Ayatollah Khomeini’s Discourse as ‘Final Vocabulary’:
A Postmodernist Reading
Mansoor L. Limba, PhD
Director, Shajaratun Muntazirah Educational and Research Institute, Cotabato City, Philippines
ABSTRACT: By using ‘thin’ and ‘thick’ words purely derived from Islamic metaphors and signifiers, Ayatollah Khomeini castigates the West’s claim to meta-narrative and pretension to universality. He deconstructs its appropriation of the cultural production of voiceless ‘others’ and setting of the rules of the game – the ‘same’ versus the ’other’, the ‘West’ versus the ‘Rest’, ‘civilisation’ versus ‘barbarism’. Contrary to Muslim apologists, eclectics, and hybridists’ clichés of articulating Islam within the Western logocentric logic, the Ayatollah articulates an overarching discourse in the idiom of the Islamic truth regime with almost no reference at all to Western political doctrines. In particular, Khomeini’s notion of mahdawiyyah is a discourse outside modernity’s logic of Westphalian nation state sovereignty. I argue that mahdawiyyah is a pursuit of what Rorty called ‘final vocabulary’; it is to turn up side down the table of the ‘self/other’ project. Indeed, mahdawiyyah is a tale of both de-centring and re-centring (the de-centring of modernity and re-centring of Islam) and the guiding light of the Iranian foreign policy.
KEYWORDS: Mahdawiyyah/Mahdism; postmodernism; Iran; foreign policy; Ayatollah Khomeini.
Introduction
This paper is an attempt to examine the Islamic Republic of Iran’s foreign policy principles in the light of a postmodernist reading of mahdawiyyah (the Islamic belief in the coming of a global saviour or redeemer, called the Mahdi, in the future). I argue that mahdawiyyah is a doctrine upon which some of these foreign policy principles are based. In particular, the notion of ‘active waiting’ (intizar) for the Mahdi by Imam Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic republic, is investigated.
In this paper, instead of the Latinised ‘Mahdism’ or ‘Mahdiism’, the transliteration mahdawiyyah of the Arabic word is used because the latter is historically and linguistically more accurate than the former. The former can be considered an anachronism that has little significance in an age in which cross-cultural understanding is a pressing concern. Moreover, the suffix ‘-ism’ in ‘Mahdism/Mahdiism’ is used to form an abstract noun. The word mahdawiyyah, however, is a term which signifies not a set of concepts or propositions per se, but rather an activity or movement.
The Theoretical Landscape
Positivism is a philosophical movement characterised by (1) an emphasis upon science and the scientific method as the only sources of knowledge and (2) a sharp distinction between the realms of fact and value. Proponents of positivism believe, therefore, that knowledge should be acquired through logical reasoning and empirical experience. Broadly speaking, positivism is a position which maintains that the goal of knowledge is simply to describe the phenomena that we experience.[1] This approach can also be applied to international relations.
The late-1970s saw the emergence of post-positivist theories in international relations. Post-positivism is a broad term that encompasses a diverse range of theoretical perspectives that share in the rejection of one or more aspects of positivism. Positivism/rationalism and post-positivism/reflectivism represent the basic methodological divide in international relations concerning the nature of the social world (ontology) and the relation of our knowledge to that world (epistemology). The ontological dimension concerns the nature of social reality: is it an objective reality ‘out there’ or is it a subjective creation of people? From this dimension, international relations theories can be classified into explanatory and constitutive. An explanatory theory is that which sees the world as something external to our theories of it while a constitutive theory is that which maintains that our theories help construct the world. The epistemological aspect deals with the ways in which we can obtain knowledge about the world: can we scientifically explain it or must we instead interpretatively understand it? From this aspect, international relations theories can be divided into foundational and anti-foundational. Foundationalist positions hold that all truth claims about some feature of the world can be judged true or false while anti-foundationalist approaches uphold that truth claims cannot be so judged since there are never neutral grounds for so doing.[2]
One of these post-positivist/reflectivist theories is postmodernism which made its entrance in the field of international relations in the mid-1980s and is traceable to post-World War II French philosophers, foremost of whom were Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida.[3] Its precise definition is debatable not only between its friends and foes but also among its proponents.[4] As Akbar Ahmed asserts, ‘Postmodernism in the end may just turn out to be a journalistic cliché, an undefined catch-phrase, and not really the herald of a new phase in human history.’[5] Nevertheless, parsimoniously defined as ‘incredulity towards metanarratives,’[6] postmodernism is notably dismissive and suspicious of modernity’s meta-theories that claim universality and stability. In other words, it denies the possibility of foundations for establishing the truth of statements existing outside of discourse.
One recurring theme in postmodernism concerns the power-knowledge relationship elaborately dealt with by Foucault who regarded the two as mutually constituted. According to Foucault, all power requires knowledge and all knowledge relies on, and reinforces, existing power relations implying that there is no such thing as ‘truth’ existing outside of ‘regimes of truth’. In looking at history to reveal how certain regimes of truth have dominated others, Foucault proposes an approach known as ‘genealogy’.[7] The regimes of truth which this approach affirms reflect the ways in which, through history, both power and truth develop together in a mutually sustaining relationship. In other words, statements about the social world are only ‘true’ within specific discourses. As such, postmodernism is concerned with how some discourses and thus some truths dominate others.[8]
Another recurring theme of postmodernism concerns the textual strategies it employs. According to Derrida, textual is the way in which the social world is constructed. For him the world is constituted like a text such that interpreting the world reflects what he calls ‘the textual interplay at work,’ or the concepts and structures of language. In order to expose these textual interplays, he advances two ways, viz. deconstruction and double reading.[9] Anchored in the idea that seemingly stable and natural concepts and relations within language are in fact artificial constructs, arranged hierarchically such that in the case of opposites in language one term is always privileged over the other, deconstruction is a means of showing how all theories and discourses rely on artificial stabilities produced by the use of seemingly objective and natural oppositions in language; for example, light/darkness, knowledge/ignorance, white/black, friend/enemy. In order to show how these stabilisations operate, Derrida subjects the text to double reading, the first being a repetition of the dominant reading to show how it achieves its outward coherence and the second being the demonstration of the internal tensions within a text that result from the use of ostensibly natural stabilisations. His aim is not to come to a ‘correct’ or even ‘favoured’ reading of a text, but to show how there is always more than one reading of any text.[10]
Modernity’s Anarchy Problematique
Like other post-positivist or reflectivist theorists, postmodernists seek to make scholars aware of their conceptual prisons the most important of which is that of modernity itself and the whole idea that modernisation leads to progress and a better life.[11]
In the study of international relations, a leading postmodernist, Richard Ashley,[12] has performed a double reading of the concept of anarchy by providing first a reading of what he calls ‘anarchy problematique’ according to the traditional positivist literature, and then a second reading that shows how the seemingly natural opposition between anarchy and sovereignty that does the work in the first reading is in fact a false opposition. By radically disrupting the first reading which outlines not just the absence of any overarching authority but the presence of an array of states in the international arena, Ashley shows just how arbitrary is the ‘truth’ of the traditional assumptions made about anarchy and the logic of state action that it requires (i.e. self-interest, raison d’état, the routine resort to force, etc.).[13]
This Ashley does by posing two questions: (1) what happens to the anarchy problematique if it is not so clear that fully present and completed sovereign states are ontologically primary or unitary? (2) what happens to the anarchy problematique if the lack of central global rule is not overwritten with assumptions about power politics?[14]
The general effect of the anarchy problematique which depends on what Ashley terms ‘double exclusion’,[15] Devetak argues, is the confirmation of the opposition between sovereignty and anarchy as mutually exclusive and exhaustive. In particular, it represents ‘a domestic domain of sovereignty as a stable, legitimate foundation of modern political community’ and ‘the domain beyond sovereignty as dangerous and anarchical.’[16]
Mahdawiyyah and the Anarchy Problematique
From the insights gained from Ashley’s double reading of the concept of ‘anarchy’, it can be argued that the Westphalian state-centrism has no a priori essence of its own but is a product of its historical constitution and reconstitution as the primary mode of subjectivity in world politics. In line with the genealogical approach, this question can be raised: how and by virtue of what political practices and representations is the sovereign state instituted as the normal mode of international subjectivity? Answering this question leads us to the postmodernist conclusion that state-centrism is not the only ‘truth’ in the global village but just one of the existing regimes of truth.
Simply put, state sovereignty does not necessarily mean progress, stability and normalcy and the realm outside it does not necessarily represent backwardness, instability and abnormality. Another mode of global subjectivity that can be put forth in this context is mahdawiyyah which is the messianic belief in a future global governance under the rule of a promised redeemer of mankind as espoused by the Abrahamic eschatology of Islam. It is a regime of truth in the international relations discourse which has a conception of the legitimate use of violence, identity, boundaries of the political space, and statecraft different from that of modernity’s state-centrism.
In a Prophetic tradition (hadith) upon whose authenticity Muslim schools of thought agree, Prophet Muhammad is reported to have said:
If there were to remain in the life of the world but one day, God would prolong that day until He sends in it a man from my community and my household. His name will be the same as my name. He will fill the earth with equity and justice as it was filled with oppression and tyranny.[17]
It is said that the establishment of this global rule will usher in a golden age for mankind characterised by spiritual and moral excellence, diffusion of knowledge, technological advancement, agricultural abundance, economic prosperity, and political stability. According to Prophetic traditions, people of the world will be so contented that ‘The younger ones wish they were grown-ups, while the adults wish they were younger….The good become even more good, and even the wicked ones are treated well’[18] and ‘The inhabitants of the heavens and the inhabitants of the earth will be pleased with him [i.e. the Mahdi] and such plants will be produced by the earth that the living will wish the dead could come back to life.’[19]
In sum, apart from modernity’s mode of international subjectivity centred on state sovereignty, mahdawiyyah offers another mode of subjectivity involving an idea of global rule whose notion of sovereignty, identity, boundaries and statecraft represents a different regime of truth.
Ayatollah Khomeini’s Notion of Mahdawiyyah
‘Final vocabulary’, Richard Rorty asserts, refers to a set of words and phrases each of us resorts to in giving accounts of our hopes, beliefs, and desires. It is the vocabulary one used in telling his story. It is considered ‘final’ for beyond it, ‘there is only tautology, violence or silence.’[20]
‘Islamism’ or the assertion of global Muslim subjectivity, according to Bobby Sayyid, is indicated by an increasing number of Muslim communities that have begun to experience changes in what Rorty would call their ‘final vocabularies’ by narrating ‘their personal identities and the destiny of their communities by referring to a language derived from what they understood to be their Islamic heritage.’[21]
For Sayyid,
Islamism…is a project which attempts to transform Islam from a nodal point in discourses of Muslim communities into a master signifier. In particular, the Islamist project is an attempt to make Islam a master signifier of the political order. It is the struggle to establish which signifiers will constitute the unity and identity of a discursive universe which is central, since the transformation of a signifier into a master signifier is what makes possible the constitution of unity and the identity of the whole and its parts.[22]
By using ‘thin’ and ‘thick’ words purely derived from Islamic metaphors and signifiers, Ayatollah Khomeini castigates the West’s claim for meta-narrative and pretension to universality. He deconstructs its appropriation of the cultural production of voiceless ‘others’ and setting of the rules of the game – same/other, the West/the Rest, civilisation/barbarism. Contrary to Muslim apologists, eclectics and hybridists’ clichés of articulating Islam within the Western logocentric logic, the Ayatollah articulates an overarching discourse in the idiom of Islamic truth regime with almost no reference at all to Western political doctrines.
As Zubaida observes, the discourse of Ayatollah Khomeini is conducted exclusively in the idiom of Islamic political theory without citing any modern political doctrines. In short, he writes as if Western thought did not exist.[23] And there is no room for ‘Islam-is-real-democracy’ and ‘Islam-anticipates-socialism’ premises in his narrative:
He makes no attempt to try and locate Islam within a tradition of progressive history, in which major developments are re-described as being originally inspired by Islam… There is no obvious attempt to incorporate or even engage with political concepts associated with the discourses of nationalism, Marxism [and] liberalism. It is only with Khomeini that the role of western discourse as universal interlocutor appears to be shaken. Khomeini’s political thought, alone among Muslim thinkers of the last hundred years, does not try to have a dialogue with western discourse. He does not try to argue with or against western political theory.[24]
Many ‘modern’ concepts such as ‘constitutionalism’, ‘rule of law’, ‘Islamic republic’, ‘universal suffrage’, ‘freedom’, ‘presidency’, ‘separation of powers’, and ‘parliamentary legislation’ are undeniably taken up later by the Iranian Constitution. However, modernity is not presented as the ‘master signifier’ of these concepts. The master signifier is a signifier to which other signifiers refer and are unified by. As the signifier of the totality that guarantees and sanctions unity, it acquires a universal dimension and functions as the place of inscription for all other signifiers.[25]
This point is succinctly captured in Ayatollah Khomeini’s statement ‘Islamic Republic – nothing more, nothing less’ when there was a national debate on the name of the Iranian republic to be established after the victory of the Islamic Revolution. Some parties and figures were in favour of such names as ‘Islamic Liberal Republic’, ‘Islamic Democratic Republic’, ‘Islamic Socialist Republic’, and so forth. By that statement, Ayatollah Khomeini showed his advocacy for ‘republic’ with Islam (‘Islamic’) as its sole master signifier and not any of such ‘master signifiers’ as liberalism (‘Liberal’), democracy (‘Democratic’) and socialism (‘Socialist’).[26]
As Sayyid surmises,
…Khomeini does not offer a point-by-point consideration of why an Islamic republic would be better than western governmental practice, he does not offer arguments against western political theory; he simply states the virtues of an Islamic political order.[27]
Sayyid is also of the opinion that
Khomeini’s strategy is emulated by Rorty who declares: ‘Conforming to my precepts, I am not going to offer arguments against the vocabulary I want to replace. Instead, I am going to try and make the vocabulary I favour look attractive by showing how it may be used to describe a variety of topics.’[28]
Ayatollah Khomeini, motivated by ‘the spirit of the world without spirit’[29] also pronounced 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. The Ayatollah debunked the legitimacy of Pahlavism on many grounds among which are the absence of democracy in the state, the state as a menacing threat to Islam, foreign domination in the economic and political spheres, the bazaar’s state of bankruptcy, and massive poverty.[30] In condemning Zionism, he says: ‘This degenerative tumour that has, with the backing of major powers, been planted in the heart of Muslim countries and whose roots threaten daily the Muslim countries, must be removed.’[31]
In particular, Ayatollah Khomeini’s notion of mahdawiyyah is a discourse outside modernity’s logic of Westphalian nation state sovereignty, defying the seemingly stable sovereignty/anarchy, stability/instability, civilised/barbarian, and citizen/non-citizen binaries.
Advocating a conception of ‘waiting’ (intizar) characterised by activism and dynamism, in one of his speeches barely a year after his demise, Ayatollah Khomeini mentioned the different conceptions of ‘waiting’ and indicated which of them is correct:
Some understand the waiting for the advent in this way: that they would sit and supplicate in the mosque, at the husayniyyah and at home, and pray to God for the advent of the Imam of the Time (may God’s peace be upon him)….Another group was saying that waiting for the advent means that we should not be concerned with what is happening in the world ….One group was saying, ‘Well, the world must be full of sin so as for His Holiness to come...’ Another group was more extreme than this. They were saying, ‘Sins must be committed; people should be urged to commit sins so that the world would be filled with tyranny and oppression, and His Holiness (may God’s peace be upon him) would come’….Yet another group was saying, ‘Any government that is established at the period of occultation is false (illegitimate) and is contrary to Islam.’ ….Those who were not actors were arrogant on account of some fabricated traditions that state, ‘Any banner that is hoisted prior to the appearance of His Holiness is a false (illegitimate) one.’ They were imagining that any government (that is established) according to the manner of those (mentioned) traditions; that anyone hoisting the banner with the banner of Al-Mahdi, in the name of ‘Mahdism’ [is false (illegitimate)].[32]
That is, the last mentioned group held the view that any government to be established prior to the Mahdi’s advent is illegitimate – a view which, according to Ayatollah Khomeini, is based upon fabricated hadiths. He refutes this view by saying, thus:
Now, let us assume that there is really such a tradition. Does it mean that we have no more duties (to perform)? That is, is it not against the expediency of Islam and against the Qur’an that we have to indulge in sin in order for the Prophet to come and for His Holiness to come? His Holiness who would come, for what that he would do so? It is to spread justice; to consolidate the government; to eliminate corruption. It is contrary to the noble verses of the Qur’an that we would refrain from forbidding what is evil; that we would refrain from enjoining what is good; that we would spread sins so that His Holiness would come. His Holiness would come for what? As His Holiness comes, he will do the same things…[33]
As a manifestation of this positive ‘waiting’ espoused by Ayatollah Khomeini in a macro-state level, he initiated many bold steps in paving the ground for the reappearance of the Mahdi. These steps include (1) the introduction of the theory of ‘guardianship of the jurist’ (wilayat al-faqih), (2) founding and heading the Islamic Republic as the Supreme Leader and ‘jurist-guardian’ (wali al-faqih), (3) declaration of Rabi‘ al-Awwal 12-17 as ‘International Islamic Unity Week’ and the opening of ‘Forum for the Proximity of Islamic Schools of Thought’ (Dar al-Taqrib bayn al-Madhahib al-Islami), (4) revival of the Abrahamic Hajj and the rite of ‘disavowal of the polytheists’ (bara’at al-mushrikin), and (5) consecration of the last Friday of the fasting month of Ramadan as ‘International Quds Day’.[34]
Mahdawiyyah in Iran’s Foreign Policy Principles
The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran is unique in many respects. As far as the Islamic doctrine of mahdawiyyah is concerned, the Constitution is perhaps the only constitution in the world which explicitly acknowledges the personality of the Mahdi and his advent. Article 5 states:
During the occultation (ghaybah) of the Wali al-‘Asr (i.e. the Twelfth Imam), may God expedite his appearance, the wilayat al-amr [guardianship of the affair] and leadership of the ummah devolve upon the just and pious jurist, fully aware of the times, courageous, possessing administrative and problem-solving abilities, who will assume the responsibilities of this office in accordance with Article 107.
Iran’s Constitution is also categorical in the rejection of the state’s sovereignty purely emanating from the people by stipulating an ‘intermediary sovereignty’ of state as stated in Article 56: ‘Absolute sovereignty of the universe and Man belongs to God, and it is He Who has made the human being master of its own social destiny.’[35]
The Preamble gives an indication of Iran’s advancement of mahdawiyyah’s ideal of the elimination of injustice and inequity in the world, thus:
With due attention to the Islamic content of the Iranian Revolution, as a movement aimed at the triumph of all the mustad‘afin (oppressed) over the mustakbirin (oppressors), the Constitution provides the necessary basis for ensuring the continuity of the Revolution at home and abroad. In the development of international relations in particular, the Constitution tries, with other Islamic and popular movements, to prepare the way for the formation of a single world community [in accordance with the Qur’anic verse] ‘Indeed this community of yours is one community, and I am your Lord. So worship Me’[36] and to sustain the continuity of the struggle for the liberation of all deprived and oppressed peoples throughout the world.[37]
Article 3, Section 16, also provides:
In order to achieve the objectives specified in Article 2, the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran must direct all its resources to…[f]raming the country’s foreign policy on the basis of Islamic criteria, fraternal commitment to all Muslims and unflinching support to the world’s oppressed (mustad‘afin).
Iran’s foreign policy principles are derived from the following two provisions:
The foreign policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran is based upon rejection of all forms of domination – both the assertion of it and submission to it – preservation of the country’s all around independence, its territorial integrity, defence of the rights of all Muslims, non-alignment with hegemonic superpowers, and the maintenance of peaceful relations with all non-belligerent States.[38]
The realisation of human felicity throughout human society is the ideal of the Islamic Republic of Iran and it considers independence, freedom and the rule of justice and Truth to be the right of all people of the world. Accordingly, while scrupulously refraining from all forms of interference in the internal affairs of other nations, it supports the struggle of the mustad‘afin for their rights in every corner of the globe.[39]
In the words of Ayatollah Khomeini, ‘Relationship between a nation that has risen up to free itself from the clutches of international pilferers and world-devourers is always in the interest of pilferer and disadvantageous to the oppressed.’[40] He also said: ‘We have the duty of saving the oppressed and the deprived people.’[41]
It can thus be gleaned from the above-quoted provisions of the Constitution that a central theme of Iran’s foreign policy principles is the doctrine of mahdawiyyah expressed in the notion of ‘active waiting’ for the Mahdi. Iran is a sovereign state but it does not accept modernity’s essentialist conception of the Westphalian state. The establishment of the Islamic Republic, for its founder, is not the ultimate ideal but just an initial step toward the attainment of that ideal through what is called ‘the rule of gradualism’ (qa’idih-yi tadarruj).[42]
Conclusion
The late-1970s saw the emergence of post-positivist theories in international relations. One of these post-positivist theories is postmodernism which is traceable to post-World War II French philosophers foremost of whom were Foucault and Derrida. Beautifully defined as ‘incredulity toward meta-narratives,’ postmodernism is dismissive of modernity’s meta-theories that claim universality and stability.
By using ‘thin’ and ‘thick’ words purely derived from Islamic metaphors and signifiers, Ayatollah Khomeini castigates the West’s claim for meta-narrative and pretension to universality. He deconstructs its appropriation of the cultural production of voiceless ‘others’ and setting of the rules of the game – same/other, the West/the Rest, civilisation/barbarism. Contrary to Muslim eclectics and hybridists’ clichés of articulating Islam within the Western logocentric logic, the Ayatollah 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.
In particular, Ayatollah Khomeini’s notion of mahdawiyyah is a discourse outside modernity’s logic of Westphalian nation state sovereignty. It defies the seemingly stable sovereignty/anarchy, stability/instability, civilised/barbarian, and citizen/non-citizen binaries. Ayatollah Khomeini motivated by ‘the spirit of the world without spirit’ also 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.
As guiding principles of its foreign policy, Iran tries ‘to prepare the way for the formation of a single world community…and to sustain the continuity of the struggle for the liberation of all-deprived and oppressed peoples throughout the world’ (Preamble of the Iranian Constitution). It considers its ideal ‘the realisation of human felicity throughout human society’, and ‘independence, freedom and the rule of justice and Truth to be the right of all people of the world’ (Article 154 of the Constitution).
In sum, Imam Khomeini’s discourse on mahdawiyyah is a pursuit of what Rorty called ‘final vocabulary’. It is to turn up side down the table of ‘self/other’ project. It is a tale of both de-centring and re-centring – the de-centring of modernity and re-centring of Islam.
References
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Ashley, Richard K. ‘Untying the Sovereign State: A Double Reading of the Anarchy Problematique’, Millennium XVII, no. 2 (1988).
Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
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Griffiths, Martin. Key Thinkers in International Relations (London: Routledge, 2003).
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Smith, Steve & Owens, Patricia. ‘Alternative Approaches to International Theory’, in The Globalization of World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations, ed. John Baylis & Steve Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, 3rd ed.).
Tabataba’i, Sayyid Muhammad Husayn et al. ‘Messianism and the Mahdi’, in Expectation of the Millennium: Shi‘ism in History ed. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, et al. (New York: State University of New York Press, 1989).
Vasquez, J. ‘The Post-Positivist Debate’, in International Relations Theory Today ed. Keene Booth & Steve Smith, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995).
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[1] Martin Griffiths & Terry O’Callaghan, International Relations: The Key Concepts (London: Routledge, 2002), 249-250.
[2] Martin Hollis & Steve Smith, Explaining and Understanding International Relations (Clarendon: Oxford University Press, 1990); Robert Jackson & Georg Sorensen, Introduction to International Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 217-248; Steve Smith & Patricia Owens, ‘Alternative Approaches to International Theory’, in The Globalization of World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations, ed. John Baylis & Steve Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, 3rd ed.), 271-293.
[3] Smith & Owens, ‘Alternative Approaches to International Theory’, 285; Lene Hansen, ‘R. B. J. Walker and International Relations: Deconstructing a Discipline’, in The Future of International Relations: Masters in the Making? ed. Iver B. Neumann & Ole Waever (London: Routledge, 1997), 316-317.
[4] Richard Devetak, ‘Postmodernism’, in Theories of International Relations ed. Scott Burchill, et al. (Hampshire: Palgrave, 2001, 2nd ed.), 181.
[5] Akbar S. Ahmed, Postmodernism and Islam: Predicaments and Promise (London: Routledge, 1992), 9.
[6] Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), xxiv.
[7] See Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge (London: Tavistock, 1982).
[8] Devetak, ‘Postmodernism’, 182-183.
[9] Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976).
[10] Devetak, ‘Postmodernism’, 186-188.
[11] See, for example, J. Vasquez, ‘The Post-Positivist Debate’, in International Relations Theory Today ed. Keene Booth & Steve Smith, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995): 217-240.
[12] Martin Griffiths, Key Thinkers in International Relations (London: Routledge, 2003), 207-211.
[13] Devetak, ‘Postmodernism’, 188-189.
[15] Richard K. Ashley, ‘Untying the Sovereign State: A Double Reading of the Anarchy Problematique’, Millennium XVII, no. 2 (1988), 257.
[16] Devetak, ‘Postmodernism’, 189.
[17] Quoted in Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Tabataba’i, et al. ‘Messianism and the Mahdi’, in Expectation of the Millennium: Shi‘ism in History ed. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, et al. (New York: State University of New York Press, 1989), 8; Najmuddin Tabasi, An Overview of the Mahdi’s Government, trans. Mansoor Limba (Tehran: Ahl al-Bayt (A) World Assembly, 2009), 117-118.
[18] Quoted in Harun Yahya, The End Times and the Mahdi (Maryland: Khatoons, 2003), 53.
[20] Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 73.
[21] Bobby S. Sayyid, A Fundamental Fear: Eurocentrism and the Emergence of Islamism (London: Zed Books, 1997), 2.
[23] Sami Zubaida, Islam, the People and the State (London: Routledge, 1989), 13.
[24] Sayyid, A Fundamental Fear, 113-114.
[26] Murtada Mutahhari, The Concept of Islamic Republic, trans. Muhammad K. Ali (Tehran: Foreign Department of Be‘that Foundation, 1982), 15-22, 40-45.
[27] Sayyid, A Fundamental Fear, 114.
[29] Lawrence D. Kritzman, Michel Foucault Politics, Philosophy and Culture: Interviews and Other Writings 1977-84 (New York: Routledge, Chapman and Hall, 1988), 218.
[30] See Ayatollah Khomeini’s speeches since 1953 in Sahifih-yi Imam, vol. 1.
[31] Imam Khomeini, Pithy Aphorisms: Wise Sayings and Counsels (Tehran: The Institute for Compilation and Publication of Imam Khomeini’s Works, 2004, 2nd ed.), 127.
[32] Sahifih-yi Imam XXI, speech on 3 April 1988 [14 Farvardin 1367 ah (solar) / 15 Sha‘ban 1408 ah] on the different understandings of ‘waiting’ for the advent (of Imam al-Mahdi (A)).
[34] See Sahifih-yi Imam I-XXII.
[35] Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Chapter 7, National Sovereignty and Powers Derived from It, Article 56.
[36] Qur’an, 21:92. In this paper, the translation of all Qur’anic passages is adapted from ‘Ali Quli Qara’i, The Qur’an with a Phrase-by-Phrase English Translation (London: Islamic College for Advance Studies Press, 2004).
[37] Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Preamble, Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
[38] Ibid., Chapter 10, Foreign Policy, Article 152.
[40] Pithy Aphorisms, 121.
[42] Muhammad-Rida Dehshiri, ‘Ways of Attaining the Ideal International Order from Imam Khomeini’s Viewpoint’, in Imam Khomeini and the International System: A Collection of Articles, trans. Mansoor Limba (Tehran: The Institute for Compilation and Publication of Imam Khomeini’s Works, 2006), 55 & 61.