Ali Shariati Quotes on Politics
Ali Shariati (1933–1977) — the Iranian sociologist and Shi‘i revolutionary intellectual whose lectures at the Hosseiniyeh Ershad in Tehran shaped the ideological climate of the 1979 Iranian Revolution — gave twentieth-century political philosophy of Islam its most influential synthesis of Shi‘i theology with the revolutionary categories of European critical thought. The central project, developed across Religion vs. Religion, Red Shi‘ism vs. Black Shi‘ism, and the lectures collected in On the Sociology of Islam, recasts the foundational episodes of Shi‘i sacred history (the martyrdom of Husayn at Karbala, the Imamate, the awaited return of the Mahdi) as templates for revolutionary political action against tyrannical regimes and the imperial-capitalist global order that sustains them. The framework, drawing on Frantz Fanon, Sartre, and Massignon alongside the classical Shi‘i tradition, shaped the ideology of the Iranian Revolution and the broader twentieth-century political Islam.
Quotes
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Attributed to Ali Shariati:
“There is the religion of the oppressed, and there is the religion of the oppressor; do not mistake them for each other.”
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Attributed to Ali Shariati:
“Islam is a movement before it is a creed.”
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Attributed to Ali Shariati:
“The intellectual must descend from the academy to the street.”
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Attributed to Ali Shariati:
“Tawhid is not only metaphysics; it is the political principle of human unity.”
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“Party ,' in the general vocabulary of world intellectuals, is basically a unified social organization with a ' world-view ,' an ' Ideology ,' a 'philosophy of history,' and 'ideal social order,' a 'class foundation,' a 'class orientation,' a 'social leadership,' a ' political philosophy ,' a 'political orientation,' a 'tradition,' a 'slogan,' a 'strategy,' a "tactic of struggle," and … a "hope" that wants to change the "status quo" in man, society, people, or a particular class, and establish the "desired status" in its stead.”
Ali Shariati, in: The Islamic Quarterly, Vol. 27-29, (1983), p. 215; as quoted in: Ali Mirsepassi (2000), Intellectual Discourse and the Politics of Modernization, p. 126. -
“Party ,' in the general vocabulary of world intellectuals, is basically a unified social organization with a ' world-view ,' an ' Ideology ,' a 'philosophy of history,' and 'ideal social order,' a 'class foundation,' a 'class orientation,' a 'social leadership,' a ' political philosophy ,' a 'political orientation,' a 'tradition,' a 'slogan,' a 'strategy,' a "tactic of struggle," and … a "hope" th”
Ali Shariati, in: The Islamic Quarterly, Vol. 27-29, (1983), p. 215; as quoted in: Ali Mirsepassi (2000), Intellectual Discourse and the Politics of Modernization, p. 126. -
“Islam is the first school of social thought that recognizes the masses as the basis, the fundamental and conscious factor in determining history and society not the elect as Nietzsche thought, not the aristocracy and nobility as Plato claimed, nor great personalities as Carlyle and Emerson believed, not those of pure blood as Alexis Carrel imagined, not the priests or the intellectuals , but the m”
p. 49; as cited in: Ali Mirsepassi (2000) Intellectual Discourse and the Politics of Modernization, p. 126. -
“In the world view of tauhid , man fears only one power, and is answerable before only one judge. He turns to only one qibla, and directs his hopes and desires to only one source. And the corollary is that all else is false and pointless all the diverse and variegated tendencies, strivings, fears, desires and hopes of man are vain and fruitless.”
p. 97; partly cited in: John L. Esposito (1996) Islam and Democracy. p. 25.