A new reading of Ali Shariati's intellectual legacy on Iranian political discourse and concepts of Islam and modernity.

Ali Shariati (1933–77) has been called by many the 'ideologue of the Iranian Revolution'. An inspiration to many of the revolutionary generation, Shariati's combination of Islamic political thought and Left-leaning ideology continues to influence both in Iran and across the wider Muslim world. In this book, Siavash Saffari examines Shariati's long-standing legacy, and how new readings of his works by contemporary 'neo-Shariatis' have contributed to a deconstruction of the false binaries of Islam/modernity, Islam/West, and East/West. Saffari argues that through their critique of Eurocentric metanarratives on the one hand, and the essentialist conceptions of Islam on the other, Shariati and neo-Shariatis have carved out a new space in Islamic thought beyond the traps of Orientalism and Occidentalism. This unique perspective will hold great appeal to researchers of the politics and intellectual thought of post-revolutionary Iran and the greater Middle East.

In Feminine Visibility in Contemporary Iran: Women, Religion, Culture and the State, Esmaeil Zeiny and Seyed Javad Miri bring together a collection of essays which offer a number of new perspectives on the role and power of Iranian women in refashioning the country’s politics, culture, and religion. This collection threatens the stereotypical representations of Iranian women, and illustrates how high women leapt over the hurdles obstructing their progress and how much they have achieved to renegotiate the roles demanded by Iranian society.

By focusing on colonial histories and legacies, this edited volume breaks new ground in studying modernity in Islamicate contexts. From a range of disciplinary perspectives, the authors probe ‘colonial modernity’ as a condition whose introduction into Islamicate contexts was facilitated historically by European encroachment into South Asia, the Middle East, and Northern Africa. They also analyze the various modes through which, in Europe itself, and in North America by extension, people from Islamicate contexts have been, and continue to be, otherized in the constitution and advancement of the project of modernity. The book further brings to light a multiplicity of social, political, cultural, and aesthetic modes of resistance aimed at subverting and unsettling colonial modernity in both Muslim-majority and diasporic contexts.

Globalizing Political Theory is guided by the need to understand political theory as deeply embedded in local networks of power, identity, and structure, and to examine how these networks converge and diverge with the global. With the help of this book, students of political theory no longer need to learn about ideas in a vacuum with little or no attention paid to how such ideas are responses to varying local political problems in different places, times, and contexts. Key features include: Central Conceptual Framework: Introducing readers to what it means to “globalize” political theory and to move beyond the traditional western canon and actively engage with a multiplicity of perspectives. Organization: Focused on key topics essential for an introductory class aimed at both globalizing political theory and showing how political theory itself is a globalizing activity. Themes: Colonialism and Empire; Gender and Sexuality; Religion and Secularism; Marxism, Socialism, and Globalization; Democracy and Protest; and Race, Ethnicity, and Indigeneity. Pedagogy: Each chapter features theoretical concepts and definitions, political and historical context, key authors and biographical context, textual evidence and exegesis from the foundational texts in that thematic area, a list of discussion questions, and a list of resources for further reading. Committed to a multiplicity of perspectives and an active engagement between the global and the local, Globalizing Political Theory connects directly with undergraduate and graduate-level courses in political theory, global political theory, and non-western political thought.

From the ninth to the nineteenth centuries, Persian was the pre-eminent language of learning far beyond Iran, stretching from the Balkans to China. In this book, Alexander Jabbari explores what became of this vast Persian literary heritage in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Iran and South Asia, as nationalism took hold and the Persianate world fractured into nation-states. He shows how Iranians and South Asians drew from their shared past to produce a 'Persianate modernity', and create a modern genre, literary history. Drawing from both Persian and Urdu sources, Jabbari reveals the important role that South Asian Muslims played in developing Iranian intellectual and literary trends. Highlighting cultural exchange in the region, and the agency of Asian modernizers, Jabbari charts a new way forward for area studies and opens exciting possibilities for thinking about language and literature.