Who Is He

by Ali Shariati

  “The tomorrow of the thought, literature and attitudes of our intellectuals will not be weary and wary of religion. We took the Quran from the cemetery back to the city, from the environs of perfumed shrines to the very fabric of life, from the end of the bazaar to the heart of the university, from poetry and poets, from prayers and eulogy, from tears and crying, from machine-like repetitions, from being an unclear, unfunctional thing to being a movement of a conscious, constructive faith which gives power, motion and consciousness, created values and built a new generation, a new age.

  Tomorrow’s Social Movement

  “There is no doubt about the fact that our social movement of tomorrow will be neither a movement based on materialism nor on nationalism. It will be a movement based on Islam—a conscious, progressive Islam whose political party will be formed from the ideology of Islam.

  “These are the principle lines of the clear and determined design which the Husayniyah drew. The generation who will complete it are those who showed their faith, consciousness and power of decision-making in an exemplary manner on that Friday afternoon (when the Husayniyah was closed by the security forces).

  “That which you laid the foundation for was the construction of a building. Today it has become a faith. Every brick that you placed one upon another has today become a heart, a heart which is illuminated by the sacred ray of God’s Light, which has been lit by the flame of the light of Islam.

  “The flames of this fire have arisen to the farthermost distances of the world and leaped out from the depths of souls. When I hear it said, ‘They have closed the Husayniyah!’ I begin to laugh. They have mistaken a place for a school of thought and action. They do not know that ‘closing the Husayniyah’ will only fan the flames! A university student said, ‘At the Literacy Corps Base during free time, a group gathered in a corner and were playing cards. The rest? They were reading the books printed at the Husayniyah and in the evening when news came that they had closed the Husayniyah, only two people were left playing cards!’

  “I who have always confessed to my inabilities, who have always seen myself drowned in God’s Grace, never sensed with such completeness as I do today that we did this work. Never before today have I sensed with such certainty that the decisive and extensive success of the Husayniyah over time and the conquest of the body of thoughts of our society has been guaranteed by God’s Will.

  “Who has ever had the success of planting stucco and earth and growing love and thought? The events which took place at the Husayniyah broke through the election at Thaqifah and the act of the Khawarij. Criteria were buried. Barriers eliminated....and then my vows to give my nights and days to the Husayniyah. Every moment. No home. No family. All given to the Husayniyah. The result—the opportunity to speak, to write, to gather together all those potentials, all that love and devotion....

  “These were all preparation for the groundwork of a concept which had been created by the Unseen without any of us being aware of it, predicting it, or affecting it. He implemented it. He drove everyone to where He wanted them to go. He made friend and foe, alike, His agent to implement His design. Whoever learns what the Husayniyah was will either not believe it or will be obliged to admit to its miraculous-like work.

  “This is what should assure us that the director, designer and responsible authority of the legal Husayniyah institute is Him, and that He has a plan for the future which He will undoubtedly not leave undone. We should know that no edict, ruling, command or sign will have any effect when confronted by His Will. There is no doubt that the movement of time and the cycle of thought in our age are real Signs and Divine Traditions, in truth, and that the victories and ideals of the Husayniyah are but assignments from Him.

  The Islam of Tomorrow

  “The Islam of tomorrow will not be the Islam of the pseudo-religious scholars. The Islam of Qum and Mashhad will also change. The young theological students have shown that they will no longer accept things which are dictated to them without first questioning them. The defeat of this group (of pseudo-religious scholars) confirms the fact that (in spite of the weapons at their disposal and the strong support they received behind the front lines in their war on the unarmed) the Husayniyah will stand. From this point onwards, the power of religion will never again be given into the hands of official custodians who are satisfied with simply inheriting it.

  “The new educated class has also shown that in spite of all of the efforts over the past fifty years to turn them from religion and to cause disgust in them in regard to Islam, they answer in a positive way to the call of Muhammadic Islam. In much the same way, responsible, conscious, determined preachers have joined our ranks.

  “Tomorrow’s Islam will not be the Islam of the book of prayers. It will be the Islam of the Quran. Tomorrow’s Shiism will not be the Shiism of the Safavid Shah Sultan Husayn. It will be the Shiism of Husayn. Tomorrow’s religion will no longer be the religion of ignorance, tyran­ny, prejudice, ancient superstitions, habit, repetition, tears, weakness and abasement, for it has become the religion of consciousness, justice, awareness, liberation, revolutionary movement, knowledge, civilization, art, literature, social, responsibility, progress, new ways of thinking, looking to the future and domination over time and over historic destiny.

  “These are the realities which tell us that the Husayniyah chose the right path. It carried out its duty correctly. Its watchwords were expressed at the right time and in the right place.

  The Husayniyah is a Movement

  “The Husayniyah is not a place. It is not an accident, a gathering or a meeting. It is an event, a phenomenon which came into being in response to the necessities and needs of the time. The Divine Law created and ruled over its time and its society so that it was able to carry out its dangerous assignment to reject a trinity in Islam,3 to negate a deviated Shiism, to design monotheistic Islam and to prove the existence of red Shiism.4 Rest assured that never will ignorance or deviation effect an assignment which God has given and historic determinism accompanied.

  “The edicts of Kab al-Ahbars, the hoarded gold of Abd al-Rahmans and the exiles by the Uthmans are nothing more than a few useless stones thrown in a stream to momentarily block its flow before it reaches the sea. The Husayniyah is like a spark which falls on dry wood. It will, at any moment inflame a thought even if the body be cold....

  “Part of the agenda is that every penny spent here has become a word. Each brick has become a thought, and the building has become a school of thought and action. Even if they destroy the building, its flattened earth will remain as its address directing history to the evolution of thought, the Islamic movement and the consciousness of the people. The people will occupy it whenever they want, no matter who tries to stop them for it belongs to them.

  “The concept of ‘what must be done?’5 will be implemented. That is why from the beginning you were the founders of a building and, now you are the heirs of a movement, a current movement which daily grows in power and in extent.

  “What about me? As a teacher, speaker or writer at the Husayniyah, I sense that God put forth the work of the Husayniyah as a most difficult responsibility. It is as if His Words can be heard: The third season of the Husayniyah is about to begin. Do not lose hope. Do not become indifferent. Do not return to normal life. Do not take another way. Do not turn to your homes. Leave aside your professions. Sacrifice your wife and children. Forget your ‘self’. During whatever remains of your life, wherever you are in the world, under whatever conditions you live and in whatever work you do, direct others to it.

  “To me the Husayniyah was not just a place to go to speak or to teach. The Husayniyah has been kneaded with my blood, thought, personality and faith. The Husayniyah Irshad is the base of a political party, a party which chose Islam as its ideology. Its intellectual school of thought and action and world view is Islamology. I designed the basis of it in lectures like “Shiism: A Complete Political Party,” “Monotheism,” “The Philosophy of Hist
ory,” “Husayn: Heir of Adam,” “ Ummah (Community) and Imamate (Leadership),” “Red Shiism,” “Ali: School of Thought and Action, Unity, Justice,” “The School of Thought and Action of Imam Sajjad: Consciousness, Love, Need and Jihad,” “Prayer,” “Awaiting the Religion of Protest,” (that is, whenever you arise, the Mahdi will come; he is awaiting us!), “The Story of Adam,” (the philosophy of the nature of the human being), “The Islam of the Imamate (Leadership) and Justice,” “Alid Shiism/Safavid Shiism,” “Islam as Ideology in the Triangle of Gnosis, Marxism and Existentialism,” and “The Revolutionary Role of the Reminders and Reminding in History.”

  Then he began defining certain key terms in terms of the Quran and the Sunnah: “Family and kinship are not to be considered as a third principle alongside the Quran and the Sunnah but rather as an objective embodiment of these two sources and the entrance into these two bases.

  “Selection: of a revolutionary regime more committed than a democracy and opposed to beliefs that are simply inherited rather than chosen; implementing the ‘greater occultation’; a time of responsibility for all people and an age of committed democratic rule; guidance of a progressive and intellectual philosophy of historic determinism.

  “Monotheism: a philosophical world view, a unified philosophy of history, an anti-class social infrastructure and an equality among people—that is, world, social and human unity embodied in a complete, progressive, intellectual and social party meeting such needs and insights of this era as the strategies and tactics of struggle, the method of social work, the study of goals and even revolutionary programs in a social environment....

  “Jihad.

  “Ijtihad. The various methods used by the Imams in the realization of a unified mission...

  “Such an Islam chosen not only as a heart-felt religious faith or as a particular religious sect but also as the perfect, progressive and powerful ideology of a political party, a divine-like party of the masses. Once so equipped, such an Islam will make itself known in the contradictions of the social arena, for intellectual conflicts and in powerful ideological wars of the world.

  “Armed decisively (unlike traditional religions which flee from conflict out of fear and weakness) and with the assurance of intellectually armed mujahid, Islam is on the alert and ready to challenge eastern and western intellectual fronts.

  “Islam must stake out an intellectual claim by relying upon its ideological bases and its own cultural sources. It must do so with honor, consciousness and power. At the same time, in the name of progressive intellectuals, it must awaken the people, give movement to society, provide intellectual leadership appropriate to this time and salvation to its people in the best form possible.

  “Know that you stand in the front ranks of the intellectuals of your time and that you have two added values that other committed but anti-religious intellectuals lack.

  “First, with the ideological infrastructure of monotheism and resurrection, you offer meaning to life and existence. Second, by having a faith and a religious culture, you develop a relationship of understanding and spiritual kinship with your people—while other intellectuals become estranged from them. This is why Muslims in their present degenerated form have fallen behind and are weaker than the progressive anti-religious intellectual. Yet armed with the above ideology and faith, you can take on the form of progressive, aware, powerful human beings—something which anti-religious intellectuals are deprived of by their materialism.

  “These are issues which the Husayniyah Irshad addressed. These issues form a school of thought and action and movement which the Husayniyah has conceptualized at this time in the conscience and ideas of this generation. As both friends and enemies are astonished to realize, never before have the people of one particular time or the conscience of a generation so quickly and deeply accepted the call of an intellectual base, found faith and sincerity in it and, above all else, sensed a commitment.

  “These are the Articles of Association of the Husayniyah recorded in the events of our time, recorded upon the hearts of an aware generation who seek truth and recorded upon the will of educated, enlightened, anguished and responsible believers who have decided to reclaim their faith from the deviation into which it has been made to fall....

  “The Husayniyah Irshad which you built several years ago has been smelted down with the use of a powerful divine elixir and has been transformed. It has become a movement, an intellectual current. It has become faith, love, belief, idea, responsibility, way, goal, and ideology. It has become a political party....The message cannot be deterred by any conspiracy, deceit or force whatsoever.

  “A man must live and enjoy material benefits, have work which occupies him, see to his wife and children, enjoy life, rest and relax and, in his free time, he must serve society or his faith. Yea. But sometimes it happens that the heavy weight of responsibility (the responsibility for a thought, the responsibility for the destiny of a nation, a faith, a time) is placed upon the shoulders of one or of several people. Here the ‘musts’ change. When cholera strikes a city or when a faith is being quickly destroyed by conscious enemies assisted by unconscious or criminal friends or when the salvation of a people, a generation, is dependent upon the cry and self-sacrifices of one or several people, such people must give their lives for all the years they are alive. The issue of living is no longer relevant. Whatever has been approved, recommended or, even obligatory, becomes forbidden.

  “Our time, our young generation, our faith, our Quran, our Prophet and...our beloved culture; and our tomorrows all in anticipation of those who discern the dangers, the conspiracies, and the disgraceful destiny of tomorrow, who know the message in a prophetic-like way and who continue to announce the jihad....Muslim intellectuals (who are very few in number) are messenger-like persons, messengers whose Gabriel is Muhammad and that’s all!...

  “The Husayniyah Irshad began this invitation. It awoke our times. It created a great wave. The salvation of our people, the salvation of our faith is in the group who know ‘what must be done?”

  The Final Journey

  Nine months later, on September 12, 1973, the Shah’s authorities issued a warrant for Shariati’s arrest. He was then imprisoned without trial, tortured and placed in solitary confinement for 550 days until March 20, 1975. They tortured his friends and followers in his presence trying to make him support their regime, but none of this had any effect upon him.

  After the closing of the Husayniyah and the imprisonment of Shariati, his books were banned. Anyone possessing one was arrested and the book was confiscated. As policies of suppression increased, the resistance of the people increased. His books were distributed both in Iran and outside of Iran. They were found in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, the countries in the Persian Gulf, Europe and America.

  He was finally released from prison because of the activities of two fronts. First, the tactics of his friends and students through international organizations, disclosures about the regime’s activities and political pressure on Iran. Second, the pressure applied by friends and allies of the Liberation Movement in Algeria (who by then held responsible positions in the government) when the Shah went to Algeria. Algeria at that time was acting as the mediator between Iran and Iraq in the signing of the Algeries Accord. 6

  After his release in the spring of 1975, SAVAK’s (the Shah’s secret police) tactics changed and through various agents they tried to have Shariati agree to a debate in exchange for permission to leave Iran. He refused. They then issued orders to eliminate him. They printed some of his works without his permission. They spread rumors that Shariati had done this himself trying to show that he cooperated with the regime. The leftist communists fanned the flames of this rumor. Shariati quickly denied this in circulars published in the winter and spring of 1976.

  He was under surveillance after his release from prison. The Shah’s regime did not allow him to continue his work. It so restricted his activities that he decided to migrate from
Iran with the help of his friends. He published his will and testament. He wrote the last letter he would ever write to his father, whom he loved a great deal. He said good-bye to his wife and children and on May 16, 1977, began a new migration from Iran.

  But he did not live beyond Sunday, June 2, 1977, dying in London under mysterious circumstances. His body was taken by friends to Damascus on June 17, 1977 to be laid beside the grave of the beloved Zaynab.

  6.

  Epilogue

  HIS FATHER WAS asked to what he felt Ali owed his success. He said: “His success was both outward and inner. Outwardly it was his pow­erful pen and literary ability. In many cases his pen turned to magic. He had a most alluring way of presenting his ideas....This in addition to the substance of his work, the study he had done, and the powerful quality of his pen and speech. All of these were outward causes for his success.

  “The inner cause was that whatever Ali said, he was himself committed to and believed in. He would never express anything—no matter how attractive—that he did not himself believe in. What­ever he said, he believed. And because what he said came from the heart, it entered the heart of those who heard it or read it.

  “This method was, at that time, very dangerous. The regime was extremely sensitive in regard to him. They would contin­uously and repeatedly send people who would warn him and threat­en him. ‘Don’t say this.’ ‘Do that.’ This is why they expelled him from Mashhad University.... He paid no attention to danger when it came to what he be­lieved. It was such that he felt each speech that he gave would be his last. In this way he rejected all dangers at the cost of his very life. He expressed his beliefs to the people as much as possible in the time available to him.