group, People's Mujahideen, has
been interpreted in Iran as part of a pattern of escalating aggression
by the Bush administration. How do you see American-Iranian relations
unfolding in the future?

[A]  It is a mixed bag. The Americans kept the People's Mujahideen
intact as a stick so that if Iran were to mobilize its 10,000-strong
Badr battalion under the control of SCIRI (the Supreme Council for
Islamic Revolution in Iraq, ruled by Ayatollah Hakim), they would let
the Mujahideen loose. In and of itself, this is a tragic turn of
events for the Mujahideen because once they were a progressive,
revolutionary movement. They then degenerated into a mercenary army
that Saddam Hussein used against the Kurds and other opposition
groups. And now they have become an instrument of American
imperialism; it is a horror.

In terms of the Iran-US relationship, there is not much of a
relationship. We have to take a step back and look at it globally. The
point for the US in the region is absolute and unconditional control
of the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, through which a
considerable volume of world oil passes. In my judgment, Europe is now
emerging as a second superpower: with a population of 265 million,
with the euro now as strong as the dollar, with a potential alliance
with Russia, and trans-Siberian oil pipelines through Siberia all the
way to Japan and China and Korea. This together can in fact globally
engulf the US and prevent its drive towards global control.

Major European opposition - French and German (the British are
tangential, and the Spanish and Italians don't count) - made the Iraqi
war in fact a proxy war between the US and Europe. The US wants to
have total and unconditional control over the Persian Gulf. Iraq is
now occupied and pacified, Saddam Hussein is no longer a problem.
Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan are all under US control. Iran and
Syria are two important players who are not. Syria is not related to
this area but is important for controlling the Hizbollah in Lebanon
and the Hamas in Palestine in order to facilitate and pacify
resistance for this roadmap to peace that Bush has in mind.

Iran however is part of the same scenario (control of the Persian
Gulf, that is) but this does not mean that the Americans will do in
Iran what they did in Iraq. That is not the solution. The solution is
that Iranians themselves are already scared and have initiated
conversation with the Americans. There are now more aggressive, secret
conversations going on between the US and Iran. The US just requires
the following from Iran: flow of oil, open markets for its goods, and
security for the Persian Gulf. If these three items are provided, the
US does not care at all about progressive, reformist movements inside
Iran one way or another. If Khatemi and the progressive movement he
represents win, fine, if he loses, fine, as long as these three
objectives are met.

[Q]  Given the perceived success of the US invasion of Iraq, at least
in the short-term, what do you think the prospects are for another
American military intervention in the Middle East, in Syria or Iran
for instance?

[A]  Very few prospects, if any, I should think. If the Iranians
fulfill the three conditions I mentioned above, the Americans will not
bother them about anything at all.

I also believe that the size of the US army does not allow it. The
entire size of the US army is one million. When they deployed 250,000
in the Persian Gulf for the Iraqi operation, the North Koreans were
waving their nuclear weapons around, and the Americans could not
redeploy to East Asia from the Gulf.

It is in the nature of this particular empire that it has in fact
begun to model itself on what it calls Al-Qaeda. There is nothing
called Al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda is the blueprint on the basis of which the
Pentagon is now remodeling itself. It is a force that is presumed to
be omnipotent and can strike at any moment and the Pentagon is using
it to reshape itself.

I do not think the US has the military capacity for another massive
invasion à la Iraq. First of all the Iranian population is 60 million,
the land is infinitely more diversified, and within the Islamic
Republic, there is a democratically elected government. If you ask me,
Khatemi has more claim to legitimacy as a president than Bush does.

There are a couple of other factors. Democracy, until and unless it
emerges from the soil of a culture, is entirely useless. Islamic
Revolution was a nightmare of Islamic theocratic forces coming to the
fore. In Algeria, in Turkey, we were always afraid of this nightmare
coming to pass. In Iran, it came to pass and the country witnessed a
decade of sacred, charismatic terror perpetrated by Khomeini.