Man & Islam

By Ali Shari'ati

Man and Islam is a series of seven lectures which were given by Shari'ati in different universities in Iran, In this series he analysis the philosophy of the creation of man, Islamic world-view, the limitations of the material world,and the responsibility of man in the scheme of the universe.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jul 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781483555508

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Preface by the Publisher

There is a saying by the Holy Prophet Muhammad that at the beginning of each age, God will send among the people a reformer who will revive His religion after its death. Along with this tradition comes the reassurance of God’s covenant to manifest His Guidance among mankind until it reaches its final hour. Although some have answered to such divine promise, fewer are those who bequeath to humanity the practical formulae to nurture it toward its highest ideals. When such men do arrive, their lives do not miss those precious opportunities to touch our innermost spirit, and arouse within us an insatiable thirst to eclipse former precedents and explore new frontiers. Upon their departure is left a legacy of immense value which never erodes with time, but becomes more appreciable as humanity evolves in its relentless search for the meaning of life.

Such a man was Dr. Ali Shari’ati, an extraordinary creative genius, who possessed an enormous oratory and literary power that brought new life and permanency to the Islamic movement. Anyone who is inspired to know this great mujahid must study the chronicles of his illustrious life and refer to the vast collection of his prolific writings and lectures he left behind for the world.

Dr. Shari’ati was born in 1933, in Mazinan village, a small suburb of Mashhad, Iran. His was essentially an agrarian background with a domestic environment that was intensely religious. He completed both his elementary and high school education in Mashhad. Academically, he excelled in every scholastic challenge he encountered, mastering the most intricate details of every curricula in a minimum period of time. Such scholastic prowess typified all of his subsequent educational endeavors.

After graduating from high school, and having a profound-love for the teaching profession, he attended the Teacher’s Training College in Mashhad, where, after two years of study, earned his certification as an instructor. Thus, he set a pattern that remained with him throughout his life—a student and teacher concurrently.

Having a profound sense of humanity by nature and a strong perception of the corrupt social and political climate coloring the Iranian society, it was inevitable that Dr. Shari’ati would discover his place in the vanguard of the human rights’ struggle. It was during the brief period of Dr. Mussadegh’s ascendancy to power that the young Shari’ati, in the company of his father, Muhammad Taqi Shari’ati (a finished scholar and teacher of prominence), first became actively involved in the political struggle against foreign domination. But after the success of the infamous U.S. engineered coup d’etat of 1953, which toppled the Mussadegh government and restored the Peacock Throne, he soon joined the famous National Resistance Movement underground. This movement was founded by Ayatullah Talaghani and Prof. Mehdi Bazargan the same year. Shari’ati was soon to become the most outspoken activist in this movement, which was formed with the aim of providing a viable defense against the excesses of Western imperialism in Iran.

In 1957, he and his father, along with 14 other members of NRM, were arrested, interrogated, harassed by SAVAK (the CIA/Zionist-trained Iranian secret police). Unshakened by the opposition’s growing antagonism towards the increasingly popular NRM, Shari’ati assisted his father in founding the Center for the Propagation of Islamic Principles in Mashhad. This Center became an important ideological base for active and intellectual Muslims. It was here that the Qur’an as a central focus of teaching, studying and propagating the teachings of Islam in a logical, scientific and progressive way was expounded in great depth. Shari’ati became one of the Center’s leading teachers and spokesmen, organizing and chairing numerous meetings on the commentary of the Qur’an and other Islamic ideological discussions. His lectures were so masterful and invigorating that the Center quickly attracted large numbers from the ranks of students and intellectuals. It was also during this period that his career as a writer began to blossom with the publishing of works such as the Median School, a popular treatise on the philosophy of ideologies.

In 1960, after graduating within the top third of his class, he received his bachelor’s degree in Persian literature from the University of Mashhad. His relentless pursuit of higher education took him to Paris, France, where he was awarded a scholarship to the University of Sorbonne. His five-year residency in Paris was perhaps the most critical period in broadening his social and philosophic vision. It was a period characterized by deep thought and intense activity. During his tenure as a student at the Sorbonne, he benefited immensely from the works of great thinkers such as Albert Camus, Jean Paul Sarte, Gurwitsch and Islamic experts like Louis Massignon. His study of the works and ideas of different philosophers and writers, as well as his close association with them during his stay in Europe, inspired him to develop fresh ideas of his own and a broader sense of creative expression.

His exposure to various schools of Western social and philosophical thought, along with the sound Islamic wisdom he acquired from a pure and noble lineage, enabled him to introduce a new dimension to the Islamic movement—a world-view that was more responsive to the temporal requirements of contemporary societies. This new world-view of Islam addressed itself to the need for a sound ideological conception and a clear perception of the dynamics of the real world; a prerequisite for constructing any social order rooted in Tauhid (Oneness of God).

With the same enthusiasm and dedication to the service of Islam that characterized his early student years in Iran, Dr. Shari’ati, along with Dr. Ebrahim Yazdi, and Dr. Mustafa Chamran, established an organization called the Liberation Movement of Iran Abroad in 1960. This movement was the sister organization of the Liberation Movement of Iran, established earlier the same year by Ayatullah Talaghani, Prof. Mehdi Bazargan and Prof. Yadullah Sahabi. The activities of LMI later played a vital role in the success of imparting pure political and Islamic ideology to tens of thousands of Iranian students studying outside Iran. In August of 1962, Shari’ati and his colleagues organized a second National Front abroad. Under its auspices, and with the help of its like-minded persons, he published one of the most widely read Persian-language journals in Europe called, Free Iran. What made this journal such an effective organ was that the content of its articles harmonized the perspectives of the intellectuals abroad with the realities of the peoples’ struggle within Iran.

Dr. Shari’ati’s stay in France was during the height of the Algerian Revolution. There, he followed the movement very closely and viewed its anti-imperialist struggle to be comparable to the one developing in Iran. Particularly impressed by the social, political and psychological analyses borne by this struggle, Shari’ati worked closely with the Algerian Mujahideen and made valuable contributions to their cause. He also wrote articles for El-Moudjahid, the official organ of the Algerian Liberation Front.

The intensity of the revolutionary struggle in Algeria sent shock waves that were felt throughout France and made Shari’ati and the Algerian Mujahideen in Paris the target of systematic harassment by the French police. On one occasion, the police raided a meeting which Shari’ati was attending with members of the Algerian Mujahideen. The police conducted such a vicious and brutal attack that the injuries Shari’ati sustained necessitated his being hospitalized for three weeks.

Dr. Shari’ati gained significant experiences as a result of his interactions with Dr. Frantz Fanon, the Algerian spokesman, while he was residing in Paris. So impressed was Shari’ati with this young psychiatrist, for both his revealing analyses of the racist character of French imperialism and his unwavering sacrifices in helping shape the dynamics of the Algerian struggle, that he was inspired to translate into Persian several of Fanon’s works, including highlights of one of his most memorable literary achievements—The Wretched of the Earth. Thanks to Shari’ati’s warm recommendation of Fanon to the Iranian people, more of his works were studied and translated in Iran by many discriminating students and intellectuals.

Upon completion of his graduate studies in Paris in 1964, where he received doctorate degrees in sociology and the history of religions, Shari’ati returned to Iran only to learn that he would spend the remainder of his life as a target of contempt by a nefarious regime that grew increasingly apprehensive of not only his vibrant intellectual and revolutionary prowess, but of his potential for shaping what was inevitably to become a new social consciousness among the youth of his nation. Almost immediately, after arriving at the Iran-Turkey border, Shari’ati was, on orders by the Shah, arrested and imprisoned by the Iranian police in response to his political activities in France. For the next six months he braved the ordeal with matchless fortitude and patient perseverance.

After his release from prison, he went to Tehran where he embarked upon the arduous task of awakening the masses with the vast treasure of Islamic knowledge he had acquired over the years. Such an awakening bore ominous consequences for the future of the Pahlavi regime and the voracious interests of its imperialist masters. Hence, every attempt by Ali Shari’ati to seek employment within the realm of his expertise was precluded by the government, despite the fact that there were vacancies for various teaching assignments fitted to his qualifications. At one point, he even offered to accept the salary normally paid a teacher on the primary level, but even this magnanimous gesture was rejected.

Confronted with this stalemate, he went back to Mashhad where the best he could manage was a job as a high school teacher. His new position at the high school did not dampen his spirit, nor frustrate his desire to fulfull his objectives. During the evenings, he participated in lectures at the University of Mashhad and soon won the respect and admiration from the majority of its student body. After pressure exerted by the students, who campaigned and petitioned for his acceptance by the school’s administration, the school’s principal was forced to accept him as a member of the faculty. But the University was displeased by this open-arm reception Shari’ati received from the students. Soon, this displeasure grew into open hostility, which resulted in his forced retirement from that institution.

After his departure from Mashhad University, he moved back to Tehran where he established the famed and celebrated Husseineh Ershad religious center. By means of free lectures, classes and distribution of books on social and religious topics conducted at the center, he was more effective in his efforts to impart guidance and direction to Iran’s young generation. The activities at the Husseineh Ershad ushered in a new wave of thinking for the youth of Iran in particular and the society as a whole. So much in demand was Shari’ati, that books compiling his lectures and writings were printed at a number no less than 100,000 copies. In a country where no previous new publication numbered more than 5,000, such a large printing was a clear indication of the unprecedented popularity of the message of Shari’ati.

The Shah’s regime, monitoring the growth and the popular appeal for Shari’ati, and fearful of the imminent erosion of its fascist dictatorship over the masses, closed the Husseineh Ershad and captured the elder Shari’ati after an aborted attempt to arrest his son. When the younger Shari’ati learned of the plight of his father, he immediately offered himself to SAVAK in exchange for his father’s release. Refusing this bid, SAVAK committed both of them to prison, where they were subjected to brutal torture and interrogation. Subsequently, the elder Shari’ati was released and Ali Shari’ati remained in prison for the next 18 months.

The cumulative effects of Shari’ati’s revolutionary activities in Iran had now become an integral component in the vehicle that would ultimately carry the objectives of the Islamic movement toward their fruition. The fire had been kindled. The entire nation would soon become an inferno of revived Islamic spirit and revolutionary consciousness, which would completely dismantle the Pahlavi regime. News of his incarceration triggered letters of protest and outrage from influential friends and supporters at home and abroad. Much of the pressure for his freedom was received from prominent intellectual circles and humanitarian organizations in Europe and Algeria. These appeals flooded the Algerian government with such regularity and great number that their impact moved Algeria to exert enough diplomatic pressure on Iran to release him in 1975.

But Shari’ati’s new found freedom amounted to no more than a token gesture of appeasement by a dictatorship anxious to escape the wrath of international condemnation. The Shah placed him under house arrest and tight surveillance for the next two years. Unable to publicly lecture or publish his writings, he was compelled to flee the country in 1977. His miraculous and successful escape, which took him to London, England, was short lived. After enjoying only three weeks of freedom, he was mysteriously martyred on June 19, 1977.

The diabolical nature of the Pahlavi regime together with the gluttonous appetites of its zionist and imperialist masters concocted a bizarre chemistry whose lethal flow stopped at nothing short of obliterating the presence of Islam from every sector of Iranian society. So obsessed were the enemies of truth with the mind of offsetting the profound impact of Shari’ati on the Iranian people, that in addition to their proscription of his writings and lectures, and successful covert designs on his life, they painstakingly undertook a campaign to create, what was in effect, a semblance of alliance between himself and the Shah’s regime. To accomplish this, they began publishing and circulating pro-government or reactionary material under his name. A few even praised him as a champion of human rights and a national hero. But owing to the vigilance of the people, and their determination to no longer succumb to the crafty games of these servants of imperialism, they were able to expose these diabolical schemes of the Shah and his henchmen.

However, the most significant effort at resisting the Shah’s attempts to exploit the death of Shari’ati arose when the regime, after exhausting all of its channels of international influence, failed in its bid to have Shari’ati’s body returned to Iran for a government-sponsored funeral. The success of the efforts in frustrating the regime’s attempts at having the body of Shari’ati returned to Iran, is the result of the courageous, around-the-clock sacrifices of such people as Yazdi, and Chamran, in coordination with the Liberation Movement of Iran Abroad and the Muslim Student Association (P.S.G.). This successful concerted effort resulted in securing the transfer of the body from London to Damascus, Syria, whereupon the renowned Imam Musa Sadr led the funeral prayers. The enormity of the gathering and the emotional intensity on that occasion made it unforgettable. Muslims from all over the world whose lives had been enlightened by Shari’ati’s character, outlook and genius, came to pay their last respects to this champion of Truth.

The international reaction to Shari’ati’s death and the triumphant efforts in resisting all the cynical designs by the Shah to exploit his martydom, could be seen as a major victory for the Islamic revolution for several reasons. First, they provided the first practical indication of the impact of his ideas on influencing the Islamic movement abroad, as well as in Iran. Second, they revealed that through an organized collective mobilization of the masses, on various fronts towards a common objective, the spell of tyranny could be broken. This was evidenced by the fact that a once proud and feared regime that boasted of its invincibility to both internal and external political resistance, was now exposed as a weak and vulnerable apparatus of U.S. imperialism. Third, they seemed to confirm the fulfillment of Shari’ati’s mission to salvage the honor and prestige of a religion that suffered from centuries of stagnation and theological irresponsibility, owing to