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
Kara Abdolmaleki
Kara Abdolmaleki holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Alberta. His dissertation was titled ‘A Robin Redbreast’ in an ‘Iron Cage’: Revisiting the Intellectual Movement of Dissent in Iran between the 1953 Coup and the 1979 Revolution. It examines Romanticist and critical counter-Enlightenment propensities in Iranian fiction, poetry, and film. Kara completed his master's and bachelor’s degrees in English Literature at the University of Tehran and Kurdistan University, Iran. In Canada, he collaborated with several journals including The Canadian Review of Comparative Literature and Inquire Journal of Comparative Literature in various capacities. His work has appeared in the International Journal of Iranian Studies, Film International, Parsagon, and The Guardian. His research interests include Iranian cinema, literature, and culture as well as postcolonial and Critical Theory.
Intimations of a Civil Mysticism in Ali Shariati’s Erfan
​
Ali Shariati’s thought can be distilled into a tripartite doctrine of Erfan [Mysticism], Barabari [Equality], and Azadi [freedom], which he proposes as an antidote to the tripartite malady of the brave new world: Zar [capital], Zur [coercion], and Tazvir [duplicity] (Shariati, Revolutionary Self-improvement 80-83). Erfan is an indispensable and intrinsic aspect of Shariati’s thought. Distinct from the conventional hermetic and reclusive conception, Shariati’s mysticism does not shun political and social engagement and does not romanticize an imaginary past. It is progressive, not retrograde and revolutionary, not disengaged.
This paper seeks to revisit the concept in Shariati’s thought and theorize it within a critical counter-enlightenment context. Shariati’s mysticism is “civil” (Manouchehri), “post-religious,” socially engaged, and conducive to “a spiritual social democracy” (Mahdavi; Vakily). For neo-shariatis, erfan is interpreted as an “attempt to articulate a discourse of indigenous modernity on the basis of a spiritual ontology and a progressive public religiosity [which] represents a poignant challenge and an alternative vision to Enlightenment modernity’s positivist and secularist legacy” (Saffari). Spirituality, in this context, serves as a “strong impetus for the recognition of difference, respect for the other, and solidarity with the marginalized and the oppressed” (Saffari).
As a contribution to that literature, this study seeks to investigate whether civil mysticism can be fostered by more research and theorization into a critical counter-enlightenment theory and a prospective cosmopolitan alternative to instrumental rationality. Can this mystical worldview become more than an attitude that would exist on the margins of, and in symbiosis with, enlightenment modernity? Does it hold the potential to develop into a new mode of thought, an epistemic alternative to fundamentally transform humanity’s relationship with nature towards a more harmonious co-existence? What are the affinities between civil mysticism and Critical Theory, particularly Horkheimer and Adorno’s unsettling of Enlightenment in its mathematization, “subjugation”, and destruction of nature? In short, this paper adds its voice to the call by the critical counter-Enlightenment tradition for a ‘re-enchantment’ of the world and the laying of the foundation of an ontologically moral approach towards nature and humans.
​
​
​
​
​