The Iranian thinker Ali Shariati (1933-1977) is known as one of the most prominent Islamic intellectual symbols of the 20th century.

And the American magazine “Newsweek” published a review of the 979-page book “Iran: A Modern History” by researcher Abbas Amanat, professor of history at Yale University, published on Yale University 2017. .

Show writer Khaled Ahmed says that Shariati was an "icon for generations" with a worldview that extended to many schools of thought and philosophy.

In the 1960s, his fiery speeches, numerous books, pamphlets and cassette recordings made him a symbol of revolutionary Islam and a prominent opponent of the Shah of Iran.

Shariati was born in the city of Mashhad to a religious family and his father was a famous preacher, who ran a religious center with a revivalist agenda.

The national movement in the early 1950s, and the opposition political culture that followed in the 1960s, shaped the view of Shariati secondary school teacher, who was a supporter of the anti-Shah National Front, before moving to France where he obtained a doctorate from the Sorbonne in "Sociology of Religion" With a thesis analyzing Persian mystical texts.

Ilham Iqbal and Fanon

The writer says that Shariati quoted from the philosopher and poet of the Indian subcontinent Muhammad Iqbal a basic concept that Islam is a mixture of politics and spirituality and that it has permeated the entire human life.

The writer adds that Iranian clerics objected to Shariati's views on Iqbal because they saw in the poet and philosopher Iqbal a Sunni philosopher.

Some critics even claimed that Iqbal insulted Imam Jaafar al-Sadiq in one of his poems, which was not accurate.

But the greatest influence on Shariati came, according to the author, from the Caribbean-born Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) and his revolutionary anti-colonial thesis, which was popular at the time among left-wing intellectuals.

Shariati translated Fanon's book The Wretched of the Earth shortly after its publication in 1961.

Shariati viewed the struggle against colonialism, embodied by the Algerian revolution, as an existential struggle for human liberation in which the suffering of the oppressed and their sacrifices were to restore not only political freedom, but also human dignity and moral responsibility.

Frantz Fanon was interested in the struggle against colonialism and adopted humanistic Marxism and African ideas of liberation (Shutterstock)

Fanon became the voice of the ardent intellectuals and activists of the so-called Third World working extensively to define the geography of deprivation and dependence on the West.

Fanon was essentially a socialist, and his anti-colonialism went beyond mass struggle to emphasize national, cultural, ethnic and religious bonds, which he viewed as crucial tools of struggle, and opened up to broad options, including armed struggle, to get rid of alien ideologies on both sides of the global divide.

Thus, Shariati absorbed that message but reformulated it to suit his historical reading of the Shiites, according to the author.

Shariati.. the great preacher

After returning to Iran in 1964, he was expected to be harassed by the Shah's secret police "SAVAK" and was arrested for his opposition activities abroad;

But soon after, perhaps after guarantees were given, he was allowed to take up his university position, teaching the sociology of religion and history at Mashhad University.

He made a name for himself as an ardent professor with contrasting views on Islamic history, which he presented in a new context to his growing audience.

Shariati emerged as a very powerful speaker and was invited to many places of learning.

The government ignored him for a while, but his growing popularity forced Iran's security agency, SAVAK, to scrutinize his work.

As a result, Shariati's lectures were banned.

In 1963, the Iranian philosopher and scholar Morteza Motahari established a "discussion forum" in the name of Hosseiniya Ershad in Tehran, which became a landmark in the Iranian cultural scene in 1969, and included speakers such as Ali Khamenei, Hashemi Rafsanjani, Muhammad Beheshti, and others.

Motahhari had loved the writings of my first Sharia and chose to publish them under the auspices of the Hussainiya Irshad.

In 1969, Mehdi Bazargan (the first prime minister in Iran later after the fall of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi), who had influence in the Irshad Hussainiya, invited him to give a lecture there.

Shariati gave two series of lectures, meanwhile, the SAVAK provoked Shariati's public call for revolution against tyranny under the Shah, and he was banned from attending Mashhad University.

He was left with only the Husayni-Irshad platform, but here too his published lectures provoked the ire of religious scholars, who condemned the forum as a breeding ground for heresy.

Syed Hussainiya Irshad

The Ershad Hosseinieh is a modern religious institution in northern Tehran that was established in 1964 to promote a new Islamic perspective that is palatable to mostly university students and educated professionals.

It could be compared to Catholic institutions in France or evangelical halls in the United States, and it was quite different from the familiar environment of traditional mosques and sanctuaries.

For nearly a decade, Shariati's message of rediscovering Islam and its activism has prevailed in the language of metaphors touching the hearts and minds of young Iranians.

For the masses who came in droves to hear him, Hussainiya Ershad provided the perfect setting for a charming lecturer, handsome, dressed in suit and tie, clean-shaven, smiling, and speaking in a cheerful Khorasani accent.

He was so modernist that even the secular Iranian middle class could not ignore him.

Editing with the Qur'an

Shariati considered himself an existentialist believer in God, and he sought to find a message of liberation in the Qur'anic text and in the Shiite past.

In his texts and works there was a strong mixture of Fanon and the French philosophers Sartre and Masignon, along with Marx, Mosaddeq, the Algerian National Liberation Front and Jalal Al Ahmad.

The ideas of these characters were compiled and incorporated into Shariati’s mind to make his early Islamic heroes speak his revolutionary message, and in the oral and written world of Ali Shariati, all of these characters were transformed into champions of social justice, self-sacrifice, and revolution against the oppressors.

In this sacred past, the age of the early believers, Shariati imagined an Islamic path where the imams and their pure and just companions resisted and sacrificed themselves in resisting their corrupt persecutors.

Revolutionary against the Safavids

In this novel about "revolutionary Shiism", Shariati was a modern and contemporary rhetoric, and an instigator who overthrew his "oppressed" heroes the urgent task of revolutionary rebellion against the "repressive villains" in contrast to the defenders of the "Black Safavid Shiism" who defended the conservative tendency of religious scholars, Which he described as bargaining, and greedy.

Shariati believed that the rise of Safavid Shiites against the Sunni Ottomans was the result of a conspiracy to divide Islamic unity, a conspiratorial perspective also shared by the writer and philosopher Jalal al-Ahmad, however, his account of history was exciting to his audience, who were comparing Shariati's bold and dynamic ideas with the "stagnant world of generalized Shiites." .

Shariati's criticism of the Pahlavi regime was tacit, yet his allusions were not beyond the reach of SAVAK agents who routinely monitored his activities and occasionally harassed him.

Despite the harassment by the security services, and the separation from the foundation's president, Morteza Motahari, Shariati continued to lecture and publish until Ershad's closure in 1972. His publications, widely available to people from all walks of life, were a source of concern to the regime.

Motahhari (later, Grand Ayatollah) defended Shariati, but became increasingly suspicious of his views over time.

He was forced to stay away from Al-Hussainiya for 7 months, but when he returned, he was due to become its most famous lecturer, attracting masses from universities and high schools until they swarmed the forum's squares.

He began his second mission with a lecture entitled "Iqbal, the reformer of this century".

He took from Allama Iqbal the basic concept that Islam is a mixture of politics and spirituality and that it has permeated the entire human life.

Disagreement with religious scholars

Shariati's attack on religious scholars was intense, and Morteza Motahari, who had lost control of the Husayniyah, began opposing what he saw as Shariati's "extremism" by 1971, and in 1972, at the height of urban guerrilla clashes, Shariati was seen as a serious threat .

He was accused of collaborating with the MEK and spent 18 months in solitary confinement, before being released with the Shah's approval when international publicity for his release was great enough to make the Shah realize the disadvantages of keeping the popular and outspoken preacher in detention.

For two years after his release, he lived under de facto house arrest with his health seriously deteriorating, according to the author.

In early 1977, he was allowed to leave the country after being forced by the SAVAK to publish, or to plagiarize a statement on his behalf praising the White Revolution (the Shah's reforms) and when he arrived in England in March, he was suffering from depression and other ailments.

Soon after, he died of a severe heart attack in a hospital in Southampton.

The book's author, Abbas Amanat, says he found it strange that "the circumstances surrounding his death did not sufficiently concern the British authorities to conduct an investigation".