The Sirat Model in Ali Shariati’s Political Thought: Explaining the Crisis of Tradition and Modernity and the Idea of Return to the Self

lotfi, mostafa

Volume 16, Issue 2 (Political researches of the Islamic world, summer 2026) پژوهش‌هاي سياسي جهان اسلام 2026, 16(2): 1-20 | Back to browse issues page

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lotfi M. The Sirat Model in Ali Shariati’s Political Thought: Explaining the Crisis of Tradition and Modernity and the Idea of Return to the Self. پژوهش‌هاي سياسي جهان اسلام 2026; 16 (2) :1-20
URL: http://priw.ir/article-1-2079-en.html

The Sirat Model in Ali Shariati’s Political Thought: Explaining the Crisis of Tradition and Modernity and the Idea of Return to the Self

Mostafa Lotfi ^*

Allameh Tabataba’i University (ATU) , mlotfi1985@gmail.com

Abstract: (15 Views)

The encounter of Iranian society with modernity has been one of the most significant intellectual and political challenges of the contemporary era. Ali Shariati, as one of the most prominent religious reformist thinkers, sought to present a model for overcoming the identity crisis and backwardness of Islamic societies through a simultaneous critique of petrified tradition and imitative modernity. The aim of this research is to explain Shariati's political thought in confronting the crisis of tradition and modernity by reconstructing the conceptual model of "Sirat." This study employs conceptual analysis and textual interpretation of Shariati's works. The findings demonstrate that concepts such as Ummah, Imamate, ideology, and Return to the Self form an interconnected and teleological system within Shariati's intellectual framework, which can be reconstructed and interpreted through the Sirat Model. In this model, Islamic ideology functions as the roadmap, Ummah as the travelers, Imamate as the guide, and Return to the Self as the destination. Accordingly, the Sirat Model can be considered an analytical framework for understanding the internal coherence of Shariati's political thought and explaining his solution to the crisis of tradition and modernity.
The innovation of this research lies in reconstructing the relationship among the fundamental concepts of Shariati's political thought and presenting the "Sirat Model" as an analytical framework for understanding the internal coherence of these concepts. This model demonstrates how ideology, Ummah, Imamate, and Return to the Self are interconnected in a directed process, forming a coherent response to the crisis of tradition and modernity.

Keywords: Ali Shariati, Islamic political thought, Sirat model, tradition and modernity, Ummah and Imamate, return to self, conceptual metaphor.