Dr. Ali Shariati

Dr. Ali Shariati is one of the most influential Iranian Muslim intellectuals who during the ups and downs of the Islamic Revolution of Iran, left a great impact on the popular revolutionary movement of the Iranians. Dr. Ali Mazinani-Shariati, famously known as Ali Shariati was born on 3 December 1933 in Kahak, Razavi Khorasan, a village in Sabzevar County, Razavi Khorasan Province. His father, Mohammad-Taqi Mazinani (1907-1987) was a religious scholar. Dr. Shariati completed his elementary education at ibn Yamin Primary school and his secondary education at Ferdowsi High School in Mashhad. Before he received his diploma, he joined the Teacher’s Training College in Mashhad where he obtained a degree in education . After completing his studies in this centre in 1952, he was employed at Khorasan Cultural Office and taught at Katebpour School in the Ahmadabad district in Mashhad. Later on, in 1956, he joined the faculty of Literature at Ferdowsi University in Mashhad to pursue Persian literature.

In 1959, he emerged as the top student. Based on the educational regulations during that era, the students who obtained the best grades were given a scholarship to continue with their studies abroad in foreign universities. Therefore, Dr. Shariati went to France and studied at the Paris-Sorbonne University. In 1963, he translated a section of the book “The History of the Virtues of Balkh” (Tārikh Faḍā’il Balkh) into French as his doctorate thesis and obtained his Ph.D. certificate in the faculty of history and returned to Iran. For a while, he worked as a teacher in the schools of the villages of Toroq and Mashhad. Late, he worked as an expert in textbook studies and planning in Tehran.

He participated in an assistant professor examination at Ferdowsi University and obtained the position of assistant history professor at that university and began teaching. Some years later, in 1971, he resigned from teaching at the university and was forced into retirement. In 1977, he went to Europe to study and do more research. However, he passed away on the 19^th of June, 1977 in his home on the outskirts of London. He was buried on the 22^nd of June, 1977 in a cemetery close to the holy shrine of Sayyidah Zaynab (a) in Damascus, the capital city of Syria. His body was later on transferred to Iran.

In 1958, Dr. Shariati married Fatemeh Pouran Shariati-Razavi who was his classmate in the faculty of literature. They were blessed with four children namely: Ehsan, Sousan, Sara and Mona.

Dr. Shariati wrote several articles, books and delivered many lectures, all of which had an intellectual aspect and this attracted the attention of many people, especially the youth, university students and fighters against the imperial regime. He initially became acquainted with the Islamic ideologies through his father. In 1944, Mohammad-Taqi Mazinani established a centre for propagating Islamic information in Mashhad to promulgate the Islamic principles. He aimed at countering anti-religious ideas in this manner. At that time, certain ideologies were being promoted by communists and the Tudeh Party in the country and the youth were becoming interested in such ideologies.

Dr. Shariati was also amongst the first students of this centre and he soon started working with his father. While learning about these Islamic teachings and gaining familiarity with the Islamic sciences and knowledge, Ali gained experience with political issues. He even became acquainted with a socialist group that believed in God. Due to the extensive propagation by the communists, this group thought that socialism as the only way of struggling. However, they also believed in God.

After a short time, Dr. Shariati separated from them and at the same time as the commencement of the nationalization of the Iranian oil industry. he joined the popular struggle and became active in the Islamic Association of University Students along with his father. With the defeat of the national government on 19 August 1953 due to the American-British coup d’état, most of the national members were arrested and pressured. Nevertheless, Dr. Shariati went ahead with his activities and began writing articles in the cultural journal “Mashhad” and the newspaper “Khorasan.” Similarly, he also offered his literature program through the local radio station. In 1956, he formed a literary association to support the young and modern poets of Khorasan and poetry and gathered interested young people in this forum.

The regime of Mohammad-Reza Shah Pahlavi considered his activities in line with the political opposition and arrested him and several other people, including his father, in 1957 in Mashhad and took them to Tehran. Dr. Shariati spent some time in prison and after he was freed, he returned to Mashhad. After attaining top marks at the University of Mashhad, he was not able to use the scholarship due to the history of political condemnation by the government. He eventually went to France and while studying, he joined the students who opposed the rule of the Shah and participated in the formation of the second National Front. Moreover, he took the responsibility of the editor-in-chief of the “Iran Azad” monthly journal. He wrote an article under the pseudonym “Sham’e” (an abbreviation of his name – Ali Mazinani-Shariati) in the “Andisheh Jabheh” journal and the Paris letter[GS5] .

Nevertheless, his religious inclination drove him from the National Front towards an organization that had a religious inclination. For this reason, he formed the Freedom Movement of Iran abroad. While studying in Paris, he established a relationship with freedom fighters from other countries, such as freedom fighters from Algeria.

To liberate their country from the shackles of the French colonialism and occupation, Algerians fought against the imperialists. Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) – a combatant intellectual who joined the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) – was among the intellectuals and combatants that Dr. Shariati talked with and consulted. This closeness to the other freedom fighters was to such an extent that it pushed him toward joining the FLN in 1959. In 1961, demonstrations were held in front of the Belgian embassy in France after the death of Patrice Lumumba (1925-1961) – a politician, independence leader and the first Prime Minister of Congo – was announced. Students from other countries participated in those demonstrations and Shariati was among them. This demonstration led to a fight between the people and the French police. Dr. Shariati was among those who were arrested and jailed for a time in the Paris prison.

After attaining his doctorate in 1965, Dr. Shariati returned to Iran. When he arrived in Iran, he was arrested at the Bazargan border and taken to Ghezel Ghaleh Prison. He remained in prison on charges of opposing the Shah’s regime. Later, he returned to Mashhad. His presence in the university as a teacher gave him new opportunities to present his ideas and ideology to the new and zealous generation in the country. Now, with a bag full of new experiences and his incorporation of the revolutionary ideas of Islam, he opened a new horizon for the young generation of the country and attracted enthusiasts with his passionate speeches. It was during these years that the Hoseyniyyeh Ershad Institute in Tehran was constructed and its operators invited Dr. Ali Shariati, along with Ayatollah Mortaza Motahhari, to offer their lectures and teach there.

The presence of Dr. Shariati in the Hoseyniyyeh Ershad Institute led to the further spread of his fame all over the country, and the distance between his periodic meetings was shortened due to the great enthusiasm of his followers. A lot of people from different parts of the country used to gather around to listen to his speeches. From 1970 to 1972, when the SAVAK[1] ordered the shutting down of the Hoseyniyyeh Ershad Institute, he had delivered dozens of lectures and written several volumes of books, which were the result of Dr. Shariati’s continuous activity in which he invited his audience towards self-knowledge and self-return due to his familiarity with the language and culture of the people, as well as his knowledge of religion. Most of Dr. Shariati’s books were printed and published in secret as being in possession of these books was considered a crime by the regime. Owing to this fact, his books were published under pseudonyms, such as Ali Moallem, Ali Mazinani and so on.

In his speeches and books, he considered Islam as a revolutionary ideology and the only way to attain liberation from intellectual and political dependencies and he used to propagate this notion. Regarding the religious ideology and Islamic concepts, Dr. Shariati mostly referred to those religious categories and concepts that had the aspect of exhilaration, epic creation and inculcated a liberation movement. Additionally, by utilizing the ideas of the reformist intellectuals, such as Sayyid Jamaluddin Asadabadi (1839-1897) and Allamah Mohammad-Iqbal Lahori (1877-1938), Dr. Shariati used to repeat the slogan of the people’s return to Islam. According to him, the Islamic Revolutionary Movement needed to rely upon the teachings and concepts of the noble Quran, that is, the fundamental pillar of Islam, more than anything else. Moreover, he believed that this matter needed to be reinforced more than ever before in society.

Dr. Shariati used to consider the cause of the awakening of the Muslims in the present age to be a new approach to the noble Quran as the book of life. He arose during a period of contemporary Iranian history when the world was devoid of spirituality and theism due to the confrontation with the ideology created by human thought, and the Iranian society on the margins of this monotonous world, was rapidly moving towards destruction and non-existence. Nonetheless, due to his correct understanding of his time and because of his religious inclination, Dr. Shariati revived the religious thought.

After the Shah’s regime forced him to stay away from the academic environments of the university and the closure of the Hoseyniyyeh Ershad Institute, Dr. Shariati continued with his cultural activities. He was under pressure from the security apparatus to compromise with the Shah’s government. These measures did not bear any fruit. However, pressure from the security forces upon his family forced Dr. Shariati to identify himself to the SAVAK in September 1973. He remained in the Joint Anti-Sabotage Committee prison[2], which was one of the most dreaded prisons, for eighteen months.

Finally, he was freed through the mediation by the Algerian Foreign Minister Abdul-Latif Ghomayshi to the Shah. This happened at a time when the Shah had visited Algeria to attend a conference of the heads of the OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries). Another reason that also led to his freedom was the widespread pressure from the people, specifically the intellectuals and university students. Nevertheless, the living conditions in the country had become extremely hard for him. It was due to this reason that on the 16 May 1977, by using his passport name – Ali Mazinani – he travelled out of the country towards Europe without creating any frictions with the SAVAK agents. This trip was to be his last one. After Dr. Shariati had moved out of the country, the SAVAK prevented his wife from joining him and eventually, he passed away. With the announcement of Dr. Shariati’s death, many demonstrations were held by university students in the universities. These students expressed their anger while mourning the loss of Dr. Shariati by holding widespread demonstrations.

During the popular demonstrations in 1977 and 1978 when Iran’s Islamic Revolution had reached its climax, protestors held up pictures of Dr. Shariati and carried banners containing his statements such as, “Those who went away (joined the liberation struggle), carried out the mission of Imam al-Husayn (a). Those who remained behind must accomplish the mission of Lady Zaynab (a), otherwise, they will be considered to be Yazidis.”  With his death, which many viewed as a conspiracy by the Shah’s security apparatus to silence one of the enlighteners of society, a new movement was created in the forefronts of the struggle and he was referred to as the martyred teacher of the revolution.

Since there were religious and historical errors in his works and since he was opposed by the scholars of the seminaries, he accepted these criticisms. Moreover, he had emphasized in his will that some of his works needed to be revised and because he did not get an opportunity to do so, the experts should correct them.

He said, “If I am the loneliest person among the lonely ones, there is still God. He is the substitute for those who do not have anything. Curses and congratulations are all meaningless. If all creatures become raging wolves and the horror and resentment fall on me from the sky, you are my eternal and invulnerable source of kindness. Oh, the Eternal Refuge, you can be the substitute for all the helpless ones.”

Three decades after Dr. Shariati’s death, and despite the political changes that have taken place in Iran, his name still resonates in the country, especially in the academic and intellectual centers.

Dr. Ali Shariati has left behind dozens of articles and lectures and 36 books which include: “Red Shi’ism vs. Black Shi’ism,” “Fatimah is Fatimah,” “Ali is a Truth in Mythology,” “The Philosophy of Prayer,” “Falling in the Desert,” the Story of Hasan and his Ladylove,” “One Followed by an Eternity of Zeroes” and many more others.

In most of the cities of Iran, roads and several educational and medical centers have been named after Dr. Ali Shariati.

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