By François Rastier
The "revolutionary" turn of Islamism was variously announced. In his book, Revolutionary Islam (2003), Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, known as Carlos[1], already invited, with the ardor of the new convert, the "anti-globalization movements" to join the fight to "free the world from imperialist exploitation and Palestine from Zionist occupation." Islamism would then be left-wing and Judith Butler, a world reference on gender theory, explained in 2006 that "it is extremely important to consider Hamas and Hezbollah as progressive social movements, which are located on the left and are part of a global left[2] "They would even be part of the international revolutionary cause, according to Michael Hardt and Toni Negri: "The postmodernity of fundamentalism is recognized by its refusal of modernity as a weapon of Euro-American hegemony - in this respect, Islamic fundamentalism represents a paradigmatic example." (Empire, 2000, p. eleven).
This anti-modern revolution is very reminiscent of the "conservative revolution" in Weimar Germany. With this euphemistic formula, Armin Moehler designated the movement of thought that prepared the establishment of a total state justified by an obscure political theology.[3] and radically opposed to the values of modernity such as democracy, human rights, the autonomy of citizens, equality between men and women, the rule of law.
Today, Khomeinist Iran would have shown the way for this revolution, according to Hardt and Negri: "To the extent that the Iranian revolution expressed a profound rejection of the world market, it could be considered the first postmodern revolution." In addition to the fact that Iran is part of the world market and continues to denounce restrictions on access, let us recall that theIran Times celebrates Iran's international trade agreements every day.
Regardless, we have understood that the postmodern revolution that is given here as a paradigmatic example is the establishment of a theocracy, whether Shiite or Sunni, like the caliphate according to Daesh. In this metapolitics, assassins can become heroes (or martyrs), and the repression of democrats, independent journalists or human rights defenders illustrates a "paradigmatic" anti-imperialist revolution. This double regime of truth was recognized by Michel Foucault, a supporter of Khomeini, from the bloody establishment of the Islamic Republic: Iran does not have "the same regime of truth as we[4] "The state of exception creates its own truth, this was already the theme of Nazi thinkers like Martin Heidegger and Carl Schmitt. The fact remains that, in this regime of truth, democrats and secularists are mercilessly repressed: let us recall the thirty thousand political prisoners massacred in 1988 on the orders of a fatwa of Khomeini and the international negationist conference organized in 2006 by Ahmadinejad. Since then, in Syria, jihadist groups of different persuasions have nothing more urgent than to fight the secular or simply democratic resistance.
Such a "revolutionary" orientation has found various echoes in France, notably after the first attacks in 2015 against Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Cacher, which targeted both secularism and Judaism. We should return to the work of Emmanuel Todd, Who is Charlie?, which deals with “zombie” Catholicism (sic), not of Islamism… For his part, Alain Badiou, in the Racinean Our evil comes from further afield, think of the killings of November 13th., credits the criminals with "sacrificial heroism." Less fortunate, Jean-Marc Rouillan, former leader of Action Directe, who had simply mentioned the "courage" of the terrorists, was sentenced to eight months in prison for condoning crime. The "courage" of the murderers had already been praised by the philosopher Susan Sontag in her contribution to the special issue of Newyorker on the September 11, 2001 attack.
Badiou also justified nihilism, "popular subjectivity that is generated and aroused by globalized capitalism", since "it is fascisation that Islamizes and not Islam that fascinates". Let us finally move on to Onfray, whose interviews have been included in Daesh videos, such as this statement to Point of November 15, 2015, two days after the attacks of November 13, under the title “France must end its Islamophobic policy » : "If we continue to pursue this aggressive policy towards Muslim countries, they will continue to retaliate as they do. France should stop this Islamophobic policy aligned with the United States[5]"
Regarding these thinkers, Boualem Sansal spoke of "useful idiots", but, however well-founded it may seem, this formula of Leninist tradition overlooks the fact that their statements are perfectly concerted and even clever if we judge by their dissemination. In fact, our radical thinkers share the same enemies with the Islamists: the fantasized West, democracy, human rights, international justice, rationality. All fear that the rule of law will disarm and dissipate their political theologies, whether they are based on Sayyid Qutb or Hassan Al Banna, Martin Heidegger or Carl Schmitt.
A good number of radical philosophers, from Nancy to Vattimo, Agamben, Žižek, Badiou reject the rule of law by invoking Heidegger – who, even before the publication of his most anti-Semitic and openly Hitlerian writings, attracted the support of various Islamists, from Abdul Rahman Al Badawi to Ibrahim Vadillo. Ahmad Fardid in Iran claimed to be his followers in order to create a school of thought from which Mahmoud Ahmadinejad emerged.
Moreover, Daesh ideologues have a perfect command of postcolonial rhetoric and use it to recruit. While they are obviously reserved about gender theory, they put humanitarian action, crusades and genocides on the same level. They are not the first: Derrida recently drew up in The Monolingualism of the Other the list of secondary misdeeds of the “colonial drive” by enumerating “religious missions, philanthropic or humanitarian good works, market conquests, military expeditions or genocides” (1996, p. 47).
On the Qatari channel Al Jazeera, very close to the Muslim Brotherhood, the deconstructionist philosopher Slavoj Žižek, became the official commentator on the Arab revolutions[6] to warn them against Western democracies – and elective democracy, which is not very popular in the Gulf. On the channel's website, in a tribute to Derrida, the postmodern philosopher Santiago Zabala also warns against those who "still believe in nostalgic and dangerous ideas such as 'objectivity', 'reality', 'truth', 'values' as preconditions of democracy", because it is "the search for fanatical and absolute affirmations[7] " Indeed, the absolutist fanaticism of the democrats must be duly denounced in the media of Qatari feudalism.
But how would our radical thinkers be useful to Islamists today? The aim of the attacks is not only to attack symbols such as Charlie Hebdo, the Hyper Cacher, the Jewish Museum of Brussels, the July 14 celebrations in Nice. Beyond the shock of violence, the Islamists aim to disorient public opinion, prevent reflection, and reverse the roles of victims and executioners. By aggravating the confusion, deepening it strategically, and continuing the violence by other means, our ideologues can thus claim the historic mission of supplementary.
A final example. Sandra Laugier, a highly influential Hamonist philosopher at the CNRS, a specialist in gender and which, co-signed in Libération with Albert Ogien (already co-author of Anti-democracy), two months after the beheading of Samuel Paty, an article entitled "The fanatics of the Republic". They state: "This reduction of the Republic to secularism leads the last square of devotees to go to the front as soon as they sense a danger of calling into question this pillar of the republican order [...]. This irritates the exalted of secularism, who have found an outlet for their frustration: the Muslim presence. This is how they come to confuse the defense of the ''values of the Republic'' with a crusade against a minority, designated for collective vindictiveness" (December 12, 2020). Should we deplore the fact that Muslim children are forced to attend secular schools and undergo "computer marking"? Coming from the Islamist conspiracy sphere, the accusation of "computer marking", popularized by a Pakistani minister, had been denounced as a fake news as early as November 22, three weeks earlier.
Who is threatened by the "madmen of the Republic"? Accused of discriminating against young Muslims, was Samuel Paty not one of these madmen?
[1] Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, Revolutionary Islam, Monaco, ed. du Rocher, 2003.
[2] “Judith Butler responds to attack: “I affirm a Judaism that is not associated with state violence””, Mondoweiss , August 2012.
[3] Announced in particular by Carl Schmitt, Political theology (1922), Spengler, The Decline of the West (1918-1922), and by Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, The IIIe Rich [The Third Reich] (1923). Heidegger took up the main themes, from Rector's speech until black notebooks which are now appearing.
[4] In Janet Afary and Kevin B. Anderson, Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: Gender and the Seductions of Islamism, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2005, p. 125. See also the synthesis by Michael Walzer, “Islamism and the Left,” Dissenter, , winter 2015.
[5] Translated into Arabic, his interview with Jean-Jacques Bourdin in 2013 on France 24 had earned him many Islamist votes, which were entirely justified: "We are not going to make the law among Muslims. Muslims are at home [sic]. In these cases, why don't we make the law in Israel... We must stop pursuing the colonial policy that is ours, under the pretext that it is human rights that motivate us!
[6] His latest book has also been reviewed and praised on Al Jazeera by Santiago Zabala, a figure of Spanish-speaking Heideggerianism, collaborator of Gianni Vattimo and also co-author of Deconstructing Zionism (in Vattimo and Marder, 2014, op. citL.).
[7] See .
