–French academic Maxime Rodinson, describing in 1978 the phenomenon of political activists and religious zealots in Iran making common cause against the country’s monarchy; such a combination successfully toppled the Shah of Iran in 1979, ushering in the Islamic Republic.
Despite his prolific scholarly output on various aspects of Islam, Maxime Rodinson is today not a household name, probably not even in France, where he was born. His writings on the maneuverings that led up to the 1979 ouster of the Shah of Iran, however, might be profitably read in 2011 – if only as an antidote to the vast majority of MSM coverage of the Egyptian protests.
Rodinson’s writings can help us think more clearly and more critically about what is happening in Egypt today, as (once again) a loose grouping of Middle Eastern liberals and religious zealots demands an autocratic ruler step aside and make way for…well…what comes next is not exactly clear.
But be cautious — applying Rodinson’s assessment of Iran in the late 1970s to Egypt today may cause momentary disorientation.
That’s because Rodinson’s concern about how the Iranians seemed in danger of trading one form of despotic rule (the Shah) for another (headed by the country’s clerics) is at odds with about 95% of the coverage of the Egyptian protests by the MSM.
The MSM wants to tell a much different story, portraying the scenes in Cairo as a combination of Woodstock, the 1960s campus sit-ins and the fall of the Berlin Wall.
And to keep that “narrative” going, the MSM dare not ask too many questions about what dreams are playing out in the minds of those organizing against General Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s president. What many reporters and columnists want to believe is Woodstock with an Arabic accent may turn out to be something else entirely.
Some light-headed commentators (perhaps nostalgic for the days of flower-power) are taking this narrative so far that they want to believe that the protests in Egypt could mean that the entire Arab world is only a few regime changes away from coming “into the splendid embrace of democracy.”
Those commentators would scoff at a Rodinson-esque view of the Egypt protests. Then again, Rodinson’s take on the effort to drive out the Shah of Iran was not widely shared in France, or abroad.
MSM coverage of the Iranian Revolution took a different view, but it was Rodinson who turned out to be correct. After the Shah fell, Iran’s clerics, “dreaming of another form of despotism” all along, placed the country under harsh theocratic rule.
Unfortunately, Rodinson passed away in 2004, so we cannot know for sure how he would react to the Cairo protests. We can guess, however, that he might gently steer the reporters twittering from Egypt to question whether the Egyptians may be poised to trade one despotism for another, rather than bring in democracy.
As he might sadly point out, it has happened before.
