Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from July, 2017

BOOK REVIEW

Review of Saffari, S. (2017).  Beyond Shariati: Modernity, Cosmopolitanism, and Islam in Iranian Political Thought.  London and New York: Cambridge University press. 256 pp.  $99.99, ISBN: 9781107164161"  UNEDITED VERSION FOR JOURNAL OF Middle East Media and Book Reviews Online (MEMBR) Questions pertaining to the conceptual relationship between Islam and modernity -and therefore between cultural relativism and (hegemonic) universalism- continue to occupy the minds of scholars of contemporary/modern Islam and/or Muslim societies.  The book under review examines the thought and legacy of Ali Shari’ati ( d.1977) , famously dubbed an  ‘ideologue of the Iranian Revolution’  and  what are broadly termed ‘neo-Shari’atis’ ( i.e. Shariati’s intellectual interlocutors)  through this broad theoretical lens. In essence in many ways the book under review wishes to problematize the preponderant view of Islam’s (supposed) incompatibility with mod...