Spektrum Iran

Ali Shariati and Emile Durkheim's Sociology of Religion

Document Type : Original Research Paper

Author

Markus Fiedler

University Bayreuth, Germany

https://doi.org/10.22034/spektrum.2025.494761.1016
Abstract
When the Iranian sociologist Ali Shariati came to France in the early 1960s and received his doctorate at the Sorbonne, Paris, in 1964, he was confronted not only with Marxist ideas as a student of sociology, but also with the sociology of religion of Émile Durkheim. For Schariati, who had turned to religion and developed a revolutionary interpretation of Islam, Durkheim's sociology posed a major challenge in several respects. The French sociologist Émile Durkheim is not only credited with establishing sociology as a formal discipline in Europe, but also with giving it a scientific basis by adopting the methods of the natural sciences in the study of society. His methodology stems from positivism, a concept first introduced by the French mathematician and philosopher Auguste Comte (1798-1857). To a certain extent, Durkheim's positivism represented a ‘methodological challenge’ for Schariati, since he rejected everything metaphysical and religious as unscientific. Furthermore, Durkheim is also considered the founder of functionalism, which ultimately only appreciated religion in terms of its social function, which had to pose a problem for Schariati as a religious person for whom religion had a very special meaning. Another important point is that Durkheim believed he had discovered the original religion of humanity in his work Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse (‘The elementary forms of religious life’) in his study of totemism in an Australian aboriginal tribe, which was a real challenge for Schariati's thinking. In this article, the three important aspects of Durkheim's sociology of religion will first be briefly presented and the Iranian sociologist Ali Shariati will be briefly introduced to the German reader. Subsequently, Shariati's examination of Durkheim's sociology of religion will be illustrated on the basis of these points and his way of thinking will be highlighted. The results will be summarised at the end.

Keywords

Ali Shariati
Emile Durkheim
sociology of religion
totemism
religion

Subjects

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Spektrum Iran
Volume 37, Issue 2
December 2024
Pages 241-257

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