Still working to recover. Please don't edit quite yet.

Ali Shariati

From Anarchopedia
Jump to: navigation, search

Ali Shariati (علی شريعتی) (November 23, 1933 in Kahak - 1977 in Southampton, England) was an Iranian revolutionary[1] and sociologist, who focused on the sociology of religion. He is held as one of the most influential Iranian intellectuals of the 20th century[2] and has been called the 'ideologue of the Iranian Revolution' [3].

Biography[edit]

Ali Shariati was born in 1933 in Kahak (a village in Mazinan), a suburb of Sabzevar, found in northeastern Iran[4]. His father, Mohammad-Taqi, was a teacher and Islamic scholar, who opened in 1947 the 'Centre for the Propagation of Islamic Truths' in Mashhad, in the province of Khorasan [5], a social Islamic forum which became embroiled in the oil nationalisation movement of the 1950s[6].

In his years at the Teacher's Training College in Mashhad, Shariati came into contact with young people who were from the less privileged economic classes of the 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 provide 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 modern Islamic and extra-Islamic thinkers such as Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Muhammad Iqbal, Sigmund Freud and Alexis Carrel[7].

In 1952 he became a high-school teacher and founded the Islamic Students' Association, which led to his arrest after a demonstration. In 1953, the year of Mossadeq's overthrow, he became a member of the National Resistance Movement. He received his bachelor's degree from the University of Mashhad in 1955. In 1957 he was arrested again by the police, along with 16 other members of the National Resistance Movement.

Ali Shariati then managed to obtain a scholarship for France, where he continued his graduate studies at the University of Paris. There he was considered a brilliant student and elected best student in letters in 1958. He worked towards earning his doctorate in sociology, leaving Paris before he was able to complete his studies in 1964. During this period in Paris, Shariati started collaborating with the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) in 1959. The next year, he began to read Frantz Fanon and translated an anthology of his work into Persian.[8]. Shariati would introduce Fanon's thought into Iranian revolutionary émigrée circles. He was arrested in Paris during a demonstration in honour of Patrice Lumumba, on January 17, 1961.

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 history of religions, 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 in Iran Jalal Al-e Ahmad's book Gharbzadegi (or Occidentosis) .

He 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 then went to Tehran where he began lecturing at the Hosseiniye Ershad Institute. These lectures proved to be hugely popular among his students and were spread by word of mouth throughout all economic sectors of the society, including the middle and upper classes where interest in Shariati's teachings began to grow immensely.

Shariati's continued success again aroused the interest of the government, which arrested him, as well as many of his students. Widespread pressure from the populace and an international outcry eventually led to his release after eighteen months in solitary confinement, and he was released on March 20, 1975.

Shariati was allowed to leave the country for England. He died three weeks later in a Southampton hospital.

Shariati's death is the subject of some controversy. While the official autopsy indicated a heart attack as the cause of death, there is a degree of consensus that he was assassinated. However, the identification of the assassin varies. SAVAK, the Shah's secret police, is frequently mentioned as the likely suspect. However, some counter that Islamist hard-liners are to blame, on the basis of similar treatment of Ahmad Kasravi.

Shariati's shrine is in Damascus, Syria in the yard of his beloved Zainab bint Ali.

Views[edit]

Shariati's works were highly influenced by the Marxism and Third Worldism that he encountered as a student in Paris — ideas that class war and revolution would bring about a just and classless society — from one side, and the Islamic puritanism (or the Islamic Reformation) movements of his time from the other side. 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." [9]

He sought to translate these ideas into cultural symbols of Shiism that Iranians could relate to. He 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 "everyday is Ashoura, every place is Karbala." [10]

Shariati referred to his brand of Shiism as "red Shiism" which he contrasted with clerical-dominated, unrevolutionary "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.[11]

Notes from the speech[edit]

About way and goal in success, Shariati says: “Hey, I am thinking of it myself, in this part of world (East), we all do endeavours in praying and are sweating (white liquid) and this is our situation, frustrated , but on the other part of world (West) ,they are enjoying in party and drinking liquor (white liquid) but their situation is that, successful, I do not know that the problem relates to the type of liquid or the way of drinking!”

About poverty and thinking, Shariati says: " What I want to say is......

Poverty goes everywhere and is ubiquitous.......

Poverty is not being hunger, not being naked ......

Poverty is not having “something”, but that thing is not food and money and even gold.........

Poverty is dust which sits on unsold books in a bookstore......

Poverty is a blade which cuts returned newspapers in a recycling machine......

Poverty is a three thousand-year-old inscription which a memento of a visit has been written by visitor on ...

Poverty is a banana’s skin which is thrown from a window of a car to a road .....

Poverty goes everywhere and is ubiquitous.........

Poverty is not a night you spend "without food" ...

Poverty is a day you spend "without thinking”... ”

Belongings and thinking: "I prefer walking in street and thinking about God to staying in mosque and thinking about my shoes."

Legacy[edit]

Shariati's most important books and speeches[edit]

  1. Hajj (The Pilgrimage)
  2. Marxism and Other Western Fallacies : An Islamic Critique
  3. Where Shall We Begin?[1]
  4. Mission of a Free Thinker[2]
  5. The Free Man and Freedom of the Man[3]
  6. Extraction and Refinement of Cultural Resources[4]
  7. Martyrdom (book)[5]
  8. Ali
  9. An approach to Understanding Islam PART1-[6] PART2-[7]
  10. A Visage of Prophet Muhammad[8]
  11. A Glance of Tomorrow's History[9]
  12. Reflections of Humanity
  13. A Manifestation of Self-Reconstruction and Reformation
  14. Selection and/or Election
  15. Norouz, Declaration of Iranian's Livelihood, Eternity
  16. Expectations from the Muslim Woman
  17. Horr (Battle of Karbala)
  18. Abu-Dahr
  19. Islamology
  20. Red Shi'ism vs. Black Shi'ism
  21. Jihad and Shahadat
  22. Reflections of a Concerned Muslim on the Plight of Oppressed People
  23. A Message to the Enlightened Thinkers
  24. Art Awaiting the Saviour
  25. Fatemeh is Fatemeh
  26. The Philosophy of Supplication
  27. Religion versus Religion
  28. Man and Islam - see chapter "Modern Man and His Prisons"

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ↑ 30th Anniversary of the Foundation of the Islamic Republic, A Revolution Misunderstood. Charlotte Wiedemann
  2. ↑ Gheissari, Ali. 1998. Iranian Intellectuals in the Twentieth Century. Austin: University of Texas Press.
  3. ↑ Abrahamian, Ervand. 1993. ‘Ali Shariati: ideologue of the Iranian revolution’. In Edmund Burke and Ira Lapidus (eds.), Islam, politics, and social movements. Los Angeles: University of California Press. First published in MERIP Reports (January 1982): 25-28.
  4. ↑ Rahnema, Ali. 1998, 2000. An Islamic Utopian. A Political Biography of Ali Shari‘ati. London: I.B. Tauris, p. 35.
  5. ↑ An Islamic Utopian, p. 13.
  6. ↑ An Islamic Utopian, pp. 13-18.
  7. ↑ An Islamic Utopian, pp. 61-68.
  8. ↑ «La jeune génération est un enjeu», interview with Gilles Kepel in L'Express, 26 January 2006 (French)
  9. ↑ Mottahedeh, Roy, The Mantle of the Prophet : Religion and Politics in Iran, p.330
  10. ↑ Nasr, Vali, The Shia Revival, Norton, (2006), p.128-9
  11. ↑ Nasr, Vali, The Shia Revival, Norton, (2006), p.129

Further reading[edit]

  • Rahnema, Ali. 1998. An Islamic Utopian. A political biography of Ali Shariati. London: I.B. Tauris.
  • Gheissari, Ali. 1998. Iranian Intellectuals in the Twentieth Century. Austin: University of Texas Press.

External links[edit]

Videos
Retrieved from "http://eng.anarchopedia.org/index.php?title=Ali_Shariati&oldid=45336"