[custom_adv] Shariat Razavi who had a stroke on Monday died yesterday evening. Her son, philosophy researcher Ehsan Shariati announced the news in his weblog. [custom_adv] Herself an author, Shariat Razavi was born in 1934 in the religious persian city of Mashhad where she later studied Persian literature. Shariat Razavi was also a graduate from Sorbonne University in 1963 with a PhD degree in Persian literature. She married Ali Shariati in 1958. [custom_adv] Her books include: ‘An Outline of a Life: Volume 1: Biography’, ‘An Outline of a Life: Volume 2: Reviews and Views’ and ‘Everlasting Relics’. Shariat Razavi is the founder of Ali Shariati Foundation where compiles and publishes the ontology of her late husband. [custom_adv] She was also the sister of Mahdi Shariat Razavi, one of the three students who were martyred on the eventful day of December 7, 1953, by forces of the former persian monarchy regime of Mohammad-Reza Pahlavi. She will be laid to rest next to his brother in Emamzadeh Abdollah of Shahr-e Ray. [custom_adv] Ali Shariati Mazinani (23 November 1933 – 18 June 1977) was an revolutionary and sociologist who focused on the sociology of religion. He is held as one of the most influential intellectuals of the 20th century and has been called the "ideologue of the Revolution", although his ideas ended up not forming the basis of the Islamic Republic. [custom_adv] In his years at the Teacher's Training College in Mashhad, Shariati came into contact with young people who were from less privileged economic classes of society, and for the first time saw the poverty and hardship that existed in homeland during that period. At the same time, he was exposed to many aspects of Western philosophical and political thought. [custom_adv] He attempted to explain and offer solutions for the problems faced by Muslim societies through traditional Islamic principles interwoven with, and understood from, the point of view of modern sociology and philosophy. [custom_adv] His articles from this period for the Mashhad daily newspaper, Khorasan, display his developing eclecticism and acquaintance with the ideas of modernist thinkers such as Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Sir Allama Muhammad Iqbal of Pakistan, among Muslims, and Sigmund Freud and Alexis Carrel. [custom_adv] In 1952, he became a high-school teacher and founded the Islamic Students' Association, which led to his arrest following a demonstration. In 1953, the year of Mossadeq's overthrow, he became a member of the National Front. [custom_adv] He received his bachelor's degree from the University of Mashhad in 1955. In 1957, he was arrested again by the police, along with sixteen other members of the National Resistance Movement. [custom_adv] Shariati then managed to get a scholarship for France, where he continued his graduate studies at the Sorbonne in Paris. He left Paris after earning a PhD in sociology in 1964 from the Sorbonne. During this period in Paris, Shariati started collaborating with the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) in 1959. [custom_adv] The following year, he began to read Frantz Fanon and translated an anthology of his work into Persian.[11] Shariati introduced Fanon's thought into Iranian revolutionary émigrée circles. He was arrested in Paris on 17 January 1961 during a demonstration in honour of Patrice Lumumba. [custom_adv] The same year he joined Ebrahim Yazdi, Mostafa Chamran and Sadegh Qotbzadeh in founding the Freedom Movement of homeland abroad. In 1962, he continued studying sociology and history of religions, and followed the courses of Islamic scholar Louis Massignon, Jacques Berque and the sociologist Georges Gurvitch. [custom_adv] He also came to know the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre that same year, and published Jalal Al-e Ahmad's book Gharbzadegi (or Occidentosis) in homeland. [custom_adv] Shariati then returned to homeland in 1964 where he was arrested and imprisoned for engaging in subversive political activities while in France. He was released after a few weeks, at which point he began teaching at the University of Mashhad. [custom_adv] Shariati then went to capital where he began lecturing at the Hosseiniye Ershad Institute. These lectures were hugely popular among his students and were spread by word of mouth throughout all economic sectors of society, including the middle and upper classes, where interest in his teachings began to grow immensely. [custom_adv] His continued success again aroused the interest of the government, which arrested him as well as many of his students. Widespread pressure from the people, and an international outcry, eventually led to his release on 20 March 1975, after eighteen months in solitary confinement. [custom_adv] Shariati was allowed to leave for England. He died three weeks later in a Southampton hospital under "mysterious circumstances" although in Ali Rahnema's biography of Shariati, he is said to have died of a fatal heart attack. [custom_adv] He is buried next to Sayyidah Zaynab, the granddaughter of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, and the daughter of Ali, in Damascus, Syria, where Iranian pilgrims often visit. [custom_adv] Shariati sought to revive the revolutionary currents of Shiism. His interpretation of Shiism encouraged revolution in the world, and promised salvation after death. Shariati referred to his brand of Shiism as "red Shiism" which he contrasted with non-revolutionary "black Shiism" or Safavid Shiism. [custom_adv] His ideas have been compared to the Catholic Liberation Theology movement founded in South America by Peruvian Gustavo Gutierrez and Brazilian Leonardo Boff. [custom_adv] Shariati was a prominent Islamist philosopher who argued that a good society would conform to Islamic values. He suggested that the role of government was to guide society in the best possible manner rather than manage it in the best possible way.
