Shariati, The Superficial Depth

“Mysticism, Equality, Liberty” is Shariatist version of French famous slogan “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” which heralded the age of modern humanist values after the French Revolution. Replacing “Fraternity” by “Mysticism” was not because they contradicted each other. “Mysticism” had to be added somewhere to satisfy Iranians long obsession with religion: the realm without which life lacks depth and remains a transitory superficial childish game. Yet, to avoid wordiness, “Mysticism” kicked “Fraternity” out and sat prior to “Equality” and “Liberty” to look like a modern concern.

Shariati has manifested his so-called mysticism in “Descendent”, “Dialogues of Loneliness” and the series of “Desert”. In his perspective, life at the first glance is absurd and disgusting. He finds sex, career ambitions and everyday civil lifestyle very primitive, ordinary and animal-like. Somewhere in his “Descendent”, he blames employees seeking promotion and ridicules them for having such an insignificant life and cheap goal. And the only elixir he finds to transform filthy nature of human and redeem him/her from suffering is “Faith”.

However, Shariati’s “Faith” is such a vague concept. It is a mixture of Mohammad, Imam Ali, Sartre, Marx and some other irrelevant people. His only art is likening compassion of Sartre to Mohammad’s and righteousness of Marx to Imam Ali’s. His “Descendent” is an immature attempt to make up a holistic book. It is immature, because a book cannot be holistic simply by including names of the first men in history – Adam and Eve – and the last ones: Marx and Sartre. The reality of his “modern interpretation of religion” is just putting modern names next to religious saints.

There is no mysticism in Shariati. His so-called mystical writings are nonsense uttered by a negative anti-life mind. It is all confusion; however he has continually tried to hide this negativity and confusion behind words like justice, faith and transcendental ideals.

Unfortunately his discourses widely appealed to 1970’s Iranian religious students, those who were studying in western-style universities but opposed Shah’s modernization project. Youngster revolutionaries whose concern was neither “Liberty” nor “Equality”, but wiping all aspects of american consumer lifestyle off the society and replacing them by transcendental Islamic values. They became founders of Iranian model of Islamic fundamentalism whose Egyptian model had already formed some twenty years earlier.

Mankind is very vulnerable to unclear ideas and dogma. Negative approaches to basic aspects of life will lead to dogma in a quest for deeper meaning of life. Do not trust people who do not celebrate sex and earthy love. Do not follow world-views which preach absurdity of promoting livelihood. Those who encourage you to quit ordinary life and pursue some greater good in Heaven have minds not evolved beyond their teenage obsessions.

English Fukuyama vs. Persian Fukuyama

On October 13th, an article from Francis Fukuyama was published in News Week titled “The Fall of America, Inc.”. The article was highlighted in Tehran governmental dailies, however the title was deliberately mistranslated: “Collapse of Western Civilization”. The same day, Iran Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, made a speech for the masses and remarked that recent worldwide financial crisis is the beginning of downfall of western liberal democracy. “Marxism proved its absurdity after implosion of the Soviet bloc twenty years ago, and today the world can hear cracking bones of Capitalism skeleton one after another.” he cited. The metaphor is implying bankruptcy of investment banks which started in Wall Street and continued in Europe and other parts of the world. This crisis looks to anti-Americanists like a dead-end for liberal democracy which they have been anticipating, while liberal-democrat commentators note that Wall Street meltdown marks the end of an era within Capitalism context, not the end of Capitalism itself.

Fukuyama is from the latter group. He is the author of “The End of History and the Last Man” in which he argued that the progression of human history as a struggle between ideologies is almost at an end, with the world settling on liberal democracy after the end of the Cold War. However, since 2002 he has been trying to distance himself from the neoconservative agenda under the Bush Administration, citing its overly militaristic basis. His criticisms of America’s militaristic interventions in the name of promoting democracy are enthusiastically reflected by Iran state controlled media. The Persian version of his last analysis of the global financial crisis sounds like a retreat from his famous doctrine of “The End of History”.

In the original version however, there is no implication of diminishing liberal democracy. It only argues that consequent to Wall Street meltdown, American ideas and advice will be less globally welcome. Fukuyama explains that most important export of America is its ideas and two fundamentally American ideas have dominated global thinking since Reagan’s presidency. The first one was the idea of minimal governments, tax cuts and deregulation agenda. The second was America as the promoter of liberal democracy around the world. He likens these ideas as two important brands of “America Inc.” which have lost faith of the market after the financial meltdown. He believes that Reagan’s transformative movement, which was a pragmatic response to the excess of welfare states of 1980s, lost its way and ended up with today’s financial crisis when became an unquestionable ideology. Along with this crisis, he remarks, a certain vision of capitalism has collapsed. That outdated vision is Reaganism with its deregulation mantra. However, Fukuyama believes that America can still restore its brand as its rivals’ models – Chinese and Russian – do not appear to be competitive.

Along with China and Russia, Islamic Republic of Iran has been trying to challenge the west in all aspects since 1979. It introduces Islam as a complete system of morality, justice and governance, whose laws and principles should be the sole basis of governance and everything else in life. After the implosion of Soviet bloc – the event which is extremely propagandized to have been prophesied by Khomeini much earlier – Iran’s Islamic government propaganda machine foresees imminent downfall of liberal democracy and obsolescence of its western style of life. In Islamic Republic’s discourse, the world is destined to embrace the message of Iran’s Islamic Revolution as its only savior. A message which has culminated with a 30% rate inflation, oil-dependent economy and extreme social class divisions after 30 years of experiment.