Más allá de la Revolución: estudio comparado del pensamiento político de Ali Shariati y Ruholá Jomeini

Abstract

This article will analyse the political projects facing Western modernity of two of the most prominent Islamic thinkers in the second half of the twentieth century in Iran. The Islamic Revolution of 1979 is usually portrayed as a uniform revolution, orchestrated, and culminated by Ayatollah Khomeini and his followers. This narrative eludes and denies the diversity of ideas, projects and thoughts that characterised pre-revolutionary Iran. In order to demonstrate this line of thought, we will present in a comparative way the political thoughts and projects of ‘Ali Shari’ati and Ruhollah Khomeini, who can be considered as the most significant figures of the religious intelligentsia at the time. The former is distinguished as a proponent of an alternative modernity based on the revolution of Shiism. The latter presents a project that we will defend is theoretically and analytically better understood as a pragmatic populism of Islamic roots than as a Shi’i fundamentalist project.