Essay On Ali Shariati

Ali Shariati is a Shi’a Muslim living in Iran. Iran is an Islamic country to which majority is Shi’ite. Shariati is a revolutionary thinker, philosopher activist and one of the brilliant modern interpreters of Islam. He was described by Muhammad Tariq as, “a reactionary fanatic who rejects anything new without knowledge nor he was an intellectual imitating the western perspectives without his independent judgement (Tariq, n.d.)”. He studied Islam and presented an Islamic critiques in response to the young Muslims who are being influenced by the western thoughts of capitalism or Marxism.

He is also tagged as the intellectual ideologue of the Iranian revolution. The Iranian revolution which happened in 1979 was one of the most significant event in the history of the Iranians. Westerners commonly perceive the Iranian as an outdated and intolerant movement that rejects all things modern and non-Muslim. They claim that the revolution leads the revival of Islam, and that the revolutionary movement is a realistic phenomenon uncontaminated by any foreign

His father named Mohammad Taqi Shariati was a reform minded cleric and lived his life by doing lecture in his own religious hall (Bayat, a: 1990). His father strong advocacy for reforms in Iran had influenced Shariati’s intellectual mind the most. Despite their family including his father being shiites, the conservative Ulama of Iran accused his father as a Sunni Muslim and a Wahhabi (Abrahamian, 1982). Wahabbi the ideologue of Sunni Saudi Arabia, is Iran’s enemy in terms of propagation of religion due to some differences although both are Muslims. The major difference between Sunni and Shi’a is the issue of who succeeds Prophet Muhammad. For Sunnis, Ali was simply a central figure in early Islam and should be revered as such. However, Shiites argued that the Prophet had intended for Ali and later Ali’s sons to succeed him in leading the Muslims (Ostovar,