Ali Shariati
Ali Shariati Mazinani was an Iranian revolutionary and sociologist who specialised in the sociology of religion. He is regarded as one of the most influential Iranian intellectuals of the 20th century. He has been referred to as the "ideologue of the Islamic Revolution", although his ideas did not ultimately serve as the foundation for the Islamic Republic.
Biography
Ali Shariati, also known as Ali Masharati, was born in 1933 in Mazinan, a suburb of Sabzevar in northeastern Iran. His father's family were clerics. His father, Mohammad-Taqi, was a teacher and Islamic scholar. In 1947, he established the Centre for the Propagation of Islamic Truth in Mashhad, Khorasan Province. It was a social Islamic forum that became involved in the oil nationalisation movement of the 1950s. Shariati's mother came from a small land-owning family in Sabzevar, a town near Mashhad.During his years at the Teacher's Training College in Mashhad, Shariati encountered young individuals from economically disadvantaged backgrounds and for the first time witnessed the poverty and hardships prevalent in Iran at that time. At the same time, he was exposed to many aspects of Western philosophical and political thought. He attempted to explain and offer solutions for the problems faced by Muslim societies through traditional Islamic principles interwoven with, and understood from, the point of view of modern sociology and philosophy. His articles from this period for the Mashhad daily newspaper, Khorasan, display his developing eclecticism and acquaintance with the ideas of modernist thinkers such as Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and Sir Allama Muhammad Iqbal among the Muslim community, and Sigmund Freud and Alexis Carrel.
In 1952, he became a high school teacher and founded the Islamic Students' Association, which led to his arrest following a demonstration. In 1953, the year of Mossadeq's overthrow, he became a member of the National Front. He received his bachelor's degree from the University of Mashhad in 1955. In 1957, he was arrested again by the Iranian police, along with fifteen other members of the National Resistance Movement.
Shariati then earned a scholarship to continue his graduate studies at the University of Paris under the supervision of the Iranist Gilbert Lazard. He left Paris after earning a PhD in Persian language in 1964. According to Ali Rahnema, the Paris to which Shariati arrived in the 1960s was “the world’s hub of cultural and political activity,” particularly in terms of anti-colonial resistance in the context of the Algerian Revolution. During this period in Paris, Shariati started collaborating with the Algerian National Liberation Front in 1959. The following year, he began to read Frantz Fanon and translated an anthology of his work into Persian. Shariati introduced Fanon's thought into Iranian revolutionary émigré circles. He was arrested in Paris on 17 January 1961 during a demonstration in honour of Patrice Lumumba.
The same year he joined Ebrahim Yazdi, Mostafa Chamran and Sadegh Qotbzadeh in founding the Freedom Movement of Iran abroad. In 1962, he continued studying sociology and the history of religions in Paris and followed the courses of Islamic scholar Louis Massignon, Jacques Berque and the sociologist Georges Gurvitch. He also came to know the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre that same year, and published Jalal Al-e Ahmad's book Gharbzadegi in Iran.
Shariati then returned to Iran in 1964, where he was arrested and imprisoned for engaging in subversive political activities while in France. He was released after a few weeks, at which point he began teaching at the University of Mashhad.
Shariati went to Tehran, where he began lecturing at the Hosseiniye Ershad Institute. These lectures were hugely popular among his students and were spread by word of mouth throughout all economic sectors of society, including the middle and upper classes, where interest in his teachings began to grow.
His continued success again aroused the interest of the government. He was arrested, along with many of his students. Widespread pressure from the people and an international outcry eventually led to his release on 20 March 1975, after eighteen months in solitary confinement.
Shariati was allowed to leave for England. Shortly after, on 18 June 1977, he was found dead in Southampton at the house he was renting from psychology professor Doctor Butterworth. He is believed to have been killed by the SAVAK, the Iranian security service during the time of the Shah. However, in Ali Rahnema's biography of Shariati, he is said to have died of a heart attack under mysterious circumstances, although no hospital or medical records have been found. He is buried next to Sayyidah Zaynab, the granddaughter of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and the daughter of Ali, in Damascus. Iranian pilgrims often visit his grave.
Views and popularity
Shariati sought to revive the revolutionary currents of Shi'ism. His interpretation of Shiism encouraged revolution in the world and promised salvation after death. He referred to his brand of Shiism as "red Shiism" or Alid Shiism which he contrasted with non-revolutionary "black Shiism" or Safavid Shiism. His ideas have been compared to the Catholic Liberation Theology movement founded in South America by Peruvian Gustavo Gutierrez and Brazilian Leonardo Boff.Shariati was a prominent philosopher of Islam, who argued that a good society would conform to Islamic values. As opposed to other prominent revolutionary figures, such as Ayatollah Khomeini, Shariati proposed a utopian classless society that would be established through a dialectical struggle between the people of tawhid and the people of shirk. He argued that it was only in a classless society that true monotheism could be established, and the dialectical struggle between these two dual forms of humanity were idealized for Shariati in the struggle between Cain and Abel. He believed that the most learned members of the Ulema should play a leadership role in guiding society because they best understand how to administer an Islamic value system based on the teachings of the Prophets of God and the 12 Shia Twelver Imams. He argued that the role of the clergy was to guide society under Islamic values to advance human beings towards reaching their highest potential, rather than to provide or serve the hedonistic desires of individuals as in the West. However, Shariati did not believe that the clergy should themselves be rulers and that society should be dominated by the ulema, the view popularized by Ayatollah Khomieni in his concept of vilayat al-faqih, or "guardianship of the jurists". Rather, he argued that the clergy should play a role in electing a ruler who could lead the people according to the principles of Islam.
At the same time, Shariati was very critical of some clerics and defended the Marxists. "Our mosques, the revolutionary left and our preachers," he declared, "work for the benefit of the deprived people and against the lavish and lush Our clerics who teach jurisprudence and issue fatwas are right-wingers, capitalist, and conservative; simply our fiqh is at the service of capitalism." For Shariati, “Safavid Shiism”, which he described as the religion propagated by the ulema, was devoid of the “true” and revolutionary roots of Islam brought forth by the Prophet Muhammad and Ali that challenged the authority of the elite in Mecca, namely that of the Umayyads. He argued that “Safavid Shiism” had taken on an apolitical character as an arm of the state, and had corrupted the original revolutionary message of Islam and Shiism, which he refers to as “Alid Shiism.” His resentment and criticism of the clergy was, and continues to be, a point of controversy, as many of the ulema vehemently disagreed with his arguments.
Shariati's works were highly influenced by Louis Massignon and the Third Worldism that he encountered as a student in Paris, including ideas that class war and revolution would bring about a just and classless society. He was also highly influenced by the epistemic decolonisation thinking of his time. He is said to have adopted the idea of Gharbzadegi from Jalal Al-e Ahmad and given it "its most vibrant and influential second life".
He sought to translate these ideas into cultural symbols of Shiism that Iranians could relate to. Shariati believed Shia should not only await the return of the 12th Imam, but should actively work to hasten his return by fighting for social justice "even to the point of embracing martyrdom". He said that "every day is Ashoura, every place is the Karbala".
Shariati is sometimes referred to as the “Fanon of the Islamic Revolution”; unlike Fanon, however, Shariati viewed religion as an ideology in itself that could be used to politically and socially mobilize people in anti-colonial resistance and revolution. In his lecture, “Shiism: A Complete Party,” Shariati argued that the Shia sect of Islam contained in it a revolutionary ideology and was itself the “party of God,” with the ability to mobilize the masses in a “class struggle.” This also formed the basis for his lecture series on Islamshensi or “Islamology,” which he delivered from the Hosseiniye Ershad Institute from February to November 1972. This was Shariati’s attempt to reinterpret and reconceptualize Islam through a revolutionary lens, constructing Islam as more than just a religion, but a universalist political ideology, recasting Islamic history as inherently transformative, progressive, and resistant. He felt that people could fight imperialism solely by recovering their cultural identity. In some countries, such an identity was intertwined with fundamental religious beliefs. Shariati refers to the maxim of returning to ourselves. Drawing directly from Fanon, in his lectures titled Bāzgasht or “Return,” Shariati presented his own version of a “return to self” that was rooted in a revival of the ethical and spiritual core of a community, arguing for a return to the “culture of Islam” and Islamic ideology. Fanon’s return to self is based on a present return and reclamation of one’s identity through acts of violence that affirm the existing body and selfhood in the present moment beyond the racialized identities imposed by colonizers, which he argues is a direct and immediate act of decolonization and liberation. In contrast, Shariati’s “return” is future-oriented in that it shifts the focus from the immediate present to a potential future state of self and society, one that is rooted in Islamic values and focuses on the rediscovery of a religious self. Shariati’s concept of “return” is closely tied to martyrdom, in which the martyr willingly commits an act of self-sacrifice in order to awaken the collective consciousness of the community against oppression. He relies on the martyrdom of Husain, who represents the ideal martyr who willingly chose to sacrifice himself to realize a return to an authentic Islam for others.
Social theorist Asef Bayat has recorded his observations as a witness and participant in the Iranian revolution of 1979. He asserts that Shariati emerged at the time of the revolution as "an unparalleled revolutionary intellectual" with his portraits widely present during the marches and protests. His nickname as "mo'allem-e enqilab" was chanted by millions, and his literature and tapes had already been widely available before the revolution. Bayat recalls that " father, barely literate, had his own copies" of Shariati's works.