Siavash Saffari

Ali Shariati (1933–77) has been called by many the 'ideologue of the Iranian Revolution'. An inspiration to many of the revolutionary generation, Shariati's combination of Islamic political thought and Left-leaning ideology continues to influence both in Iran and across the wider Muslim world. In this book, Siavash Saffari examines Shariati's long-standing legacy, and how new readings of his works by contemporary 'neo-Shariatis' have contribu

In much of the academic literature on the modern processes of sociopolitical change in Muslim-majority societies, Islam and modernity have been described in oppositional terms. This article examines the development of a religiously mediated discourse of indigenous modernity by prominent twentieth-century Iranian thinker Ali Shariati and his contemporary intellectual followers in post-revolutionary Iran. It asks how Shariati's thought and its new readings by neo-Shariatis may contribute to the cu

By centering the question of Palestine, this article contributes to a decolonial critique of German critical theory à la Jürgen Habermas and the Frankfurt School. The article’s intervention is prompted by the November 2023 ‘Principles of Solidarity. A Statement’ (PoS), of which Habermas was a coauthor. Released amid a full-scale Israeli assault on the besieged Gaza Strip, which followed the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack in southern Israel, the PoS statement expressed unequivocal solidarity wi

Abstract Leading twentieth-century Iranian public intellectual Ali Shariati has been described by some as a proponent of a project of nativism and cultural authenticity. This article offers an alternative reading of Shariati, one that highlights the germination of his thought in a process of constant oscillation between particular historical-sociopolitical attachments and a decidedly cosmopolitan intellectual horizon. This oscillation, it is argued, while born out of the core-periphery dynamics

Building on previous studies on a mid- and late-twentieth-century recasting of Islam’s doctrine of monotheism, or tawhid, as a distinctly Islamic framework for liberative praxis, this article considers the interplay between the particular and the universal in the tawhidic paradigms of Iranian lay theologian Ali Shariati (1933–1977) and African-American pro-faith and pro-feminist theologian amina wadud (b. 1952). The article proposes that although it was developed in a distinctly Islamic register

Sixty years after the original publication of Gharbzadegi (1962) by dissident Iranian writer Jalal Al-e Ahmad, the controversial book remains an important marker in the formation of the mid- and late-twentieth century perceptions of Iranian intellectuals about the relationship between their country’s past, present, and future. Building on the recent scholarship which considers Gharbzadegi as an alternative vision of the future rather than a nostalgic call for a return to the past, this article s

As a growing corpus of academic literature is taking notice of the plural geographies and trajectories of liberation theologies across diverse faith traditions, inquiries into the relationship between political Islam and liberative praxis are garnering renewed attention. Some scholars, casting doubt on the possibility of an Islamic liberation theology (ILT), have regarded political Islam as being devoid of liberative potential. Others, designating Islamism as the Muslim equivalent of liberation

Over three and a half decades after his death, Ali Shariati (1933-1977) continues to occupy a major place in the ongoing academic and public debates about the relationship between Islam and modernity. Seldom, however, have commentators attended to the ways in which Shariati's intellectual followers in post-revolutionary Iran have read his thought in relation to the condition, content, and negotiation of modernity in Iran and other contemporary Muslim societies. This dissertation seeks to address

In November 1998, the United Nations General Assembly adopted resolution 53/22 naming the year 2001 as The UN Year of Dialogue among Civilizations. The United States government was unwilling even to give the appearance of international cooperation by engaging the international community in any formal or informal dialogue. The dialogue thesis which emerged in the latter half of the 1990s was seen as a direct rejection of the theory of clash, and a challenge to the end of history thesis. Many cont

This article examines the development of a Marxian frame for the critique of religion in twentieth century Iranian political thought by Taqi Erāni and Bizhan Jazani. It argues that, following Marx, Erāni and Jazani understand religion to be a superstructural relic from an earlier stage of human development which will gradually and inevitably withdraw from collective human life as a consequence of the material dialectics of history. It further shows that Erāni and Jazani consider religion to be i

Whereas the existing literature on political Islam has often examined post-Islamism in relation to political and economic liberalism, this intervention foregrounds a variety of post-Islamism that is decidedly Leftist in its political and economic commitments. In so doing, the present article moves away from a conception of post-Islamism as a monolithic project. Instead, the article uses the term in relation to a plurality of conditions and projects in and by which some Muslim individuals and gro

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