AN ISLAMIC UTOPIAN

The political biography of Ali Shariati, considered by many as the ideological father of the Iranian revolution of 1979, is not only an account of one person’s life but of the cultural, social and political conditions that reared him. Ali Shariati’s life spans the highly sensitive period of change during which a conscious effort was made by the Pahlavi dynasty to push Iran from its presumed traditional status towards a Western-defined state of modernity. A product of the transformation initiated by Reza Shah, during the reign of Mohammed Reza Shah, Ali Shariati became actively involved in, and was greatly influenced by, the multifarious changes that Iranian society underwent in terms of economics, politics, ethics, culture, poetry, prose, flm, journalism and even religion. A synthesis of many contradictory currents, Shariati became an instrumental figure in the fall of the Pahalvi dynasty. In this respect, his life reflects the convulsions of a culturally rich and historically ancient society confronted with the tides of changing times.

A society in a state of flux witnesses new alignments. Ideas and positions become polarized and those convinced of the absolute truth of their own arc at a disadvantage when it comes to synthesis. Those in favour of an ideal modernity at all costs become as inflexible in their assessment of what is and what ought to be as those who cling to a traditional religion as their last defence in the face of pressing necessities. True believers, fixed in their ways, they never question. For Iranians, the genuine need for modernity and the struggle to protect Islam became a contradictory dilemma. Modernity was westward-looking, change-oriented and anti-traditional, while Islam was the formal cornerstone of society’s established traditional values, a deeply-valued reliable cultural heritage. For a majority of intellectuals, Islam and modernity presented a trade-off. The choice of a path to modernity – economic, political, and ideological – posed itself only after modernity was pursued at the cost of religion. This clash of powerful contradictory ideas left a few intellectuals – a third group who sought a union of opposites – in a limbo of uncertainty. Ali Shariati was of this group.

In his youth, and later in his active life, Shariati’s praxis was the testing ground of his beliefs. Even though his vision of the ideal society was formed relatively early in his life, the method and approach of attaining that ideal underwent considerable transformation. Over the years Shariati came to believe in – and in turn to reject – just about every way of political struggle available to the activist. Trial and error proved that certain modes of political action thought to be impossible in a particular socio-political environment could prove to be viable and effective under special circumstances. In these particular circumstances, never clearly discernable in advance, truisms in social sciences are there to be refuted. Who would have thought that open political agitation in speeches, articles and books would be permitted or neglected in a state which could not tolerate the least criticism?

To understand Shariati the man, one has to understand the spirit and customs of his time and place. In his society chivalry, honour and sacrifice were virtues. Sacrifice in the pursuit of honour incurs pain. The pleasure of pain and longing becomes the motor of life. In this society worthy men are those who have a pain, who live with it and never directly divulge it. It is the inward and outward scars that make a man. The hedonistic happy-go-luckys are boys who need to mature. In this tradition, romontic youth fall in love not to consumate their love, but to cherish the longing and the pain. This is the Oriental conception of a Platonic love. The creativity and originality that the pain causes pours itself into the poems, prose and sketches that young men such as Shariati produced. Shariati’s poetry, romantic, political, or self-destructive, recounted the story of a pain. His sentimental romantic stories and his visionary Sufi words of ecstacy, were all narratives of longing and the heart-warming feeling of unfulfilled metaphysical love. Revolutioniaries of all kinds; practitioners, intellectuals or preachers, are lovers of utopias and display all symptoms of an earthly lover at a metaphysical level. This is why Shariati always thought that even Marxist revolutionaries willing to die for a cause, were metaphysical idealists who were willing to sacrifice their most precious material belonging for an ideal cause.

The trajectory of Shariati’s life resembles that of a generation of provincial young men who, by chance or divine providence, were sent to Europe on government scholarships. In Shariati’s case, the cultural experience added to his other contradictory currents. Yet Shariati’s curiosity allowed him to absorb all that went on around him in Europe. He observed and learnt, without losing sight of his objective – the synthesis of modernity and religion as the solution to the problems of his country. His skepticism and uncertainty bred a bold inquisitiveness. His receptivity to new ideas allowed him to articulate a new language. Shariati’s words and concepts, which later impregnated minds and moved crowds, were nothing but the readily comprehensible synthesis of the many everyday theories and debates that he had heard. His patched-up doctrine was a redefined amalgam of different paradigms. Yet his language and his paradigm penetrated the minds and hearts of his audience. Shariati always spoke of the pain – his own – that he had to cry out. His mesmerizing political speeches were an echo of a political, economic and religious system that pained him.

When I began my research for this book I had no predisposition, value-judgement or bias concerning Shariati. Convinced of his impact on the young and of his subsequent intellectual influence on the turn of events in Iran, I simply wished to understand the man and his life. The more I learnt about him, the more I was intrigued by his complexity and the aura of enigma surrounding him. I am neither judge nor prosecutor and certainly not the jury. I have tried to reconstruct a life on the basis of the information I have obtained. Wherever possible this has been double-checked. Where controversial episodes are discussed, opposing views have been presented. So far as the use of information available to me is concerned, as an Iranian I am still proudly bound by certain invisible cultural covenants. Cheap journalistic scoops cannot make up for low quality intellectual products.

In the process of my research in Iran, I came across a young, heavily bearded book-seller who, after testing my intentions, not only found me a three-volume rare collection written by one of Shariati’s clerical detractors, but even offered to introduce me to the author. Before handing me the books, he said, "So much is being said about Shariati, yet I have never honestly understood this man. Was he a saint or the devil himself? If you shed some light on him, I would receive my real recompense (ajr)." I promised to do my best.