Document Type : Original Research
Authors
1
Assistant Professor, Department of Jurisprudence and Law, Women and Family Faculty
2
PhD in Religious Studies, University of Religions and Denominations
10.48311/jhs.2026.104771.0
Abstract
Religious reform in the Islamic world since the late nineteenth century has emerged as one of the most significant intellectual and social responses to the encounter between Islam and modernity. Throughout this period, diverse historical and social conditions; ranging from colonial encounters and the challenge of Western modernity to the rise of socialism, the spread of modern science and technology, and later the experience of revolutions and religious states, generated multiple forms of reformist discourse. These shifting contexts not only raised new questions about the relationship between religion, political authority, social justice, and scientific progress, but also underscored the need for a critical rethinking of inherited traditions and their compatibility with the demands of contemporary life.
Within this broader genealogy of Islamic reform, Ali Shariati occupies a distinctive and influential place; not because he explicitly aligned himself with the reformist canon, but because the conceptual innovations at the heart of his thought situate him within this tradition. In the sociopolitical climate of 1960s and 1970s Iran, and in response to dominant juridical and institutional readings of religion, Shariati sought to reconstruct key concepts of Shi‘ism to equip them with new social and emancipatory functions. While intellectually indebted to earlier reformers such as Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and Muhammad Iqbal, Shariati’s project both extends and transforms the reformist lineage by redefining Shi‘i concepts in ways that resonate directly with the struggles of his own time. Drawing on Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory, this study argues that Shariati’s intellectual project amounts to a comprehensive reconfiguration of the Shi‘i semantic field. In this reconstruction, imamate functions as the nodal point that confers coherence on the entire discursive formation. Around this central category, Shariati reorganizes key concepts such as justice, guardianship (velāyat), community (ummat), and expectancy (entezār), treating them not merely as doctrinal themes but as floating signifiers whose meaning must be articulated within new chains of equivalence. Through this articulatory process, Shariati generates a network of meanings in which religious concepts are endowed with social, ethical, and political potency. Shi‘ism, in this framework, becomes an identity grounded not in inherited symbolism or ritual continuity but in collective responsibility, ethical action, and resistance against oppression.
A central feature of this discursive formation is the construction of boundaries between competing versions of religion. Shariati employs a logic of exclusion to distinguish between “Safavid Shi‘ism” and “Alavid Shi‘ism,” marking the former as a passive, hierarchical, and state-serving formation and the latter as a dynamic, justice-oriented, historically engaged alternative. This boundary-making not only defines the internal coherence of his discourse but also delineates the contours of collective identity by organizing distinctions between “us” and “others.” In this configuration, the redefined imamate serves simultaneously as a source of internal unity and as a principle of differentiation, enabling Shariati to establish a new political and ethical horizon for Shi‘i identity.
The hegemonic potential of this discourse becomes clear when examined in its social and historical context. Shariati’s reinterpretation of religious concepts reordered the expectations and responsibilities associated with faith, transforming religion into an engine of empowerment and a catalyst for political mobilization. By translating abstract doctrines into demands for social justice, communal solidarity, and moral agency, Shariati provided a vocabulary through which religious identity could be tied to the struggle against inequality and domination. His discourse thus produced a model of Shi‘ism that was not merely theoretical but capable of shaping collective action and mobilizing publics in moments of political crisis.
The findings of this study suggest that Shariati’s reconstruction of Shi‘ism, framed through the discourse of Alavid Shi‘ism, successfully transformed religious elements into the building blocks of a broader political project. Through the reorganisation of floating signifiers around the central axis of imamate, his discourse created stable chains of equivalence that endowed concepts such as justice, community, and expectancy with new relational meanings. This process activated the capacity of religion to foster collective agency, enabling it to function both as an ethical framework and as a practical tool for social transformation. Shariati’s discourse not only stabilized a new interpretive horizon but also became a hegemonic force that influenced the direction of political and social movements in Iran during the 1970s.
Ultimately, this study demonstrates that Shariati’s project illustrates how a reimagined religious tradition, when articulated through a coherent discursive logic, can transcend doctrinal interpretation and operate as a potent ideological and mobilizational force. By reshaping the conceptual architecture of Shi‘ism and aligning it with aspirations for justice, freedom, and collective responsibility, Shariati forged a discursive formation that played a consequential role in the sociopolitical transformations of modern Iran. His work shows how the reconfiguration of meaning can function as a catalyst for both identity formation and structural change, revealing the power of discourse to animate new forms of collective life.
Keywords
Subjects
historical sociology