A Sociological Explanation of Rise and Fall of Ideological Understanding of Religion

Ideological religion spread in the pre-revolution atmosphere of Iran among religious intellectual of the Iranian society. As one of the most effective religious intellectuals of his time, Ali Shariati presented the idea of Islam as an ideology in a powerful manner. However, after the victory of the Islamic Revolution, particularly since 1980s, ideological approach to religion and its necessity has been doubted, faced serious decline and turned into a context for the criticism of the ruling power by some religious intellectuals. Abdul Karim Soroush, the most outstanding religious intellectual of the post-revolution era, launched criticism against ideological religion. The present paper is an attempt to causally explain and describe reasons for the rise and fall of ideological understanding of religion in the above-mentioned two periods in the thoughts of Shariati and Soroush. Content analysis and genealogy was used and also the following indexes in the said two periods was conducted: sociopolitical status, intellectual sources, social circles of the two thinkers and effective social-historical conditions of the two periods. On the basis of the findings of this research, certain causal factors and reasons played an important role in the rise and fall of the ideological understanding of religion and changes in the relationship between religion and power.