This book explores the life and legacy of Jalal Al-e Ahmad (1923-69) - arguably the most prominent Iranian public intellectual of his time - and contends that he 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. Hamid 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 is about expanding the wide spectrum of anticolonial thinking beyond its established canonicity and 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 many books and articles on the social and intellectual history of Islam, both medieval and modern, many of them translated into other languages. He is a globally recognized critical thinker on contemporary affairs and a regular columnist for Aljazeera.


Book Information
ISBN 9781474479288
Author Hamid Dabashi
Format Hardback
Page Count 304
Imprint Edinburgh University Press
Publisher Edinburgh University Press