Ali Shariati: Critical Social Theory and the Struggle for Decolonization, edited by Dustin J. Byrd and Seyed Javad Miri

Ali Shariati (1933-1977) is best known as a “revolutionary theorist,” closely connected to Iran’s Islamic Revolution of 1979. While his social, political, and religious thought was deeply influential in those turbulent times, Shariati was much more than a political ideologue. A scholar of religion, philosophy, and sociology, Shariati was fluent both in Western and Islamic thought, which allowed him to create some of the most penetrating “critical” thought in the 20^th century, applicable to both the West and the dār al-Islām. While he remains controversial inside his home country, his influence has grown beyond its borders. Today, contemporary theorists are returning to Shariati’s written works, seeing his voluminous writing as a precursor to the decolonization movement, which seeks to emancipate the non-Western world from the vestiges of Western colonial domination. In many ways, Shariati laid the foundation for such emancipatory work through his own struggle against the Shah of Iran and the clerical establishment that supported the status quo. This collection of essays returns to a variety of the Shariati’s core concepts, as it seeks to interrogate them, revitalize them, and engage our own age of strife through these Shariatian perspectives.

Contributors: Dustin J. Byrd, Seyed Javad Miri, Joseph Alagha, Esmaeil Zeiny, Vahideh Sadeghi, Bijan Abdolkarimi, Raewyn Connell, Carimo Mohomed, Tanveer Azamat, Teo Lee Ken, Milad Dokhanchi, Fatemeh Shayan, Ali S. Harfouch, M.S. Kolbadi, and Mohammad Masud Noruzi.

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