However, even in these countries, it is not the only
law of the land. Creating governments exclusively
based on the sharia is a major tenet of today’s
Islamist movements, both radical and gradualist.
In non-Muslim countries some jurists and legis-
lators have proposed limited adoption of certain
elements of the sharia for Muslim immigrants and
citizens, but such suggestions have met with pub-
lic outcries. The public perception of the sharia in
Europe and North America, as well as among non-
Muslim minorities in Muslim lands, is that it is
an inflexible, tyrannical system of medieval rules.
Muslim reformers and modernists, on the other
hand, argue that this is incorrect, that the sharia’s
perceived faults are the result of corrupt or poorly
educated Muslim authorities, as well as the indi-
rect effects of colonialism. To counteract negative
interpretations of the sharia, they are reexamining
its foundations and history, in order to bring it
into greater conformity with universal notions of
JUstice, hUman rights, and gender equality.
See also aboU el-Fadl, khalid; allah; hanaFi
legal school; hanbali legal school; islamism;
madrasa; maliki legal school; reneWal and
reForm movements; shaFii legal school; shiism.
Further reading: Ahmad Atif Ahmad, Structural Inter-
relations of Theory and Practice: A Study of Six Works
of Medieval Islamic Jurisprudence (Leiden: E.J. Brill,
2006); Laleh Bakhtiar, ed., Encyclopedia of Islamic
Law: A Compendium of the Major Schools (Chicago:
Kazi Publications, 1996); Wael B. Hallaq, A History of
Islamic Legal Theories: An Introduction to Sunni usul al-
fiqh (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999);
Fazlur Rahman, Islam, 2d ed. (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1979), 100–116; Bernard Weiss, The
Spirit of Islamic Law (Athens: University of Georgia
Press, 1998); Muhammad Qasim Zaman, The Ulama in
Contemporary Islam: Custodians of Change (Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002).
Shariati, Ali (1933–1977) Islamic modernist,
ideologue of the Iranian Revolution of 1978–1979
Ali Shariati is widely considered one of the most
important social thinkers of 20th-century iran.
Shariati combined ideas from existentialism and
Marxism with Islamic ideas from the qUran,
hadith, and Shii tradition. His goal was to trans-
form Islam from a set of rules for the individual
to follow into a progressive ideology that could
change society.
Shariati was born in the village of Mazinan in
northeastern Iran. His father, Muhammad Taqi
Shariati, was a reformer who worked to bring edu-
cated young Iranians back to Islam by explaining
how the ideals of Islam were connected to the con-
temporary world. To advance his ideas, he founded
the Center for the Spread of Islamic Teachings in
Mashhad. Shariati went to school in Mashhad but
also studied with his father and was deeply influ-
enced by his teachings. In 1949 Shariati trained to
become a teacher. After several years as a teacher
he enrolled in the University of Mashhad, gradu-
ating in 1960 with a B.A. in French and Persian
literature. He then went to Paris to pursue gradu-
ate studies and received a Ph.D. in 1964 from the
Sorbonne. One of Shariati’s teachers there was the
noted French Catholic scholar of Islamic Studies,
Louis Massignon (d. 1962), whom he credited for
inspiring his inner transformation in those years.
Shariati had also become an anti-shah activist.
In 1957 he was arrested for taking part in a rally
supporting the National Front, a political group
that opposed the government of mohammad reza
shah pahlavi (r. 1941–79). While in Paris, he
participated in the anti-shah student movement.
He was named the editor of the newspaper of the
Congress of the National Front, Iran-i azad (Free
ban), and he also contributed articles to the Alge-
rian revolutionary newspaper Al-Mujahid.
In France, while he was influenced by think-
ers such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, he
also criticized their rejection of traditional religion.
Rather than seeing religion as the “opiate of the
people,” as Karl Marx described it, he believed that
the only way nations such as Iran could counteract
Western imperialism was through a strong cultural
identity that was supported by religious traditions.
In 1964, when Shariati returned to Iran, he was
arrested and imprisoned for his antigovernmentShariati, Ali 621 J