77
*  ZRC SAZU, Institute of Philosophy, Ljubljana, Slovenia
arsalan.reihanzadeh@zrc-sazu.si | https://orcid.org/0009-0003-3105-612X
Arsalan Reihanzadeh*
Of Times, Religions, and Revolutions: 
One Unites into Two
1
Keywords
time, Islam, One, onto-theology, revolution
Abstract
Starting from the impact of biblical teachings on Islam, the first part of this article at-
tempts to show the divergent paths that Christianity and Islam have taken when con-
fronted with the three dimensions of time (chronos, kairos, krisis). The article aims to elu-
cidate the distinct onto-theologies of the two religious discourses by analysing various 
examples that illustrate this divergence. Consequently, the onto-theology of Islam can 
be encapsulated as “One unites in two,” in contrast to the onto-theology of Christianity, 
which can be formulated as “One divides into two.” In the second part of the article, one 
of the political implications of the onto-theology of “One united in two” is examined in 
depth in a socio-political context, showing how the conceptualisation of such a context 
can only be done adequately if its onto-theological dimension is taken into account.
1
O časih, religijah in revolucijah: Eno se združi v dvoje
Ključne besede
čas, islam, Eno, ontoteologija, revolucija
Povzetek 
Izhajajoč iz vpliva svetopisemskih naukov na islam si prvi del članka prizadeva poka-
zati različne poti, ki sta jih ubrala krščanstvo in islam, ko sta bila soočena s tremi raz-
1 
This article is a result of the research project J6-4623 “Conceptualizing the End: its 
Temporality, Dialectics, and Affective Dimension,” and the research project N6-0286 
“Reality, Illusion, Fiction, Truth: A Preliminary Study,” which are funded by the Slovenian 
Research and Innovation Agency.
Filozofski vestnik
issn 0353-4510 | Volume 44 | Number 3 | 2023 | 77–107
cc by-sa 4.0 | doi: 10.3986/fv.44.3.04

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arsalan reihanzadeh
sežnostmi časa (chronos, kairos, krisis). Z analizo vrste zgledov, ki ilustrirajo to razha-
janje, si besedilo prizadeva osvetiliti različne ontoteologije obeh religioznih diskurzov. 
Posledično je ontoteologijo islama mogoče povzeti v frazo »Eno se združi v dvoje«, v na-
sprotju z ontoteologijo krščanstva, ki jo je mogoče formulirati kot »Eno se cepi v dvoje«. 
V drugem delu članka v družbenopolitičnem kontekstu podrobno raziščemo eno od po-
litičnih implikacij ontoteologije »Eno se združi v dvoje« in pokažemo, kako je koncep-
tualizacija tovrstnega konteksta mogoča le z upoštevanjem ontoteološke razsežnosti.
∞
Regarding the socio-politico-cultural milieu in which he came of age—where 
Zoroastrian and Judeo-Christian traditions held sway—certain scholars have 
underscored the impact of biblical teachings on the Prophet of Islam.
2
 This in-
fluence is particularly evident in the development of his deeply apocalyptic 
perception of the prophetic mission. Substantiating this assertion requires no 
extensive search. The primary sources of Islam, specifically the Qur’anic suras 
and verses, promptly come to mind with their vibrant apocalyptic imagery and 
themes. “Indeed, the Quran insists on numerous occasions on the imminent 
end of the world. It is not the case of one or two verses, one or two suras, but doz-
ens of suras and verses. This entails not only a large number of scattered verses, 
this is a case of more than thirty of the very last suras of the Quran, reputed to 
be the oldest and rightly called the ‘Quranic apocalyptic’ suras.”
3
 A substantial 
number of Hadiths also reflect the idea that “Muḥammad actually announces 
the imminent coming of the Messiah and the latter is none other than Jesus. 
At the same time, for some followers of the Prophet, ‘Alī b. Abī Ṭālib [the first 
Shī‘a imam and the fourth Sunni caliph] seems to have been the Second Jesus, 
2 
See Patricia Crone and Michael Cook, Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World 
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); David Cook, Studies in Muslim Apocalyptic 
(Princeton: Darwin Press, 2002); Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, “Muḥammad the Paraclete 
and ‘Alī the Messiah: New Remarks on the Origins of Islam and of Shi’ite Imamology,” 
Der Islam 95, vol. 1 (2018): 30–64, https://doi.org/10.1515/islam-2018-0002; Mohammad Ali 
Amir-Moezzi, “The Shi’is and the Qur’an: Between Apocalypse, Civil Wars, and Empire,” 
Religions 13, no. 1 (2022): article 1, https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13010001; Jonathan E. 
Brockopp, “The Rise of Islam in a Judeo-Christian Context,” in Light upon Light: Essays 
in Islamic Thought and History in Honor of Gerhard Bowering, ed. Jamal J. Elias and Bilal 
Orfali (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2020), 25–44.
3 
Amir-Moezzi, “Shi’is and the Qur’an,” 12.

79
of times, religions, and revolutions: one unites into two
Christ and Messiah of the apocalyptic times.”
4
 Hence, considering the profound 
impact of the Judeo-Christian tradition on Muḥammad, it becomes plausible to 
characterize him as a prophet whose foremost mission was to herald the im-
pending resurgence of the Messiah, rather than to establish an entirely novel 
religion. In essence, Islam not only fails to exist in isolation from preceding re-
ligious traditions, but also amalgamates diverse elements from them into a dis-
tinctive synthesis.
Even Franz Rosenzweig, who in his seminal work The Star of Redemption en-
deavors to delineate a clear demarcation between Islam and the Judeo-Christian 
tradition, portrays the three Abrahamic religions as distinct modes of expressing 
shared concepts, such as revelation, providence, and the triadic relationship be-
tween “God, world, and man.”
5
 While Islam shares fundamental ideas with the 
other two religions, the precise articulation of these concepts within Islam re-
sults in notable disparities between the latter and the Judeo-Christian tradition. 
In this context, we shall briefly examine one of these disparities: the divergent 
approaches of Christianity and Islam in addressing the interplay of various di-
mensions of time within their apocalyptic doctrines.
The French historian François Hartog identifies the translation of the Hebrew 
Bible into Greek in third-century BC Alexandria as a pivotal event that initiat-
ed a process culminating in the invention of what would eventually be known 
4 
Amir-Moezzi, “Muḥammad the Paraclete,” 31.
5 
In contrast to Hegel, who argued that Islam is a more universal religion than Judaism, 
Rosenzweig aims to demonstrate that Judaism, when compared to Islam, shares a closer 
affinity with Christianity, which Hegel regards as the most universal religion. To substanti-
ate this claim, Rosenzweig contends, for instance, that the nature of the relationship be-
tween God and humanity in Islam is characterized by a form of revelation that lacks a true 
dialogical aspect. In Rosenzweig’s view, the omnipresence of God in Islam leaves no room 
for meaningful communication between God and humans. He contends that Muḥammad’s 
understanding of revelation diverges significantly from the Judeo-Christian tradition. 
Although he incorporated the concept of revelation from that tradition, Muḥammad, due 
to a lack of a proper understanding, rearticulated this concept within a pagan context. In 
contrast, revelation in Judaism and Christianity marked a fundamental departure from pa-
ganism. Rosenzweig’s assertion stems from Islam’s distinctive manner of presenting con-
cepts such as revelation and providence. He asserts, in an oxymoronic way, that “in spite 
of the idea of the unity of God, posited vehemently and proudly, Islam slips into a monistic 
paganism.” Franz Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, trans. Barbara E. Galli (Madison: 
University of Wisconsin Press, 2005), 134.

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arsalan reihanzadeh
as Christian or Western time. By adopting and adapting the Greek concepts of 
chronos, kairos, and krisis, within the biblical framework, the initial transla-
tors of the Pentateuch, which held profound significance for early Christians, 
imbued these terms with meanings distinct from the original Greek intentions. 
While the Greeks associated krisis with a moment requiring a physician’s critical 
decision about a patient’s condition and viewed kairos as a decisive point when 
tragic heroes, having missed all earlier chances for triumph, met a tragic fate 
such as blindness, in the Christian interpretation of the Greek trio
thinking about crisis is [. . .] the business of [. . .] the prophet and the apocalyp-
tist, both bearers of the speech of God, who announce the times to come and the 
approach of Judgment Day (Krisis), which is, strictly speaking, the sword that will 
cleave. Kairos takes on the role of the blast of apocalypse [. . .]. Yet the age that 
is coming, while routinely called the “Day of the Lord,” is also known as Kairos. 
Just as kairos indicates a rupture within continuity, Krisis, acting as judgment, 
cleaves. While krisis places the stress on the very act of judging, kairos focuses on 
the temporal rupture that accompanies it.
6
In essence, kairos (“opportunity, the decisive moment”) encapsulates the apoc-
alyptic disruption within chronos (“ordinary time”), signaling the impending 
onset of krisis (“the judgment that slices”). The intricate interplay of these three 
facets is such that by the time the Second Coming is proclaimed, the kairos, the 
apocalyptic juncture, is already underway. It is crucial to acknowledge, howev-
er, that while kairos signifies the suspension of chronos, it does not signify the 
termination of ordinary time. The conclusion of chronos takes place solely with 
the arrival of Judgment Day (krisis). This conception of the distinct dimensions 
of time posed a fundamental challenge to Christianity right from its inception: 
the interval between kairos and krisis, that is, the ordinary time of chronos, the 
time of misery, which is like a “wedge” between the time of the apocalyptic act 
and the time of judgment.
While Christianity did not view the apocalyptic act (the Incarnation) as an out-
right negation of chronos, acknowledging the emergence of kairos time within 
it, two concerns regarding their relationship endured. One concern, on the one 
6 
François Hartog, Chronos: The West Confronts Time, trans. S. R. Gilbert (New York: 
Columbia University Press, 2022), 11.

81
of times, religions, and revolutions: one unites into two
hand, was that believers might begin to doubt the assurance of the apocalyptic 
act (kairos), progressively eroding their faith in the Second Coming and becom-
ing increasingly engrossed in the time of misery (chronos). On the other hand, 
a potential peril existed wherein believers might fervently fixate on apocalyptic 
time, endeavoring to bridge, if possible, the gap between kairos and krisis (Judg-
ment Day), striving to merge them into a single time—the extensive history of 
Christianity presents a multitude of cases where individuals have claimed to be 
the Messiah, effectively highlighting the gravity and constancy of this threat.
However, rather than solely emphasizing the Kairos and Krisis and isolating 
Chronos from them, Christianity introduced a new regime of historicity in which 
the life of the believer is shaped by the interplay of three dimensions: Kairos, 
Chronos, and Krisis. St. Paul’s preaching to the Corinthians effectively illustrates 
that, in Christianity, Chronos time is not isolated from the other two times: 
“Those who have spouses should live as though they had none, and those who 
mourn as though they were not mourning.”
7
 This use of “as though not” (hôs 
mê), as highlighted by Hartog,
indicates the dual path that will allow one to live henceforth in both Chronos time 
and Kairos time [. . .]. None of these responses goes beyond the present. They in-
dicate how to live, day after day, the mystery of Kairos, aware that the Judgment 
Day is coming but never succumbing to the apocalyptic feverishness nurtured by 
those whom the authors of the New Testament denounce as so many false proph-
ets, false Messiahs, or anti-Messiahs.
8
There is an aspect in Paul’s preaching that could be read in light of Hegel’s no-
tion of the infinite judgment. While underscoring the interweaving of Kairos and 
Chronos, the preaching implicitly acknowledges that no common measure ex-
ists between the two. “There is no common denominator, no tertium compara-
tionis, no basis for a relationship that could vouch for the asserted equivalence”
9
 
between “living in Chronos time” (depicted as “those who have spouses”) and 
“living in Kairos time” (portrayed as “should live as though they had none”). 
7 
1 Cor. 7:29–30, quoted in Hartog, Chronos, 46; emphasis added.
8 
Hartog, 46–47.
9 
Mladen Dolar, “The Phrenology of Spirit,” in Supposing the Subject, ed. Joan Copjec 
(London: Verso, 1994), 67.

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arsalan reihanzadeh
Nevertheless, the “as though not” functions as a hinge through which a rela-
tion between the two parts of the preaching is established. Instead of a negative 
judgment where one of the predicates of the subject is simply negated, resulting 
in an indeterminately determined subjects, the preaching could be seen as an 
infinite judgment in which the predicate is affirmed in its negation; or in oth-
er words, the non-predicate (as though they had no spouse) is affirmed (should 
live),
10
 leading to the positing of the subject as an indeterminately determinate 
determinateness.
However, this does not mean that the infinite judgments provide more deter-
minations of the subject-predicate relation. Rather, in contrast to “the famous 
thesis on “determinate negation,” [according to which,] one would expect neg-
ative judgment to succeed infinite judgment as a “higher,” more concrete form 
of dialectical unity-within-difference,”
11
 “in infinite judgments one is dealing 
with a relation to relationality as such or to discursiveness as such. This is why it 
cannot simply be more determined; one here deals with the truth of discursive-
ness.”
12
 Hence, in lieu of asserting “the positedness of the subject as continuing 
itself into its predicate,” one can say that the subject is posited in the very gap 
between the subject and the predicate. Similarly, the subject is the very gap be-
tween identity and difference, it is the very minimal difference inherent within 
every identity, dividing it into identity and difference. It is due to this irreducible 
minimal difference that the infinite judgment is defined as a judgment “dealing 
with a relation to relationality,” rather than providing further determination.
As a result, it could be proposed that in Paul’s preaching, the core locus of the 
subject resides in the “as though not,” which serves as an indicator neither of 
“living in Chronos” nor of “living in Kairos.” but rather of the unsurpassable 
gap between the two. To live in both Chronos and Kairos hinges on maintaining 
10 
Slavoj Žižek illustrates the distinction between the negative judgment and the infinite 
judgment by referring to the distinction that “lies [. . .] between ‘is not mortal’ and ‘is not-
mortal’: what we have in the first case is a simple negation, whereas in the second case, 
a non-predicate is affirmed.” Slavoj Žižek, Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the 
Critique of Ideology (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), 111.
11 
Žižek, 21.
12 
Frank Ruda, “What Is to Be Judged? On Infinitely Infinite Judgments and Their Conse-
quences,” in Žižek and Law, ed. Laurent De Sutter (Oxfordshire: Routledge, 2015), 168; em-
phasis added.

83
of times, religions, and revolutions: one unites into two
this gap, which has nothing to do with further determinations by which those 
who live in Chronos are “posited as continuing themselves into their predicate 
[apocalyptic act].” Accordingly, it follows that one of the potential outcomes of 
such a positing might involve the emergence of “false prophets, false Messiahs, 
or anti-Messiahs” who seek to remove the wedge (chorons) between kairos and 
krisis, feverishly continuing themselves into their predicate (Judgment Day) in 
order to ultimately fuse Kairos and Krisis into a single dimension of time, that 
of the end of time.
13
Viewing the entire narrative of the division in time from a Chronos-oriented 
standpoint, we might posit that this division, which, when seen from a Kai-
ros-oriented perspective, was understood as an interval between Kairos and Kri-
sis, has now transformed into a schism within Chronos time itself. While from 
the standpoint of Kairos, Chronos is perceived as a “wedge” between Kairos and 
Krisis, from the vantage point of Chronos, it is Kairos that becomes internalized 
within Chronos, cleaving it from within and thereby unveiling a distinct dimen-
sion of infinity within the finitude of Chronos time. In brief, the chasm between 
Kairos and Chronos should be thought of as a division that has been inherent in 
each of them from the very outset, even though it took a millennium and mul-
tiple centuries—from early Christianity to the modern era—for this in itself divi-
sion to become in and for itself.
To return to the question of the apocalyptic in Islam, we maintain that the dis-
tinction between the apocalyptic doctrines of Christianity and Islam can be 
comprehended by examining their differing approaches to the structural divi-
sion within time, brought about by the interposing of Chronos between Kairos 
and Krisis. In contrast to Christianity, where this division is addressed dialecti-
cally, Islam disavows such a division when faced with it.
In the fourth session of Seminar IV, held on 12 December 1956, Lacan under-
scored a pivotal notion that not only serves as the linchpin for comprehending 
the mother-child dynamic but also proves advantageous for his later work in 
Seminar X concerning the unknowability of the mother’s desire as the anxie-
13 
Paul’s preoccupation with the gap between Kairos and Krisis is also evident in his second 
letter to the Thessalonians, where he introduces the concept katechon from a theodical 
standpoint as a means of addressing and representing this gap.

84
arsalan reihanzadeh
ty-provoking Thing for the child. Additionally, this notion serves as an apt entry 
point for delving into the question of perverse disavowal:
Freud tells us that among a woman’s essential missing objects is the phallus, and 
that this bears the closest relation to her relationship with her child. This is for 
the simple reason that if woman finds satisfaction in her child, it’s precisely in-
somuch as she finds in him something, the penis, that more or less succeeds in 
calming her need for the phallus, that saturates this need. Should we fail to take 
this into account we misconstrue not only Freud’s teaching but also something 
that is manifest in experience from one instant to the next.
14
As we can see, there is a lack in the mother (the first Other), to which she thinks 
her child can respond “more or less successfully.” However,
the first Other of a pervert has such a strong and seemingly exclusive interest 
in the child that the pervert never comes to understand that he only “more or 
less” resembles the lack in the Other. In other words, the pervert never interprets 
the symbolic phallus (as the signifier of the lack in the Other) as the signifier of 
the Other’s metonymic, ever sliding desire—which he could never hope to satis-
fy. Instead, so perfectly does he seem to resemble what the Other wants that he 
believes the Other lacks something which is present in the world (namely, him) 
rather than something which is absent.
15
Hence, when confronted with his mOther, who requires him to have (or be) 
the phallus, the pervert disavows the lack in the mOther and reduces “the [m]
Other’s desire to demand [by] seeing himself as the answer to the question of 
what the [m]Other wants.”
16
 Put differently, the pervert resorts to disavowal as 
a self-defense mechanism in the face of the lack in the Other. In contrast to the 
neurosis, where the subject, by accepting the No of the Father, yields to the sep-
aration from the source of jouissance, the mOther, and seeks replacements for 
lost enjoyment within the socio-symbolic order by embracing the Name of the 
14 
Jacques Lacan, The Object Relation, trans. Adrian Price (Cambridge: Polity, 2021), 62.
15 
Stephanie S. Swales, Perversion: A Lacanian Psychoanalytic Approach to the Subject (New 
York: Routledge, 2012), 64.
16 
Stephanie S. Swales, “Neoliberalism and Liminality: Perverse Cruelties in the Age of the 
Capitalist Discourse,” in Lacan’s Cruelty: Perversion beyond Philosophy, Culture and Clinic, 
ed. Meera Lee (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), 194.

85
of times, religions, and revolutions: one unites into two
Father, the pervert subject acknowledges the No of the Father as a signifier that 
alienates him. Yet, he is reluctant to accept the Name of the Father, or more pre-
cisely, the Law of the Father.
17
 This is why he disavows the lack in the Other, the 
structural schism within the socio-symbolic reality.
However, the distinct manner in which Islam addresses the lack in the Other as 
the One requires our cautious avoidance of hastily generalizing psychoanalytic 
concepts, which have their origins in both clinical and institutional practices. 
The disavowal of the lack in the One in Islam should thus be approached within 
its singularity, which, similar to the singular cases in clinical and institutional 
settings, can contribute to the ongoing constructing of the concept of perversion. 
Thus, one could say that there is a distinction between the concept of perversion 
and singular cases of perversion, and instead of a one-way path from the concept 
of perversion to Islam, an alternative route must be taken: from (the concept of) 
perversion to Islam and back. While it is imperative not to generalize the con-
cept of perversion, this does not preclude us from exploring other implications of 
such a concept that extend beyond the scope of psychoanalysis, potentially lead-
ing to a productive crossroads between psychoanalysis and philosophy.
We find it useful to consider perversion as an ontological elucidation of the way 
in which our socio-symbolic reality is constituted
18
 and to read the lack in the 
17 
However, as Jacques-Alain Miller pointed out in his conceptualization of the term perver-
sion, the pervert is the subject who seeks “to make the Other exist to be the instrument of 
its enjoyment.” Lacan, who was interested in homonymy and homophony, illustrates this 
relationship between perversion and the Other by introducing a modification of the word 
perversion. He refers to it as “père-version, a word which is untranslatable, made up of 
père, father, and version. It implies a turning to the father, a call to the father.” Jacques-
Alain Miller, “On Perversion,” in Reading Seminars I and II: Lacan’s Return to Freud, ed. 
Richard Feldstein, Bruce Fink, and Maire Jaanus (New York: State University of New York 
Press, 1996), 308, 318. In the words of Bruce Fink, “perversion involves the attempt to prop 
up the law so that limits can be set to jouissance (what Lacan calls ‘the will to jouissance’). 
Whereas we see an utter and complete absence of the law in psychosis, and a definitive 
instatement of the law in neurosis (overcome only in fantasy), in perversion the subject 
struggles to bring the law into being—in a word, to make the Other exist.” See Bruce Fink, 
“Perversion,” in Perversion and the Social Relation, ed. Molly Anne Rothenberg, Dennis A. 
Foster, and Slavoj Žižek (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), 38.
18 
For a comprehensive examination of the interplay between ontology and perversion, con-
textualized in the works of Lacan, Deleuze, and Agamben, see Boštjan Nedoh, Ontology 
and Perversion: Deleuze, Agamben, Lacan (London: Rowman and Littlefield, 2019).

86
arsalan reihanzadeh
Other as reflective of the incompleteness of the One, which is divided into the 
One and the not-One.
19
 From this perspective, we contend that what Muḥammad 
disavowed was, indeed, the very incompleteness of the One. Faced with this in-
completeness, the Prophet of Islam did not emphasize the originary, inherent 
division in time; instead, he highlighted the contrasting extremities of Chronos 
and Kairos, stemming from this division. In essence, Islam projects the inher-
ent contradiction in time onto the opposition between the two poles of Chronos 
and Kairos, and thus making of this opposition a fetish that veils the inherent 
contradiction—we will see later how in Iran under the Islamic Republic, oppo-
sition and its ramifications, such as parallelism, evolved into the primary form 
of fetishism.
In summary, differing from Paul’s preaching that underscores “a relation to re-
lationality” between Chronos and Kairos, Muḥammad emphasizes the two end-
points of this relation. This emphasis is most apparent in the fact that while the 
Qur’an vividly portrays apocalyptic imagery, Islam does not overlook the oppor-
tunity to comment on and engage with the minutiae of everyday life within ordi-
nary time, Chronos. In contrast to the Christian God, who descends to undergo 
division upon the cross, the God of Islam, molded after the neo-Platonic con-
cept of the One, ascends above Being to reach the pinnacle of transcendence. 
This ascent serves to render the God of Islam, in a certain sense, more resilient 
against the division that structurally affects the constructing of our socio-sym-
bolic reality. However, when we turn to the appellations attributed to this su-
premely transcendent God, we discern the presence of opposing poles. As an il-
lustration, the God of Islam is concurrently referred to as Al-Zahir (The Manifest) 
and Al-Batin (The Hidden); or He is concurrently recognized as Al-Rahim (The 
Most Merciful) and Al-Muntaqim (The Avenger). To provide further explanation, 
the Oneness of God is maintained in such a way that while philosophical and 
19 
One might rightly object that the endeavor to establish a connection between Islam and 
perversion contradicts Octave Mannoni’s take on “religious faith,” according to which 
the problems linked to religious faith are distinct from mere belief and should be distin-
guished from the realm of fetishistic disavowal. However, we will strive to demonstrate 
how Islam’s approach to the inquiry into the lack in the Other effectively clarifies the reso-
nance between the onto-theological account of Islam and the ontological account of per-
version. See Octave Mannoni, “I Know Well, but All the Same . . .,” in Perversion and the 
Social Relation, 72.

87
of times, religions, and revolutions: one unites into two
theosophical traditions envisage a neo-Platonic God
20
 transcending the realm of 
Being, this same God is also characterized by dualistic attributes, represented 
by these opposing poles.
We have now arrived at a point where, drawing on Žižek’s reinterpretation of 
Mao’s contradiction thesis,
21
 we can encapsulate the preceding discussions in a 
dictum of fetishistic disavowal, akin to Mannoni’s approach, as follows: “I know 
very well that two divides into One, but all the same One unites into two.” Taking 
this dictum as an onto-theological declaration on Islam, we will endeavor in the 
subsequent discussion to explore the political implications of such a declara-
tion within the context of Iran under the Islamic Republic.
Before embarking on this analysis, however, we would like to briefly allude to 
the intricate tiling of the Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque, a masterpiece of Islamic 
architecture, which serves as a remarkable embodiment of the concept “One 
unites into two.” When observing the ceiling of the mosque dome from any per-
spective, a division becomes evident at a specific juncture. Emerging from this 
division point, two symmetrical arabesque lines gradually extend, each branch-
ing out in opposing directions. These initial lines generate new lines, which in 
turn give rise to additional lines, resulting in an elaborate network that cov-
20 
We can mention the name of Plotinus, who is the main source of influence of Neoplatonism 
on Islamic philosophy and theology. It is very interesting that Plotinus not only plays a 
key role in the formation of Islamic philosophy by providing the latter with the idea of 
the One, but also, as Andrew Cole explores in detail in his account of Hegel’s debt to the 
Middle Ages, he is one of the main sources of the Hegelian dialectic, which is strongly in-
fluenced by the dialectic of identity and difference conceptualized by medieval thinkers 
such as Plotinus. One could say that these two different influences of Plotinus led to the 
emergence of two major different kinds of philosophy in Christian and Islamic contexts. 
See Andrew Cole, The Birth of Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014).
21 
“Mao opposed the revolutionary motto ‘One divides into two’ to the conservative motto 
‘Two unites into one’; perhaps, however, one should propose a different revolutionary 
motto: ‘Two divides into one,’ and oppose it to the conservative ‘One unites into two.’ From 
the strict dialectical standpoint, ‘One’ is not the name for unity but for a reflexive self-divi-
sion, so ‘two divided into one’ means that the external opposition of two complementary 
poles whose harmony is the unity of the One is transposed into the immanent contradic-
tion of the One. The conservative move is, on the contrary, to resolve the self-division of the 
One by way of positing the two poles as the opposed poles of some higher unity: harmony 
(or ‘eternal struggle’) between the two sexes replaces the immanent rupture of sexuality, 
harmony of classes which form a social Whole replaces class struggle, etc.” Slavoj Žižek, 
Sex and the Failed Absolute (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020), 220.

88
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ers the entirety of the ceiling surface. The intricate arrangement of arabesques 
shares a likeness with a biological phenomenon called dendrite tiling, a process 
by which “multiple arbors of neurons innervating the same surface are often ar-
ranged in a tiled pattern that maximizes coverage of that surface while minimiz-
ing overlap between neighboring arbors.”
22
 This neural network mechanism is 
facilitated by “repulsion [or self-avoidance] between sister dendrites of a single 
neuron, ensuring that they splay apart to cover a large area.”
23
Žižek adopts the Möbius strip as the elementary topological structure embody-
ing the concept “Two divides into one,” where “a twisted or convoluted space in 
which a line, brought to its extreme, punctually coincides (or, rather, intersects) 
with its opposite.”
24
 The Möbius strip’s topology is further elaborated upon in 
the more intricate cross-cap form, which is subsequently redoubled in complex-
ity, reaching its zenith in the Klein bottle.
25
 The entire dynamic of this topolo-
gy is determined by the coincidence of a line with its opposite at the juncture 
of an inner cut that convolutes and twists the surface. In contrast, the tiling of 
the Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque does not manifest a convoluted surface; rather, it 
presents a configuration where the inner cut is disavowed, projecting itself onto 
the speculative liminality between the lines. The arabesques are intricately ar-
ranged so that no line, branch, or dendrite coincides with its opposite; instead, 
this arrangement maximizes surface coverage, minimizes overlap, and avoids co-
incidence. As we observe, this architectural masterpiece is also rooted in the 
mechanism of disavowal of the division, the cut, the schism, and the lack in the 
Other. This prompts us to briefly acknowledge that the scarcity of comedy works 
in classical Persian literature, when compared to the abundance of tragic and 
epic works, could potentially be interpreted as stemming from a tendency to 
disavow what makes us and things irreparably imbalanced. Drawing from Alen-
ka Zupančič’s insights in her classic work on comedy, we can posit that a good 
22 
Wesley B. Grueber and Alvaro Sagasti, “Self-avoidance and Tiling: Mechanisms of Dendrite 
and Axon Spacing,” Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology 2, no. 9 (September 2010): 
6, a001750, http://doi.org/10.1101/cshperspect.a001750.
23 
Zhiqi Candice Yip and Maxwell G. Heiman, “Duplication of a Single Neuron in C. elegans 
Reveals a Pathway for Dendrite Tiling by Mutual Repulsion,” Cell Reports 15, no. 10 (June 
2016): 2109, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2016.05.003.
24 
Žižek, Sex and the Failed Absolute, 226.
25 
According to Žižek, these three topological configurations correspond to the three doc-
trines of Being, Essence, and Concept in Hegel’s The Science of Logic. See Žižek, 222.

89
of times, religions, and revolutions: one unites into two
comedy stages a “short-circuit between heterogeneous orders.”
26
 This principle 
can lead to the emergence of a range of elements on stage, including collisions, 
stumbling, coincidences, overlaps, imbalances, repetition, minimal differences, 
asymmetry, and more. Comedy provides the stage on which the actor contin-
ually experiences her “self-othering” (Sichanderswerden), to use Hegel’s term, 
and where “the universal concretizes.” Notably, in the tiling of the Sheikh Lot-
follah Mosque, there is no room for coincidence, short-circuits, or imbalance. 
Everything is meticulously arranged to showcase the utmost balance, symme-
try, and homogeneity.
The tiling of the Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque provides an illustrative example of 
the concept “One unites into two.” Here, “one” unsplit, symmetrical, homoge-
nous arabesque unites into its “two” lines. Bringing our attention back to Paul, 
we could argue that unlike the trajectory of the lines (arbors) within the ara-
besques, his preaching does not present us with the juxtaposition of two op-
posing poles into which One unites. Instead, within his preaching, we witness 
a statement that internally coincides with its own opposite, mirroring the topo-
logical structure of the Möbius strip, which illustrates the concept “Two divides 
into one.” It could be argued that the “as though” in Paul’s statement operates 
in a manner akin to the inner cut of the Möbius strip. In this context, one side of 
the statement (“those who have spouses”) coincides with its own opposite side, 
(“should live as though they had none”), which is not a projected opposing pole.
Shifting our focus to the sociopolitical context of Iran, we can now try to read 
the occurrence of 11 February 1979 as a rupture within ordinary time, Chronos, 
when the revolution erupted into history. In this “interim period,” positioned 
between the Islamic Kairos and Al-Sa’a (the Hour, Judgment Day), between al-
ready and not yet, time is once again torn asunder. The fact that revolutions are 
often commemorated by the time or the place in which they occurred (such as 
the French Revolution, the Haitian Revolution, the revolutions of 1848, the Octo-
ber Revolution) points to two significant aspects.
The first point to consider is that a revolution involves the redistribution of “the 
transcendental conditions for the possibility” of a new sociopolitical order. The 
materialism of the revolution denotes a radical rupture within the established 
26 
Alenka Zupančič, The Odd One In: On Comedy (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2008), 8.

90
arsalan reihanzadeh
regime of “the distribution of the sensible” (la partage du sensible), as Jacques 
Rancière phrases it. This rupture provides the conditions of possibility for re-
constructing the socio-political order on the foundation of a new signifier. Con-
sequently, this observation highlights the structural difference between the tran-
scendental conditions that make it possible to reconstruct the sociopolitical or-
der when a revolution occurs and the actual manifestation of such an order. The 
1979 Revolution, as a radical disruption of the prevailing status quo, laid down 
the transcendental conditions for the possibility of reconstructing the sociopo-
litical order. This was achieved by unleashing the in itself negativity that had 
been manipulated and exploited by the Pahlavi’s monarchy and its regime of 
signifiers, representing a fusion of an archaic tendency rooted in pre-Islamic 
Persian heritage and a state-initiated modernization program from above.
The second aspect highlights that revolution foregrounds the inherent untimeli-
ness of time itself. This fundamentally challenges the foundational tenets of the 
Kantian notion that time and space serve as the transcendental conditions for 
the possibility of synthesis. Revolution unleashes the untimeliness of time, ac-
centuating inherent out-of-jointness and prompting us to realize that time, as 
the transcendental condition for synthesis, is itself incurably contaminated by a 
structural delay—an untimeliness. There is a non-existent time that begets time 
itself and is incorporated into time from its very inception. Here, we can cite three 
“slogan-like adages” proposed by Mladen Dolar in his compelling exploration 
of the untimeliness of time: “1. ‘There were times when there was time.’ 2. ‘Time 
is the afterlife of time.’ 3. ‘We are human, so we come too late; we are never on 
time.’ ”
27
 There is no such thing as being on time; we are always either too early 
or too late. This structural nonsynchronicity or untimeliness inherent in time is 
the reason why thought is always belated or premature to the events, resulting 
in a persistent aspect that eludes synthesis. In this context, Rebecca Comay, in 
her remarkably innovative interpretation of Hegel’s account of the French Rev-
olution, asserts that
because the present is never caught up to itself, we encounter history virtually, vi-
cariously, voyeuristically—forever latecomers and precursors to our experiences, 
27 
Mladen Dolar, “What’s the Time? On Being Too Early or Too Late in Hegel’s Philosophy,” 
in “Hegel 250—Too Late?,” ed. Mladen Dolar, special issue, Problemi International 4 
(2020): 33.

91
of times, religions, and revolutions: one unites into two
outsiders to our most intimate affairs. [. . .] Historical experience is nothing but 
this grinding nonsynchronicity, together with a fruitless effort to evade, efface, 
and rectify it: we measure ourselves against standards to which we cannot adhere 
and that do not themselves cohere, and subject ourselves to timetables to which 
we cannot adjust and that we keep trying vainly to adjust. The experience of “rev-
olution in one country” makes this syncopation painfully explicit.
28
Revolution serves as the quintessential event to illustrate this nonsynchronici-
ty, precisely revealing why there is no distinct right time for a revolution. This is 
because a revolution encapsulates a moment when the inherent structural un-
rightness of time itself is brought to the fore:
If the French Revolution is the epochal marker of modernity—a “world” event 
in that it sets the schedule and tempo against which past and future history is 
henceforth measured—this is not because it provides a fixed or objective (strictly 
speaking, ahistorical) standard of comparison, but rather because it introduces 
untimeliness itself as an ineluctable condition of historical experience. [. . .] There 
is no right time or “ripe time” for revolution (or there would be no need of one). 
The Revolution always arrives too soon (conditions are never ready) and too late 
(it lags forever behind its own initiative).
29
The 1979 Revolution was untimely because it brought to the fore the very struc-
tural untimeliness of Iranian society in its modern era. On a collective scale, 
Iranians gained awareness of this untimeliness through the series of disastrous 
defeats in the early nineteenth-century Russo-Persian wars, which culminated 
in the loss of substantial portions of the northern territory of the country. Con-
tinuing along this line of reasoning, another significant facet of the 1979 Revo-
lution can be highlighted.
In our discussion of the first aspect, we proposed that the revolution made it 
possible to reconstruct the sociopolitical order by redistributing the transcen-
dental conditions of experience within this order. At this juncture, we are still 
grounded in the Kantian perspective of transcendental conditions of synthesis. 
28 
Rebecca Comay, Mourning Sickness: Hegel and the French Revolution (Stanford: Stanford 
University Press, 2011), 4–5.
29 
Comay, 7.

92
arsalan reihanzadeh
Nevertheless, as previously noted, another distinctive feature of the revolution 
comes into play. Embedded within time itself is an inexorable, irreducible un-
timeliness, which constitutes the residue of a time we have never experienced 
but is retroactively postulated. In other words, our engagement with it remains 
exclusively negative—perceiving it as a non-existent time that irrevocably cor-
rupts time with a structural delay, thus unsettling both time and anything con-
ditioned by it. In contrast to “the lingering eighteenth-century German helleno-
philic aesthetic fantasies,” which posited the existence of a flawless, untainted, 
and harmonious time experienced during the Hellenic era, the truth remains 
that there has never been a perfect and uncorrupted time. As Comay persuasive-
ly highlights,
the [French] Revolution brings modernity to its turning point by reactivating the 
unfinished project of antiquity. It inherits the theological-political crisis of legit-
imacy that had ruined the illusory tranquility of the Greek polis. Hegel’s analy-
sis of Sittlichkeit had shattered every nostalgia for an original transparency and 
plenitude. The beautiful polis turns out to have been a fragile edifice constructed 
on the hidden fault line between two irreconcilable orders. Beauty sustained the 
fiction of equilibrium by masking the dissonance between competing grounds of 
legitimacy—divine and human, sacred and secular, Antigone’s law and Creon’s. 
Beauty was in this sense the first aesthetic ideology: it supplied the suture or hy-
phen of the theological-political.
30
The French Revolution marks a pivotal moment wherein the inherent untime-
liness of time, which was always already in itself, came to the fore and became 
in and for itself. From the inception of the so-called perfect, harmonious, and 
uncorrupted time of the Greek polis, time itself bore an inherent untimeliness, 
and it did not take much patience for this disturbing untimeliness to unfold dra-
matically, revealing above all that the foundation of the polis was rooted in an 
inexorable antagonism. In her extremely insightful book on Antigone, Zupančič 
highlights a crucial point regarding this antagonism:
The figure of Antigone seems to be emblematic of a particular kind of social an-
tagonism that touches on the question of the very constitution, and being, of the 
social [. . .]. But antagonism should in this case be understood not as hostility and 
30 
Comay, 58.

93
of times, religions, and revolutions: one unites into two
conflict between two (or several) elements but rather in the sense in which Marx 
talked about “class antagonism”: not simply as conflict between different classes 
and their interests but as something that pertains to the very logic of the space, or 
reality, in which these classes exist—in this case, the reality of the capitalist mode 
of production. In other words, talking about antagonism in the case of Antigone 
is meant to direct our attention not to her conflict with and opposition to Creon 
but rather to something that surfaces in and through this conflict, something that 
brings to the fore a singular torsion, or crack, which defines the very ground they 
stand on in their conflict.
31
The torsion that “surfaces in and through the conflict between Antigone and Cre-
on” constitutes the fissure into which the Greek Sittlichkeit crumbled. At this 
point, the era had arrived for the aesthetic ideology of Beauty to give way to 
the Roman ideology of Law; yet, as is often the case, it was too late. The dam-
age done was irreversible, and the Roman legalism represented an ineffectual 
endeavor to glue together the shattered pieces of the “harmonious,” “divine” 
world, employing “the abstract force of a law stripped of all legitimacy [the ex-
ecution of which, required] the military prowess of a ruler whose own authority 
had been reduced to an ostentatious display of destructive, orgiastic excess.”
32
Rather than invoking “the abstract force of a law,” the French Revolution shed 
a dazzling light on the underlying structural out-of-jointness of the order, its ir-
reparable delay, thereby unleashing the originary negativity previously buried 
under a pile of obsolete odds and ends. Prior to extolling the French Revolution 
for its triple signifier (liberté, égalité, fraternité), or condemning it for the Jac-
obin or Thermidorian terror, the pivotal aspect of the French Revolution that 
demands our serious consideration is the realization that, for the first time, the 
in itself negativity became the in and for itself negativity through a collective 
emancipatory act.
As mentioned earlier, the 1979 Revolution, which brought the originary nega-
tivity to the fore, not only provided the transcendental conditions for the pos-
sibility of reconstructing the sociopolitical order, but also affirmed that these 
31 
Alenka Zupančič, Let Them Rot: Antigone’s Parallax (New York: Fordham University Press, 
2023), 2–3.
32 
Comay, Mourning Sickness, 59.

94
arsalan reihanzadeh
very transcendental conditions are conditioned by the inherent untimeliness 
that structurally imbalances time. Faced with this untimeliness, the Islamic Re-
public followed a trajectory analogous to our earlier explanation of how Islam 
confronted the division in time. The mechanism of disavowing the inherent di-
vision in which the socio-symbolic reality is grounded was brutally suppressive 
from the outset. If we regard the 1979 Revolution as emblematic of the concept 
“Two divides into one,” then the Islamic Republic can be seen as emblematic of 
the concept “One unites into two.” The oxymoronic combination of its opposing 
poles—namely, “Islamic” and “Republic”—serves as a significant manifestation 
of this second concept where two opposing poles are brought together to disa-
vow the inner cut, the division that made its emergence as a government pos-
sible. Hence, since its inception, the Islamic Republic has never stopped disa-
vowing the 1979 Revolution as the pivotal moment that brought the irreversible 
division in time back to the fore.
On 1 March 1979, less than a month after the revolution’s victory, Ayatollah 
Khomeini, the architect of the Islamic Republic, addressed the clerics who were 
gathered to celebrate his return to the city following a fifteen-year exile period 
at the Feyziyeh religious school in Qom: “What our nation aspires to is an “Is-
lamic republic”—not just a simple republic, not a democratic republic, nor even 
an Islamic democratic republic, but a pure Islamic republic.”
33
 As emblematic of 
the concept “One unites into two,” the Islamic Republic, as its name suggests, in 
principle, rests on two pillars. On one hand, it is rooted in the religious doctrine 
of Imāmiyya Shī‘a, intended to grant it divine legitimacy. On the other hand, by 
upholding the sovereignty of Iranian citizens in sociopolitical decision-making, 
as emphasized by the term “Republic” in its title, the post-revolutionary gov-
ernment establishes its second source of legitimacy. In the subsequent discus-
sion, our aim is to illustrate that after the establishment of the Islamic Repub-
lic, a new government intended to reshape the sociopolitical framework follow-
ing the revolution, the structural out-of-jointness of the socio-symbolic reality 
self-externalizes in a form of dualism: Islamic/Republic. This very government 
33 
Interestingly, Khomeini’s initial proposition was not the term “Islamic Republic,” but 
rather “Islamic Government.” This very phrase was the title of his treatise, published a 
year prior to the revolution’s victory—a manifesto in which he delineated his ideal govern-
mental model. It was only at a later point, under the sway of his inner circle, that he relin-
quished his original proposal and embraced the suggestion of an “Islamic Republic,” put 
forth by a member of this close-knit group.

95
of times, religions, and revolutions: one unites into two
draws its foundation from a theory known as wilāyat al-faqīh, translating to the 
“guardianship of the Islamic jurist.” Wilāyat al-faqīh “advocates a kind of po-
litical system relying upon a just and capable jurist (faqīh) to assume the lead-
ership of the government in the absence of an infallible imām.”
34
 It “is based 
on the four epistemological and anthropological assumptions of guardianship, 
Divine appointment, jurisdiction, and absolutism. This theory defends the un-
conditional right of just jurists, as the general vicegerents of the Hidden imām, 
to wield political power over the community of believers.”
35
 The role ascribed to 
the Supreme faqīh (Guide, Jurist) is analogous to the role assigned by the Imāmi-
yya Shī‘a doctrine to the twelve Shī‘a imāms. According to this doctrine, the holy 
realm of the Shī‘a imāms is determined in the intermediary space between earth 
and the heavens—known as Malakut. This unique position enables the Shī‘a im-
āms to derive the names and attributes of God from the heavens and then reflect 
them onto the earth like a mirror. In a similar vein, acting as the general vicege-
rent of the Hidden imām, the Supreme faqīh (Guide, Jurist), much like the Shī‘a 
imāms, is envisioned as a mediator between the heaven and the earth, the theo-
logical and the political, and the spiritual and the temporal. The Supreme faqīh 
(Guide, Jurist) is intended to serve as the pivotal link bridging the two facets of 
“Islamic” (signifying the divine and heavenly dimension, Nasut) and “Repub-
lic” (representing the human and earthly dimension, Lahut). The intermediary 
position of the Supreme faqīh (Guide, Jurist) is, indeed, the very place that cor-
responds to the “One” in the concept “One unites into two.” It is the place where 
the One that unites into two is signifierized within the sociopolitical order. How-
ever, the duality encapsulated by “Islamic/Republic” extends beyond the mere 
nomenclature of the government. Over the course of the last forty-four years, it 
has consistently replicated itself, resulting in the pervasive contamination of the 
entire sociopolitical structure.
Let us pause here and closely examine the fundamental components of the Is-
lamic Republic, along with their specific interactions within a distinctive hybrid 
structure. At the pinnacle of such a pyramid-shaped government resides the role 
of the Supreme Leader (the Supreme faqīh, Guide, Jurist), whose authority and 
34 
Leila Chamankhah, The Conceptualization of Guardianship in Iranian Intellectual History 
(1800–1989): Reading Ibn ‘ Arabī’s Theory of Wilāya in the Shī‘a World (Cham, Switzerland: 
Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 258.
35 
Chamankhah, 172.

96
arsalan reihanzadeh
guardianship over the community of believers are absolute, as established by 
a constitutional amendment in 1988.
36
 However, the Constitution does not ex-
pound upon all the intricacies concerning the complete scope of the Supreme 
Leader’s powers. In addition to the powers enumerated in Article 110 of the Con-
stitution, the Supreme Leader assumes a pivotal role in the procedures for elect-
ing the president, the members of the Majlis (the Islamic Consultative Assem-
bly), and the Assembly of the Experts—positions that are filled through gener-
al elections. It can be asserted that the Supreme Leader indirectly designates 
the elected president and the members of the Majlis and the Assembly. This is 
achieved through his appointment of the twelve members of the Guardian Coun-
cil of the Constitution. He directly appoints six jurisprudents while indirectly 
selecting the remaining six legal scholars. The latter are presented to the Majlis 
by the head of the judiciary (himself directly appointed by the Supreme Leader), 
and subsequently elected in a vote by the members of the Majlis. The Guardian 
Council bears the responsibility not only of interpreting the Constitution and 
ensuring the alignment of legislation passed by the Majlis with the criteria of 
Imāmiyya Shī‘a jurisprudence (fiqh) and the Constitution, but also of oversee-
ing the election process and the qualifications of candidates vying for positions 
in the Assembly of Experts, the presidency, and the Majlis. In accordance with 
the Constitution, all candidates participating in Majlis or presidential elections, 
as well as those contending for seats in the Assembly of Experts, must undergo 
qualification by the Guardian Council. The Council interprets the term “super-
vision” in Article 99 of the Constitution as “approbative supervision” (nezarat-e 
estesvabi), which entails the authority to approve or invalidate the eligibility of 
candidates and the outcomes of elections. As a result, individuals elected by the 
public to hold positions such as the president, members of the Majlis, and the 
Assembly, have already been scrutinized and qualified under the approbative 
supervision of the Guardian Council, whose members are directly and indirect-
36 
To show what is meant by the absoluteness of the authority and guardianship of the 
Supreme Leader, we can refer here to Khomeini’s initiative to add the clause “muṭlaqa” 
(“absolute”) to the theory of wilāyat al-faqīh, transforming it into wilāyat-i muṭlaqa-yi 
faqīh (“the absolute authority and guardianship of the jurist”). A few months before his 
death, Khomeini publicly declared that “obedience to the ruling jurist [is] as [obligatory 
for] the believer as the performance of prayer, and his powers extend even to the tempo-
rary suspension of such essential rites of Islam as the hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca).” Hamid 
Algar, “Velayat-E Faqih: Theory of governance in Shi‘ite Islam,” in Encyclopedia of the 
Modern Middle East and North Africa, updated August 23, 2023, https://www.encyclope-
dia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/velayat-e-faqih.

97
of times, religions, and revolutions: one unites into two
ly appointed by the Supreme Leader. Following election, the president must re-
ceive formal approval from the Supreme Leader before proceeding to the Majlis 
for the inauguration. The narrative persists. Despite being the head of the ex-
ecutive office, the president lacks complete control over it. For instance, unlike 
presidential systems wherein the head of government appoints military com-
manders, the Iranian president holds no such authority. Nonetheless, the Irani-
an president differs from his counterpart in a parliamentary system, where the 
president’s role is predominantly non-executive and ceremonial in nature.
Functioning as the head of the executive branch, the Iranian president as-
sumes the responsibility of appointing ministers, the governor of the Central 
Bank (based on the recommendation of the Minister of Economic Affairs and 
Finance), governors-general (following the Minister of the Interior’s recommen-
dation), the vice president, and Iranian ambassadors to foreign nations. Fur-
thermore, the president issues executive orders and, as the head of the Supreme 
National Security Council, is vested with the constitutional power to declare a 
“state of emergency,” entailing the suspension of all laws or the imposition of 
martial law. This unequivocally underscores that the president is fundamental-
ly more than a ceremonial figure and possesses considerable executive powers. 
Nevertheless, even these powers are markedly influenced by the pervasive au-
thority of the Supreme Leader. Notably, an unspoken guideline within the Ira-
nian power structure designates the Supreme Leader as the one responsible for 
selecting ministers overseeing defense, intelligence, foreign affairs, science, 
and culture. Additionally, over the past two decades, Iran’s ambassadors to cer-
tain neighboring countries, including Iraq and Syria, have been designated by 
the Quds Force, an extraterritorial division of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards 
(IRGC) that directly reports to the Supreme Leader. Most significantly, the Con-
stitution explicitly entrusts the Supreme Leader with the determination of the 
“overall politics of the Islamic Republic system of Iran.” This encompasses es-
tablishing the strategic framework for both domestic and foreign policy, along 
with economic and cultural orientations. This effectively means that the execu-
tive authority is already defined by these frameworks, leaving the president and 
his cabinet to align their actions with these orientations and policies.
Considering these insights into the power dynamics within the Islamic Repub-
lic, examining the fluctuations in the relationship between the Supreme Lead-
ers and various presidents over the past forty years reveals a level of complex-

98
arsalan reihanzadeh
ity that resists facile characterization. Attempts to simplify this relationship by 
merely asserting that the Iranian president acts as a “buffer zone” between the 
Supreme Leader and the citizens, or by dismissing the presidential elections 
as insignificant and merely “a matter of window dressing,” are insufficient. In-
deed, there is a certain level of truth in these simplifications, and as attested by 
the majority of Iranians, the president’s practical impact remains constrained 
despite the ostensibly comprehensive scope of powers associated with the po-
sition. Nevertheless, despite the disparity between his executive authority and 
the presumed stature of his role as the head of the cabinet, alongside his com-
mitment to following the directives of the Supreme Leader, the events of the past 
four decades suggest a tension that has significantly and adversely impacted 
their relationship. The fact that his presidency is owed to the intervention of the 
Supreme Leader in “engineering” the elections did not preclude the emergence 
of the conflict that has been inherent in their relationship since the early days of 
the Islamic Republic. This conflict does not arise from personal or psychologi-
cal discrepancies between the two most senior officials in the Islamic Republic’s 
system. Instead, it is a structural conflict rooted in the very roles they occupy 
within the system. From this perspective, one could assert that the distinctive-
ness of the Islamic Republic lies in its composition of two positions, each en-
dowed with executive power. To elaborate, the executive authority is bifurcated 
between the president and the Supreme Leader, resulting in the coexistence of 
two legitimate governance structures: one, more potent and led by the Supreme 
Leader, and the other, comparatively weaker and led by the president. The Su-
preme Leader effectively operates a parallel government alongside the admin-
istration headed by the president. Consequently, every president has confront-
ed the existence of another legitimate government whose pervasive influence 
shapes his own government’s strategies and policies. This is the underlying rea-
son for the persistent tension observed in the relationship between the Supreme 
Leader and the presidents—a tension arising from the simultaneous presence of 
these two governance entities. The president, who gains his mandate through 
popular election, consistently finds himself in a situation where the greater con-
centration of executive power within the hands of the Supreme Leader and his 
affiliated institutions impedes his ability to fulfill the promises made during his 
electoral campaign. As a result, a structural conflict prevails between the func-
tions of the presidency and those of the Supreme Leader, regardless of the ex-
tent of political alignment between the occupants of these positions.

99
of times, religions, and revolutions: one unites into two
Indeed, this tension vividly underscores that beyond the duality ingrained in 
the name of the Islamic Republic, dualism permeates its entire system. How-
ever, in contrast to those who label the government led by the Supreme Leader 
as the “deep state,” it is crucial to recognize that this hybrid structure does not 
indicate the existence of a clandestine government within the system, running 
alongside the official government represented by the president. This hypotheti-
cal notion of hidden power networks, operating independently from the official 
government and driven by distinct interests and agendas, does not accurately 
reflect the reality. What is referred to as the deep state constitutes a legitimate 
and official segment of the Islamic Republic’s state apparatus. It does not rep-
resent a hidden government within the official government but rather serves as 
a legitimate and central component of the entire system of the Islamic Repub-
lic. All the institutions within this sector, known as nahadha-ye movazi (paral-
lel institutions), hold a specific position within the Constitution. It is evident in 
the annual budget bill presented by the president to the Majlis, where budget 
allocations are clearly designated for each of these institutions. However, un-
like the arabesques of the Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque, where the lines minimize, 
overlap, and avoid each other, the dual structure of the Islamic Republic entails 
the presence of at least two institutions for each function, leading to constant 
interference in each other’s operations. As an example, alongside the Iranian 
Army, which serves as the official armed forces organization, there exists anoth-
er military entity, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), encompassing 
ground, air, and naval forces similar to the Iranian Army. Rather than a deep 
state or a government within a government, there exists a dual structure where 
this duality stands not merely as a characteristic, but as an integral essence of 
the Islamic Republic itself. This is a structure that does not stop at the division 
into two segments: the parallel institutions under the guidance of the Supreme 
Leader and the institutions overseen by the president. It goes so far as to subdi-
vide the institutions of each segment into new institutions. As a consequence, 
through these continual divisions and subdivisions, the Islamic Republic navi-
gates the sole path to preserve its distinct “identity,” its “Oneness.”
As noted earlier, with the 1979 Revolution, the very dissonance that makes us 
“constantly racing ahead of” and “forever lagging behind” was unleashed from 
being merely the in itself negativity manipulated and exploited by the Pahlavi 
regime of signifiers. The structural dissonance that surfaced introduced a new 
dimension within time, dividing it again into Chronos time and Kairos time. It 

100
arsalan reihanzadeh
led to the overthrow of the Pahlavi monarchy, which tenaciously sought to patch 
up this dissonance with materials produced by its mythological machine. This is 
a traumatic dissonance that has made Iranians both latecomers and forerunner 
to their experience. It is traumatic because it “marks a caesura in which the lin-
ear order of time is thrown out of sequence. We compound this temporal disori-
entation every time we try to quarantine trauma by displacing it to a buried past 
or a distant future.”
37
 The Pahlavi regime and the Islamic Republic have both re-
sponded similarly in the face of such traumatic nonsynchronicity.
In seeking to alleviate this traumatic dissonance, the mythological machine of 
the Pahlavi regime endeavored to quarantine and displace it into a long-buried 
past, ancient Persia, and in doing so, ended up amplifying the dissonance even 
further. An exemplary instance of this phenomenon can be found in October 
1971, when Shah Mohammad-Reza Pahlavi extended invitations to leaders from 
over seventy countries to convene in Iran and celebrate the 2500
th
 anniversary 
of the Persian Empire at the historical site of Persepolis. During this event, a 
long-buried past was glorified and fetishized in a pompous spectacle that ap-
peared to serve as a mask against the traumatic dissonance causing Iranian 
society to face a structurally irreparable out-of-jointness. In other words, while 
the Shah of Iran’s “modernization from above” project, funded by petrodollars, 
aimed to transform Iran into a “developed,” industrialized nation, on an ide-
ological level, the glorification of ancient Persia in a mythological and pasto-
ral manner exemplified the Pahlavi regime’s fetishistic approach to concealing 
and simultaneously manifesting the traumatic nonsynchronicity of Iranian so-
ciety. This is precisely where the figure of tyranny enters the picture. As Joan 
Copjec maintains: “Whenever the always already lost past is recast as a once 
actual past of which a people have been robbed or which they themselves have 
squandered, the figure of tyranny presents itself in the engineering of efforts to 
recover the loss.”
38
The more the Shah attempted to alleviate the traumatic dissonance by quar-
antining it in a “harmonious,” “non-contradictory” mythologization of ancient 
37 
Comay, Mourning Sickness, 25; emphasis added.
38 
Joan Copjec, “Battle Fatigue: Kiarostami and Capitalism,” in Lacan Contra Foucault: 
Subjectivity, Sex, and Politics, ed. Nadia Bou Ali and Rohit Goel (London: Bloomsbury, 
2018), 148–49.

101
of times, religions, and revolutions: one unites into two
Persia, the more he intensified it. Then came a dramatic turn in the winter of 
1979, merely six years after the lavish celebrations in Persepolis. Neither the re-
turn to the glorified past nor the petrodollar-driven modernization could offer 
a corrective solution to the structural nonsynchronicity; the revolutionary mo-
ment provided the most suitable outlet for the traumatic dissonance. The revo-
lution, in suspending this specific form of tyranny, brought the inadequacy of 
both approaches to the forefront, allowing the traumatic dissonance to assert it-
self and become in and for itself. Although the traumatic dissonance managed to 
escape from the quarantine in which it was only in itself due to the manipulative 
and exploitative operation of the Pahlavi regime and became in and for itself at 
the moment of the revolution, it was once again quarantined under the Islamic 
Republic by being displaced onto a distant future. In accordance with the mes-
sianic doctrine of Twelver Shī‘a, the Twelfth Imam (Muḥammad al-Mahdi) is 
anticipated to reappear at an undisclosed time, establishing a government that 
will usher in global peace and justice. Grounded in this messianic conviction, 
the Islamic Republic, operating as a Shī‘a theocracy, has regarded itself since 
its inception as a precursor to the rule of Muḥammad al-Mahdi. Consequent-
ly, much like the Pahlavi regime, the Islamic Republic, in its struggle with the 
traumatic dissonance brought back to the fore at the moment of the revolution, 
quarantines it by displacing it into an unspecified, messianic future.
Undoubtedly, the revolution served as the decisive endpoint to the rule of the 
Pahlavi regime. However, it should not be construed as an example of “repres-
sion proper” in the Freudian sense, where repression pertains to repressing 
a signifier related to an already experienced trauma. Instead, the revolution 
should be understood as “primary repression” (Urverdrängung), which is not 
a posteriori but, if we are allowed, a priori. Primary repression “is not the re-
pression of the affect or its representation,” but rather a form of repression that 
provides the condition for the possibility of experience itself, not of this or that 
experience. At the risk of oversimplification, we can differentiate between pri-
mary repression and repression proper with an analogy. In a football game, the 
whistles that the referee blows during the game are subsequent occurrences, 
like repression proper. First, a foul or an offside goal occurs, and then the refer-
ee blows the whistle to nullify it. However, the whistle blown by the referee at 
the beginning of the game is a priori incident, akin to primary repression. This 
whistle does not negate specific action, but rather provides the condition for the 
possibility of the game itself. In this context, Zupančič emphasizes that

102
arsalan reihanzadeh
what is primarily repressed is not the drive itself, or the affect, or its representa-
tion, but the subject’s marker of this representation. The critical point about this 
is not to confound this marker with something that the subject saw or experi-
enced in reality, and repressed because of its intimate connection with the affect 
in its traumatic pressure. The “primarily repressed” marker or representative of 
the drive is something that has never been conscious, and has never been part of 
any subjective experience, but constitutes its ground. The logic of repression by 
association is the logic of what Freud calls repression proper, whereas primary 
repression is precisely not a repression in this sense. In it the causality usually 
associated with the unconscious is turned upside-down: it is not that we repress 
a signifier because of a traumatic experience related to it, rather, it is because this 
signifier is repressed that we can experience something as traumatic (not simply 
as painful, frustrating, and so on), and repress it. In other words, at some funda-
mental level the cause of repression is repression.
39
Within this Freudian framework, we can read the unleashing of the untimeli-
ness of time with the occurrence of the revolution as a primary repression that 
paved the path for a fresh sociopolitical order, wherein the lives of Iranians were 
destined to be overdetermined by the signifying logic of the Islamic Republic. 
Therefore, we may analyze the structurally intertwined connection between the 
revolution and the Islamic Republic by employing a Lacanian elaboration of 
Freud’s theory of repression. According to this elaboration, which delves into 
the process of signifierization,
the logic of the signifier (and the subject as what one signifier represents for an-
other signifier) starts only with two, it starts with the signifying dyad. On the level 
of the first signifier there is as yet no subject and not signifying logic or chain. The 
latter, however, does not occur by means of a second signifier being added to the 
first; it emerges by means of the “repression” of the first signifier, and emerges at 
its place.
40
Continuing along this line of reasoning, we can assert that the revolution, acting 
as the primary repression that brings to the fore the immense negative facet of 
sociopolitical reality, stands for the very first signifier that is retrospectively pos-
39 
Zupančič, On Comedy, 165. 
40 
Zupančič, 165.

103
of times, religions, and revolutions: one unites into two
ited as an always already lost signifier, leaving behind an empty space. This is 
precisely the empty space in which the untimeliness of time bursts forth during 
the revolutionary moment. The revolution, emblematic of the untimeliness of 
time, brings to the fore the empty space of the first signifier in which the signi-
fying chain (the Islamic Republic) is retroactively provided with the ground for 
its emergence. As a result, the dyadic structure of the signifier leads us to a con-
ception of the One in which the latter is ontologically incomplete, riddled with 
contradiction from within so that it is simultaneously and inseparably the One 
and the not-One. What is precisely disavowed under the Islamic Republic is this 
very ontological incompleteness. The distinctiveness of the Islamic Republic, 
as discussed above, becomes evident in the process where the signifying dyad 
advances through the act of disavowing primary repression to uphold the one-
ness of the One. Rooted in a specific interpretation of Shī‘a Islam, the Islamic 
Republic, when faced with the rupture that unveiled the domain of Kairos time 
during the revolution and thereby laid bare the structural untimeliness of time, 
followed a trajectory akin to Islam’s response to the apocalyptic act.
Much like (Shī‘a) Islam, which disavowed the Division that causes divisions (the 
theological/the political, the spiritual/the temporal, the esoteric/the exoteric), 
the Islamic Republic disavows this Division, which was brought to the fore at 
the moment of the revolution, not only by quarantining it in a messianic future 
but also by dividing and subdividing its administrative structure into parallel 
institutions and the presidential institutions. It is through these dual actions 
that the Islamic Republic seeks to maintain the oneness of the One—the One 
that unites into two.
Certainly, this phenomenon extends beyond the confines of the administrative 
structure; it has permeated the entire sociopolitical landscape. In one of his first 
films following the revolution, Hamshahri (Fellow Citizen, 1983), which bears 
the signature of his realist cinema, the so-called cinéma vérité, Abbas Kiarosta-
mi provides us with an exemplary illustration of the application of the mathe-
matical statement “One unites into two” within the everyday life of Iranian cit-
izens. Due to traffic congestion resulting from the revolution and the Iraq-Iran 
war, a law was enacted restricting vehicle passage in certain congested areas of 
Tehran from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m., allowing entry only with a permit. The film por-
trays the interactions between drivers lacking a traffic permit and a traffic of -
ficer, as they attempt to convince the officer to accept their excuses for entering 

104
arsalan reihanzadeh
the restricted zone. With the insights from the previously discussed signifying 
dyad, the actions of the drivers who seek to convince the traffic officer, rather 
than complying with the traffic restriction, could be read as the failure of the sig -
nifier “traffic permit” to represent the “empty space” of the first signifier. Its fail -
ure to represent the negative dimension of the signifying logic and to refer it to 
the next signifier, leads to the dysfunctionality of the traffic law to successfully 
persuade the drivers to submit to such a law. This is because the “empty space” 
of the first signifier, which internally contradicts the signifier “traffic permit,” 
dividing it into “traffic permit” and “not-traffic permit” (the signifying dyad), is 
projected onto the conjunction between the traffic officer and the drivers with-
out a traffic permit. In other words, the “not-traffic permit” of the signifier “traf -
fic permit” is now dissociated from it and self-externalized onto the liminality 
between the opposing poles of “traffic permit” and “not-traffic permit” in such 
a way that both sides are equally recognized. This is why the drivers without a 
traffic permit do not see themselves as transgressors of the traffic law. We are not 
dealing here with the dialectic of rule and exception in which a violation of the 
traffic law is an exception that occurs within a framework that is still governed 
by the same traffic law. Rather, as mentioned above, the failure of the signifier 
“traffic permit” to represent, to tarry with, its internal negative dimension, the 
“not-traffic permit,” leads to the self-externalizing of the structural impasse of 
the law and provides those who do not have a traffic permit with a “not-traffic 
permit” and enables them to act in a way as if they knew that “the law does not 
cover all circumstances.” This dynamic puts them on an equal footing when 
conversing with the traffic officer, leading to calm and sometimes humorous ex -
changes aimed at convincing him. Their behavior stands in stark contrast to that 
of individuals who have violated the law. In one scene, a female motorist whom 
the officer refuses to let through even says to him: “Damn the one bothering peo-
ple!” In many other cases, however, the officer is convinced to allow the motor-
ists to proceed. In her insightful take on the film, Copjec asserts:
None of the motorists displays any disrespect for the officer or the law, indeed 
what is striking is the way a kind of respect or at least a faith in her pact with the 
law seems to invite the endearing ingenuity with which each attempts to skirt it. 
The consistency of the responses—not one fails to engage in ruse—in combina-
tion with the demeanor of the drivers leads us to understand that what we are 
witnessing does not go under the name of exception. None of these citizens (the 
title defines them as such and thus links them to the law and to state power) con-

105
of times, religions, and revolutions: one unites into two
siders him or herself to be above or outside the law; rather, each seems to take it 
for granted that the law does not cover all circumstances, that there is in the law 
itself something that is not decided by law and that this emancipates those sub-
ject to it from rote conduct.
41
Today, four decades after Kiarostami’s film, the situation remains unchanged at 
the very same street intersection where the traffic officer once enforced the new 
traffic law. Vehicle movement is still restricted during office hours, but now, in-
stead of the traffic officer, traffic control cameras oversee the area. What sets the 
present situation apart is that a few hundred meters from the intersection, kiosks 
sell “traffic permit cards” that, when obtained, grant drivers legal access to the 
restricted traffic zone during working hours. In other words, after all these years, 
the projected “not-traffic law” of the “traffic law” still persists, not as an internal 
exception to that law, but as an opposing, if not parallel, pole. The difference now 
is that the “not-traffic permit” has become a monetized entity. During the time of 
the film’s production, motorists without a permit would attempt to convince the 
traffic officer using various forms of sophistry, crafting lies and excuses. How -
ever, today’s sophist motorists are distinct from their Greek predecessors who 
were paid. Instead, these modern sophist motorists are required to pay a fee in 
order to legally traverse a route that is otherwise prohibited—needless to say, the 
officials and administrators of the Islamic Republic can pass through these traf-
fic zones without any obstruction. The realm of Internet access in Iran presents 
another facet of this phenomenon. While the government officially filters certain 
platforms like Twitter, it is noteworthy that all authorities of the Islamic Republic 
maintain official pages on such platforms. Moreover, government-licensed com-
panies legally sell anti-filters and VPNs to citizens, enabling them to access oth-
erwise filtered websites and platforms. This transition from the neo-Platonic God 
to the Money God is a comprehensive topic that merits deeper exploration. For 
now, let us conclude with the liminality between the traffic officer and the drivers 
without permits, a juncture where One unites into two.
41 
Joan Copjec, “The Imaginal World and Modern Oblivion: Kiarostami’s Zig-Zag,” Filozofski 
vestnik 37, no. 2 (2016): 36.

106
arsalan reihanzadeh 
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