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Thinkers

Ali Shariati

Islamic · Middle East · 1933 to 1977

Iranian thinker who held that faith should be a force for freedom and justice, and who called for a committed, active religion.

What it is

Ali Shariati (1933 to 1977) was an Iranian intellectual who wrote and lectured on the sociology of religion and the history of Islam, and who criticised the rule of the shah. He was born at Mazinan, studied at the University of Mashhad and took a doctorate in Paris, and he died in England in June 1977, a little before the Iranian revolution of 1979.

His central claim was that Shia Islam, properly understood, is a force for social justice and progress and not a quiet inheritance. He argued for a faith that takes part in the struggles of its own time.

The main ideas

  • A faith that acts. He held that Shia Islam carries a revolutionary spirit, and that believers are called to work for justice.
  • A faith that can be corrupted. He thought this spirit was lost when the religion became an institution tied to political power, and that it had to be recovered.
  • Against some clerics. He criticised some of the clergy and other conservative religious leaders, which brought him trouble from them as well as from the government.
  • Against cultural domination. He opposed the shah's policy of Westernising the country, and he held that a people could resist foreign domination by recovering its own cultural identity.

What it looks like in practice

Imagine a young student in Tehran in the early 1970s who has been told that religion is only private prayer. Shariati would invite that student to ask what the founders of the faith did about poverty and power, and to see belief as a reason to act. This is an illustration of his way of arguing, not a passage from his writing.

Books and moments

  • Paris. His years there brought him into contact with the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and with Iranian students who opposed the regime.
  • 1964. Back in Iran, he was jailed. Later he taught at Mashhad and then in Tehran.
  • Husayniya-yi Irshad. At this centre of religious education in Tehran his lectures drew large and eager audiences, especially among the young.
  • Prison and exile. He was imprisoned again for eighteen months, and in 1977 he left for England.
  • June 1977. He died in England soon after arriving. His supporters blamed the Iranian security service, SAVAK; a biographer cited elsewhere reports a heart attack, and the circumstances remain unclear.

Questions and criticism

  • How much did he shape the revolution? One account says his teaching laid the foundation for the 1979 revolution, another says he is called its ideologue though his ideas did not become the basis of the state that followed. It is fair to ask which description fits.
  • Criticism from the clergy. Many religious leaders disagreed with his attacks on parts of the clergy, so his reading of his own faith remains contested.
  • His death. Whether he died of natural causes or was killed has not been settled.

Close neighbours

The page on Jean-Paul Sartre shows the philosopher he met in Paris, and the page on Jamal al-Din al-Afghani shows an earlier Muslim thinker who also joined faith to politics.

Written by epchē in our own words, and checked against independent sources on 29 October 2026. The sources are listed below.

Who they connect to

Influenced by

  • Frantz Fanon · He translated Fanon's writing into Persian and used his ideas about liberation.

Other Islamic thinkers

Sources we used

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