“Ali Shariati and Post-Colonial/Critical Social Theory” – Roundtable Discourse

I was honored to join several other scholars of Ali Shariati in a discussion of Shariati’s life and work. This roundtable convened in remembrance of Shariati’ premature death in 1975, just a four years before the Iranian revolution, which he contributed to. In my presentation, I talked about Shariati’s dialectics of religion, especially as it relates to the Hassan model of religious quietism vs. the Hussain model of religious activism. This modeling of Shi’i emancipatory activism is based on my book, “Ayatollah Khomeini and the Anatomy of the Islamic Revolution in Iran: Towards a Theory of Prophetic Charisma,” which was published by University Press of America. The entire discourse can be found in the two links below, as well as my excerpted presentation.

The presenters included: Sayed Hasan Akhlaq (USA), Dustin J. Byrd, (USA), Seyed Javad Miri (Iran), Michael Naughton (UK), Mehdi Shariati (USA), Esmaeil Zeiny (Malaysia)