رامین مددلو

Ali Shariati (Ph.D.) is a thinker who has tried to describe and introduce Islam in the context of socialism with sociological approaches and utilizing historical data and minimal philosophical views. In this endeavor, justice was a central concept shaping the ideal society of Shariati, called the Middle Ummah (Middle Community). By manipulating conventional socialism, using its various modes, and also incorporating Islamic beliefs into its structure, he tried to use socialism as a context for introducing Islamic vision to build an ideal religious society. In this religious ideal society characterized to be a dual-rooted one named “Classless Monotheistic Society”, justice was the spirit governing it, which tuned it with the system of creation. On the path to build a theory of justice shaping a classless monotheistic society, Shariati passes through the four stages of theorizing; however, contradictions appear in the stages more elaborated by him and a great deal of ambiguity is also seen where he has chosen to give brief explanations. Thus, Shariati’s theory of justice is an incomplete theory containing many innate contradictions and ambiguities. The flaw in Shariati’s justice theory is so serious that the authors claim that what is inherited from Shariati is not a coherent theory of justice; rather, it is an initial design of a theory of justice in the context of Islamic socialism.

According to this research based on historical research methods, different conditions, and various events can lead to a change in the views of Turkish Islamist elites on the meaning of the Islamic revolution of Iran. The research shows that the dominant understanding of Iran's Islamic Revolution has changed in three different periods: In the first period, under the influence of the thoughts of Shariati and Imam Khomeini, the Islamic Revolution as a utopia; in the second period, under the influence of the  Umm al-Qura theory and the Iran-Iraq war, the Islamic revolution as an model of Islamic governance; and in the third period, under the influence of the Syrian crisis, the understanding of Islamic revolution of Iran as a Shia revolution. In this third period, two main viewpoints appear: The first viewpoint understands the Islamic revolution as a Shia revolution from the beginning, and the second viewpoint, by dividing the history of the Islamic revolution of Iran into two eras, introduces the era of Imam Khomeini as the era of "Islamic revolution" and calls the era of Ayatollah Khamenei as the era of "Shia" revolution.