Fanon’s letter to an Iranian Revolutionary
Why an anti-colonial revolutionary warned about religious rule
In 1960, Ali Shariati, the man who would come to be known as the “architect of the Iranian revolution,” returned to Paris after a summer of intense revolutionary activity. He had been living there since 1959, supported by a scholarship from the Iranian state.
Shariati registered for a doctoral degree at the Sorbonne and embarked on a course of study in Persian literature, under the direction of Iranologist Gilbert Lazzard. His attention, however, was focused on the burgeoning political movement comprised of anti-colonial activists from France’s colonies.
The most notable and influential among these was the great revolutionary thinker and fighter Frantz Fanon (1925–1961). Born in Martinique, Fanon migrated first to France, where he trained as a clinical psychiatrist. Fanon later joined Algeria’s movement to overthrow the French occupation, and himself fought in the trenches with Algerian revolutionaries, all the while producing work that would inspire anti-colonialists around the world.
Shariati claimed that in 1961, the year of Fanon’s death, he struck up a correspondence with Fanon while they were both living in France. He proudly described himself as the “first person in Iran who has known Fanon, translated his works, spoken of…
