It is often said that definitions of Islamic government are imprecise. To me, however, they seemed to have a clarity that was completely familiar and also, it must be said, far from reassuring.
Interpretation
The concept of Islamic government lacks precise definitions, but those presented resonate with a sense of clarity and familiarity, albeit unsettling.
In this quote, Michel Foucault reflects on the ambiguous nature of Islamic government definitions. He acknowledges that while these definitions may lack precision, they evoke a sense of understanding for him personally, though this familiarity brings him little comfort, suggesting an inherent complexity and possibly a troubling reality within those definitions.
In practice
In a lecture discussing political systems, one could use this quote to illustrate the complexities of defining government models.
A real subjection is born mechanically from a fictitious relation [...] He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribed in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection.
Matthey, a Geneva physician very close to Rousseau's influence, formulates the prospect for all men of reason: 'Do not glory in your state, if you are wise and civilized men; an instant suffices to disturb and annihilate that supposed wisdom of which you are so proud; an unexpected event, a sharp and sudden emotion of the soul will abruptly change the most reasonable and intelligent man into a raving idiot.
But the guilty person is only one of the targets of punishment. For punishment is directed above all at others, at all the potentially guilty.
I don’t feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am. The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning. If you knew when you began a book what you would say at the end, do you think that you would have the courage to write it? What is true for writing and for love relationships is true also for life. The game is worthwhile insofar as we don’t know what will be the end.
You may have killed God beneath the weight of all that you have said; but don't imagine that, with all that you are saying, you will make a man that will live longer than he.
The work of an intellectual is not to mould the political will of others; it is, through the analyses that he does in his own field, to re-examine evidence and assumptions, to shake up habitual ways of working and thinking, to dissipate conventional familiarities, to re-evaluate rules and institutions and to participate in the formation of a political will (where he has his role as citizen to play).
A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law, or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.
At the heart of every being lies creation's dream of a principle that will one day give organic form to its fragmented treasures. God is unity.
Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings.
History may be servitude. History may be freedom. See, now they vanish. The faces and places, with the self which, as it could, loved them, to become renewed, transfigured, in another pattern.
We often forget that everything we see, animate or inanimate, is a visual manifestation of the work of our invisible God. We have become so accustomed to trees, mountains, sky, air, water, flowers, animals, vegetables and people that we no longer see them for what they are - God's work.
The trouble with being a god is that you've got no one to pray to.
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