Social Theory: Ali Shariati

25th Aug 2022 by Edward Wastnidge

Social Theory: Ali Shariati


Ali Shariati is often cited as one of the key ‘ideologues’ behind Iran’s revolution, despite not living to see its success in overthrowing the Shah in 1979. The social and political thought of Shariati was highly influential amongst segments of the opposition to the Shah in the decade leading up to the revolution. His ability to take elements of 20th Century postcolonial political thought and imbibe it with Iranian and religious meaning, and reference points, gave him a popular appeal that still resonates in some sections of Iranian political thought and debate today. While much work has understandably focused on the relevance of Shariati’s political thought for both Iran’s revolutionary experience and political life in the Islamic Republic, its application beyond these milieus is less well covered.    The following starts by offering an overview of the intellectual context and key arguments of Shariati’s wide ranging work, which has been well-explored elsewhere.[1] It then looks at Shariati’s thought in application, before finishing with some of the issues to be aware of when applying his work.

 

Intellectual context

Shariati’s intellectual development drew on his upbringing in a politically active, religious family which shaped his engagement with pro-Mossadegh, anti-Shah movements during the politically contested 1950s in Iran. His affiliation with modernising Islamic revival movements such as the Centre for the Propagation of Islamic Truths (led by his farther), and the Movement of God-Worshipping Socialists helped to establish a religiously grounded vision of social justice which shaped his life’s work.

Shariati was also heavily influenced by the time he spent in Paris during the early 1960s, where he completed his doctorate in Sociology. During this period, he came under the influence of the French orientalist Louis Massignon, who helped further shape Shariati’s interest in Gnosticism and the development an ‘Abrahamic view’ of all religions transcending sects and difference.[2] From this experience, Shariati began to develop his conception of a socio-political mission for all Abrahamic faiths in terms of helping the poor and oppressed of society by eradicating class differences and supporting the meek. Shariati was also influenced by the existentialist thinking of John-Paul Sartre, a contemporary of his in Paris, and the work of Frantz Fanon, part of whose work he translated into Persian.[3] As the pre-eminent biographer (in English) of Shariati, Ali Rahnema, notes, Fanon reinforced Shariati’s beliefs that colonised peoples in the 3rd world could only succeed by returning to themselves and their own history.[4]

Though his doctoral training in the West exposed him to a number of contemporary political currents and philosophies, many of which were Marxist-oriented in keeping with the times, Shariati developed his social and political thought primarily with the context of Iran and Islam in mind. To this end, his work built on that of thinkers such as Jamal al-Din al Afghani, and in particular the notion of gharbzadegi (or ‘westoxification’) popularised by his contemporary Jalal Al-e Ahmad, whom he viewed as a pioneer of anti-imperialist political thought alongside Fanon. Shariati was an admirer of Mohammad Iqbal, who had also completed his doctorate in Europe and engaged with key European philosophers of his time, describing him in one essay as a ‘reformer of Islamic society’.[5] Indeed, as Saffari highlights, his readings of thinkers such as al Afghani and Iqbal emphasised what he saw as their open and synthetic nature.[6]

Though Iran was never formally colonised by Western imperial powers, Shariati can be considered as a postcolonial thinker who Sadeghi-Boroujerdi argues was able to meld his idiosyncratic, modernist interpretation of Shi’ism with the Third Wordlist, anti-Imperialist zeitgeist of the 1960s and 1970s.[7]  Shariati’s relationship with Marxism is worthy of note here. Though he is often cited as having leftist leanings on account of the egalitarianism of his message and the time in which he was active, he was also a staunch critic of Marxist political thought and clashed with the revolutionary left in Iran. This became more prominent in his later writings and in the context of the Mojahedin-e Khalq’s conversion to Marxist-Leninism in the early 1970s. For Shariati, Marxism and Islam were contradictory forces, and a such were rivals in the fight against imperialism.[8]

Regular attempts by the Shah’s regime to censure his work culminated in imprisonment from 1973-1975, and Shariati died shortly after going into exile in 1977.  As opposition grew against the Shah, Shariati’s work became increasingly popular. Though a member of the intelligentsia, his ability to speak in accessible language, using religious and cultural reference points that were familiar to people from all walks of society, gave his social and political thought a wide-ranging appeal. Some of his most well-known lectures came from his time working with the Hosseiniyeh Ershad in Tehran, a hot bed of religious debate and opposition to the Shah from 1968 onwards

 

Key arguments 

During the course of his life, Shariati produced a multitude of works,[9] ranging from subjects as diverse as existentialist philosophy, the role of women in society, political thinkers, ideologies, key figures in the history of Islam, the role of the clergy, and many more topics. This breadth and prolificacy means that a key argument can be hard to pin down, but there are recurring themes across many of his works. For Shariati, the increasingly despotic rule and Westernising tendencies of the Shah were best combated through a ‘return to the self’, where Islam could be used to fully understand Iran’s history. His eclectic approach allowed him to fuse modernity and religion as a means of solving the problems Iran was facing as a society. Rahnema describes Shariati as a ‘natural dialectician’, with binary elements underpinning much of his philosophical discourse.[10] It allowed him to advance what Saffari frames as a ‘socio-politically progressive discourse  of indigenous modernity that engages freely and creatively with a wide range of emancipatory projects in the modern world.’[11]  Shariati also helped revive the Quranic term ‘mostazafin’ (the ‘oppressed’), used in his translation of Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth (translated as mostazafin-e zaman). Shariati’s discourse of the mostazafin has been compared to the liberation theology of Latin America that became popular during Shariati’s era due to its emancipatory potential.[12] It was a term that went on to be utilised by Khomeini and which played a key role in the narrative of the Iranian revolution in 1979 and in the founding principles of the Islamic Republic.  

There was a progressive intent behind much of Shariati’s work, and as a pluralist thinker he utilised the more progressive elements of Western political thought that he had engaged with in Paris as something of a mirror image of what he described as ‘authentic Islam’,[13] citing the religion’s inherently democratic and emancipatory characteristics. He espoused a monotheistic worldview repurposing the concept of towhid (unity or ‘oneness’ of God)to encompass the whole of humanity and existence. Shariati often used notable figures and episodes from the history of Islam to emphasise these features, emphasising the revolutionary aspects of the death of Hussein and the historical experience of the Shia. For example, he was a great admirer of Abu Zarr,[14] a revered figure in Shi’ism who he saw as initiating the struggle for Islamic equality and for whom Islam was a refuge of the helpless and the oppressed.[15] Another famous piece tells the story of the Prophet’s daughter and wife of Ali, Fatima, who is held up by Shariati as a source of inspiration among the deprived masses who are resisting oppression.[16] Shariati used such episodes from Shi’i and broader Islamic history, along with pointed allegories, to rally against capitalist elites and their tastes, implicitly contrasting the opulence of the Shah’s regime with the lives of small merchants and villagers.[17] In ‘Islamshenasi’ (Islamology), Shariati sought to present a ‘modern’ egalitarian and democratic Islam, emphasising concepts such as shura (consultation)  and ‘ijma (consensus), thus enabling a politicised reinterpretation and definition of classical Islamic concepts.[18]

Although he was fully cognisant of social science methodologies, Shariati saw in their quest for objectivity an inherent lack of social responsibility. This did not sit well with his firm and revolutionary belief in the need for intellectuals and, importantly, theologians, to articulate their views and judgements to the people. If Shariati’s Islamic faith acted as the foundation of his political thought, the clerics who had for centuries acted as guardians of that faith were a repeated target of his writings and lectures. In Fatima is Fatima, Shariati scolds the ulema for not sufficiently teaching followers about the words and deeds of the prophet’s family.[19] His essay Red Shi’ism: The Religion of Martyrdom. Black Shi’ism: The Religion of Mourning has been described by Sadeghi-Boroujerdi as his ‘most celebrated attempt to turn Shi’i Islam into an ideology of revolutionary agency’.[20] In this series of speeches Shariati distinguished between the true Shi’ism of Ali (or red Shi’ism of martyrdom), and that which was established by the Safavid dynasty (the black Shi’ism of mourning). For Shariati, Alavite or red Shi’ism had a deeply held revolutionary mission aimed at leading the deprived and oppressed masses towards freedom and for the seeking of justice, [21] whereas Safavid Shi’ism was a reactionary force representative of the ruling classes, traditionalist ulema, and defenders of the political and religious status quo. 

In practical terms Shariati’s work found its chief targets in his challenging of monarchical rule in Iran and the perceived dogmatism of traditionalist clerics. His contribution goes beyond the Iranian case though by seeking to present a response to the encounters between Western-defined ‘modernity’ and Islam, and through emancipating the oppressed in the face of corrupted elites.

 

In application

Perhaps the most obvious starting points for the ‘application’ of Shariati’s political thought can be found in the Iranian Revolution of 1979. The unleashing of the revolutionary potential of Shi’ism certainly found a platform among a cross section of the political movements that coalesced to bring down the monarchy in Iran. Though Shariati’s death in 1977 preceded the revolution, the revolutionary (re)interpretation of Islam he espoused naturally has important corollaries for understanding its eventual outcomes. Following the establishment of the Islamic Republic, scholars sought to trace the ideological foundations of this new, revolutionary interpretation of Islam, seeking to highlight the breadth and sophistication of the political thought of intellectuals that underpinned it, such as Shariati.[22] Shariati’s emphasis on a form of guided democracy, in keeping with the anti-colonial leaders of the time,  has a natural affinity with Khomeini’s conception of Islamic government which went on the shape the political institutionalisation Islamic Republic.

The post-revolutionary readings of Shariati’s works are particularly important ‘testing grounds’ for the continued applicability of his political thought, and his ideas maintain their currency in Iran today. His ideas remain important both in their perceived contribution to the revolutionary project of the Islamic Republic but also in questioning some of its more contentious outcomes. Saffari in particular has discussed how a subsequent generation of ‘neo-Shariatis’ use insight from his work to address a multitude of questions relevant to political and social life in the Islamic Republic.[23]For Saffari, the neo-Shariatis, which for him include some of the  so-called ‘religious intellectuals’ such as Hassan Yousef Eshkevari, provide important critiques to some of the more nativist and culturally-essentialist discourses espoused by traditionalists and Islamists in the Islamic Republic.[24] Instead, they ‘…emphasise the hybridity of cultural identity  and the historical and philosophical unsustainability of identarian claims.’[25] This allows an emphasis on multiple strands to critique elements of autocratic rule more broadly, which some neo-Shariatis have undertaken in relation to clerical rule in Iran.

Beyond its obvious applicability to social and political developments in post-revolutionary Iran, the pluralist nature of Shariati’s thought is also relevant to contemporary debates around sectarianism in the broader Middle Eastern context.  Despite his regular use of often explicitly Shi’i concepts and historical analogies, Shariati’s discourse often emphasises the heterogeneity of Islam,[26] and it is one that arguably transcends sectarian divides, seeking to highlight progressive thought in both Sunni and Shi’i Islam. A more identarian-focused application can also be used to explore the use of certain identity markers by Iran in elements of its foreign policy. For example, support for the mostazafin beyond Iran remains embedded in its foreign policy, sitting as it does within the very constitution of the Islamic Republic.  If one were to extrapolate to the Resistance Axis, the varying hues of ‘3rd world-ism’ present at varying times in the Islamic Republic’s foreign policy, or indeed the official response to the Arab Uprisings as an ‘Islamic Awakening’, then this more ideological lineage is clear. As ever, reducing Iran’s foreign policy to just one aspect of its multi-faceted identities and interests is a major over-simplification, but it shows how such political ideas can have a practical manifestation.

In addition to the Iranian case, Shariati’s work can also be useful in helping us understand the role, or indeed lack thereof, of ideologies in contemporary events such as the Arab Uprisings. For example, in comparing the events of the late 1970s in Iran with the uprisings, Asef Bayat notes how the absence of radical strategies and revolutionary ideas ultimately led to the stymieing of the latter.[27] Re-readings of Shariati’s work in the light of developments in contemporary, populist-Islamist politics in Turkey, and in the success or otherwise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, can also provide innovative theoretical insight to understanding the continuing salience of religious identities in political mobilisation. 

One can also make a strong case for including Shariati among the panoply of postcolonial thinkers who continue to challenge the epistemological and ontological foundations of still Western-centric disciplines such as International Relations. Though Iran was never formerly colonised, Shariati’s writings had much in common with other postcolonial writers. His emphasis on the hegemony of Western political ideas and civilisation, encounters with ‘modernity’, and strong anti-Imperialist bent, can be aligned with much of the work that postcolonial theorists undertake in seeking to challenge many of the deeply held assumptions about relations between states, peoples and cultures. There are certainly some interesting parallels that can be drawn with Shariati’s work and those of postcolonial IR scholars, such as Robbie Shilliam, who seek to problematise the ‘geo-cultural division of knowledge production’,[28] and scholars who attempt to emphasise postcolonial agency in constructing and/or re-constituting the international.[29] Shariati’s work also continues to be applied by scholars exploring his contribution to a wide range of questions in social and political thought more broadly.[30]

 

 

Issues to be aware of

Though this essay has made a claim for the continued relevance of Shariati’s political thought in a number of theoretical, temporal, and disciplinary milieus, one should be cautious in overstating his impact, or extrapolating selected elements of his wide-ranging oeuvre to current debates. Labelling Shariati as one of the chief ‘ideologues’ of Iran’s revolution does not do his broader work full justice, and we will never know what he might have thought of the revolution’s outcomes, nor whether he would have had a role as an active political thinker in the Islamic Republic. Notable contemporaries and former students of Shariati’s are aligned with the Freedom Movement and have been censured regularly for their opposition to certain political and social developments in the Islamic Republic. Care also needs to be taken when drawing direct lineage or application of his ideas in the Iranian context, due to the often selective appropriation of his ideas, particularly by reformist intellectuals, as discussed extensively by Sadeghi-Borujerdi.[31] Contemporary Iranian thinkers such as Abdolkarim Soroush and Daryush Shayegan have also offered important critiques of Shariati’s ideologisation of Islam and perceived reductionism.[32]

Finally, while Shariati’s work was of course often written with reference to the Iranian context, and within which it has found its most fertile application to date, there is scope to take his work further. The very nature of academic knowledge production has privileged Western voices in social and political thought. It is these figures, and related theoretical paradigms, whose work is so often applied to the Middle East. The under-representation of voices and perspectives from the region is evidenced by the very roll call of theorists discussed in the compilation of reports in which this essay sits. Therefore, a corrective is much needed to help deprivilege the dominant role that Western theorisations have played when seeking to ‘understand’ the region from without.

 

Suggested readings

In terms of English language collections of Shariati’s most famous works:

  • -Ali Shariati, The Collected works of Dr Ali Shariati (Mustbe Interactive, 2014)
  • -English-language website of Ali Shariati, contains partial translations of his work: http://www.shariati.com/kotob.html

A more extensive compilation of his writings can be found in the Persian language version of the website: http://www.shariati.com/gallery.html , with recordings of his speeches here: http://www.shariati.com/speech.html

Key secondary analyses of Shariati’s work:

  • Ali Rahnema, An Islamic Utopian: a political biography of Ali Shariati (London: IB Tauris, 2014)
  • Siavash Saffari, Beyond Shariati: modernity, cosmopolitanism and Islam in Iranian political thought (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2017)

Shariati’s influence in terms of wider developments related to Iran’s revolution and its political development:

  • Ervand Abrahamian, ‘Ali Shariati: Ideologue of the Iranian Revolution’, MERIP Reports, no. 102, 1982. Available online at https://merip.org/1982/01/ali-shariati-ideologue-of-the-iranian-revolution/
  • -Shahrough Akhavi, ‘Islam, politics and society in the thought of Ayatullah Khomeini, Ayatullah Taliqani and Ali Shariati’, Middle Eastern Studies 24 (4) (1988): 404-431
  • -Hamd Algar, Roots of the Islamic Revolution (Open Press, 1983)
  • -Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi, Islam & Dissent in Postrevolutionary Iran: Abdolkarim Soroush, Religious Politics and Democratic Reform (London: I.B. Tauris, 2008)
  • -Ziba Mir-Hosseini and Richard Tapper, Islam and Democracy in Iran: Eshkevari and the Quest for Reform(London: I.B. Tauris, 2008)
  • -Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi, Revolution and its Discontents: political thought and reform in Iran (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2019
  • -Siavash Saffari, ‘Two Pro- Mostazafin Discourses in the 1979 Iranian Revolution’, Contemporary Islam, (2017) 11: 287 – 301


[1] For a list of key readings, both by Shariati  and scholars of his work, please see the ‘suggested readings’ at the end of this piece.

[2] Ali Rahnema, An Islamic Utopian: a political biography of Ali Shariati (London: IB Tauris, 2014), p.120-123.

[3] Ervand Abrahamian, ‘Ali Shariati: Ideologue of the Iranian Revolution’, MERIP Reports, no. 102, 1982. Available online at https://merip.org/1982/01/ali-shariati-ideologue-of-the-iranian-revolution/. Abrahamian also notes how Shariati had correspondence with Fanon during this period, challenging him on his position regarding religion and revolution.

[4] Rahnema, , An Islamic Utopian, pp. 16-17.

[5] Ali Shariati, ‘Mohammed Iqbal’, The Collected works of Dr Ali Shariati (Mustbe Interactive, 2014), p.604.

[6] Siavash Saffari, Beyond Shariati: modernity, cosmopolitanism and Islam in Iranian political thought (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2017).

[7] Eskandar Sadeghi-Borujerdi, Revolution and its Discontents: political thought and reform in Iran (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2019), p. 116.

[8] Rahnema, An Islamic Utopian, p.360.

[9] There is no exhaustive ‘complete works’ of Shariati in English, and his full written works remain untranslated. Much of his well-known work  for English audiences has come through secondary treatments of his works based on the original Persian sources, and  also in the transcribed lectures that were given during his time at the Hosseiniyeh Ershad during the 1970s. A sample of his written work and transcribed lectures are available online at: http://www.shariati.com/kotob.html. A wider selection can be found on the Persian language version of the site, and includes recordings of his speeches. 

[10] Rahnema, An Islamic Utopian, p. 369

[11] Saffari, Beyond Shariati, p. 5

[12] Siavash Saffari, ‘Two Pro- Mostazafin Discourses in the 1979 Iranian Revolution’, Contemporary Islam, (2017) 11: 287 – 301.

[13] Rahnema, An Islamic Utopian, p. 128

[14] One of Shariati’s earliest publications was a translation of the work Abu Zarr: The God-Worshiping Socialist, by the Egyptian novelist Abd al-Hamid Jawdat al-Sahar.

[15] Ali Shariati, ‘And once again Abu-Dhar’, Collected Works, p. 148.

[16] Ali Shariati, ‘Fatima is Fatima’, Collected Works, p. 300-302.

[17] Ibid, pp.195-196.

[18] Rahnema, An Islamic Utopian, p.236

[19] Shariati, Fatima is Fatima, p.199

[20] Sadeghi-Borujerdi, Revolution and its Discontents, p.120.

[21] Ali Shariati, ‘Red Shi’ism: The Religion of Martyrdom. Black Shi’ism: The Religion of Mourning’, Collected Works, p. 580.

[22] See, for example, Abrahamian, Ali Shariati: Ideologue of the Iranian Revolution; and Hamd Algar, Roots of the Islamic Revolution(Open Press, 1983)

[23] Saffari, Beyond Shariati

[24] Ibid, p. 93.

[25] Ibid.

[26] Rahnema, An Islamic Utopian, p. xvi.

[27] Asef Bayat, Revolution without revolutionaries: Making sense of the Arab Spring (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2017)

[28] Robbie Shilliam, ‘The perilous but unavoidable terrain of the non-West’, in Shilliam, R.(ed.) International Relations and Non-Western Thought: Imperialism, Colonialism and Investigations of Global Modernity (London: Routledge, 2011)

[29] Pinar Bilgin, ‘How to remedy Eurocentrism in IR? A complement and a challenge for The Global Transformation’, International Theory, (2016): 8 (3) pp. 492–501; Vivienne Jabri, ‘Disarming norms: postcolonial agency and the constitution of the international’,  International Theory, (2014),  6(2) pp. 372-390.

[30] See for example the edited volume by Dustin J. Byrd and Seyed Javid Miri, Ali Shariati and the Future of Social Theory: Religion, Revolution, and the Role of the Intellectual (Leiden: Brill, 2018)

[31]  Sadeghi-Borujerdi, Revolution and its Discontents

[32] See, for example Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi, Islam & Dissent in Postrevolutionary Iran: Abdolkarim Soroush, Religious Politics and Democratic Reform (London: I.B. Tauris, 2008), pp. 194-199; Shayegan described Shariati’s thought as ‘…a mixture of two paradigms vomiting one another out’  - see Daryush Shayegan, Cultural Schizophrenia: Islamic Societies Confronting the West (London: Saqi Books, 1992), p. 55.


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