Introduction Chapter 1

Notes Introduction 1. Omar Khayyam, Ruba’iyat of Omar Khayyam, trans. Edward FitzGerald. introduction by Dick Davis (London: Penguin, 1995). Chapter 1 1. See Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism (New York: Grove Press, 1965), 35– 67. 2. Ibid., 42. Emphasis added. 3. For a groundbreaking essay on the identification of the feminine body with body politic that predates Fanon’s and reverses the gaze toward the French woman, see Lynn Hunt’s “The Many Bodies of Marie Antoinette: Political Pornography and the Problem of the Feminine in the French Revolution,” in her edited volume Eroticism and the Body Politic (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 108–30. 4. Fanon 1965: 27– 30. 5. Ibid., 40. 6. Ibid., 36. 7. Ibid., 37. 8. As persuasively argued by Nicholas Dirks in Castes of Mind (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001). 9. As a case in point, see Karin Andriolo’s “Murder by Suicide: Episodes from Muslim History,” American Anthropologist 104, no. 3 (2002): 736– 42 for an examination of three examples of suicidal violence in Islamic history by way of explaining the events of 9/11. 10. Andriolo 2002: 741. Frankly, I do not see much of a difference between this anthropological study and a CRS (Congressional Research Services) report for the US Congress, titled “Terrorists and Suicide Attack” (August 28, 2003; available through CRS Web, Order Code RL 32058) prepared by a certain Audrey Kurth Cronin, “Specialist in Terrorism” in the “Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division.” Though equally centered on Islamic cases of suicidal violence, Cronin’s study is, in fact, far more open- minded– – even neutral– – in its findings than Andriolo’s essay. 11. Edward W. Said, After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives, with photographs by Jean Mohr (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), 79. 12. Ibid., 80–81. 13. Ibid., 82–83. 14. Ibid., 83–84. 218 Notes 15. Mahmoud Darwish, Memory for Forgetfulness: August, Beirut, 1982, trans. Ibrahim Muhawi (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995). 16. I was the intermediary between the UNESCO officials in New York and Makhmalbaf in Tehran. 17. For a detailed reading of Forough Farrokhzad’s The House Is Black, see the first chapter in my Masters and Masterpieces of Iranian Cinema (Washington, DC: Mage Publishers, 2007). 18. See Richard Warry, “Conjoined Twin Surgery Highly Risky,” BBC News, July 8, 2003, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3053862.stm. 19. Ramin Ahmadi’s essay was published on the Gooya website (http://www .gooya.com) in July 2003. Ahmadi’s legitimate criticism of the Islamic Repub- lic later degenerated into his active collaboration with US authorities to docu- ment human rights abuses in the Islamic Republic. No attention was paid to similar, if not worse, abuses by Americans in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. He is now an entirely discredited collaborator and native informer jeopardizing the cause of human rights in Iran. 20. On the rise of the Holocaust industry, see the extraordinary work of Norman Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering (London: Verso, 2001). Chapter 2 1. Chapter “The Story,” The Qur’an. 2. Sixth/Twelfth century Qur’anic commentator Kashf al- Asrar wa ‘Uddat al- ’Abrar, explaining the Nocturnal Journey (Mi’raj) of the Prophet to the Heav- ens to visit God the Unseen. 3. Sixth/Twelfth century Qur’anic commentator Ruh al- Jinan wa Ruh al-Janan , explaining why Joseph smashed the idols in his prison. 4. Qur’an 1:1. I use Marmaduke Pickthall’s translation in The Glorious Koran: A Bi- Lingual Edition with English Translation, Introduction and Notes (London: George Allen & Unwin Fine Books, 1976). 5. Qur’an 2:1– 4. 6. Such as the sixth/twelfth century Qur’anic commentator Shaykh Abu al- Futuh al- Razi in his Ruh al- Jinan wa Ruh al-Janan (Qom: Ayatollah al- Uzma Mar’ashi Najafi Library, 1404/1983), vol. 1, 39. 7. Al- Razi 1404/1983: vol. 1, 41. 8. On the anxiety of not being able to see ourselves, see Jean- Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness (New York: Gramercy Books, 1956), 339–51; 351– 59. 9. See the Qur’an 2:87; 2:136; 2:253; among many other verses. 10. Qur’an 3:59. 11. Qur’an 4:171. 12. Kevin Hart, The Trespass of the Sign: Deconstruction, Theology and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 7. 13. Ibid., 8. 14. Ibid. 15. Qur’an 2:2. 16. Qur’an 68:2. 17. Qur’an 96:1–4. 18. Hart 1989: 5. Emphasis added. Notes 219 19. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Balti- more: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), 49. 20. Ibid., 50. 21. Qur’an 2:115. 22. Qur’an 2:272. 23. Qur’an 28:88. 24. Compare, for example, the Naqsh-e Jahan Square in Isfahan to what, during the Shah’s time, was called Shahyad Square in Tehran. At the center of the square in Isfahan stood nothing but a shallow pool. At the center of Shahyad Square was a resurrectionary monument. The Isfahan square is Islamic because it is a visual reminder of the Presence of the Absent (God); the Shahyad Square is imperial because it reminds of the Absence of the Present (the monarch— and thus its name, Shahyad, the royal memorial). The Islamic Revolution toppled the monarchy but was already too imperialized in its Persian imagina- tion to notice the paradox of Shahyad Square and thought by renaming it the Azadi (Freedom) Square, it could Islamize it. It did not. The sign of the square defeats the signifier of its name. 25. Qur’an 12:1. 26. Qur’an 12:2. 27. Qur’an 12:3. 28. Qur’an 45:23. 29. Qur’an 45:24. 30. Qur’an 12:7. 31. Qur’an 12:6. 32. Qur’an 12:17. 33. Qur’an 12:21. 34. Qur’an 12:22. 35. In this reading of Joseph’s story, I have deliberately avoided biblical scholarship on its Hebrew version because the Qur’anic version should be read indepen- dently. But I cannot refrain from expressing my astonishment when I see that the leitmotif of “Face” is identified as the key thematic element in the Hebrew Yaakov cycle that comes immediately before Yosef and then the story of Yosef itself being identified as follows: “Even ‘face,’ the key word of the Yaakov cycle that often meant something negative, is here given a kinder meaning, as the resolution to Yaakov’s life.” Everett Fox, The Five Books of Moses: The Schocken Bible, Volume 1 (New York: Schocken Books, 1983), 173. 36. Qur’an 12:23. 37. Qur’an 12:24. 38. Qur’an 12:24. 39. Al-Razi 1404/1983: vol. 3, 126. 40. Qur’an 12:2. 41. Qur’an 12:30. 42. Qur’an 12:31. 43. For an account of the Kharijite subsect of the Maymuniyya excluding the Joseph chapter from their version of the Qur’an, see Richard Bell and W. Mont- gomery Watt, Introduction to the Qur’an (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1970), 46. 44. See al- Razi 1404/1983: vol. 3, 128. 220 Notes 45. For al- Maybudi’s account, see Abu al-Fadl Rashid al- Din al- Maybudi, Kashf al- Asrar wa ‘Uddat al-’Abrar , ed. Ali Asghar Hekmat (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1339/1960), vol. 5, 61. 46. There are wonderful folkloric accounts of how we have the “cuts” in the palm of our hands precisely where our ancestral mothers cut their hands. When they saw Joseph and were so distracted by his beauty, instead of cutting the orange they held in their hands, they cut their hands. In such accounts, every time we look at our own hands, we are, in effect, reminded of the beauty of Joseph, that one time Truth manifested Itself in its beautiful Face and then had to hide Itself. 47. Hart 1989: 12. Emphasis added. 48. See Husserl’s Logical Investigations, trans. J. N. Findlay (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970): investigation 1, chapter 1, §1. 49. Jaques Derrida, Speech and Phenomena and Other Essays on Husserl’s Theory of Signs (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 17. 50. Qur’an 12:35. 51. Qur’an 12:40. 52. Al- Razi 1404/1983: vol. 3, 134. 53. Ibid., 147. 54. Ibid. The reference to the meaning of the name Nu’man is missing in al- Razi’s account. 55. Qur’an 12:84. 56. Qur’an 12:87. 57. Hart 1989: 12. 58. Jacques Derrida, Positions, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 19. 59. Ibid. 60. Derrida 1973: 18. 61. Derrida 1981: 19. 62. Qur’an 12:93. Pickthall adds a parenthetical “(again)” before “a seer.” This does not appear in the original ya’ti basiran. It is important that we see Jacob as gaining a new kind of (in)sight. 63. Qur’an 12:94– 95. 64. Qur’an 12:96. I have kept Pickthall’s “he became a seer once more,” but fa- artadda basiran is better translated as “he returned to being a seer.” Again, the point is that there is a constitutional difference between the way Jacob sees now and the way he used to see. Joseph’s Face, the Sign of the Unseen, is at stake. 65. Qur’an 12:102. 66. Qur’an 12:105– 6. I have kept Pickthall’s “How many a portent,” but ka- ayyin min ‘ayatin is far more accurately translated “How many a sign.” 67. Qur’an 12:108. 68. James Hoopes, ed., Writings on Semiotics by Charles Sanders Peirce: Peirce on Signs (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), 141.

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