Description
Book SynopsisIn this social and intellectual biography, Hamid Dabashi contends that Jalal Al-e Ahmad was the last Muslim intellectual to have articulated a vision of Muslim worldly cosmopolitanism. This unprecedented engagement with Al-e Ahmad's life and legacy is a prelude to what Dabashi calls a 'post-Islamist Liberation Theology'.
Trade Review"Hamid Dabashi's remarkable work on Iranian 'cosmopolitan humanism' has already expanded the parameters of discussions on non-western thought to highlight the quest for an anticolonial modernity as integral to its global reach. In this well-balanced and elegantly written volume, Dabashi treats Al-e Ahmad, a preeminent intellectual of his time, as a pioneering -anticolonial theorist who Islamist thinkers, such as Ali Shari'ati, would only later develop an elective affinity for, in the process recasting him an anti-western nativist. Dabashi situates Al-e Ahmad alongside other anticolonial thinkers to remind us that Al-e Ahmad could not have anticipated Shari'ati would have taken him all the way to the borderlines of a committed Islamist ideologue." Along the way, this provocative work raises important questions about the evolution of an anticolonial canon and the crystallization of sectarian divisions."" -Ali Mirsepassi, Albert Gallatin Research Excellence Professor, New York University
