Dr Shariati was born in Mazinan, Khurasan, a small village in Eastern Iran, in 1933 and was educated by his father, Aqa Muhammad Taqi Shariati. His youth was spent in Meshad where his father established the Center for the Propagation of Islamic Teachings. After high school he entered Teachers' Training College and became an active member of his father's center. He entered the University of Meshad in 1956, graduating in 1960. From 1960 to 1964 a state scholarship enabled him to study at the University of Paris, where he gained sociological insight and pursued Islamic studies with the renowned French scholar Louis Massignon. In France he was influenced by the radical Marxism of Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Franz Fanon. Despite this influence he criticized these thinkers for their rejection of traditional religion and suggested that the only way the deprived nations could counterbalance Western imperialism was through the cultural identity preserved by religious traditions.

Dr Ali Shariati
Fatima is Fatima
Our Expectations of the Muslim Woman
Dr Ali Shariati
An Islamic Utopian