Ali Shariati: Islamizing Socialism and Socializing Islam

Abstract

In this article, I argue that Ali Shariati was a socialist and a religious thinker at the same time. In order to fulfill his mission as a revolutionary thinker who is based largely on Marx, Shariati maintained that he should weaken the link between his thoughts and traditional Marxism or some aspect of them especially the Materialist basis of Marxism. While Shariati establishes his arguments largely on Marxist tools and analysis, he tried to entwine them (and other western philosophies) with Islam, and to insist on the metaphysical basis of his worldview. He formulated his Tawhīd theory to merge between Existential-Marxism and Islam as a total Ideology of action and a vital world-view that he believed in, instead of the institutional static religion of the clergy.