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
Mahmood Exiri Fard
Mahmood Exiri Fard is a PhD student of sociology at the University of Alberta. He did his masters in American cultural studies and his BA in social sciences both at the University of Tehran. His research interests are in the area of Theory and Culture. He has worked on Marx and Freud. He has also worked on the first generation of the Frankfurt School Critical Theory as well as French poststructural theorists and contemporary Marxian and Freudian thinkers. He has recently focused on fetishism and fashion in contemporary capitalism. Mahmood has translated a number of works by continental thinkers into Persian, including Foucault, Baudrillard and Bauman’s essays as well as Max Horkheimer’s book Eclipse of Reason.
“Religion Against Religion”: Ali Shariati on the Dialectic of Religion
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This paper presents Ali Shariati’s view on religion. It specifically focuses on a rereading of one of his talk titled “Religion Against Religion” which was shortly published as a book. Shariati used a dialectical method in his historical inquiries. Shariati’s dialectic mainly relies on Marx and Sartre; yet, it reveals Hegelian elements as well. A Hegelian reading can help understand aspects of Shariati’s thought. This paper examines Shariati’s concept of religion through Hegel’s notion of dialectic and his idea of Aufhebung (sublation). I will trace Shariati’s view on the dialectical movement of religion through which religion bends on itself in order to universalize itself by transcending socio-historical particularities. I will argue that according to Shariati religions initially emerge as emancipatory and oppositional forces which give voice to the suffering of the masses. Yet, gradually the very religion, which appears as an essential movement of freedom, is absorbed into the dominant relations of power and turns into an instrument of justification and unfreedom. However, religion does not forfeit its fundamental momentum: while religion is assimilated into present social structures, it still reserves an internal dialectic. This dialectical impulse gives birth to a counter-religion which opposes the dominant religion in the name of a truth which has been distorted in the latter. This counter-religion claims to be a new religion; it shows traits of the Hegelian idea of Aufhebung, as it abolishes, cancels and annuls the dominant religion and, at the same time, preserves the latter’s essence on a higher level. A new religion is born. The new religion, which is initially perceived as heresy or disbelief, claims to be more authentic. However, over the time, the new religion bears the same fate: it is ingested by dominant socio-political systems of the epoch. Yet the dialectical movement of religion persists and new forms of religiosity are instigated in infinite cycles. Therefore, the endless dialectical rebirths of religion, which continuously evoke a novel form of religion against older forms, act as a guarding drive which preserves the universality of religion against historical particularities.
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