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
Fatemeh Sadeghi
Fatemeh Sadeghi is an Iranian researcher and lecturer of political science and gender studies. She is a specialist in political thought, gender studies, Islamic theology and jurisprudence, political thoughts, and Iranian politics. She obtained her PhD in Political Thought in 2004 from Tarbiat Modarres University in Tehran. From 2003 until 2008, she taught as assistant lecturer at the Faculty of Political Science of the Islamic Azad University of Karaj. She was also a co-editor of Goftogu, the Iranian journal of culture and society from 2003 and 2010, and a member of International Center for Dialogue among Civilizations in 2000-2001. Currently she is an O’Brien fellow at the Faculty of Law at McGill University. She has published several books and academic articles in both English and Persian. Her book in English, The Sin of the Woman: The Interrelations of Religious Judgments in Zoroastrianism and Islam (2018) was published by Claus-Schwartz Verlag in Berlin. Her books in Persian include Gender in Ethical Doctrines: From 3 to 9th Century Iran (2013), The Unveiling of the First Pahlavi: Rereading of a Modern Intervention (2013), Women, Power and Resistance in Post-revolutionary Iran (2012), Gender, Nationalism, and Modernity in the First Pahlavi (2006). Her translations from English into Persian include Leila Ahmad’s Women and Gender in Islam: The Historical Roots of a Modern Debate, Agnes Heller’s A Theory of Modernity, Asef Bayat’s Life and Politics, Reza Aslan's Zealot, and Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique.
A Communist Theology? Mostafa Sho‘aiyan’s Political Imaginary
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Iran in 1970th witnesses several leftist guerrilla groups attempting to overthrow the pro-Western regime of the Shah and replace it with a socialist/ communist society. Whereas considerable attention has been paid to prominent leftist leaders and gurillas such Bijan Jazani and Hamid Ashraf, Mostafa Shoayian (1935-1975) remained to be a controversial figure. In his books and pamphlets including Revolution, he has expressed his disagreements with orthodox Marxism of the Fadaiyan Khalq. He believed that avoiding communism and moving into an enemy camp of the working class is an inevitable consequence of the impasse that is called Leninism. Due to his criticisms towards Leninism, Stalinism, and leftist dogmatism, Shoayian was epitomized by the Fadaiyan Khalq as a burgeiose, Amercian marxist and revisionist. He believed that freedom and justice cannot be experienced while we are caught in dogmatism and tyranny. His secret life at the margins of the Left, his theoretical attempt to combine freedom, justice and spirituality, and his hope and commitment to a just society deserves a particular attention, especially at the time,when millions of people today are stuck in neo-liberal conditions of abject misery and abuse, exploited by tyrants, suffer in silence, and are fearful that resistance will make the unbearable even worse.
The question this paper attempts to answer is: what, if any, is the relevance and significance of Shoayian as a revolutionary thinker for contemporary debates on freedom and justice, particularly forty years after the Iranian Revolution and its failure to bring about a free and just society? What are the significant aspects of his intellectual endeavor, not only for the intellectual history of Iran, but also for global contemporary debates and ideas on freedom and justice? And what are the limitations and barriers he faced in his intellectual but also secret life?