Dr. Sharaiz Chaudhry
Over the past two years, the world has witnessed Israel’s livestreamed genocide in Palestine and its aggression against the people of West Asia – sponsored and supported by the imperialist powers of North America and Europe. For many, this has opened their eyes to the injustice that lies at the heart of the international system and marks a turning point – how can we accept the status quo, knowing that imperialism and its vassal, Zionism, is willing to sacrifice millions of Palestinians to maintain its dominance?
For Muslims, we have seen religious institutions rendered powerless to stop the unfolding catastrophe, while political leaders remain complicit in the genocide. With the exception of the Axis of Resistance in the region – the Islamic Republic of Iran, Hizballah in Lebanon, Ansarallah in Yemen, and the Islamic Resistance in Iraq –Muslim populations and movements have failed to mobilise in any meaningful way to combat the greatest crime of our time. At the same time, diaspora communities remain dominated by apolitical or liberal tendencies.
This should raise serious questions for all of us as to the state of our religion today. Is this the same religion as that of Muhammad ibn Abdallah, who challenged the oppressive tribal system maintained by the elites of the Quraish, or the religion of Husayn ibn Ali, who chose martyrdom over pledging allegiance to the tyrannical Umayyad Caliph Yazid ibn Muawiyya?
We must ask ourselves how we understand our religion in the face of imperialism, capitalism, and white supremacy, and what our duties are in this political context. How do we recover Islam’s liberative spirit that centres the marginalised and seeks to change their material conditions? Islamic Liberation Theology (ILT) is an intellectual tradition that seeks to do precisely this. This series of articles provides a theoretical foundation for its key aspects, offering a framework through which we reconnect to Islam’s essence as a religion for the marginalized that is ready to meet the challenges of our day.
Here, Part One outlines ILT’s contemporary influences, particularly its connection to Latin American Liberation Theology and Black Theology, the seminal work of revolutionary Iranian thinker Ali Shariati, and Marxism. Part two proposes a unique methodology that centres praxis and achieving material change. Together, they provide Muslims with a framework to challenge the oppressive status quo and build a world that embodies the central Islamic principle of justice.
The theoretical origins of Islamic Liberation Theology as an intellectual discipline can be traced back to three broad intellectual trends. The first two, both originating within Christianity, are Black Theology, which emerged in the US in the late 1960s, and Latin American Liberation Theology, also from the same era. The latter developed in the context of revolutionary upheavals, inspired by the success of the 1959 Cuban Revolution, and the catastrophic levels of poverty and inequality across the continent. Latin American churchmen took the Vatican II proclamation by the Church, calling on it to be a social actor that would provide dignity for all, in radical directions that explicitly drew on Marxist currents to critique existing structures and advocate for change.
Black Theology, first articulated by the Methodist minister James Cone, emerged simultaneously from the Black Power movement in the US in the aftermath of Malcolm X’s assassination in 1965 and the rise to prominence of figures such as Kwame Ture and the Black Panther Party.
Although addressing different political concerns and emerging from very different political contexts, these two trends shared some remarkable similarities that have become key themes in liberation theologies that have succeeded them.
The first of these is a critique of the dominant theological interpretations of the time, which, they highlight, are not objective but rather reflect power relations and function to justify oppressive structures. Cone describes these as a “white theology” that oppresses other racialised groups in the name of Christianity:
American white theology has not been a significant factor in the struggle for black liberation. It has been basically a theology of the white oppressor, giving religious sanction to the genocide of Amerindians and the enslavement of Africans. From the very beginning to the present day, American white theological thought has been “patriotic,” either by defining the theological task independently of black suffering… or by defining Christianity as compatible with white racism… In both cases, theology becomes a servant of the state, and that can only mean death to blacks.
For both traditions, these dominant trends contradicted the valid message of the Gospel, which should emulate God’s preferential option for the poor and marginalised by siding with the oppressed. Liberation theologians in Latin America identified poverty as the key issue. They critiqued the global capitalist system, enforced by US imperialism, for transforming the poor into “non-persons” unworthy of life.
The Church’s historical complicity in upholding racist and capitalist political structures is seen as contradictory to this godly preference for the marginalised, making it a duty for Christians to dismantle these oppressive socio-political structures through involvement in political movements. Indeed, Black theologians were involved in the Black Power movement, through organisations such as the Black Panther Party, and Latin American Liberation Theologians, who aligned with revolutionary movements, most notably the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in Nicaragua. The primary goal was not, therefore, to provide an alternative, progressive interpretation of Christianity. Instead, it was to change material conditions for the marginalised and challenge the systemic causes of their oppression.
While the term “liberation theology” originates within Christianity, this should not lead to the false notion that this is a “foreign import” into the Islamic tradition. Rather, at around the same time, thousands of miles away, Ali Shariati was coming to remarkably similar conclusions in response to Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s despotic rule in Iran –formulating a unique blend of Islam and revolutionary politics.
Shariati’s thought was a curious amalgamation of influences, which he was able to synthesise to give “full ideological expression to all the suppressed revolutionary potentials of Shi’ism” and transform it into “the triumphant site of ideological mobilisation against the Pahlavi regime.” While his writings and lectures covered a wide range of subjects, the most important themes for our purposes regard his analysis of the sociology of Islam. Similar to Black and Liberation Theology, he argued that religion played a dual role in society, either upholding systems of oppression and the position of the powerful minority or promoting a revolutionary spirit of equality and justice that empowers the masses.
The conflict between these two poles of religion has defined all of human history and is illustrated in the story of Cain and Abel, the two sons of Adam. Shariati argued that their story was not mentioned in the Quran simply as a condemnation of murder, but to outline two systems of thought and historical forces. He observes:
There has existed throughout human history, and there will continue to exist until the last day, a struggle between the religion of deceit, stupefaction and justification of the status quo and the religion of awareness, activism and revolution.
The system of Abel represents the true Islamic ideal, organised around the principle of tawhid (unity), that rejects all forms of hierarchy based on race, class, or gender. Conversely, the system of Cain is characterised by shirk (polytheism) and encourages social disparities. It adopts a form of political quietism, placing an overemphasis on religious asceticism and ritual practice.
Shariati provides different examples of different wars in this perpetual war between Cain and Abel. Prophet Musa’s confrontations with Firon, Qarun, and Balaam; Abu Dharr al-Ghifari’s condemnation of the third caliph, Uthman ibn Affan; the Battle of Siffin between Ali ibn Abi Talib’s and Muawiya ibn Abi Sufyan; Hussain’s resistance to Yazid ibn Muawiya at the Battle of Karbala, and the struggles between “Red/Alid” and “Black/Safavid” Shi’ism are some of the key examples that he cites.
These examples were designed to connect the Iranian struggle for freedom with the social objectives of an Islamic movement that spanned history and had divine sanction. He portrayed Shi’ism as a movement of protest for the dispossessed and criticised the ulama for abandoning this.
Just like Liberation Theology, Shariati identified Islam with the masses, the subjects of history, and not a small elite. Citing verse 28:5-6, which has become central to Islamic Liberation Theology, he notes that God explicitly identifies with the oppressed and guarantees their success:
And we desired to show favour to those who were abased in the land and to make them leaders, and to make them the heirs, and to establish them in the land.
Rather than relying on determinism, however, every individual has to make a conscious decision about what role they will play:
It is the responsibility of every individual in every age to determine his stance in the constant struggle between the two wings we have described and not to remain a spectator.
In this sense, Shariati mirrors Christian Liberation Theology’s emphasis on material change and individual responsibility. Although he is unlikely to have known about his Christian counterparts, the shared Latin American and Iranian experiences of capitalist and imperialist domination led them to develop remarkably similar roles for religion in their societies. For both, it had the potential to be a revolutionary force for change that could challenge the power structures that prevent our collective liberation.
The Marxist critique of capitalism was fundamental to the analyses of both Latin American liberation theologians and Ali Shariati. The influence, however, was not unidirectional, and these thinkers sought to challenge the anti-religious sentiment that dominated many socialist movements.
Referring to Marx’s own understanding of the relationship between the economic base and superstructure, liberation theologians highlight that religious interpretation (just like other social structures, such as the state or law) is in the service of the dominant mode of production. The latter will determine which interpretations (accommodationist or revolutionary) dominate, and anti-religious Marxists contradict their own dialectic philosophy when they essentialise religion as an inherently reactionary social force.
Referring to Marx’s famous passage in his Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Shariati notes:
It is right that, “Religion is the opium of the masses of the people”, so that the people surrender to their abjectness, difficulties, wretchedness and ignorance, surrender to the static situation which they are obliged to have.
As we have seen, however, he also believes that true religion is revolutionary – embodied in the system of Abel throughout history. He, along with Christian liberation theologians, cautions against the Marxist tendency to dismiss the social potential of religion. Instead, religion, as an embodied practice of socialised human beings, is not an inherently reactionary or revolutionary force. Instead, both exist in conflict with each other at any given moment, with class and power relations determining which will dominate.
Liberation Theology seeks to reclaim Islam’s revolutionary spirit that challenged oppressive social structures and made the marginalised subjects of history. Influenced by its Christian counterparts and the thought of Ali Shariati, it sees religious knowledge production as a social process that is influenced by contemporary power relations. Within the context of racialised capitalism and imperialism, dominant interpretations either uphold these forces or stay silent with regard to them. ILT provides a framework to challenge these forces by taking God’s intervention in history on the side of the oppressed seriously. It sees it as the responsibility of each believer to be involved in the eternal struggle between the forces of justice and injustice and fulfil God’s promise to establish the dispossessed in the earth.
Dr. Sharaiz Chaudhry is a writer and researcher with a PhD in Islamic Liberation Theology from the University of Edinburgh. He looks to combine Islam with a materialist analysis to understand how Muslims can contribute to social justice struggles and revolutionary politics.
Works cited:
