Behrouz Ghamari-Tabrizi
Professor of Near Eastern Studies and Director of the Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies at Princeton University
Behrouz Ghamari-Tabrizi
Professor of Near Eastern Studies and Director of the Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies at Princeton University
Babak Rahimi is the associate professor of Communication, Culture and Religion and the director of the Program for the Study of Religion at UC San Diego. His monograph, Theater-State and Formation of the Early Modern Public Sphere in Iran: Studies on Safavid Muharram Rituals, 1590-1641 C.E. (Brill 2011), traces the origins of the Iranian public sphere in the early-seventeenth century Safavid Empire with a focus on the relationship between state-building, urban space and ritual culture. Rahimi is also the co-editor (David Faris) of Social Media in Iran (SUNY Press 2015) also (Armando Salvatore and Roberto Tottoli) The Wiley Blackwell History of Islam (Wiley Blackwell). His articles have appeared in Thesis Eleven: Critical Theory and Historical Sociology, International Political Science Review, International Communication Gazette, International Journal of Middle East Studies, The Middle East Journal, The Communication Review, and Journal of the International Society for Iranian Studies. Rahimi has been a visiting scholar at the Internet Institute, University of Oxford (2010) and the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania (2012). He was also a Senior Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace, Washington DC (2005-2006). Rahimi’s research interests concern the relationship between the public sphere, technology and modernity. The historical and social contexts that inspire his research range from early modern Islamicate societies to the Global South.
Mohammad Nakhshab and the Invention of Socialist Theism
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This study is an attempt to provide an account of political philosophy of Mohammad Nakhshab (1923-1970), the co-founder of the Movement of God-Worshipping Socialists (Nazhat Khoda Parastan-i Sosialist) in 1943. While known as the first Iranian thinker to synthesize Shi’ism and socialism, Nakhshab’s political philosophy articulates an innovative reconceptualization of Shi’i Islam through critical appropriation of socialist modernity and its technoscientific implications for world progress. Nakhshab’s “investigative socialism” (sosiyaliste-h tahghighi), the paper argues, is a radical take on human agency by which critical hermeneutic of purposeful action for self-rule becomes realized based on an ethical world-view (jahan-bini) for social justice. By way of outlining Nakhshab’s philosophy, the study lays out a three-part dimension of materiality, vitality and metaphysics for social action as the foundation for social democracy. It argues that central to Nakhshab is the vitality of human self-interpretation in which action becomes possible in terms of dialects of mater, life and spirit of which socialism as its highest expression defies mechanical determinism but more importantly claims human sovereignty. Far from collectivist politics and Soviet-state socialism, Nakhshab’s political vision is one of democratic socialism grounded in Shi’i conception of social justice in a call for mobilization through party politics. The paper is divided in two sections. The first section studies Nakhshab’s philosophical writings, especially his critique of dialectic materialism; the second section considers his narrative of political parties, especially the notion of “hokomat-e mardom be mardom,” manifested as God-worshiping socialism. It finally argues that Nakhshab’s project for homegrown democratic socialism in Iran is reflective of a distinct post-colonial politics that emerged in the post-war Global South, as capitalism and decolonization accelerated along with new forms of grass-roots politics which Iranian Socialists Theists activity participated.