Explores the life and legacy of Jalal Al-e Ahmad (1923 69) arguably the most prominent Iranian public intellectual of his time A social and intellectual biography of Jalal Al-e Ahmad, a seminal Muslim public intellectual of the mid-20th century Places Al-e Ahmad's writing and activities alongside other influential anticolonial thinkers of his time, including Frantz Fanon, Aim C saire and Edward Said Chapters cover Jalal Al-e Ahmad's intellectual and political life; his relationship with his wife, the novelist Simin Daneshvar; his essays; his fiction; his travel writing; his translations; and his legacy In 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, before the militant Islamism of the last half a century degenerated into sectarian politics and intellectual alienation from the world at large. Dabashi places Al-e Ahmad beside other towering critical thinkers of his time, showing how he personified a state of Muslim anticolonial modernity that has now disappeared behind the smokescreen of sectarian politics. This unprecedented engagement with Al-e Ahmad's life and legacy is a prelude to what Dabashi calls a 'post-Islamist Liberation Theology'. The Last Muslim Intellectual expands the wide spectrum of anticolonial thinking beyond its established canonicity by adding a critical Muslim thinker to it an urgent task, if the future of Muslim critical thinking is to be considered in liberated terms beyond the dead-end of its current sectarian predicament.

About the Author
Hamid Dabashi is Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York. He is the author of over 25 books and focuses on the social and intellectual history of Islam, both medieval and modern. Among his most recent books are The World of Persia Literary Humanism (2014); Can Non-Europeans Think? (2015); Persophilia: Persian Culture on the Global Scene (2015); Iran without Borders: Towards a Critique of the Postcolonial Nation (2016); Iran: Rebirth of a Nation (2017); The Shahnameh: The Persian Epic as World Literature (2019); The Last Muslim Intellectual: The Life and Legacy of Jalal Al-e Ahmad (2021). He is a globally recognised critical thinker on contemporary affairs and a regular columnist for Aljazeera.

Reviews
"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



Book Information
ISBN 9781474479295
Author Hamid Dabashi
Format Paperback
Page Count 344
Imprint Edinburgh University Press
Publisher Edinburgh University Press