Shariati Books

[Kristy Suzuki]

AliShariati (Ali Masharati) was born in 1933 in Mazinan, a suburb of Sabzevar, in northeastern Iran.[5] His father's family were clerics.[6] His father, Mohammad-Taqi, was a teacher and Islamic scholar. In 1947, he opened the Centre for the Propagation of Islamic Truths in Mashhad, in Khorasan Province.[7] It was a social Islamic forum which became embroiled in the oil nationalisation movement of the 1950s.[8] Shariati's mother was a small land-owning family, stemming from Sabzevar, a little town near Mashhad.[6][9]

In his years at the Teacher's Training College in Mashhad, Shariati came into contact with young people who were from less privileged economic classes of society, and for the first time saw the poverty and hardship that existed in Iran during that period. 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, Sir Allama Muhammad Iqbal of Pakistan, among the Muslim community, and Sigmund Freud and Alexis Carrel.[10]

In 1952, he became a high-school teacher and founded the Islamic Students' Association, which led to his arrest following a demonstration.[citation needed] 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 sixteen other members of the National Resistance Movement.[citation needed]

Shariati then earned a scholarship to continue his graduate studies at University of Paris under the supervision of the Iranist Gilbert Lazard. He left Paris after earning a PhD in Persian language in 1964.[11] During this period in Paris, Shariati started collaborating with the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) in 1959. The following year, he began to read Frantz Fanon and translated an anthology of his work into Persian.[12] Shariati introduced Fanon's thought into Iranian revolutionary migre circles. He was arrested in Paris on 17 January 1961 during a demonstration in honour of Patrice Lumumba.[citation needed]

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 (or Occidentosis) in Iran.[citation needed]

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.[citation needed]

Shariati next 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.[citation needed]

His continued success again aroused the interest of the government, which arrested him, 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 June 18, 1977, he was found dead in Southampton at the house he was renting from psychology professor Dr. 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, where Iranian pilgrims often visit.[citation needed]

Shariati sought to revive the revolutionary currents of Shiism.[13] His interpretation of Shiism encouraged revolution in the world, and promised salvation after death.[14] He referred to his brand of Shiism as "red Shiism" which he contrasted with non-revolutionary "black Shiism" or Safavid Shiism.[15] His ideas have been compared to the Catholic Liberation Theology movement founded in South America by Peruvian Gustavo Gutierrez and Brazilian Leonardo Boff.[16]

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."[19]

He sought to translate these ideas into cultural symbols of Shiism that Iranians could relate to. Shariati believed Shia should not merely 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," saying "every day is Ashoura, every place is the Karbala".[21]

When he was writing the three letters to Fanon, unlike him, Shariati believed that it is not true that one must put away religion to fight imperialism. 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.[22]

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 and his nickname as "mo'allem-e enqilab" (revolutionary mentor) chanted by millions and whose literature and tapes had already been widely available before the revolution. "My father" recalls Bayat, "barely literate, had his own copies" of Shariati's works.[23]

It seems that his eagerness to explore socialism began with the translation of the book Abu Zarr: The God-Worshipping Socialist by the Egyptian thinker Abdul Hamid Jowdat-al-Sahar. According to this book, Abu Dhar was the very first socialist.[24] Then, Shariati's father declared that his son believed that the principles of Abu Dhar are fundamental. Even some thinkers described Shariati as the modern-day Abu Dhar in Iran.[25] Of all his thoughts, there is his insistence on the necessity of revolutionary action. Shariati believed that Marxism could not provide the Third World with the ideological means for its own liberation. One of his premises was that Islam by nature is a revolutionary ideology. Therefore, Islam could relate to the modern world as an ideology. According to Shariati, the historical and original origin of human problems was the emergence of private ownership. He believed that in the modern era, the appearance of the machine was the second most fundamental change in the human condition. In fact, private ownership and the emergence of the machine, if considered one of two curves of history, belong to the second period of history. The first period is collective ownership. However, Shariati gave a critique of the historical development of religion and the modern philosophical and ideological movements and their relationship to both private ownership and the emergence of the machine.[26]

Shariati developed the idea of the social, cultural and historical contingencies of religious knowledge in sociology.[citation needed] He believed in the earthly religion and in the social context in which the meaning of society is construed. He also emphasized that he understood religion historically because he was a sociologist. He said he was concerned with the historical and social Tawhid, not with the truth of the Quran or of Muhammad or Ali.[27]

In the first place, Shariati criticised western liberal democracy.[citation needed] He pointed out that there is a direct relationship between democracy, liberalism and the plundering of nations. He believed that liberal democracy is the enemy of humankind. He also referred to the fact that the ruling economic system of liberal democracy is unjust and contrary to the rights of people. He maintained that in such a society, someone who is weak is already subjected to defeat and annihilation. There are basic foundations in Shariati's thoughts and his criticism of liberal democracy. The first foundation is related to the contrast between the religious worldview and the non-religious one. He explained history, society and humanity according to a monistic worldview. He explained liberalism as something with inequality and discrimination. Freedom and equality based on spirituality were the very basis of pre-modern societies which were devastated in one period of history.[citation needed]

Shariati believed that the government of Imam Ali could be considered the best form of democracy. On this occasion, he tried to interpret the behaviour of Imam Ali in contrast with his enemy.[28][clarification needed] He called this democracy Commitment democracy. It appears that Shariati did not accept the western definition of democracy although he had no problem with democracy. According to him, a religious government is a democratic right of Muslim citizens. He believed that one of the basic problems of western democracy is demagogy. Nowadays the votes of voters are directed to special channels with the help of advertising instruments. In such a condition only one who is critically conscious can dispose of distractions and surface-level arguments, and vote effectively for themselves and their communities. He maintains that the western democracy based on gold, cruelty and tricking (Zar, Zour va Tazvir) is an anti-revolutionary regime that is different from ideological Guidance.[28][clarification needed][clarification needed]

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